Max Lucado, Christian Bestselling Author, Denounces Trump: Here’s Why It Won’t Matter

Max Lucado, the legendary Christian author and pastor, recently broke from his norm of not commenting on politics to point out that the Donald Trump campaign is all wrong for America.

In a post entitled “Decency for President,” published Feb. 24, Lucado called out Trump, not for his policy positions, but for the vicious way that he goes at his detractors.

“I don’t know Mr. Trump,” he writes. “But I’ve been chagrined at his antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made mockery of a reporter’s menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to the former first lady, Barbara Bush as ‘mommy,’ and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail.”

Max Lucado also points out that Trump “routinely calls people ‘stupid,’ ‘loser,’ and ‘dummy.'”

“These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments,” he added. “They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded, and presented.”

Max Lucado books have sold millions of copies, and one would think that his influence could be felt in the evangelical vote, but so far, that seems to be going in Trump’s favor.

It is not likely to change, even with Lucado’s rather strong takedown, and there are a few reasons for this.

Firstly, Max Lucado has lost a lot of ‘credibility’ with evangelical Christians.

Lucado was initially a minister with the churches of Christ, a conservative group using just the Bible as the basis for their belief system.

But as this rather detailed takedown of his later teachings would indicate (via Soul Winning), he has since adopted a more secular view of what it takes to be a Christian.

Max Lucado, in other words, is no longer recognized as an “evangelical” in the way that a Pastor Robert Jeffress would be — a pastor who wholeheartedly endorses Trump, and even recently spoke out in his favor at a campaign event.

https://youtu.be/sH24Jmg9VZk

Secondly, Christians are betting on Trump’s sincerity right now because they don’t have any other choice.

If you look at the issues that really matter to evangelical Christians — support for traditional marriage, a fear of losing religious freedoms, and moral indignation at abortion, which they believe to be the murder of an innocent human life, then the choice is pretty clear.

You either vote for a Hillary Clinton or a Bernie Sanders, who definitely do not share your beliefs and will actively work against them, or you vote on the strongest candidate saying all the things you want to hear.

As one commenter on the Max Lucado blog writes, “What choice do we have anymore? All the damage has been done and it wasn’t Trump who changed rules in regard to marriage, making abortion OK, letting people have gender problems due to a little four year old wanting to change, a real bad example for the whole country.”

According to this commenter, the situation needs to be fixed, and “we now need to forget about religion, personality, and any rinky dinky thing stop [sic] us because it is too late!… The DAMAGE has been done and needs to be fixed, the BOTTOM LINE.”

https://youtu.be/86xC3HWUT6k

Finally, Trump is speaking to the central fear of most Christians.

The loss of religious liberty is what concerns Christians the most — the idea that they cannot teach what they feel compelled to teach because of how it conflicts with societal norms.

Trump pointed out in a recent campaign speech that Christians “don’t have a lobby,” and so they are disrespected. He also vowed to “work like hell” to make sure Christians would have a lobby under his administration.

It’s working so far for him, and nothing Max Lucado says at this juncture is likely to change it.

[Image via MaxLucado.com]