Why Trump lost Christian voters in 2020

It appears that US President Donald Trump lost a significant amount of support among Christian voters in the 2020 US presidential election. In other aspects of the election, such as that for the Senate and House of Representatives, there was not such a significant loss of support. See here Trump%20lost%20religious%20voters%20%u2014%20and%20it%20cost%20him%20in%20multiple%20states%3A%20analysis%20-%20Alternet.org:

President Donald Trump's overwhelming support from evangelical Christians slipped during the 2020 election as President-elect Joe Biden managed to sway a substantial margin of those voters. Now, Trump's campaign team is searching for someone to blame for its election defeat, according to Politico.

Initially, Trump's campaign advisors and Christian allies dismissed the poll projections that suggested a decline in his support among religious voters, insisting the president delivered for his religious supporters throughout his term.

Political analysts have been seeking the reasons for such loss of support, but for Christians the reasons are simple and not far to seek. 

 Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them." In their appearances on TV, which of the two, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, showed more of the fruit of the Spirit, which St Paul lists in Galatians 5:22?

Love

Joy

Peace

Patience

Kindness

Goodness

Faithfulness

Gentleness

Self-Control

And which of them, Joe Biden or Donald Trump, showed more of the works of the flesh, which St Paul lists in Galatians 5:19ff?

Immorality

Impurity

Licentiousness

Idolatry

Sorcery

Enmity

Strife

Jealousy

Anger

Selfishness

Dissension

Party Spirit

Envy

Drunkenness

Carousing

It has been reported that some of President Trump's supporters ascribed his loss of the election to demonic influence, and they are probably right, because one of the things that demons do is tempt people to behave in ways that display the works of the flesh rather than the fruit of the Spirit. 

The way that they do this has been documented in C.S. Lewis's book The Screwtape Letters, which politicians who wish to gain the support of Christian voters could profit from reading.

None of this says anything about the policies of the parties that these two men represent. That is often a factor in the political choices that Christians make, and much of it has to do with exercising one's judgement to balance the good and the bad in the various policies. 

Some may have voted for Biden because they thought his policies on healthcare were more Christian than those of Trump, while others may have voted for Trump because they thought his policies on abortion were more Christian. But that is a matter of judgement and weighing up the probabilities, and in the end it probably balanced itself out. 

But in the question of the fruit of the spirit and the works of the flesh, there was no need for such balancing. In previous elections it could be said that voters had to choose between the evil of two lessers. But this time around the issues were more clearcut. You could vote for the works of the flesh, or for the fruit of the Spirit.

 

US politics in a nutshell

Someone posted this on Facebook, and for those living outside the USA it says it all. It tells you all you need to know about both main parties in the current US election, and the other parties don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being elected anyway.

Yes, I know it's simplistic, and it over-simplifies complex issues, but unless you're a professional political fundi, it tells you all you need to know.

Hat-tip to Daniel Lieuwen, who shared it on Facebook.

I never drove white voters away: Malema

The Yanks have Sarah Palin; we have Julius Malema. I don't know which is worse. I know that there are political loose cannons in every country, but, as someone once said, the trouble with political jokes is that they get elected.

I never drove white voters away: Malema: City Press: Politics: News:

Malema told delegates that it was not true that he drove whites away from the ANC, saying only that white voters never voted for the governing party even during former president Nelson Mandela’s leadership.

“They (whites) never voted for Mandela in 1994 and they never voted for (president) Thabo Mbeki,” he said.

Malema said whites had not voted for Mandela even when he was involved in reconciliation.

I've got news for you, my china.

I'm white, and I voted for Mandela in 1994.

I voted for Mbeki in 1999, though not in 2004.

In 2004 and 2009 I voted for Patricia de Lille and the ID, because I thought voices like Patricia de Lille's needed to be heard in parliament.

I didn't vote in the local government elections last month. I don't get to vote for the mayor of Cape Town, and I didn't even know who the candidates were in our ward. But the main reason was not ideological. I happened to be away on holiday (and you can see our best holiday pics here -- I think they're quite cool, even though I say so myself).

And more and more I'm seeing the truth of what G.K. Chesterton wrote:

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy.

But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

Or, as Jeremy Taylor used to sing:

One fine day I'll make my way to 10 Downing Street
"Good day," I'll say, "I've come a long way excuse my naked feet.
But I lack, you see, the energy to buy a pair of shoes
I lose my zest to look my best when I read the daily news,
'cause it appears you've got an atom bomb
that'll blow us all to hell and gone
I've I've gotta die then why should I
give a damn if my boots aren't on."

And the death of Albertina Sisulu last week rubs it in.

It's not the atom bomb that threatens us now, but when I read the daily news it's all about a bottomless sea of greed and mediocrity.

Politicians of Albertina Sisulu's generation stood for something and they fought for something, and one could admire them.

If we had a General Election today I wouldn't know who to vote for.

As someone else said, How do politicians resemble a bunch of bananas?

The answer: They're all yellow, they hang together, and there's not a straght one among them.

Actually there's one guy left I might be prepared to take seriously.

