Donald Trump spoke to a group of Southern Baptists for about a minute and a half June 10 and warned them they cannot vote for Democrats because “they’re against religion” and “they’re against your religion.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for U.S. president, spoke via video to participants at a free luncheon hosted by the Danbury Institute as a side event to the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis.
He addressed his remarks to “all the wonderful pastors and faith leaders, very respected people gathered for the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.”
Trump thanked the crowd “for your tremendous devotion to God and country and your tremendous support of me.”
“You just can’t vote Democrat.”
In what has become standard fare for his campaign rallies, Trump called the United States a “declining nation” that can only be rescued by voting for him.
“These are difficult times for our nation, and your work is so important,” he said. “We can’t afford to have anyone sit on the sidelines. Now is the time for us to all pull together and to stand up for our values, and for our freedoms, and you just can’t vote Democrat.
“They’re against religion. They’re against your religion. In particular, you cannot vote for Democrats, and you have to get out and vote. We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, it is in life, and the heritage and tradition that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world.”
If reelected to the White House, Trump said, “These are going to be your years because you’re going to make it come back. Like just about no other group. I know what’s happening. I know where you’re coming from and where you’re going, and I’ll be with you side by side.”
The former president, who now is a convicted felon, was introduced by Scott Colter, who leads the new Danbury Institute, a conservative advocacy group. Colter is a former administrator at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, an SBC school in Fort Worth, Texas.
Colter said he voted for Trump in 2016 and was criticized by his peers for doing so.
“We who made that decision faced immense and tremendous persecution and ridicule from the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, from organizations within the Southern Baptist Convention, and from a wide swath of Christianity,” he asserted. “And yet we went to the ballot box and made that decision based upon the issue that we thought was the most important issue facing our country and the next generation of our children, who are being slaughtered in the womb.
“Our decision to support Donald Trump was vindicated in that moment, because of what he did,” Colter continued. “We took a risk. We took a risk on what he said he would do. And he came through and he delivered in that case. And so we can debate all day long the merits of who Donald Trump is and his personality and all of those different things. He did what he said he would do. And for Christians, that brought the step that we had been praying for and that we really never thought we would see in the pro-life movement and I’m tremendously grateful for that.”
Earlier in the luncheon program, Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., reiterated his previous critique of Trump’s conviction in a New York court on 34 felony counts related to hush money payments made to a mistress.
Al Mohler posing with Paul Pressler two months after the Duane Rollins sexual assault case against Pressler was made public in 2017. (Via X)
“What we are looking at is the misuse of the American legal system in a way that, quite frankly, will not allow for recovery,” Mohler said.
The seminary president said this fall’s presidential election represents “two rival understandings of reality facing off,” and the Republican understanding is better aligned with Southern Baptist values.
“We are called together as conservative Christians for a matter of conviction and a political policy and a political principle,” he said. “And if nothing else, we have to be the last people on earth to know what those principles are. Understand that it comes right down to life and liberty and on those two fights, we will not be absent.”
Then in a turn that separates Mohler from the views of most evangelical voters, he called for opposition to invitro fertilization. This distinction, brought to the forefront by an earlier ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, separates the most extreme anti-abortion advocates from traditional anti-abortion advocates.
“If we believe in the sanctity and dignity of every single human life from the point of fertilization, we need to recognize any intervention by an embryo, any commodification of the embryo, any turn of the embryo into a consumer product is an assault upon human dignity,” Mohler declared.
Mohler is coauthor of a resolution opposing IVF that will be considered by messengers to the SBC annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday. That resolution is considered to be extremely controversial.
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