Both Vice-president Pence and Mike Pompeo are active evangelicals, believing in the whole evangelical package, including the so-called rapture, a final battle between good and evil, and the second coming of Jesus, when the faithful will ascend to heaven and the rest of us will go to hell. One of the preconditions for this event is the gathering of Jewry in a greater Israel. If you are wondering why the Trump administration is so preoccupied with Israel and its enemies it is owing to this so-called Christian Zionism.
The evangelicals are some of Trump’s staunchest supporters, the spine of his base. To them he is a latter-day King Cyrus, the 6th Century BC Persian king who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity. To them Trump’s daily lying, his dubious business practices, his racism and his serial sexual affairs are irrelevant. He is a “great leader” who fights the perceived threats to their way of life, their feeling of persecution (largely imaginary) and the attacks by liberals on “christian values”, such as abortion, homosexual marriage and the societal acceptance of equality for trans-sexual men and women.
As the better informed people who voted for him in 2016 drift away, disillusioned and disgusted, Trump will rely more and more on these Christian Zionists and employ more of them in the chaotic administration. (based on an article in The Guardian. 18 Jan 2019)
In parenthesis……I received the following email (I am not necessarily a supporter of MoveOn):
“Dear fellow MoveOn member,
Karen Pence, second lady of the United States, has agreed to teach at a school that does not provide admission to LGBTQ students or parents. The school also requires teachers to sign employment contracts affirming that “the term ‘marriage’ has only one meaning; the uniting of one man and one woman,” and that being a member of the LGBTQ community is a fireable offense”.
Doesn’t it make you want to espouse beliefs that involve rationality, kindness, inclusivity, lack of fear (evangelicals are very fearful, mainly of hell-fire), give and take? In other words Epicureanism?
I must point out that there is a huge difference between evangelicals in the US and those in the UK. My sister and her family are evangelicals, but they are great supporters of science, believe in global climate change etc and are appalled by the torrent of lies they see coming from the Trump administration, and the unwinding of the American safety and health protections etc that British people welcome and take for granted. They are, in short, educated. And they do good things in their communities, regardless of ethnicity and colour. Apparently there are many British evangelicals who doubt whether some transatlantic evangelicals are even christian, although there are no statistics on this and it is hear-say.