Every week, millions of Christians gather to worship and remember the tenets of the faith: belief in God, in Jesus Christ as his son and their savior, and in the Holy Spirit. Many utter the words of the Lord’s Prayer each week, and in doing so, ask that God forgive our sins, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
These are the ABCs of the Christian faith — and they should theoretically be an easy answer to offer if, like President Donald Trump, you’re asked what might happen when you die, and what you might do when Judgment Day comes.
And yet, when asked last week by Ross Douthat on 60 Minutes where Trump thinks he’ll go when he dies — and if he could forgive his political enemies if his salvation depended on it — Trump was brutally honest.
“Well, I’m a religious person, so in theory I go to heaven,” the president said. “I hope so. I don’t want to go to hell.”
Could he forgive opponents like former FBI Director James Comey and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi?
“Well, then I wouldn’t be real, would I? I mean, if I said to you, sure, the easy answer to that is ‘Oh, yes, I could forgive,’” Trump told Douthat. “The answer is no. I want to be honest, no.”
Even if God asked it?
“Before the judgment, no,” he said. “I do hate some of my enemies…I probably cannot do that, no, because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.”
For the love of God there are a TON of different kinds of Christians. I mean, for crying out loud, a Presbyterian minister was part of a group of protestors that was shot by a rubber bullet while demonstrating against ICE, Bishop Marianne Budde was in the news the day of the inauguration for calling out Trump in her brief sermon at a prayer service that he himself was attending, every No Kings/No Tyrants protest includes plenty of Christian groups (including me and my colleagues who stood with the ACLU). So please stop this bullshit of acting like we all support Trump and right-wing nationalstic policies. Stop acting like my religion is some kind of monolith. If you can differentiate between “Muslim” and “radicalized terrorist” then you sure as shit can learn a few distinctions of us Christians. Be better Vox.
I know you’re out there, and you know you’re out there. If it’s within you to do so, please continue doing all the good you do, because it is very real. But there is backlash: the church has not policed its own.
At some point Christianity is going to have to address its general I Corinthians (and specifically Romans 2:17-24) problem. Until it does, I am genuinely sorry that you, and other genuine believers like you, are being tarred with the same filthy brush.
Oh interesting… So when the argument is about the one or two examples on the left, then it’s all about how there are a ton of different types of Christians, and see there are good ones!
But when the discussion is and evangelicals, we suddenly get all of the, “well they’re not real Christians” arguments.
How convenient that you get to claim the handful of good ones while disavowing all the awful ones. What a clever little situation there.