Trump’s first-year report card: How’d he do on issues important to evangelicals?
In the days after Donald Trump’s surprise election in 2016, conservative evangelical Christians made clear their high expectations for the president they had helped put into office.
Has Trump met those expectations?
“When it comes to his very strong statements on life, on support for
Fully 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump.
Here’s a look at how he fared on some of the issues they most care about in his first year of office.
Evangelicals in the
Just this week, the
Brownback shares fellow conservative evangelicals’ views on same-sex marriage and abortion. And he’s one of many high-ranking evangelicals in the Trump administration: Energy Secretary
Other evangelical religious leaders have reveled in their “unprecedented” access to the
The Johnson Amendment
“I will get rid of, totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear,” Trump announced at his first
One executive order and a proposed provision of the tax reform bill later, not much has changed practically. But some evangelicals still point to Trump’s actions on the issue as further proof that he is listening to them.
Trump’s order directed the
Only
Immigration and refugees
“When it comes to his very strong statements on life, on support for
Those orders have met with mixed reviews from the courts, as well as from conservative Christians, many of whom are involved in refugee resettlement through faith-based agencies including World Relief, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services,
In the days before the election, evangelist
Trump nominated
Conservative evangelicals were thrilled with Gorsuch’s nomination and subsequent confirmation, as well as his vote with the majority in the 7-2 decision favoring
Abortion
This month, Trump declared himself the first sitting president to address the March for Life — which is not entirely true. He is the first president to address the march via satellite. Previous presidents
In his introduction to Trump’s brief remarks, Vice President
But that also is not entirely true, RNS columnist
Buoying evangelicals, many of Trump’s appointments hold anti-abortion views, Camosy pointed out. Last week, the Trump administration announced the creation of an office to protect the religious rights of medical providers, including those who oppose abortion. And one of his first acts as president was to reinstate a rule banning
But Trump, who had strongly supported abortion rights until he did an abrupt about-face during his run for president, has not yet kept his campaign promises to defund
Evangelicals have long lobbied for the
Every president since has granted repeated six-month waivers, keeping the embassy in
Trump, like others before him, made moving the embassy a key campaign promise, one he reiterated in December when he declared the
LGBTQ rights
The president’s sudden announcement on Twitter that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military came two weeks after some evangelical leaders had met at the
However, the president’s ban has been blocked in the courts.
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