Trump's Big Problem With God

An open letter to Paul Ryan and James Dobson, on the many heresies of their chosen candidate for president

- Kurt Eichenwald

TO HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN AND JAMES DOBSON:

In recent months, each of you has endorsed Donald Trump in his campaign to become president of the United States. Mr. Speaker, you undoubtedly took this action in hopes of preserving unity within the Republican Party. Mr. Dobson, because you are the founder of Focus on the Family and arguably the most influential evangelical Christian in America, it is much harder to understand your decision, as I will detail below. In this, my third open letter to Speaker Ryan and my first to Mr. Dobson, I urge you both to withdraw your endorsements—to save this country and the movements you two men represent.

I want to first state that this letter is not intended to suggest Donald Trump (or any candidate) must be an evangelical or even a Christian to be president. Nor am I implying that his faith or lack thereof should determine how anyone votes this November. Rather, I am discussing what evangelists purport to believe, compared with who and what Trump is. The primary issue here is the credibility of evangelism, particularly as it relates to politics. For years, there has been a logic to the evangelists’ support of the Republican Party: Both held similar views on most social issues, and there was more public discussion by conservative candidates about how faith informed their policies. This year, that is not true. Instead, you have a man whose positions on important social issues have changed, whose faith is obviously shallow and who seems to know nothing about even the basics of evangelism, Christianity or the Bible. Mr. Dobson, if Donald Trump represents Christian values, those values mean nothing. By endorsing him, evangelists are creating the image that what matters to them is political influence, not the word of God.