You are over thinking this. Trump was telling his supporters that he is standing with them against what they conceive as the forces of darkness. It is probably very effective . If you have spent time in the parts of the USA where the church is still the centre of life for the community then you get it. It is still a frontier society built by men and women who believed that strength of character and hard work and faith was what built the USA. They see the rioters as the direct anthesis of this. Look on youtube and you will see the citizens of small towns well armed and turning out to protect their communities. Trump is giving them the sign that he is fine with that,. They are nothing like Europeans they just happen to speak English.
Go Away Please
3 years ago
Giles, very interesting until you got to Trump’s “little show-and-tell photo op was a way of parading to others the god of his own limited imagination, the god of power, of law and order. Trump didn’t hold up his Bible in fear and trembling”. What you appeared to be doing in your attempts to portray Trump as a tiny mind was to denigrate just about all of us because lets face it most of us, myself included, have a limited imagination when it comes to God. Then you seem to imply that the only way to approach the Bible is via fear and trembling. After that you proceeded to tell us that anybody who thought the Bible and its words important eg Protestants were a bit guilty of book worship. You also managed to disparage those Americans who do read the Bible in a very literal sense and I can think of another religion that takes its book literally too. All of that so you could have a dig at Trump. I wonder if it was worth it?
David Bell
3 years ago
I do fear that this is the standard British journalists sneering at Trump. There isn’t much analysis, no consideration that Clinton would have been no better (or considerably worse) and the Democrats are desperately trying to hide Joe Biden in his cellar because he has been shown up to be both racist and senile.
The reality is this picture will play well with the evangelical right who Trump needs to keep on board and will annoy the metropolitan left to an extent that they will repeat the “deplorable” mistake by doing exactly what this article did.
Here is how I understood your perspective, and I’m probably wrong on that, so please clarify. Both the evangelical right and the metropolitan left are putty in the hands of Trump. One should not try to critique his strategy or tactics, as they are clearly the best we could hope for. This applies double to British journalists.
Not quite, he’s playing to his electorate. The evangelical right will vote for him because he will put an evangelical Christian on the Supreme Court. That will give them a clear majority on the court for the next 20 years or more. This was Trump conforming he will do that. He has already started that process with two appointments and the president elected in November will appoint at least one more.
The left hate him for the same reason as they where hoping a two term Clinton presidency would ensure a liberal Supreme Court majority. They hate Trump and the imagery of this photograph will drive then mad.
So it’s not about putty in Trumps hands just good old fashioned electioneering and showing he plans to keep to his pledge.
Penelope Newsome
3 years ago
Well, I don’t agree with the tenor of this piece. Trump quite rightly here draws other people’s attention- ie the rioters , looters – attention to the Bible. Heis standing in front of a church, one of quite afew, that hey have attacked. Quite right to remind them of the importance of the Bible and of Christianity, the religion after all on which the USA is founded.
Derek M
3 years ago
Perhaps you should have taken Elizabeth I’s advice, this doesn’t come across as very Christian, a bit like the C of E bishops last week.
lizzzygoode
3 years ago
This article just feels rather nasty.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Trump’s use of the bible is indeed absurd given that he is patently not at all religious. If only politicians (and people in general) would drop all this religious nonsense.
Surely it’s just a bit of what they call chutzpah isn’t it? Not quite the “Life of Brian”, but funny enough.
Jordan Flower
3 years ago
This piece is self-defeating. So Trump is both a semi-literate nincompoop with no capacity for deep concepts, but also a crafty and cunning authoritarian using the Bible as a prop. You can’t have it both ways, Giles. I lean more towards the “nincompoop” side.
If you had your ear closer to the ground of American Evangelicalism, you’d know that there are near-daily prayer meetings happening in the Oval Office. The fact that most people don’t know this kind of shows you that this isn’t being exploited, and neatly served to the media Right for strategic political distribution.
So we can argue about how much, but there is certainly some level of genuineness to his religious peacocking. To the extent that a lifelong high-rolling self-absorbed borderline sociopath is capable of absorbing anything of value from the Bible, I think he’s making some effort.
And that fact that you just bypass all good faith and even some more pertinent details about his “religious journey”, and just base your entire indictment on a visceral feeling that a photo gives you, is just as much of a religious imputation on you as it is Trump.
Dennis Wheeler
3 years ago
The stupidest photo-op ever. He looked awkward and utterly clueless, like an automaton told to stand there and hold a book he was unfamiliar with while posing for a camera. Has he no sane advisors?
jakealexanderson
3 years ago
Amusing that Fraser uses the very book he criticises Protestants of ‘worshipping’ to call them out; perhaps it’s the case Protestants worship the God who reveals himself through that book.
