{"id":5814,"date":"2016-10-13T11:58:15","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T10:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=5814"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:27:49","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:27:49","slug":"the-simple-christian-argument-for-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=5814","title":{"rendered":"The simple Christian argument for Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the light of many comments on yesterday’s post<\/a>…<\/p>\n

1. Christians believe that war is evil.
\n2. Clinton is much more likely to pursue, initiate or trigger a major war than Trump.<\/p>\n

If 1 and 2 are true, then Christians must <\/em>prefer Trump to Clinton.<\/p>\n

There’s a bit of wiggle room on 1, and more on 2 – though not much. To disagree on 2 is perfectly possible, and many Christians would argue that Trump is more risky than Clinton in this area. I think the evidence for that is slight-to-vanishing, but it is at least a spiritually serious engagement, and there can then follow a shared assessment of the facts of a situation in the light of an agreed moral framework.<\/p>\n

However, to accept both 1 and 2 but then say that Trump cannot be supported because he is vain, obnoxious, rude to women etc – this is not a spiritually serious argument, and does not qualify as Christian engagement in the political process. All those things are (probably) true, yet their significance pales in comparison to the violence of war. All those evangelical leaders who now disavow Trump on such grounds simply demonstrate how completely they have been captured by the principalities and powers; they are whitewashed tombs<\/a>. Whilst it would undoubtedly be a good thing to have a morally exemplary character as the occupant of the White House, that is not an available option. This is simply a choice between two evils, and unless 2 above is wrong, it is really very clear which is the greater evil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the light of many comments on yesterday’s post… 1. Christians believe that war is evil. 2. Clinton is much more likely to pursue, initiate or trigger a major war than Trump. If 1 and 2 are true, then Christians … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-1vM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5814"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5816,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions\/5816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}