Trump and Cruz have different appeals to evangelicals
SIOUX CENTER, Iowa - The true believers, the skeptics, and the plain curious huddled for two hours Saturday in a line that spanned the campus of Dordt College, stamping their feet against the cold as they waited for Donald Trump's chapel sermon.
SIOUX CENTER, Iowa - The true believers, the skeptics, and the plain curious huddled for two hours Saturday in a line that spanned the campus of Dordt College, stamping their feet against the cold as they waited for Donald Trump's chapel sermon.
Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, was visiting the small Christian Reformed school in northwest Iowa to contend for the votes of evangelicals, the most influential bloc in the state's Feb. 1 caucuses.
He has significant support from born-again Christians nationally - 42 percent according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll - but trails in the demographic in Iowa to rival Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas and the son of a Baptist preacher. Overall, the two are in a tight race.
Cruz is fluent in the language and worldview of evangelical Christianity; Trump, not so much.
Trump curses. He's been married three times. The real estate developer and reality TV star is prideful and, by his own admission, greedy. He mangles Bible references and has told interviewers he does not believe he has ever asked God for forgiveness - presumably because he does not need to do so. And Trump was a longtime supporter of abortion rights but says he's changed his mind.
"Christianity is under siege," Trump told 1,600 in the chapel, alluding to battles over the legalization of same-sex marriage and requirements for contraceptive coverage in Obamacare, as well as the aversion in some places to acknowledging Christmas.
"We don't exert the power we should have," Trump said. "Fact is, the politicians can't do anything to you if you band together." If he's in the White House, he promised, "you're going to have somebody representing you really, really well."
In his stump speech, Cruz often asks his audiences to "lift up our country in prayer: Father God, please keep this awakening going. Continue this revival across this country that we can pull back from the abyss."
The Texas senator likes to quote 2 Chronicles 7:14: "If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
Many evangelical leaders are pushing back against Trump, saying that believers should not abandon their principles for an authoritarian's siren song.
"One thing the Bible is very clear on, and that is 'do not be deceived,' " said John Stemberger, president of Florida Family Action. "They're suspending what they know to be true because Trump takes care of the emotional need to have a protector in difficult times."
He said evangelicals should consider the morality of the casino business and remember that Trump has supported gay marriage and federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
On the other hand, Trump got effusive praise when he visited Liberty University from the son of the school's founder, the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., and he was introduced by Dallas pastor Robert Jeffers at Dordt.
"In my opinion, Donald Trump lives a life of helping and loving others, as Jesus taught in the great commandment," Falwell said, comparing him to his own father and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Trump "cannot be bought - he is not a puppet on a string like many other candidates."
Sioux County is about 85 percent Republican and traditionally conservative, filled with descendants of Dutch immigrants. It also is home to a large community of Latino immigrants - some of them undocumented - who work in the meatpacking and dairy industries. Trump's language about shutting off the flow of immigration has angered many of the longtime residents, who are trying to accommodate the newcomers.
"A lot of conservative Republicans around here don't like Trump, from our faith-based belief in 'love your neighbor,' " said Derrick Vander Wall, 43, who was wearing a T-shirt under his coat advertising a local Latino festival as he waited to hear Trump. "I don't think he'll do that well here."
He usually votes in the Republican caucuses but is not sure whom he will back this year. "Our ancestors were Dutch immigrants, and people didn't like them either," Vander Wall said.
Four years ago, 57 percent of Iowa Republican caucus-goers identified themselves as evangelical Christians. (By comparison, just 22 percent of New Hampshire primary voters describe themselves as born-again.) Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum won 32 percent of the evangelical vote in Iowa, enough to catapult him to a narrow victory. Yet libertarian Ron Paul got 18 percent of the evangelical vote, according to entrance polls from 2012. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, neither one a favorite of evangelicals, each grabbed 14 percent.
"The evangelical vote in Iowa is not monolithic," said Jamie Johnson, a longtime Republican operative and an evangelical pastor active in social issues. "It's a tribe with a whole lot of differences of opinion. Nobody has the vote on lockdown."
Evangelical voters have plenty of options this time around, he said. In addition to Cruz and Trump, there are Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the 2008 GOP caucus winner, not to mention Santorum.
Based on what he's seeing around the state, Johnson believes Trump will get a significant slice of support from evangelicals. "They want to seal the border; they believe that Donald Trump will do whatever he has to do to take the fight to ISIS and stop Islamic terrorism, and they like that he is not concerned with political correctness," Johnson said. "He says things we've been wanting to say for a long time."
Julian Raven, an artist and itinerant preacher, travels to Trump rallies around the country telling of how he was inspired by a vision to paint a massive mural of Trump with an eagle descending to rescue the U.S. flag from falling.
"If he was applying to be a pastor, forget it, but that's not the same as a political leader," said Raven, 45, of Elmira, N.Y. "I believe God is calling this man."
He thumbed through the Bible resting on the steering wheel of his panel truck to find Isaiah 45, in which God tapped Cyrus, a Syrian, to save Israel. "There is a lot of biblical evidence that God could be choosing Donald Trump," Raven said.
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INSIDE
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Mary Pat Christie is her husband's top supporter. A3.
Bloomberg is said to weigh a 2016 run. A5.
Trump is a false prophet. Harold Jackson, C4. EndText