Teo
3 years ago
Trump knows his audience and only he knows his conscience.
clairecraske
3 years ago
You Cathols, a? Tut tut.
h j
3 years ago
Trump wants his “base” to know that their belief that he is the Messiah – the new age Cyrus as the evangelicals call him..is still the case. He counts on their vote and wants a repeat of 2016 in the states that Obama forgot about but happen to be in the electoral college and differentiators to an election outcome. Having given billions to big business he’ll be sure to have them in his pocket (or is it the other way around) already.
William Harvey
3 years ago
To infer Trump is unintelligent or “semi litrtate” is itself an unintelligent comment. Its hardly likely he survived and prospered in the cut throat world of US property speculation without at least a passable grasp of legal contracts and mathematics. OK , so he probably is irreligious or maybe evrn and agnostic. He probably doesn’t read much literature. However, to portray him as unintelligent seems illogical and runs against the available evidence. Here’s the thing…. not all Republican president are dumb war hawk and not all democratic presidents are weak, liars and cheats. That narrative is too simplistic.
He is clever rather than intelligent and, possibly as a consequence, foolish rather than wise.
Allan Dawson
3 years ago
It’s all rubbish…the people who think Trump is Christ’s rep. on earth will still cheer him on….
…those who think is Satan’s rep. on earth will still despise him….
…and the religious loons will dance on the head of a pin as they try to justify what the POTUS does or doesn’t to with references to the Bible to suit….
From what I understand Christian Evangelists don’t see Trump as God’s representative, but as God moving through him (much like the Emperor Cyrus that allowed the Jews to return to their homeland).
I know religion gets sneered at, but I’ve been to some parts of the US where that is all people have to sustain themselves. Without attending church some of them would fall into back into bad habits like drugs and crime. It’s a marker of ‘privilege’ when you don’t need religion.
Well done Giles, going back to your old tricks of inciting antisemitism in your words. The Merchant of Venice is the key source of English antisemitism and for those who obviously don’t know, Jesus was actually Jewish. But as we all know, the Jews, according to TS Eliot are lower than rats (endorsed by Hitler in Mein Kampf) and who’s to blame for the current violence in America – why those accursed Jews of course!
Irene, if you’ve been reading Giles’s recent contributions here, you’ll know that his wife is Jewish. If he’s antisemitic, theirs must be a very unhappy household. Fortunately there’s nothing in the article, or anything else he’s written, to suggest that he is.
Knew this would come up -a) some of my best friends, b) have met the man, c) Goebbels also enjoyed his time in Israel, d) read Anthony Julius’ book where gf is mentioned In dispatches and e) are you suggesting that the Merchant of Venice is philosemitic?
Are you saying that any and every quotation from the MoV is anti-semitic? `You sound as if you have quite a bee in your bonnet. Do you hear buzzing noises?
I too am Jewish but I don’t think this article is anti-semitic just because he quotes MoV. Do you think that the painting of The Last Supper is antisemitic?
What utter nonsense you speak. I don’t agree with some of his views but Fraser isn’t what you very unjustly paint him to be. Also it’s not a done thing to vote for yourself. What’s the point of that.
Andrew D
3 years ago
The Bible is a book of two unequal parts, each presenting a very different version of the deity. I suspect that Trump hasn’t got beyond the Old Testament, so hasn’t read the Jesus bit. This is true of many so-called ‘Bible Christians’ in the US (the people to whom he’s trying to appeal)
Ooh! That’s not so! And the two parts AREN’T unequal! The Old foreshadows the New through dozens of prophecies and New is the fulfilment of the Old! 101 Bible study. The church-going Americans I know in the NorthWest have a better grasp of the whole Bible than a lot of English clergy!
This is rubbish – Jesus only read the OT (sic) and would undoubtedly have condemned the NT as anti-Semitic. Most of the positive parts in the NT are pure Judaism and are filched from the OT (sic). This includes the Sermon on the Mount. The 15% of the NT that is anti-Semitic (around 600 entries according to NT scholars) was written by self-hating Jews in order to placate the Romans. How do I know? Unlike AD above, I’ve been teaching the Bible and related subjects to clergy and academics for over 40 years. So why am I not totally surprised that this website allows comments that will inflame people to attack the Jewish community – and in fact could be accused of being anti-Semitic itself. But it was ever thus. Corbyn did not arise in a vacuum – definitely not, and comparing the hated Jew Shylock to the American President is an example of venomous hatred towards Jews – whoever the writer. Especially, as a greater number of anti black judicial murders were carried out (also under Democrat mayors) when Obama was king!
