1| By inviting Trump, black pastor gives bigot access to his flock |CNN
***Can you imagine a headline stating, “By inviting Clinton, black pastor gives pro-abortion politician access to his flock.” The story could go on to explain that, though blacks make up 12% of the population they account for 28% of abortions. Or that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a hero of Hillary Clinton, believed in the importance of population control—especially for races she deemed inferior by nature.
The above link goes to an opinion piece, so I’m not complaining that the writer has a point to make, even in the headline. Nor am I making a pro-Trump argument here. Rather, it’s simply an observation that Democratic candidates get a free pass when they speak behind pulpits across the land. When they “get access to the flock,” anything goes.
2| Trump Says Israel Will Be Destroyed Unless He Is Elected President |Haaretz
***Ironically, Trump speaks aneschatological (“end-times”) prophecy that is pro-Israel, while denying a basic tenet of Evangelical-Dispensational thought about Israel’s future. It is like he has been coached on the “Evangelicals love Israel” part, but hasn’t been shown the end-times charts.
Last year’s deal, which trades sanctions relief for a nuclear rollback, “is going to destroy Israel – unless I get elected,” Trump told Cleveland-area labor leaders on Monday, according to The Columbus Dispatch. “Then Israel will be just fine.”
In Virginia, meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, defended the Iran deal and dismissed Trump’s concerns about Israel as insincere, saying the Republican’s strategy for Israel was to “pat them on the back and tell them good luck.”
Clinton, as secretary of state in President Barack Obama’s first term, helped shape the negotiations for the Iran deal and said she will uphold the agreement, although the Democratic nominee has suggested she will be more stringent in enforcing it than the Obama administration.
Unlike many of his rivals during the Republican primaries, Trump has not said he would scrap the agreement, although he has called it a bad deal. Trump has said he would first consult with his national security advisers.
3| Resettled Syrians Find Solace With U.S. Christians |The New York Times
William Stocks, a white, Alabama-born, Republican-leaning member of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, arrived at the tiny apartment of a Syrian refugee family on a Wednesday night after work. He was wearing a green-striped golf shirt and a gentle smile, and he was eager to teach yet another improvised session of English 101.
Mr. Stocks, 23, had recently moved to Georgia from Alabama, states where the governors are, like him, Southern Baptists. They are also among the more than 30 Republican governors who have publicly resisted the federal government’s plan to resettle refugees from war-ravaged Syria, fearing that the refugees might bring terrorism to their states.
To Mr. Stocks, such questions belonged in the realm of politics — and he had not come that evening for political reasons. Rather, he said, he had come as a follower of Christ. “My job is to serve these people,” he said, “because they need to be served.”
But politics and faith have always had the potential to conflict in the questions about resettling Syrian refugees in the United States.
And at a time when conservative politicians, many with ties to Christian religious groups, have aggressively sought to keep the Syrian newcomers out of their states, it is conservative people of faith who, in many cases, are serving as their indispensable support system. …
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