A Southern Baptist adviser to President Donald Trump says it is “absolutely ludicrous” to call Trump’s evangelical supporters hypocrites for standing by the president amid allegations that he had an adulterous relationship with an adult film star.
“Evangelicals know they are not compromising their beliefs in order to support this great president,” Robert Jeffress, pastor of the 12,000-member First Baptist Church in Dallas, said March 8 on Fox News.
Robert Jeffress
Jeffress predicted a lawsuit by porn star Stormy Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford and who is seeking to void a nondisclosure agreement about their relationship made days before the 2016 election, would do little to erode Trump’s evangelical base.
“Evangelicals still believe in the commandment: Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star,” Jeffress said. “However, whether this president violated that commandment or not is totally irrelevant to our support of him.”
Jeffress, a spiritual adviser to the president who prayed at Trump rallies during his campaign, said evangelicals “knew they weren’t voting for an altar boy” when they cast their ballots in 2016.
“We supported him because of his policies and his strong leadership,” Jeffress said, citing Tuesday’s announcement that Trump will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in May as the latest example.
“Evangelicals understand the concept of sin and forgiveness,” Jeffress said. “We are all sinners. We all need forgiveness. That forgiveness is available through Christ for anyone who asks. Whether the president needs that forgiveness for this particular allegation, whether he’s asked for it, is between him, his family and his God.”
Trump’s lawyer reportedly paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016 to prevent her from talking about her alleged sexual relationship with Trump a decade earlier. Attorney Michael Cohen said the president “vehemently denies” the two had an affair.
Jeffress said “even if it’s proven true, it doesn’t matter.”
“I’m asked the question, ‘What would it take for evangelicals to walk away from President Trump?’” Jeffress said. “I’m his friend. I’ll never walk away, but I think if his policy changes or if he were found to be in an adulterous relationship now, that would cause many people a problem.”
Jeffress, one of the first evangelical leaders to align with Trump’s presidential campaign, is one of six Southern Baptists named to his 25-member Evangelical Executive Advisory Board in June 2016.
Others include Ronnie Floyd, pastor of Cross Church in Springdale, Ark., and Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas , both past presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Richard Land, former head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and now president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, has advised the president, along with David Jeremiah, pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in San Diego, Calif.; and evangelist Jay Strack, president and founder of Student Leadership University.
A March 9 New York Times story suggests strong support for Trump among white evangelicals is putting a damper on modest gains in recent years toward ending Sunday morning’s reputation as the most segregated hour in America.
Chanequa Walker-Barnes
Writer Campbell Robertson said many African-Americans who began attending majority white churches in the interest of racial reconciliation began having qualms when white preachers were silent about police violence against unarmed blacks.
Now a “quiet exodus” is occurring among such worshippers, the story says, who have a hard time reconciling Trump’s talk about abortion and religious liberty with his comments about immigrants, open hostility to NFL players who kneel during the National Anthem and false claim that former President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen.
“It said, to me, that something is profoundly wrong at the heart of the white church,” Chanequa Walker-Barnes, a professor of practical theology at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta,” told the newspaper.
“We were willing to give up our preferred worship style for the chance to really try to live this vision of beloved community with a diverse group of people,” she said. “That didn’t work.”
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