You are over thinking this. Trump was telling his supporters that he is standing with them against what they conceive as the forces of darkness. It is probably very effective . If you have spent time in the parts of the USA where the church is still the centre of life for the community then you get it.
It is still a frontier society built by men and women who believed that strength of character and hard work and faith was what built the USA. They see the rioters as the direct anthesis of this.
Look on youtube and you will see the citizens of small towns well armed and turning out to protect their communities. Trump is giving them the sign that he is fine with that,. They are nothing like Europeans they just happen to speak English.
Giles, very interesting until you got to Trump’s “little show-and-tell photo op was a way of parading to others the god of his own limited imagination, the god of power, of law and order. Trump didn’t hold up his Bible in fear and trembling”.
What you appeared to be doing in your attempts to portray Trump as a tiny mind was to denigrate just about all of us because lets face it most of us, myself included, have a limited imagination when it comes to God. Then you seem to imply that the only way to approach the Bible is via fear and trembling.
After that you proceeded to tell us that anybody who thought the Bible and its words important eg Protestants were a bit guilty of book worship. You also managed to disparage those Americans who do read the Bible in a very literal sense and I can think of another religion that takes its book literally too.
All of that so you could have a dig at Trump. I wonder if it was worth it?
I do fear that this is the standard British journalists sneering at Trump. There isn’t much analysis, no consideration that Clinton would have been no better (or considerably worse) and the Democrats are desperately trying to hide Joe Biden in his cellar because he has been shown up to be both racist and senile.
The reality is this picture will play well with the evangelical right who Trump needs to keep on board and will annoy the metropolitan left to an extent that they will repeat the “deplorable” mistake by doing exactly what this article did.
Here is how I understood your perspective, and I’m probably wrong on that, so please clarify. Both the evangelical right and the metropolitan left are putty in the hands of Trump. One should not try to critique his strategy or tactics, as they are clearly the best we could hope for. This applies double to British journalists.
Not quite, he’s playing to his electorate. The evangelical right will vote for him because he will put an evangelical Christian on the Supreme Court. That will give them a clear majority on the court for the next 20 years or more. This was Trump conforming he will do that. He has already started that process with two appointments and the president elected in November will appoint at least one more.
The left hate him for the same reason as they where hoping a two term Clinton presidency would ensure a liberal Supreme Court majority. They hate Trump and the imagery of this photograph will drive then mad.
So it’s not about putty in Trumps hands just good old fashioned electioneering and showing he plans to keep to his pledge.
Well, I don’t agree with the tenor of this piece. Trump quite rightly here draws other people’s attention- ie the rioters , looters – attention to the Bible. Heis standing in front of a church, one of quite afew, that hey have attacked. Quite right to remind them of the importance of the Bible and of Christianity, the religion after all on which the USA is founded.
Perhaps you should have taken Elizabeth I’s advice, this doesn’t come across as very Christian, a bit like the C of E bishops last week.
This article just feels rather nasty.
Trump’s use of the bible is indeed absurd given that he is patently not at all religious. If only politicians (and people in general) would drop all this religious nonsense.
Surely it’s just a bit of what they call chutzpah isn’t it?
Not quite the “Life of Brian”, but funny enough.
This piece is self-defeating. So Trump is both a semi-literate nincompoop with no capacity for deep concepts, but also a crafty and cunning authoritarian using the Bible as a prop. You can’t have it both ways, Giles. I lean more towards the “nincompoop” side.
If you had your ear closer to the ground of American Evangelicalism, you’d know that there are near-daily prayer meetings happening in the Oval Office. The fact that most people don’t know this kind of shows you that this isn’t being exploited, and neatly served to the media Right for strategic political distribution.
So we can argue about how much, but there is certainly some level of genuineness to his religious peacocking. To the extent that a lifelong high-rolling self-absorbed borderline sociopath is capable of absorbing anything of value from the Bible, I think he’s making some effort.
And that fact that you just bypass all good faith and even some more pertinent details about his “religious journey”, and just base your entire indictment on a visceral feeling that a photo gives you, is just as much of a religious imputation on you as it is Trump.
The stupidest photo-op ever. He looked awkward and utterly clueless, like an automaton told to stand there and hold a book he was unfamiliar with while posing for a camera. Has he no sane advisors?
Amusing that Fraser uses the very book he criticises Protestants of ‘worshipping’ to call them out; perhaps it’s the case Protestants worship the God who reveals himself through that book.
