30 Percent of Americans Believe Trump Appointed President by God
30 Percent of Americans Believe Trump Appointed President by God
Why do so many evangelical Christians support former President Donald Trump despite his decades of documented ungodly behavior?An in-depth report from The Economist shows that it has a simple explanation: They believe that God personally appointed him to rule the United States.In fact, the report ci...
Why do so many evangelical Christians support former President Donald Trump despite his decades of documented ungodly behavior?
An in-depth report from The Economist shows that it has a simple explanation: They believe that God personally appointed him to rule the United States.
In fact, the report cites a survey conducted by Denison University political scientist Paul Djupe that around 30 percent of Americans believe Trump "was anointed by God to become president."
100% of this 30% hasn’t read their Bible.
And have long term brain damage due to lead poisoning.
💯 I believe this is why they're abhorrently stupid
100% of Republicans haven't read it, or they wouldn't be Republicans.
Was talking to my masseuse and when she heard I went to catholic school, she asked "so you've read the whole Bible prolly right?" And I was like..."ya, more than once. Is that not common for your side of the aisle?" She just chuckled. She is by no means a fervent believer, but her circle is and she still found it uncommon that I read it.
To be fair, a shocking number of Americans are, at best, complete dumbasses.
I'll bet that number and your number are pretty close.
Even better. Another headline utterly destroying the study it allegedly reports.
30% of americans are idiots it seems...
More like %30 of the 50 people they interviewed in some Alabama Walmart parking lot. Polls like this are blatant propagandist horseshit.
Again, not a single random bullshit poll. These articles from raw story and the economist are based on multiple different polls done in a statistically valid way by well known amd respected pollsters, and a comprehensive academic study of the matter. Ive linked the main study elsewhere in this thread.
I know I'm going to step in it by commenting, but the polls are usually accurate. It's how they're reported that's not. The data from polls themselves often say how limited in scope they are, but that doesn't make a good headline and never makes it into the story. It takes a real nerd to be interested in stats and real stats are boring.
The actual study is far more reasonable. The reporters ran away with it, as usual.
Hey, that's an improvement! That's down from the typical "a majority of Americans".
Tbh, most things that cite "a majority of americans" tend to actually be talking about a vocal minority of Americans.
30% of POLLED people who answered phones..
Not "of Americans" fuck this click bait shit.
Fuck the op, fuck the news sensationalizing this fucking lunatic shitgibbon
Howabout fuck you, read the actual cited academic study that I've posted links to and come back with an actually valid criticism.
He would prefer to think it's just the media reporting that a sizeable percentage of the country not only disagrees with him but would probably smile as the person you're responding to was jailed or harmed.
Can't totally blame him. "OMG u fuktard itz tthu mediaz making cheeto poplar!!1!" is much easier to deal with than reckoning with the fact that a) he was elected once, and b) based on current polling, he's likely to be elected again.
It's quite literally the same problem of the right, just reversed. The media are the problem, let's not look at the reality that is quite apparent all around us because it's scary.
Or, and this is a radical concept I know, you could read the paywalled book and quote the relevant parts. Then we could decide if we want to purchase said book for ourselves.
Because this isn't a study. This article is a sensationalized reprint of an Economist article which usually treats books pretty softly. Almost like it's an advertisement. But I would never accuse such a respectable magazine of doing that. (Lol, I even like the Economist, but it's a bad habit of theirs)
I'm not sure you're aware of how polling works. It would take many years to contact all 350 million Americans.
Polling has long since left phones behind. Anything that's pure phones is heavily skewed towards conservatives and older people.
Read the actual study. And also, like... look around you, if/when you go outside, and actually pay attention. Have you not noticed?
You guys are looking at this all wrong. 43% of Americans were found to believe that God helped Tim Tebow throw touchdowns link while only 30% believe Trump was chosen. We can thus conclude that Trump has lost a significant portion of Touchdown Jesus evangelicals.
Yup. I've answered one political call, and it was about whether to dredge our local lake to put in more housing (they make it sound nicer than that). I've blocked the rest.
Divine right of presidents theory would also make all the Democrats appointed by God. But this shit is evangelical personal relationship with God nonsense, so I guess God told them personally that he appointed Trump to be president.
