The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies have revealed a split among Christians, with some providing sanctuary to immigrants in danger of deportation and others maintaining their support of the president. Pacific Standard quoted Richard Flory, CRCC’s Senior Director of Research and Evaluation, about why the latter doesn’t seem troubled by the tactics the administration has taken in response to immigration.
Here’s an excerpt:
For Trump’s evangelical base, news of a larger-than-ever population of unaccompanied immigrant children in U.S. custody and images of barefoot migrant children running from U.S. teargas and rubber bullets at the border will do little to turn them against the administration, analysts explain. “For Trump’s core evangelical supporters, I doubt that he could cross any moral line and lose their support,” says Richard Flory, a sociologist at the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture who recently published a report on the diversity of American evangelicals, focusing in part on issues of politics.
“The way that they have interpreted him as a leader (complete with biblical support that an ‘ungodly’ leader can still be used by God to bring about God’s will on Earth), there really isn’t any reason for them to drop their support,” Flory says. “They already know the extent to which Trump represents a moral vacuum, both personally, in his business, and in his politics, and they aren’t jumping ship, so I doubt they will ever see a reason to drop their support.”
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