Trump knows his audience and only he knows his conscience.
You Cathols, a? Tut tut.
Trump wants his “base” to know that their belief that he is the Messiah – the new age Cyrus as the evangelicals call him..is still the case. He counts on their vote and wants a repeat of 2016 in the states that Obama forgot about but happen to be in the electoral college and differentiators to an election outcome. Having given billions to big business he’ll be sure to have them in his pocket (or is it the other way around) already.
To infer Trump is unintelligent or “semi litrtate” is itself an unintelligent comment. Its hardly likely he survived and prospered in the cut throat world of US property speculation without at least a passable grasp of legal contracts and mathematics.
OK , so he probably is irreligious or maybe evrn and agnostic. He probably doesn’t read much literature. However, to portray him as unintelligent seems illogical and runs against the available evidence.
Here’s the thing…. not all Republican president are dumb war hawk and not all democratic presidents are weak, liars and cheats. That narrative is too simplistic.
He is clever rather than intelligent and, possibly as a consequence, foolish rather than wise.
It’s all rubbish…the people who think Trump is Christ’s rep. on earth will still cheer him on….
…those who think is Satan’s rep. on earth will still despise him….
…and the religious loons will dance on the head of a pin as they try to justify what the POTUS does or doesn’t to with references to the Bible to suit….
…religion by transaction so to speak….
From what I understand Christian Evangelists don’t see Trump as God’s representative, but as God moving through him (much like the Emperor Cyrus that allowed the Jews to return to their homeland).
I know religion gets sneered at, but I’ve been to some parts of the US where that is all people have to sustain themselves. Without attending church some of them would fall into back into bad habits like drugs and crime. It’s a marker of ‘privilege’ when you don’t need religion.
Actually it was Cyrus
Thanks, I always get those two mixed up.
Well done Giles, going back to your old tricks of inciting antisemitism in your words. The Merchant of Venice is the key source of English antisemitism and for those who obviously don’t know, Jesus was actually Jewish. But as we all know, the Jews, according to TS Eliot are lower than rats (endorsed by Hitler in Mein Kampf) and who’s to blame for the current violence in America – why those accursed Jews of course!
Irene, if you’ve been reading Giles’s recent contributions here, you’ll know that his wife is Jewish. If he’s antisemitic, theirs must be a very unhappy household. Fortunately there’s nothing in the article, or anything else he’s written, to suggest that he is.
Knew this would come up -a) some of my best friends, b) have met the man, c) Goebbels also enjoyed his time in Israel, d) read Anthony Julius’ book where gf is mentioned In dispatches and e) are you suggesting that the Merchant of Venice is philosemitic?
Are you saying that any and every quotation from the MoV is anti-semitic? `You sound as if you have quite a bee in your bonnet. Do you hear buzzing noises?
I too am Jewish but I don’t think this article is anti-semitic just because he quotes MoV. Do you think that the painting of The Last Supper is antisemitic?
What utter nonsense you speak. I don’t agree with some of his views but Fraser isn’t what you very unjustly paint him to be.
Also it’s not a done thing to vote for yourself. What’s the point of that.
The Bible is a book of two unequal parts, each presenting a very different version of the deity. I suspect that Trump hasn’t got beyond the Old Testament, so hasn’t read the Jesus bit. This is true of many so-called ‘Bible Christians’ in the US (the people to whom he’s trying to appeal)
Ooh! That’s not so! And the two parts AREN’T unequal! The Old foreshadows the New through dozens of prophecies and New is the fulfilment of the Old!
101 Bible study.
The church-going Americans I know in the NorthWest have a better grasp of the whole Bible than a lot of English clergy!
This is rubbish – Jesus only read the OT (sic) and would undoubtedly have condemned the NT as anti-Semitic. Most of the positive parts in the NT are pure Judaism and are filched from the OT (sic). This includes the Sermon on the Mount. The 15% of the NT that is anti-Semitic (around 600 entries according to NT scholars) was written by self-hating Jews in order to placate the Romans. How do I know? Unlike AD above, I’ve been teaching the Bible and related subjects to clergy and academics for over 40 years. So why am I not totally surprised that this website allows comments that will inflame people to attack the Jewish community – and in fact could be accused of being anti-Semitic itself. But it was ever thus. Corbyn did not arise in a vacuum – definitely not, and comparing the hated Jew Shylock to the American President is an example of venomous hatred towards Jews – whoever the writer. Especially, as a greater number of anti black judicial murders were carried out (also under Democrat mayors) when Obama was king!