Knowing how Evangelicals are, they'd claim that the dem presidents are Satan deceiving people or, like in the case of Obama, are potential Antichrists. They need Satan to be powerful enough to fear and they use anything they can to reinforce that.
Both the RawStory and The Economist articles are quite vague about what specific 2021 Pew poll they’re talking about. I’m very skeptical of this 30% number. The Economist article itself made no such claim.
In fact, the report cites a survey conducted by Denison University political scientist Paul Djupe that around 30 percent of Americans believe Trump "was anointed by God to become president."
Not a Pew Research Poll.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/full-armor-of-god/2B21DC6F17E88C6DF7275F45A66DF104
I'll see if I can find it on open scholar or something similar.
EDIT: Here we go!
https://annas-archive.org/md5/da76eb110551fd4028c9c0a8e185f0ce
You can thank Cambridge for paywalling scientific knowledge for why the article is so hard to find.
I mean it took me about 10 minutes, but I guess most people do not know how to do research on the internet.
Thanks!
So I dug into this, and the following excerpt is the only piece of information related to the claim in question:
In the run up to the 2020 election, religious conservative public figures – for example, Rick Perry – claimed that Donald Trump was anointed by God; Perry called him “the chosen one” (see Djupe and Burge 2019). The head of Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Council, Paula White, went a bit further: “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God, and I won’t do that.” In May 2019, 21.4 percent of Protestants believed Trump was anointed by God to be president, as did 29 percent of evangelicals, and a majority of Pentecostals (like Paula White). Belief in Trump’s anointing increased considerably closer to the 2020 election (Djupe and Burge 2020; Edsall 2020).
Here are the original sources of the claim:
I’ll keep editing this comment as I get further into it.
Edit 1: added archive link for Edsall 2020
Edit 2: fixed the link for Djupe and Burge 2019
Edit 3: Here is an archive link to the Economist article.
Edit 4: relevant quote from the Economist article:
In a survey conducted by Mr Djupe shortly before the election, three in ten Americans believed Mr Trump “was anointed by God to become president”.
Edit 5: Conclusion
It seems as though the Economist article, and therefore the Raw Story and various other articles referencing it, are not correct. I’ve looked through a couple dozen resources at this point, and I cannot find any publications from Djupe or Burge substantiating this “30% of Americans” claim. However, I did find
However, I did find this:
Other surveys have shown similar results. A 2020 Pew Research Center survey asked Americans, not just church-attenders, about God’s role in recent presidential elections. They found that 32 percent of the more than 6,000 respondents, a sizable minority, believed Trump’s election must be part of God’s overall plan—though only 5 percent of those respondents believed God chose Trump because of his policies.
So maybe the 30% finding was from Pew after all? I’m going to send all this to the Economist to ask for clarification.
My mom believes it and told me at her Bible studies they all talk about how God put Trump on Earth to protect America. So there’s that. It’s mostly old ass Christians, but unfortunately for us America is mostly old ass Christians because the Baby Boomer generation was FUCKING HUGE. Hats off to the leftist Christians who actually understand Jesus’ teachings
And when a Democrat is elected? The same group denies, denies, denies.
If God is all powerful, why did your guy lose?
Either God isn't all powerful, or he's not your guy after all...
We are so fucked.
If Trump wins, he is literally at this point stating he will be a dictator, that he wants to get rid of vermin people, and that he is very concerned about the purity of the blood of the nation.
If he loses, these deranged imbeciles have /a lot of guns/ and I am convinced they will basically figure out how to top 9/11, either in one concentrated burst of insanity, or more likely exceed it in body count in something like a few weeks of domestic terrorist attacks around the country.
The possibly even more terrifying thing is that roughly similar numbers of Americans believe in all or a substantial amount of the QAnon nonsense, and the Venn Diagram between QAnon adherents and Trump is God's President people is practically a circle.
50 million delusional angry armed psychopaths.
I sure hope I can get into Canada within a few years.
50 million armed, delusional, and angry, but have you SEEN them? ;)
Any serious resistance and they run off like the giant babies they are.
Better buy a gun then.
and that he is very concerned about the purity of the blood of the nation.
If blood is too "pure", it breaks down.
But that he still can be a candidate, seems like the US is close to dictatorship anyway.
