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Very interesting article Stephen. To unpack all it’s features for the non-link readers herein is a challenge I won’t accept (got work to do today - packing to move houses).

So let me provide links (for those that care) to a couple of related articles and give my summary.

First recognize that Donald Trump’s candidacy is creating a fissure in the political conservative stranglehold on Evangelicals. Read for more info as of Jan 2016, but still true today. Trump’s past behavior (with no remorse shown) and words today are simply not reconcilable with any form of Christianity.

Then read Ruth Graham’s (no, not Billy’s wife) article for Slate which she concludes that there is an opportunity to re-insert the Christian left into national politics like in the days of Rauschenbusch (1920’s, 1930’s).

Then read a couple of responses to Graham’s article:
Stephen’s religious dispatches article and .
Sorry about all caps - it was the way they came.

My summary: I agree with the excellent last article at least in the short term. Hillary does not anymore have the creditability to claim the mantle of Christ (if she ever had it) despite her reference to Angelou, etc. Too much support for deaths via drones and too much coziness with Wall Street. Both Sanders and Jill Stein would have much more credibility but will not do so since both are ethnic Jews and non-believers in Christ. Nor (regrettably) does Christian Left have much power in America today. The Christian Left needs to enlargen it’s base (by reading the Gospels, understanding our social ills and developing the zeal that should naturally flow) and develop a viable candidate for 2020. Separation of Church and State (the institutions) does not entail a separation of Christ’s teachings (help the poor, turn the other cheek, against money hoarding, welcoming foreigners, ....) from political thought.

I’ll add that the political environment today may be an opportunity for mainline churches. I know of three couples that have recently joined our church (or are attending regularly in one case) that came expressly because of the political right wing environment in their Baptist churches they came from. But realistically it will take time for the Christian Left to have much influence on secular politics.

Best projections I see are that Iowa will go for Hillary. And yes you are right that I'm a Clinton supporter. I was interested in Bernie early on. But he lost me a while back and makes me less and less interesting in voting for him all the time. But if he got the nomination I'd vote for him over Trump.

Sanders consistently does better in national polls against Trump than Clinton. His strategy right now appears to be to claim enough delegates to prevent Hillary from heading into the convention with enough committed delegates so that she doesn't have to rely on super delegates. Looks like that will probably be the case. Whether he can get enough super delegates on his side, with the unfavorable ratings she has, and with his better poll numbers against Trump, to win is probably a pipe dream. But they will get a lot into the platform and into the Clinton campaign, and the Democrats will unify, if for no other reason than they are almost unanimously against Trump.

One advantage for whomever wins the Democratic nomination is that the current President, who built the "blue wall" over the course of the past two elections, along with a huge network of voters connected via social media, has the highest job approval rating toward the end of his term as anyone since Bill Clinton, and before that, Reagan at the end of his first term.

And Bernie makes a big deal of pledged and non-pledged (super delegates) because he is losing. Hillary was a lot closer to catch Obama the last time she ran than Bernie is to catching Hillary by my last reading. Again, I'm annoyed by someone who has been a Democrat for all of about 5 minutes making all kinds demands when he isn't going to win.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, has a very different take on Trump--his strategy and his appeal. Thought not a Trump fan, he predicts Trump will win in a landslide and explains why.

Speak loudly and carry a stick as long as your penis. This seems to me to be all I really know about Trump. I hope he doesn't win, but if he does, I will learn more. He does seem to have driven a railroad spike into the coffin of civil discourse in this country.

The times I've watched Trump he says so many controversial and contradictory things that I'm not sure what he believes, if he believes anything and that his only reality is bluster. Almost as if if you yell something loud enough it makes it true.

The arc of Hillary narrative is she holds Marian Wright Edelman and Maya Angelou in high esteem lifelong. She was raised strong in the Methodist church and Trump has no such foundation.

Taylor Branch is in her inner circle of spiritual and moral advisors and she is acquainted with Molly Marshall and the Wake Forest woman now in the Obama White House. I think Hillary resonates with the Obama/ Marilynne Robinson of a few months ago you can read at nybooks.com

So this is not a spiritual vacuum when deciding between Trump and Hillary; nor a character vacuum.


In the scarey department the former pr dude for Pressler's boy, the Cruz, makes a strong case on how Trump can be elected this morn on NPR. He's studied it and thinks Trump may be the apotheosis of Karl Rove's max out the white working male strategy. And if that happens then for all the reasons Andrew Sullivan stated in NY Post its Katy bar the door for our great country

George W. Bush was a Methodist, too. In that case, his evangelical right wing supporters used that to declare him one of them, or at least to attempt to make the connection. With Hillary, the fact that she's Methodist makes her a left wing liberal.

The Clintons certainly have their faults, and they know how to play politics when they have to, and how to look like that's not what they're doing when they have to. But I don't believe much of the rhetoric about their alleged corruption. Trump is far worse, though that no longer appears to make a difference. I don't doubt the competence of Hillary Clinton to serve as chief executive and commander in chief.

Does she still believe.

She has roots to Gaffney South Carolina with her life long fascination with the legacy of Marian Wright Edelman.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin- ... ll-believe