\u201cMr. President, we\u2019re going to be your most loyal friends,\u201d Jeffress said then.<\/p>\n
That prediction was accurate. At some of Trump\u2019s lowest moments over the past few months, conservative religious leaders have materialized at the White House to literally lay hands on him in prayer.<\/p>\n
The photos of these moments have a powerful resonance for many American Christians who are steeped in a fundamentalist form of the faith that is individualistic, populist and places a high value on outward forms of religiosity. Their faith practice is characterized by a fascination with emotional experience and with big, dramatic gestures and story lines. The extraordinary is often valued over the ordinary, novelty over tradition, speaking in tongues over creeds, prophecy over liturgy.<\/p>\n
And Trump, who spoke Friday at a gathering of religious conservatives in Washington, D.C., called the Values Voters Summit, has been eager to harness that emotional energy on his own behalf, especially at low points in his presidency.<\/p>\n
When the damaging news broke in July that Donald Trump Jr. had met during the campaign with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer and had been eager to receive information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government, a group of evangelicals prayed over Trump that very evening in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch an honor to pray within the Oval Office for @POTUS & @VP,\u201d tweeted Johnnie Moore, a former aide to Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr.<\/p>\n
Moore now runs a public relations and advocacy business and is a major player at the intersection of conservative evangelical Christianity, politics and entertainment. But when it comes to convening these groups of leaders, it is Jeffress; Paula White, a Florida prosperity mega-church pastor who\u2019s been called \u201ca heretic\u201d by other Christian leaders; and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, who take the lead, according to people who are familiar with the inner workings of the group.<\/p>\n
Moore attached to his tweet a photo shot from behind Trump that showed six or seven hands on the president\u2019s back, a common gesture among evangelicals during prayer for another person. Many believe the laying on of hands channels spiritual power to the person being prayed for.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe laying on of hands in the Old Testament signified transfer (of sins to the scapegoat, for instance) and of the Holy Spirit from one person to another (anointing),\u201d Michael Horton, a prominent evangelical author and a professor of theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, wrote in an email. \u201cJesus sometimes healed in analogous ways, placing his hands on people, but not necessarily. The apostles laid hands on some people for healing as well. So the idea is biblical.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, Horton cautioned, \u201cwhat people are doing with it today is closer to magic, it seems to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry Jackson, a Pentecostal pastor from the Maryland suburbs outside D.C. who was one of the ministers who prayed for Trump in the Oval Office, said that \u201cif people don\u2019t understand the faith dimension involved, they would say that it\u2019s superstitious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe there is a transfer \u2014 a potential transfer \u2014 of spiritual power and the Holy Spirit\u2019s influence to a willing and believing recipient,\u201d Jackson said in an interview. \u201cThe recipient has got to be in a place where his faith and his character can allow God to impart grace to him. \u2026 If there was true humility on the part of the president, God can give him these bursts and downloads of wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the question is, if you don\u2019t stay in that humble place, you can have bursts of wisdom but not wisdom in another moment,\u201d Jackson added. \u201cWe understand the president is really by nature a fighter and protector, but the role America needs now is more of a father and a healer as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ministers who visited with Trump that day didn\u2019t just pray for him. Some also took up his cause of criticizing the media and encouraged their followers to disregard press reports, which that day would have been about Trump Jr.\u2019s meetings with Russians during the campaign. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In May, Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist preacher from Texas perhaps best known for attacking Mitt Romney\u2019s Mormon faith, stood among a host of Christian ministers in the White House Blue Room and addressed President Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-36067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36067"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=36067"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=36067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}