Something something mysterious ways
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg
I'm guessing that goes in reverse too, no? Provided "fame" is a religion too, because rich people love seeing their names in the news and hence give a lot to charity.
Statistically my opinion doesn't even count because I'm not American.
But i get the 30% crowd on this. For that buffoon of a human being to become president. Maybe there was divine intervention. But whatever God exists, is fucking with us for entertainment.
divine intervention
*Russian intervention
At this point it seems clear to me that if there is a God, it is basically the insane God of Madness from the Elder Scrolls, Sheogorath.
"Blessed is the Madgod, who tricks us when we are foolish, punishes us when we are wrong, tortures us when we are unmindful, and loves us in our imperfection."
And that same group thought that Obama was put in power by Satan. They used it as an excuse to ignore laws. "I follow gods law, not mans" and other such stuff that flagrantly violated the very rules established by their god.
Romans 13 1 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
Exactly, though to be fair this is Paul's words, not Jesus', though it echoes what Jesus taught when he said, "give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, give to God that which is God's."
Note, this doesn't say anything about Jesus' perspective on what the ideal government looks like, it only says we are morally obligated to follow the law.
I don't think there was a historical Jesus but had there been one and the rest of the sorry basically correct I doubt he would have said that in historical context.
The issue came down to the cult of the emperor. People in the empire were supposed to worship the emperor. Jews were given an exception provided that they offer daily donations in their temple for his health. The issue was the face of the emperor was on the coins. The majority of Jews at that time and place were okay with that but agreed that in the temple area you needed to change the money. A small zealot group was not and demanded that Jews use different coinage. In the story Jesus is asked to take a side on this debate and he leans towards it being fine. Then a scene later he is all angry about it. Very odd. Especially since he had the same followers in both scenes. Talk about wishy-washy leadership.
Here is the thing: we first hear this supposed argument made by a Roman decades later. A Roman familiar with Paul's prosperity gospel system. For Jesus to have said it was not fine would have been a major financial and legitimacy blow to the church.
If it had happened we would have had a zealot who suddenly decided to take lax opinion and moments later change his mind. People don't typically work that way. We have a group and we go along with everything the group thinks and we don't make rapid changes on our viewpoints in front of others and lose face. Especially when we are ruling solely by charisma.
Tl:Dr Jesus didn't exist but had he existed the story couldn't have happened the way described and was clearly an effort to keep the church money flowing.
As a plague?
30% of Americans or 30% of voters?
About 10 or 20 minutes after I posted the story, I found the actual study by Dennison University that is the basis of many of the claims.
Here is the /official/, paywalled, abstract only link on Cambridge's journal or study publishing site:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/full-armor-of-god/2B21DC6F17E88C6DF7275F45A66DF104
And here are various links to the full study provided by scientists amd volunteers who believe information should be freely available:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/da76eb110551fd4028c9c0a8e185f0ce
I have not had enough time to read it but given that 40% + of American adults believe in the Biblical Creation narrative of the world and do not believe in evolution, I'm pretty confident the 30% figure refers to basically American Adults, ie potential voters, in this context.
It doesn't say. That and the fact that this is reporting on other reporting, a kind of "reaction video" of journalism should be enough to ignore that number.
This article has more detailed information on the surveys conducted. It seems to be about a third of US adults.
https://bigthink.com/the-present/was-trump-anointed-by-god/
Interestingly, while skewed heavily towards Republicans, some Democrats also hold this position and a much smaller percentage overall believe he was selected because of his policies.
30% of Americans that were willing to take the survey... So the most enthusiastic voters...
It's 21 percent of weekly church going Protestants. Unless OP cares to actually share the operative part of the book. That's the number in the interview we've been able to find.
I'm not surprised, just disappointed.
It’s the prosperity gospel. Evangelicals are convinced god gives money to people he likes. Trump has money, as do most Republicans, ergo, god must approve.
Why that doesn’t apply to George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, or any other rich Democrat I don’t get.
Isn’t it obvious?!
Those democrats made a deal with Satan.
Trump has money
Does he though? He dramatically inflates the value of his properties and downplays his debts, preferring to declare bankruptcy than paying them. That doesn't sound like he has a lot of money, that sounds like he has a lot of assets and debts, and it isn't clear if his assets exceed his debts.
