XPost: alt.politics.religion, alt.christian.religion, alt.christnet.evangelical   
   XPost: alt.christnet.religion, alt.christnet.christianlife   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   US evangelicals voted for Trump. We need a better conversation   
      
   By Dr Alastair Roberts   
      
   White evangelicals in the US overwhelmingly support Donald Trump, but   
   their reasons are often misunderstood by their British counterparts.   
   Dr Alastair Roberts looks at the cultural and political forces at play   
      
   Source: REUTERS/Octavio Jones   
   	https://t.co/RrsytMABF6   
      
   Gery Cuprisin prays with the congregation during an ‘Election Eve   
   Service of Prayer,’ in support of President Donald Trump at Suncoast   
   Liberty Fellowship in Largo, Florida.   
      
   Separated by an ocean, American and British Christians often struggle   
   to understand each other’s politics.   
      
   Americans are considerably more likely to be oblivious to British   
   politics than the other way around. However, notwithstanding the   
   extensive coverage of and even preoccupation with American politics in   
   British media, British observers often have highly misleading   
   impressions of the animating forces, the faultlines, and the   
   affiliations of American politics.   
      
   Perhaps our supposed overfamiliarity with it prevents us from   
   recognising the foreignness and strangeness required to appreciate it   
   on its own terms.   
      
   Evangelicals on this side of the Atlantic can find it difficult to   
   understand the extremely high levels of support for President Trump   
   among white American evangelicals (over 80%). Even more confusing -   
   and perhaps dismaying - for some may be the enthusiasm for Trump among   
   many prominent evangelical leaders, such as Franklin Graham, who   
   prayed at the inauguration.   
      
   Many British Christian observers resonated more with Bishop Mariann   
   Budde’s much-discussed sermon, within which she expressed her concern   
   for “gay, lesbian and transgender children…who fear for their lives”,   
   for undocumented immigrants, and for refugees, asking President Trump   
   to show mercy.   
      
   Read it all here:   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa   
   Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm   
   Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com   
      
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