WHITE CHRISTIAN EVANGELISM

A DESCENT INTO MADNESS

SEXUAL REPRESSION

A WAR ON THE POOR

A WAR ON WOMEN AND GAYS

EDITORIAL NOTE: We certainly don't suggest all white evangelicals are Trump supporters.
However, this does reflect on most white evangelicals.

DONALD TRUMP'S OVERWHELMING SUPPORT FROM WHITE EVANGELICALS

Donald Trump has overwhelming support from the Evangelical and conservative Christian community. About 80% of white Evangelicals (Pew Research) voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. About 80% of white Evangelicals strongly approve of Trump's job performance. (Pew Research). The results of Pew Research's surveys also show that Trump had the majority of Protestant and Catholic support.

While support for Trump erodes, his support from white Evangelicals remains intact.

Considering that Donald Trump's actions regarding healthcare most severely threaten the sick and the poor, the overwhelming support of the conservative Christian community for Trump is quite shameful.

U.S. EVANGELICALS AGAINST HEALTH CARE

VOTING FOR THE DEATH OF OTHER AMERICANS

On August 11th 2017, key leaders of different conservative organizations, many focused on faith, came together to sign a petition to take away health care from the sick and the needy. This petition supports the idea that President Donald Trump has the authority to repeal the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). This petition is a danger to the American people. A danger to the sick and the poor.

Key among these signatories were founder of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, President of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, who preached that God sends natural disasters to punish gays and just had his home destroyed by a flood, as well as representatives of the Eagle Forum, the Conservatives of Faith, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, the CEO of the anti-pornography organization Enough is Enough, the president of the American Family Association, etc.

We do not believe that the Affordable Care Act is perfect. We ourselves support Single Payer (as you can read from our report). However, the Affordable Care Act has succeeded in providing health care to some 20 million Americans who did not have it before. Repealing the Affordable Care Act in lieu of the Republican plan would result in some 20 million people losing their health care (as predicted by the CBO) and would kill more than 43,000 people annually (New England Journal of Medicine).

The Republican Party already tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They failed. There is little support among the American people and the medical establishment for this action. And yet these signatories want to repeal the Affordable Care Act and end the subsidies to insurers that help reduce costs for the poor.

Even though the repeal of the Affordable Care Act has failed, there are still conservative forces mobilizing to make it happen. And President Donald Trump is currently threatening to end subsidies to insurers. If Donald Trump fulfills his threat, premiums will rise by 20 percent and the federal budget deficits would increase by $194 billion (New York Times). This will impact the poor more than anyone else. In his 2016 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump said that he wasn't going to let anybody die in the streets. But this is exactly what is going to happen if this crusade to end Obamacare continues. And even if Obamacare is never repealed, the repeated attempts to do so are jeopardizing the stability of the insurance markets, making it more likely for premiums to sky-rocket and for poor people to have less options for coverage (World Future Fund).

On October 6th 2017, the Trump administration removed a federal health provision requiring employers to provide coverage for birth control. Companies are required under the Affordable Care Act to offer their employees health coverage that covers contraception. Under the new rules, companies and insurers need only cite a moral or religious objection in order to opt out of the Obama-era federal rule requiring birth control be covered for free for all women. In other words, giving a woman's employer the power to control what she can and can't do with her body. An estimated 55 million women have free access to birth control under the Obama-era rule. Hundreds of thousands could lose that coverage with the change.

"The Trump administration is forcing women to pay for their boss's religious beliefs," said ACLU senior staff attorney Brigitte Amiri. "We're filing this lawsuit because the federal government cannot authorize discrimination against women in the name of religion or otherwise."

On May 4th, 2017, Donald Trump released his "religious liberty" executive order, allowing a broad license to discriminate against LGBT people and others. Several leaders of the religious right were invited to the White House that day, on the National Day of Prayer.

This executive order could lead to the Department of Health and Human Services implementing damaging religious exemptions that would allow hospitals to turn away LGBTQ family members based on the hospital's religious beliefs – leaving patients to die alone.

It could create religious exemptions that would allow federal dollars to fund shelters that adopt formal policies refusing to recognize marriages of same-sex couples or the gender identity of transgender people.

The Social Security Administration could adopt a policy allowing workers to refuse to process spousal or survivor benefits paperwork for a man who has just lost his husband, or refuse to process benefits paperwork for a child of a lesbian couple.

Employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs could be empowered to refuse to process paperwork for a surviving same-sex spouse and their family, also citing religious objections to same-sex marriage.

Trump's executive order grants cover to government officials who wish to deny LGBTQ people's humanity.

A nationwide coalition of 153 evangelical Christian leaders released a statement affirming their beliefs on restricting human sexuality, controlling women's bodies, open bigotry against homosexuals and the condemnation of all sex outside of marriage.

“We did not make ourselves. We are not our own. Our true identity, as male and female persons, is given by God,” the manifesto’s preamble states. “It is not only foolish, but hopeless, to try to make ourselves what God did not create us to be.”

Many of the 14 listed beliefs included in the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’s “Nashville Statement” take direct aim at the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community.

Several members of President Donald Trump's Evangelical Advisory Board are among the document’s 153 signatories. They include James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Ronnie Floyd, senior pastor of Cross Church; Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary; James MacDonald, founder and senior pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel; and James Robison, founder and president of LIFE Outreach International.