But maybe that's what the "prosperity gospel" people are into, appearances over facts...
despite his decades of documented ungodly behavior
Because they also have decades of documented "ungodly behavior" (dumb phrase given god is a complete asshole) and want someone in charge that will let them continue it. Why do people insist on equating "christian" with "good"? If you saw some dude with "Good Guy" tattooed on his forehead, would you trust them? That's exactly what the cross has symbolized since it's inception.
Saw this unhinged video on the old site about a week ago. Woman being interviewed was going on about how much the shitbag cares about USA and how much he cares about us. These people cannot reason about anything logically. He gives no fucks for anyone but himself, yet this asshole was saying he gives a fuck about his supporters / USA citizens. I hate stupidity. I hate gullibility.
I had a sociology professor who stated that we hate most in others what we fear most in ourselves. Checks out.
This smells of bullshit. You can't get any of the numbers or methodology without paying. (Generally academic abstracts at least include their methodology if not their conclusion)
Which is because this is a book. This isn't a study it's a fucking advertisement.
Just looking at the publicly available numbers from respected groups like Gallup, 47% of Americans are religious. This would mean that 63% of religious people in the US believe God anointed a president.
Furthermore, 31% of Americans believed Trump had won the election as of 2023. (Gallup again) This would assign a mere 1% of those people to non religious, or at least, not believing he was anointed by God.
These numbers are highly suspect. However I'll stop short of saying the book itself is wrong. The free pages available on Google books talk about taking a comprehensive approach to Christian Nationalism in the US. Not this headline. It would not be the first time reporters read something an academic wrote and went off with a take away that was nowhere in the book or study.
What's far more likely, (without having paid for a subscription because fuck that and OP's free links don't work) is he said something along the lines of 30% of Christians believe he was anointed by God to bring Christian governance back to the the US. (Their ideology not mine, according to PEW, 24% of US adults identify as Evangelists) Not that he is anointed now. Of course there's serious overlap between evangelists and people who believe Trump won, but it is not 1 to 1.
Overall these are things we've known for a while. But finding out 30% of Americans believe in Divine Right Monarchy would be a big deal. And burying it in a book on a tangential subject would be completely irresponsible. It would be the watershed of a whole series of studies to support or refute. I highly doubt Rawstory has the right takeaway on this.
Edit -as always, it takes far more effort to track down what was actually done and said than to print a spurious story. So the Rawstory article simply points to the Economist article as it's citation. The Economist article has this to say -
A survey in 2023 by Paul Djupe of Denison University in Ohio found that a quarter of Americans believe in modern-day prophets and prophecies.
And
In a survey conducted by Mr Djupe shortly before the election, three in ten Americans believed Mr Trump “was anointed by God to become president”.
It also says they see Trump like the Persian Emperor who, while not Jewish himself, secured their freedom. So this was before the election, with no polling after the election. Only the observations of Christian Nationalists and Apostolic Militants combining to form the January 6th insurrection. Simply put we don't know how many still believe he's anointed to be elected. And how many people thought God would intervene after the election or still believe he will intervene.
Replying to myself because it's a bit late for this edit. But here's the money quote from the poll author.
We put a survey into the field in May of 2019 that assessed the opinions of just over 1,000 Protestant Christians. We asked two questions regarding the anointing of presidents by God.
The first asked if all presidents are anointed by God, while the second asked if Donald Trump was specifically anointed by God to win the 2016 election. In our sample, just 21.4% believed Donald Trump was specifically anointed by God to be president, but that figure increases among groups who believe in modern day prophets and a God who is active in the daily affairs of the world.
Slightly more white evangelicals (29%) agreed that Trump was anointed by God, but among white Pentecostals, like Paula White, that figure shot up to 53%.
21 percent of about 30 percent of American Adults believed this before the 2020 election. Somebody better than me with math can correct me but I'm pretty sure that's 6 percent of Americans?
Sigh.
Its not a book.
It is a comprehensive study that is 68 pages long not counting the pages of references.
I was able to download it and read it as a 5.2mb pdf file from the first sub link from annas-archive link I posted, maybe learn how to use the internet.
Anyway, the specific claim that Trump was annointed President by God is held by 30% of Americans is backed up by research done by the authors that shows a dramatically increased likelihood to believe this when someone scores high on a measure of a set of beliefs/views the authors define as Christian Persecution, which is also shown to be very highly correlated with another measure of Christian Nationalism, which itself is another indexed measure of beliefs, studied by the authors in this paper.
