In Case You
Missed It
'God
Has Given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong-un,'
President's Evangelical Adviser Says
October 08, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Texas pastor Robert Jeffress makes claim as
tensions escalate between Pyongyang and Washington
By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
Texas
megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, one of President
Trump’s evangelical advisers who preached the
morning of his inauguration, has released a
statement saying the president has the moral
authority to “take out” North Korean leader Kim Jong
Un.
“When it
comes to how we should deal with evildoers, the
Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has
endowed rulers full power to use whatever means
necessary — including war — to stop evil,” Jeffress
said. “In the case of North Korea, God has given
Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un.”
Jeffress said in a phone interview that he was
prompted to make the statement after Trump
said that if North
Korea’s threats to the United States continue,
Pyongyang will be “met with fire and fury like the
world has never seen.”
The
biblical passage
Romans 13 gives the
government authority to deal with evildoers,
Jeffress said. “That gives the government … the
authority to do whatever, whether it’s
assassination, capital punishment or evil punishment
to quell the actions of evildoers like Kim Jong Un,”
he said.
He
said that many pacifist Christians will cite
Romans 12, which
says, “Do not repay evil for evil,” but Jeffress
says that the passage is referring to Christians,
not to the government.
“A
Christian writer asked me, ‘Don’t you want the
president to embody the Sermon on the Mount?’ ” he
said, referring to Jesus’s sermon.
“I said absolutely not.”
In his
sermon on the morning of Trump’s inauguration in
January, Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist
Dallas, compared Trump to the story of the biblical
leader Nehemiah, who helped rebuild the city of
Jerusalem.
The first
step of rebuilding the nation, Jeffress said, was
the building of a wall around Jerusalem to protect
its citizens. “You see, God is not against building
walls,” Jeffress said in his sermon at St. John’s
Episcopal Church in Washington.
Jeffress is
no stranger to controversy. He has said in the past
that former president Barack Obama paved the way for
the Antichrist and drew wide attention for calling
Mormonism a cult during the 2012 Republican
primaries. Jeffress knows his comments on North
Korea could be considered controversial, even among
fellow evangelicals. His megachurch in Dallas is a
prominent Southern Baptist church, one where
evangelist Billy Graham had membership for many
years. In 2016, the church reported an average
weekly attendance of about 3,700.
“Some
Christians, perhaps younger Christians, have to
think this through,” Jeffress said. “It’s
antithetical to some of the mushy rhetoric you hear
from some circles today. Frankly, it’s because they
are not well taught in the scriptures.”
Over the
past two years, Jeffress said, Trump has been “very
measured, very thoughtful in every response.”
“People
instinctively know that this president is not going
to draw an imaginary red line and walk around it
like President Obama did,” he said.
Attitudes
about North Korea among evangelicals are unclear, he
said.
An
overwhelming number of white, evangelicals voted
for Donald Trump, 81-16 percent, according to
exit poll results. Facebook Live host Libby
Casey talks to religion reporter Sarah Pulliam
Bailey about how Trump appealed to this group
and what they expect from him once in office.
(The Washington Post)
“I think
many evangelicals, like most Americans, really don’t
pay attention to global affairs,” Jeffress said. “I
believe we’re all going to be forced to soon if
North Korea isn’t dealt with decisively.”
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Jeffress is
unusual for an evangelical pastor because most
pastors do not speak about specific foreign policy
issues from the pulpit, except sometimes about
Israel, said Amy Black, a political-science
professor at Wheaton College, an evangelical
institution in Illinois.
Theologians
and church leaders have debated the interpretation
of Romans 13 for millennia, Black said. Most
mainstream interpretations of the passage, she said,
would suggest that God works through governmental
leaders, but ultimate authority comes from God.
Debate broke out among Christians in Germany during
World War II over how to interpret this passage;
some Christians believed they should follow the
government while others set up a resistance
movement.
“If
anything, Romans 13 creates a conundrum, because it
could be interpreted that Kim Jong Un has authority
to govern,” she said.
Jeffress
last met with Trump in July when a group of pastors
laid hands on the president in the Oval Office. He
said now that health care is off the table,
evangelicals are hoping for tax reform, though he
didn’t have any specifics in mind.
The access
Jeffress has to the White House, Black said, may
explain why many evangelicals have been so attracted
to Trump.
“Some of
the approval of Trump is less about the specific
person and even specific policy, but it’s about
someone who is listening to us,” she said. “Jeffress
is a piece of that story of having access.”
Black says
that Jeffress represents an “old guard” of
evangelicals, closely aligned to leaders like
popular radio personality and psychologist James
Dobson and Pat Robertson, who founded the Christian
Broadcasting Network. Many evangelicals now look to
leadership from pastors like Rick Warren in
California or Tim Keller in New York City, though
Warren and Keller do not speak about politics very
often.
“We’re in a
weird vacuum; we’re past the Jim Dobson and Pat
Robertson era, but it’s not 100 percent clear who
will fill their place,” Black said.
Jeffress, who was an early supporter of Trump, has
said that after sharing Wendy’s cheeseburgers in
Iowa, he believed Trump would be the next president
and that it would be because God placed him
there. In July, his church choir and orchestra
performed a song
called “Make America Great Again” at the John F.
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in D.C.,
where Trump was in attendance.
This
story has been updated to provide further comments
from Amy Black, a political-science professor at
Wheaton College.
This
article was originally published by
Washington
Post
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