That's Zwelinzima Vavi, the trade union leader.

In today's paper he was quoted as saying

You cannot tell the workers and the poor that your real ambition is accumulation and more and more (of an) expensive bourgeois lifestyle and opulence; you have to talk their language even though everything you are is about accumulation and self-centredness. Tenderpreneurs present themselves as mMessiahs to advance their narrow economic agenda.

At least he sees the problem, or part of it.

Trouble is, as long as the tripartite alliance lasts, there's no chance of voting for him.

The Orange Revolution, Peeled

The Orange Revolution, Peeled by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com:

To recall the media hype that accompanied Ukraine’s 'Orange Revolution' of 2004, which propelled Viktor Yushchenko, a former central banker and alleged liberal democrat, into power, is like remembering a fever-dream in the morning: the memory of the details are blurred, and all that really remains is the sense that something strenuous, and ultimately unreal, has been passed through. The disputed election of 2004 – eventually decided in Yushchenko’s favor on account of mass street protests – ended with the defeat of Viktor Yanukovich, the candidate of the Russian-speaking eastern section of the country – the man whose comeback in Sunday’s election represented a stunning repudiation of the Orange Revolution and the regime that was born in its wake. How that 'revolution' came to be, and what it really represented, is about to undergo a major revision, one in striking contrast to the instant narrative provided by the Western media six years ago.

Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace

And now it appears that Yanukovich, the candidate the Western media wanted us all to hate, has won the election. Is it just that I'm getting more cynical as I'm getting older, or is the media hype getting worse?

Ukraine seems to exist as a case-study for Samuel Huntington's Clash of civilizations thesis, with the fault line between Western and Orthodox civilisations running right through the country. If anything can confirm Huntington's thesis, the Western media spin does.

Another commentator comments on the spin in this article: News Analysis - For Kremlin, Ukraine Election Cuts Two Ways - NYTimes.com

On Monday, for example, European election monitors praised the election that was held Sunday, calling it an impressive display of democracy. Ukraines election, in other words, did not follow the Kremlin blueprint...

What a bizarre statement. A Russian-favored candidate wins in a fair election, and somehow that is supposed to be evidence that Russia is in favor of unfair elections. In fact, their candidate winning in a fair election is the best possible blueprint for Russia.
Imagine what the NY Times would be saying if the election had been unfair!

In the short term, the Kremlin may have benefited from the election. Relations were tense under the incumbent president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, an Orange leader who wanted to pull Ukraine away from Moscows orbit by joining NATO.

Mr. Yanukovich does not support NATO membership and has indicated that he will abandon some other initiatives opposed by Russia. This is the only real news in the whole NY Times story. This was a major geopolitical / energy-politics victory for Russia. Once again a CIA-engineered Colored Revolution has been turned back. The NY Times does its best to bury this news near the bottom of their story, and even then they downplay it by saying the Kremlin 'may' have benefitted, but only in the 'short term'.

What is lost in all this rhetoric about whether "the West" or "the Kremlin" benefited is what is surely more important: whether the people of Ukraine benefited.

Worship al fresco

We arrived at Zakhele School in Mamelodi this morning for the Hours and Readers Service. The burglar alarm was going off in the school media centre, so Val phoned the security company, but they said the client had been suspended. The classroom we usually use was locked, so we found a desk, propped up the ikons against a tree, and had our service there, to the intermittent accompaniment of the burglar alarm, the shouting Zionist man who usually has the classroom next to ours (theirs was open) and the neopentecostal amplifier at the other end of the school yard.

On the way home afterwards we noticed blooming election posters, now that the date of the general election has been announced, mostly ANC and Democratic Alliance at this stage. I've heard that there are 114 parties contesting the election this time, so no one can say we don't have a choice. One result is certain, a politician weill be elected.

McCain not "natural born" citizen after all

It seems that people have been querying the citizenship of both leading candidates for the US presidency -- Barack Obama's father was Kenyan, but he was born in the USA. John McCain, however, was not.

clipped from www.nytimes.com In the most detailed examination yet of Senator John McCain’s eligibility to be president, a law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen.” The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over Mr. McCain’s eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make Mr. McCain a natural-born citizen. “It’s preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an advanced democracy,” Professor Chin said. “But this is the constitutional text that we have.”

Gerald Ford, the unelected US president

Hearing all the eulogies for Gerald Ford, the only unelected president of the USA, reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton said:

Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that the two things have often quarrelled. The real ground upon which Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. The one specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen.

If our faith comments on government at all, its comment must be this -- that the man should rule who does NOT think that he can rule. Carlyle's hero may say, "I will be king"; but the Christian saint must say "Nolo episcopari." If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this -- that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule. Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can't.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of democracy is elections. because all the wrong people put themselves forward for election. Maybe what we need is for the leaders of a country to be chosen by lot. Let parliament be drafted by ballot. They would be just as representative of the country as elected politicans, and they would be replaced when their term of office ends, so they wouldn't be around long enough to establish a bribe-taking system. If Gerald Ford was as good as they are now saying, this would probably be a better system.