Intentional Conservative Archives - Intentional Conservative

What Led White Evangelicals to Vote for Trump?

January 5, 2018 by debisimons

Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll, originally published in 1994 by Wm. B. Eerdmans, now available in several formats, including audio. (If you follow the link and purchase the book I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.)

I am going to assume that you have already read or will read my review of this book over at my main site, Intentional Living. As I said there, this is a dense, challenging book that will reward readers who take it on.

For the purpose of this post, however, I want to concentrate specifically on some ideas that help explain why so many earnest, sincere Evangelical/ Fundamentalist Christians felt that they had to vote for a lying, cheating, adulterous playboy with a pro-choice Liberal Democratic background and a profane, vulgar vocabulary. Their votes reflected a failure of the mind in several different areas. I hope the following won’t sound too scathing, but we are in a predicament today that does not allow for mincing of words. America has elected an utterly unfit man to the Presidency, and Evangelicals helped to put him there. Why?

Let’s Define a Few Logical Terms

August 22, 2017 by debisimons

It has occurred to me often over the past year that there are a few terms that keep cropping up in political discussions and which are often used inaccurately, or at least sloppily. The terms have some overlap but are distinct ideas, and I think it’s helpful to parse them out. So here goes:

1. Whataboutism: the biggie, from which many other errors flow. Here is my definition:

Be a Berean

December 1, 2017August 2, 2017 by debisimons

What does it mean to “be a Berean”? Take a look at Acts 17:11:

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. (NIV)

When Paul was on his missionary journeys one of the main ways he did his teaching and preaching was that he went to the local synagogue in each city.

Would Things REALLY Be “So Much Worse” with Hillary?

July 5, 2017 by debisimons

I get this comment sometimes on my Facebook page, so let’s address it. Are we really better off with Donald Trump than we would have been with Hillary Clinton? It’s not a matter of re-fighting the election but of taking a good, hard look at what (if anything) has actually been accomplished by the election of a third-rate celebrity con man with no governing experience to the highest office in the land. I will be including links at various places to articles I’ve already posted as support for my ideas.

The Whole “Ends Justify the Means” Blah-de-Blah.

January 4, 2019March 8, 2017 by debisimons

Yet another post thoughtfully provided by a commenter on my Facebook page, this time in response to an article I posted about Donald Trump’s speech to Congress way, way last week. I’ve been pondering it and decided it was worth my further thoughts. Here’s what the commenter said:

Voting for Hillary to keep Donald Trump out of the White House is nothing more than using the “end justifies the means” philosophy. That philosophy is certainly not Christian, and is also not conservative.

Why Does the Trump Administration Keep Shooting Itself in the Foot?

January 4, 2019March 3, 2017 by debisimons

I’ve been watching the scene since Jan. 20 with my mouth agape in utter bewilderment. How could people who are experienced in public life and, for the most part, in governance and the law (I exclude the POTUS from that description) make such . . . well, the only word to use is “dumb”. . . mistakes? Surely, surely, surely the Trump administration came into office knowing that the Democrats in Congress would be baying for their blood (just as the Republicans would have been howling after Hillary Clinton had she won). So didn’t anybody sit down with the inner circle at the White House and say,

“Okay, guys, we need to keep our noses clean and our powder dry. We’re in a war zone.” Apparently not!

Why Bother Re-Posting These Articles Now?

January 4, 2019March 3, 2017 by debisimons

I was going to do this later on today but want to get out to the big garage cleanup, so here it is. I said earlier that I was going to post two articles from back in the distant past, before Nov. 8, when there was still hope that we weren’t going to elect Donald Trump. Out of many articles I could re-post from that time pointing out how much more dangerous Trump was than Hillary Clinton, these are the two best that I read.

But why bother? These articles didn’t change one thing. (I did a final, desperate, night-before-the-election e-mail sendout to a few selected people with the Frum article. Let’s just say that it didn’t do any good.)

Sigh. So everything is now copacetic, huh?

January 4, 2019March 1, 2017 by debisimons

President Trump managed to read off a teleprompter and act like a grownup for an entire hour last night during his address to Congress. Great swathes of the media, left, right and center, are going bonkers. He’s acting Presidential! He’s finally pivoted! We’re going to be okay!

Folks, he hasn’t changed. I would love, love, love to know what the process was in writing that speech. You just

have to imagine that there was a lot of talk about making a splash and calming down (not easy to do at the same time). There seems to be a consensus of opinion that the speech was largely a product of Steve Bannon and Ivanka Trump. So he gets all the immigration stuff, and she gets the childcare leave stuff. But it’s all great. He didn’t call any names, or bash the media, or talk about the size of his inauguration crowd or his electoral college margin. And so now we’re good to go, right?

Not so much. I’ve already posted an article on Facebook about the cynical use of a fallen hero’s wife as a prop. I’m sure she felt that she had to be there, so no criticism of her is intended in any way. The two articles below do some fact-checking and some conservative-agenda-checking. Why even bother? Because we have the job as citizens of refusing to let our leaders blindside us. We as conservatives must recognize how profoundly un-conservative the Trump agenda really is. We as Christians must recognize that not one single socially-conservative idea was promoted last night, with the exception of a plug for Neil Gorsuch to be confirmed quickly. As the pro-life website LifeSiteNews points out, his speech didn’t directly mention life, marriage, or religious liberty at all.

So hold off on the champagne. Nothing has changed. I’m going to keep on a-postin’ here and on Facebook in the hopes of fanning at least a few flames of true Christian conservatism. Here are the two articles:

“Last Night, Conservatives Gave Up on Conservatism”

“Fact-Checking President Trump’s Address to Congress”

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A Slight Repair to My Previous Post.

January 4, 2019February 25, 2017 by debisimons

After one of my dearest friends and most faithful readers wrote a long, thoughtful comment on my previous post I realized that I hadn’t been as clear as I should have been with my statement that we should go out and meet Muslims instead of reading books about them. As I said in my response to her comment, I should have worded that sentence a little differently. My point was that at some point you need to quit absorbing information and start putting what you have to use. Here are the sources of information I’ve absorbed over the past decade or so on this issue:

Dear Christian Conservative:

April 26, 2017February 24, 2017 by debisimons

Father and young son in traditional muslim headwear

What are you afraid of? Do you really believe that the cause of Christ is so weak that it can be conquered by Islam?

Why do you not rejoice that the mission field is coming to America, as it always has?

Reliable reports suggest more Muslims have become followers of Jesus over the last two decades than in Islam’s entire 1,500 year history. Based on the accounts of several missiologists, it has been surmised that “more Muslims have committed to follow Christ in the last 10 years than in the last 15 centuries of Islam.” In spite of great difficulty and turmoil, Christianity is unquestionably expanding throughout Islamic world. God is up to something amazing in a region that many have thought was unreachable. (Source: “World Revival Network Blog”)

Instead of holding study groups to read books about Islam, why not prayerfully look for ways in which you could get acquainted with actual Muslim people? Have you ever met one of them? Or do you just fear them and see them as the enemy? If you do see all Muslims through this lens, can you make room for the fact that the best way to defeat your enemy is to win him over?

I am amazed and appalled at the attitudes I see towards Muslims within the Christian community. I would suggest that we start seeing them for who they are: sinners in need of a Savior, as we all are.

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