Pastor Caleb Campbell spoke out against Trump, now he is warning evengelicals away from Christian nationalism.
Evangelical support for Trump was crucial to his 2016 presidential victory and has remained stubbornly high despite his consistent proximity to scandal. Pastor Campbell, who grew up as a John McCain Republican, was not one of those supporters. He has spent much of his time since that first victory trying to guide his fellow evangelicals away from Trump and the MAGA movement, often to little avail.
Now, six years later, he believes cracks are beginning to show.
“I think what we’re seeing is people who were speaking out against it quietly four years ago are now saying the quiet part out loud,” he says.
In the last few months and weeks, a number of prominent evangelical leaders have signalled publicly that they may be willing to move on from Trump. Taken together, they make for worrying reading for the newly announced Trump 2024 campaign.
David Lane, the leader of the American Renewal Project, which is dedicated to mobilising evangelical pastors to run for office, wrote in an email to some 70,000 evangelicals following the midterm elections that Trump’s original “mission and the message are now subordinate to personal grievances and self-importance.”
Mike Evans, a Christian Zionist and former member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, wrote in an essay sent to the Washington Post that “Donald Trump can’t save America. He can’t even save himself.”
Several evangelical leaders told Semafor that they too may be looking elsewhere, among them Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of the Family Leader. Tony Perkins, the influential president of the Family Research Council who said in 2018 that evangelicals allowed Trump a “do-over” for his past behaviour, recently told Politico that the former president doesn’t have a lock on evangelical support.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/evangelicals-may-turning-away-trump-170801960.html