By Larry Poland, Washington Times—
The Catholic priest sitting before me as we chatted near Krakow, Poland, in the 1970s was passionate. He was briefing me on the Polish people’s courageous stand against the communists led by Polish hero Lech Walesa. “It was not just a political movement,” he said, “It was spiritual. If you check the demands the labor unions were making of the government, they were not about wages and working conditions. They wanted religious holidays and other concessions for their Catholic Christian faith. The massive strikes secured them. There was a spiritual awakening driving the movement.” To be sure, the faith component to the uprising was lost to the Western press.
This week’s stunning electoral coup which made Donald Trump President-elect of the United States also was driven by a faith component. What started out as a devil’s choice for evangelicals became a movement to save the faith in America. The awful electoral choice pitted lies and corruption on one side against vulgarity, bigotry and narcissism on the other. It put the devout in a bind of conscience like no other presidential race in memory … if ever.
I am an evangelical. I grew up in the community and have retained my involvement among the leadership for half a century. In fact, I’ve spent 35 years “demystifying evangelicals” to leaders in media in Hollywood and New York, leaders whose most nuanced understanding often was (1) little old ladies in the Bible Belt, (2) angry, homophobic, hate-filled abortion clinic bombers, or (3) that underground cult of Bible-believers who are largely invisible until some politician realizes he or she needs to get the “evangelical vote” to get elected. The latter occurs rather predictably every four years. It happened again this year.
For the evangelical voter, this ballot box decision was about as comfortable as being water boarded. After the tapes of the Donald’s obscene boasts about his sexual assaults and his outrageous comments about Muslims and Hispanics, Hillary’s rather superficial Methodist claims looked pretty good compared to Mr. Trump’s more or less practical, if not philosophical, atheism. Mr. Trump was personally and morally unacceptable. Read more…