The sweeping support evangelicals gave Donald Trump on Election Day was stoked by their fear that Christianity is being killed off, Johnnie Moore, a spokesman for My Faith Votes, which focuses on getting Christian Americans to the polls, tells Newsmax TV.
“America has become an increasingly intolerant place for Christians…. The religious right is dying, Christianity is dying,” Moore said Friday to J.D. Hayworth on “America Talks Live.”
“What we’ve learned is America isn’t Los Angeles or New York. America is the center of the country and the majority of the people in this country want religious freedom, they stand up for Christian values and are unashamed of our Judeo-Christian effort
“It’s what’s happened in America: Threats to religious liberty and all these other things. But I’ve got to tell you, Donald Trump deserves all the credit in the world.”
Moore, whose nonpartisan group motivates and mobilizes the Christian vote, said he has never seen anybody “with so much power and so much influence go to the effort he went to build individual relationships with not dozens of significant Christian leaders, but thousands of them.”
He noted that some pastors have the billionaire real-estate tycoon and president-elect’s cell phone number.
“[Trump] invited criticism, he created an evangelical advisory board, he didn’t even require everyone to endorse him to be on the board because he legitimately wanted their advice and they had an open conversation with him. And it worked in an astonishing, astonishing way,” Moore said.
“And this is as American as anything. I mean we are a country with a Judeo-Christian foundation. We have a congressionally-mandated National Day of Prayer. This is something we do.
“I started getting emails and text messages and phone calls from every direction on Election Day [saying] ‘we’re praying for America, we’re praying for Mr. Trump, we’re praying for religious freedom, we’re praying for all these things. And it happened. Not only that, the turnout effort was unbelievable.”
Moore said in the previous two elections, 25 million evangelicals “just sat at home.”
“That wasn’t the case this time. They, in fact, turned out in record, record numbers. But it wasn’t for lack of effort. I mean My Faith Votes alone had [public service announcements] in 110 million households … six daily on over 1,000 Christian radio stations all across the country,” he said.
Moore said a repeal of the so-called 1954 “Johnson Amendment” — which prohibits some tax-exempt organizations from endorsing and opposing political candidates — is a big issue for Christians that Trump is going to tackle.
“This amendment was passed in order to keep the pastors in this country — to keep their mouths shuts. They can’t speak about politics, they could be penalized by the IRS and that’s an anti-American as anything,” Moore said.
“And you know Donald Trump is the first Republican candidate … in the history of the Republican Party, to put the repeal of the Johnson Amendment as part of their platform.
Moore, president of The KAIROS Company a faith-based publicity and marketing group, is author of “Defying ISIS: Preserving Christianity in the Place of Its Birth and in Your Own Backyard,” published by Thomas Nelson.
Read more at Johnnie Moore: Evangelical Panic Over Death of Christianity Helped Fuel Trump Win.
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