Looking to shore up his Christian conservative support, former President Donald Trump pledged to stand “side-by-side” with pastors and faith leaders in the fight for “our values and our freedoms.”
Mr. Trump said too much is at stake in the election this fall for religious and social conservatives to sit on the sidelines.
“You just can’t vote Democrat,” Mr. Trump said in taped comments to attendees of a Life and Liberty forum hosted Monday by the Danbury Institute in Indianapolis. “They are against religion and they are against your religion in particular.”
“We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life and the heritage and tradition that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world,” he said.
Mr. Trump has forged an unlikely political marriage with the religious right that he hopes will help him send President Biden packing this fall.
The strength of that support derives from Mr. Trump’s nomination of three conservative justices who shifted the balance of the Supreme Court and led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade — the landmark 1973 ruling establishing a constitutional right to abortion.
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Those ties have been tested, including in the GOP presidential primary race where Mr. Trump took heat for blaming some of the party’s electoral setbacks on candidates running too hard against abortion and for rejecting calls for a national abortion ban.
Before Mr. Trump’s remarks, Scott Colter, chief executive officer of the Danbury Institute, said Christians such as himself who backed Mr. Trump in 2016 faced immense blowback and ridicule from the Southern Baptist Convention and other faith leaders across the country.
But that changed when Roe ended, he said.
“Our decision to support Donald Trump was vindicated in that moment because of what he did,” Mr. Colter said. “We took a risk on what he said he would do and he came through and he delivered in that case.
“So we can debate all day long the merits of who Donald Trump is, and his personality, and all of those different things,” he said, “But he did what he said he would do, and for Christians that brought the step we had been praying for and we never thought we would see in the pro-life movement.”
According to exit polls, Mr. Trump won 76% of Christian conservatives in the 2020 election.
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Yet, the tumultuous ending of Mr. Trump’s first term in office, ensuing legal troubles, and his reluctance to support new federal abortion restrictions raised fresh doubts about his ability to keep religious and social conservatives in his corner.
Mr. Trump put a lot of those questions to bed after he dominated Christian conservatives in the GOP primary race.
The Danbury Institute forum focused on promoting the sanctity of life and religious liberty and played out as the annual Southern Baptist Convention was taking place in the same city.
Pastors and faith leaders said the gutting of Roe was a step toward the ultimate goal of abolishing abortion. They raised concerns about the transgender agenda and warned the fight over life has now moved to the states where the pro-abortion movement is investing heavily in ballot referendums that seek to make abortion a constitutional right.
Former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, who served as ambassador for International Religious Freedom in the Trump administration, called on conservative Christians to take full advantage of having a Supreme Court that will “back religious freedom.”
“I would much rather play offense than defense,” Mr. Brownback said, suggesting the high court could help stop Darwinson from being taught in schools. “We need to get out there and start taking these cases particularly while we have this Supreme Court.”
Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, urged the audience to pay attention to Mr. Trump’s being convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up payments to a porn star before the 2016 election.
“I think too few conservatives understand what is at stake in terms of turning a legal system into an extension of mere political politics,” Mr. Mohler said.
“What we are looking at is the misuse of the American legal system in a way that quite frankly will not allow for recovery and I want to say this as I am with you today if conservatives turn to hust an alternative form of using the courts for that purpose we will eventually bankrupt conservatism in the United States as well,” he said.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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