On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.
So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉
I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.
Wikipedia (yes, I know, thank you) says this:
Obama is a Protestant Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life.[77] He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he “was not raised in a religious household”. He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He described his father as a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.”[78]
In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”[79] On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying “I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t – frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.”[80][81]
Obama met Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in October 1987, and became a member of Trinity in 1992.[82] He resigned from Trinity in May 2008 during his first presidential campaign after some of Wright’s statements were criticized.[83] The Obama family has attended several Protestant churches since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, but are not habitual church-goers.[84][85][86]
And here’s Trump:
Religion
The Trump family were originally Lutherans in Germany,[52] and his mother’s upbringing was Presbyterian in Scotland.[53] His parents married in a Manhattan Presbyterian church in 1936.[54] As a child, he attended Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, and had his confirmation there.[55][55] In the 1970s, his family joined the Marble Collegiate Church (a New York City affiliate of the Reformed Church in America) in Manhattan.[56] The pastor at that church, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and The Art of Living, ministered to Trump’s family and mentored him until Peale’s death in 1993.[57][56] Trump, who is Presbyterian,[58][59] has cited Peale and his works during interviews when asked about the role of religion in his personal life.[56]
After marrying his first wife Ivana in 1977 at Marble Collegiate Church, he attended that church until 2013.[60][55] In 2016, Trump visited Bethesda-by-the-Sea, an Episcopal church, for Christmas services.[61] Trump has said that he participates in Holy Communion. Beyond that, he has not asked God for forgiveness, stating: “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.”[62]
Trump refers to his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal, a bestseller following publication in 1987, as “my second favorite book of all time, after the Bible. Nothing beats the Bible.”[63][64] In a 2016 speech to Liberty University, he referred to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians”, eliciting chuckles from the audience.[65] Despite this, The New York Times reported that Evangelical Christians nationwide thought “that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure”.[66]
Outside of his church affiliations, Trump has relationships with a number of Christian spiritual leaders, including Florida pastor Paula White, who has been described as his “closest spiritual confidant”.[67] In 2015, he asked for and received a blessing from Greek Orthodox priest Emmanuel Lemelson[68] and, in 2016, released a list of his religious advisers, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed and others.[69] Referring to his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism before her marriage to Jared Kushner, Trump said in 2015: “I have a Jewish daughter; and I am very honored by that […] it wasn’t in the plan but I am very glad it happened.”[70]
Now do I think that Obama is probably more on the agnostic side of the coin? Yes. But he definitively states that he is a Christian, and has explicitly said ‘I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.’ Although Obama is good at weaseling his way around a question and exaggerating when necessary, I do not doubt that he values the truth and wouldn’t simply lie.
Obviously Obama seems like He who is without sin himself next to Trump. There’s no doubt he values the truth. But I also don’t doubt the very good chance he’s lying about this I wouldn’t consider it weaseling either (this isn’t a lie he’s just made up in interviews, it’s a planned and consistent one). And I don’t blame him. If he didn’t self identify as a Christian (and make it sound like he really meant it), he would never have been president. I don’t think it’d be very hard for him to pretend (I’ve done it myself with certain members of my family), not all atheists are militant about their beliefs. I think he probably just tries to appreciate the good will towards man and community aspect, and doesn’t think too much about the whole God part.
Could I be wrong? Sure. But I’m probably not.
Like I said, he’s probably more agnostic than he’d ever admit. It’s terrible that in the US, you have to lie about your religion if you’re anything other than Christian or a branch of it. But Trump is the exception, isn’t he? Perhaps if the ‘horrible because he’s an atheist’ thing doesn’t stick, future presidents will have an easier time of it.