This is your “Christian” evangelical president. pic.twitter.com/u0478FoSyR
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) December 5, 2018
When the Barack, Michelle, Bill, Hillary, Jimmy, and Rosalyn started reciting it, perhaps he thought the Apostles Creed was some kind of loyalty oath for the Democratic Party.
And why does anyone care whether or not he said it? People are using this as another excuse to bash him in the name of “Christianity.”
No argument here, John. I did think it was odd that he made no attempt to say it.
I think Trump very smartly decided during his presidential campaign to win evangelicals not by pretending to be a pious evangelical (he didn’t need forgiveness, he said) but by taking their concerns seriously. So I don’t really think any evangelical voters care whether he can recite the Apostles Creed, which very few evangelicals would be overly familiar with anyway.
No one on the front row seemed to know the creed well or to handle it skillfully. Baptists Carter and Clinton get an excuse since Baptists don’t usually recite creeds. As far as Obama, I am not sure how much exposure Reverend Wright’s church gave him to creeds. Probably very little, so he also gets a pass. Trump, like Obama, has had only superficial exposure to Christian liturgy.
The real culprit, however, is The Episcopal Church. In their effort to “stay current” they revised the prayer book in 1979 eliminating the traditional wording of the 1928 book. The language of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer was generally familiar across denominational lines. Can you blame the luminaries in the first row for stumbling over the devitalized language in the 1979 book?