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Similar millions of other Americans, Franklin Graham watched the agonizing images of last week's riots at the U.S. Capitol with swelling concern and acrimony.

Graham, son of the belatedly evangelist Billy Graham and head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said he was sickened to run into "people assault my Capitol and break down the doors of my Capitol" and was dismayed to see how President Donald Trump riled up the protesters.

"I don't think it was the president's finest moment," he said.

But Graham said he doesn't expect the tumult at the Capitol to deter evangelical Christians from supporting Trump.

"I don't think he had any understanding in that moment of what was going to take place," he said. "None of u.s.a. did."

Graham added, "He regrets it."

Since his victory in a very competitive Republican primary in 2016, Trump has relied on evangelical Christians and other influential religious groups as powerful voting blocs to shore upwards his influence. He has appointed more than 200 federal judges and 3 conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who support limits on abortion and gay marriage and other policies favored past many conservative religious leaders. In the presidential election in November, 76% of white evangelicals voted for Trump and 24% for Joe Biden, according to Edison Research exit polls.

Thousands of protesters broke into the Capitol as Congress tried to finalize the Balloter Higher vote count and acknowledge Biden as the election winner. The attack led to five deaths and near 100 arrests and motivated House Democrats to introduce manufactures of impeachment against Trump for allegedly inciting the crowds. During a speech before the violence broke out, Trump told his followers, "We're going to have to fight much harder."

"If yous don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore," he said hours earlier rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, threatening Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers.

Tuesday, earlier leaving on a trip to Due south Texas, Trump said calls for his impeachment were divisive and his comments to supporters earlier the Capitol insurrection were "totally appropriate."

None of the turmoil has eroded much of his support among evangelicals, experts and religious leaders said.

For the by four years, evangelical leaders created an "repeat chamber" where they blamed all of Trump's digressions and missteps on the Democratic Party or the mainstream media, said Sarah Posner, an investigative journalist and writer of "Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump."

After the deadly Capitol riot, evangelical leaders deflected blame from Trump, while those who take been critical of the president denounced the riots and blamed him for playing a role, she said.

Evangelicals "are so conditioned non to trust the media, it'due south going to exist really hard to convince them of the truth of what happened on Wed," Posner said.

In the wake of the Capitol riots, many evangelical leaders have continued fueling Trump's baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud in last year'southward elections, she said.

"Because information technology'southward the leaders who are again churning the aforementioned conspiracy theories, I don't run across a lot of progress in irresolute anybody's minds," Posner said.

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the xiv,000-fellow member Start Baptist Church of Dallas, said Tuesday he had "absolutely no regrets" over his "enthusiastic support" of Trump over the past four years.

"He is without uncertainty the virtually pro-life and pro-religious president in history," Jeffress said in an eastward-post. "The president has every right to concur the view that the ballot was fraudulent and to invite those who share that belief to peacefully protest. He neither called for nor condoned the despicable actions of those who invaded our Capitol and assaulted the police."

In an editorial published over the weekend on Fox News, Jeffress called the storming of the Capitol "not merely a crime" just "a sin against God."

"Peaceful protestation is a vital part of our political tradition, and it has long served us well," he wrote. "What happened on Wednesday when a mob infiltrated the Capitol building was not a protestation. It was lawlessness. … Jubilant evil is evil. It corrodes the soul."

Jeffress said he would talk over in his sermon Sunday how Christians dismayed by the election results should respond to Biden.

"If nosotros are ever going to heal our country," he said, "we must learn how to lay bated the anger and bitterness that are fierce our country autonomously without enervating that people give up their deeply held convictions."

Trump has also courted support from Orthodox Jewish leaders, who applauded when he moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem two years ago. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, brokered the signing of peace accords with a handful of Mideast countries.

According to a survey by the American Jewish Committee published in October, Trump was preferred past 74% of Orthodox Jews. Biden was favored by 83% of secular Jews.

Amidst the mob at the U.S. Capitol were Orthodox Jews who supported the president, even though there were anti-Semitic images in the crowd, including a man with a T-shirt emblazoned with "Camp Auschwitz." 1 rioter arrested Friday was the son of a prominent approximate in New York's Orthodox Jewish community.

Rabbi Mendy Mirocznik, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, a national organization that represents more than 900 Orthodox clergy members, called the events at the Capitol very painful. The Rabbinical Brotherhood of America does not endorse any political candidates for office.

"This is more than the straw that broke the camel's dorsum," said Mirocznik, whose parents are Holocaust survivors from Poland. "America needs to brainstorm to heal."

A poll by the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization that tracks extremism nationwide, establish approximately two-thirds of Americans say Trump and members of groups with white supremacist beliefs were responsible for the violence.

"Well-nigh Americans now encounter the direct connexion between the dangerous rhetoric from President Trump, others on the far right and extremist groups," said Jonathan Greenblatt, primary executive of the ADL.

During religious services this by weekend, Jewish clergy took to the pulpit to speak out against white supremacy, anti-Semitism and the attack on democracy.

Every bit Rabbi Rachel Timoner began reciting the blessing, "Baruch Atah Adonai," to welcome the sabbath in Congregation Beth Elohim in New York City'southward Brooklyn civic, she attempted to comfort her congregation.

"We are going to kindle light because the world needs light," she said, lighting ii white candles.

Joseph W. Daniels, Jr., pastor of Emory Fellowship, a United Methodist church in Washington, cited the assail on the Capitol during his sermon Sunday and urged congregants to telephone call out wrongdoing when they run across information technology.

"For our nation to heal, for America to heal, we have to phone call out the fact that the behaviors and habits and attitudes of this past Wed were not of God but were of a white supremacy and privilege that are not healthy for anybody," Daniels said. "We cannot be afraid. We take to take courage. ... We have to phone call out demons."

Some conservative religious leaders called for the nation to move forwards behind Biden.

In an article in the online portal The Gospel Coalition, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, condemned the attacks on the Capitol and chosen on Christians to reject the falsehoods surrounding the elections and embrace the truth.

"Enough is enough – and indeed was enough a long time ago," Moore wrote. "It volition have decades to rebuild from the wreckage in this state. Merely, as Christians, we can start now – just by not being afraid to say what is considerately the truth. Joe Biden has been elected president."

He said, "If Christians are people of truth, we ought to be the get-go to acknowledge reality."

For other evangelicals, Trump'due south role in the Capitol attack volition be minimized because many encounter him non just as an elected official but one anointed by God, Posner said.

"They feel he should remain president because God wanted him to be president," she said.

Contributing: Deborah Berry

Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/12/evangelicals-donald-trump-capitol-riot-voter-fraud/6644005002/

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