Given that various polls and studies, many referenced in the paper, but also there exist many others, show that around 40% of Americans believe the US should be a Christian Nation, openly identify as Christian Nationalists, that the idea that Trump being appointed President by God is hugely popular amongnst this group, the claim that 30% of Americans currently believe Trump was/is appointed President by God is well evidenced.
I have absolutely no idea how or why you think this is shocking. You apparently are very out of touch with current events.
Further, this /is/ big news, hence it being a major story in 'The Economist', a popular and extremely influential publication read by basically an audience of millions of Western corporate businesspeople.
Basically, Trump and his follower's derangement is so extreme that it is threatening to the stability of the global western capitalist system as Trump and his followers believe in so many ludicrous things so fervently that the kinds of corporate decisions that rely on being able to predict market conditions and general economic and social stability are now needing to be reevaluated wholesale.
Again, I have no idea how any of this is surprising to you unless you live under a rock.
It's literally on Google books. With chapters. It's completely narrative up to the purchase point. Furthermore the operative study for this article wasn't the point of the book. It was part of a larger body of research to talk about Christian Nationalism.
I'm glad your link worked for you. It 501'd for me and I'm guessing quite a few other people.
But that's okay because we found an interview with the author. Both articles have mangled this study. Which really isn't that unusual in media. The actual number is 21 percent of Protestants that attend church weekly. 30 percent in certain demographics, and 54 percent in one specific demographic.
And you're going to need citations to sell me on the entirety of religious America thinking we should be a religious country. (There's whole churches that reject this idea and embrace the separation of church and state. So good luck!)
Yes it is well documented that there are Christian Nationalists who want Trump to destroy our democracy. But blowing it out of proportion by defending sensationalist stuff like this does not help defeat them. If you were at all involved in statistics you'd know this is absolutely par for the course in journalism about statistics.
[they believe that] God will use Trump to crush opposition to Christian nationalism and restore Christians as the nation's rightful political rulers.
i've said for years that all the so-called "hypocrisy" of the christian right supporting the decidedly unchristian donald trump vanishes when you account for one fact: he'll let them hurt who they want to hurt.
The same 30% would agree that president God was appointed by Trump
White Christian Conservatives are one of the most scary things out there. Those fuckers are twisted, hateful and dellutional.
They are all of that. But they aren't 30 percent of the country. The actual study maths to about 6 percent. 21 percent of weekly church going Protestants. (Who are about 30 percent of the country.)
If that were true the size of the crowd at his inauguration may have matched the myth told about it.
Like the king is king because god wants.. Wait why is this so similar to 1300DC?
I'm not asserting that the polling is wrong, but I would say that for many people polled it could be misunderstood.
From a Biblical worldview, God can influence leaders. Both who is put into office, and to some extent even change their hearts about situations to control their impacts in the world.
That is to say God can, not that every leader is chosen by God and even less so that every leader is approved by God. Many times God is shown allowing bad leaders as a judgement of the people.
So even among those polled who said they believe he was appointed by God, it doesn't mean all of them thought it was a positive endorsement. I think if God chose him, it's because he's the leader we deserve.
Romans 13:1
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but from God; the powers that be are ordained by God.
If you believe in the Bible you must accept that every single leader is chosen by skydaddy.
Of course if you believe in the Bible you also must believe that somehow this process breaks and the all-powerful leader of the universe is powerless against dark forces that corrupt leaders.
Got to love that they can't even keep the plotholes out.
Oh it's wrong. According to the actual study you get to 30 percent in a certain part of protestantism. At "weekly church going Protestants" it's only 21 percent. So you have to goose the numbers by asking if they hold a conservative belief before you even get the number used for headline. And saying "of Americans" is a straight up lie.
This is truly adorable.
I read "Trump was appointed by President God" and I was wondering how I missed the election of a whole ass Deity into the executive branch.
In other news, rednecks are fucking idiots.
And their votes somehow still count 😦
very difficult to be God Emperor without divine intervention
I wonder if they also have parasites and love sucking down chemicals from corporations with lifestyle statements... OF COURSE THEY DO. FILTHY OTHERSIDERS