PrintHow many evangelicals come from Trump Tower?
I was listening to a Donald Trump speech in Council Bluffs, Iowa on 12/29, and he attacked Ted Cruz's religious faith again, saying, "How many evangelicals come out of Cuba?"
I have a different question. How many evangelicals come out of New York City? The population of Tennessee is 47% evangelical. The population of Iowa is 25%, the population of New York State is only 8%, and New York City is undoubtedly even lower.
So given that Donald Trump is from New York City, how likely is it that he is evangelical? This from a man who never seems to go to church, who is stumped when asked to name a single verse from his Bible, and who has never, ever talked about his faith beyond saying, "I'm a Presbyterian! I'm a Presbyterian! I'm a Presbyterian!" Really. He has never once talked about his faith, or how it impacts his worldview, other than to say that he's Presbyterian, as if he were filling out a form.
Ted Cruz, on the other hand, grew up in Texas, which is 25% evangelical, making it much, much more likely that he is evangelical than Trump, statistically speaking. And he has talked at length about his faith:
Cruz doesn’t tiptoe around God in his politics. That’s clear from his speech to a cheering crowd at Liberty University....
“From the dawn of this country, at every stage, America has enjoyed God’s providential blessing. Over and over again, when we face impossible odds, the American people rose to the challenge,” Cruz said.
“In the past month, we have seen religious liberty under assault at an unprecedented level,” Cruz told the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition outside Des Moines in April.
Like many candidates, Cruz did a video for the Circle of Protection, a group of 100 Christian leaders working against global poverty. He leveraged a call to care into an attack on the federal policies he says interfere with individual and faith-based charities’ religious liberties. Generous Americans — those who know their Psalm 72:13, who know “that the plight of the poor is close to the heart of God,” he said — need liberty from taxes and regulations that interfere with their efforts.
There are some grounds on which Trump is superior to Ted Cruz – his current position on immigration, for example. But attacking Ted Cruz's religious sincerity when Trump's is extremely suspect is hypocrisy.
This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.
