The Guardian
By Ed Pilkington
February 21, 2016
Donald
Trump, still feeling the aftershocks of his spat with Pope Francis who
suggested he was “not a Christian” for proposing a border wall with
Mexico, now faces the
wrath of his own Presbyterian church leadership who say his hardline
views on immigration are out of line with its teachings.
Gradye
Parsons, the most senior elected official of the Presbyterian Church
(USA) to which Trump was baptized as a child, said that the Bible is
clear: followers of the
faith have to care for the needy. “Donald Trump’s views are not in
keeping with the policies adopted by our church by deliberative
process,” he said.
In
an interview with the Guardian, Parsons said that the Presbyterian
church had voted several times since the 1990s in its national general
assemblies in favor of comprehensive
immigration reform that would grant a route to legal status for the 11
million undocumented people currently living in the US. “Our official
policy is to encourage immigration reform.”
He
added that the founding narrative of Christianity contained a
commitment to those most in need – widows, orphans, the oppressed and
the alien. “It is clear that God
wants us to act on behalf of the stranger. Jesus himself and his
parents had to flee the country for their lives when he was born – there
are lots of parallels.”
Trump’s
latest kerfuffle with the religious community erupted on Thursday when
the pope made a clear reference to the presidential candidate at the end
of his papal tour
of Mexico. The pontiff said that “a person who thinks only about
building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is
not Christian”.
On
Friday the Vatican back-tracked, saying that the comments had not been
intended as a personal attack. Trump himself also made soothing noises,
praising the pope’s latest
remarks as “beautiful”.
Pope
Francis says that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is
‘not Christian’due to his plans for a wall between the US and Mexico to
stop illegal immigrants
entering America.
But
the contretemps has reopened questions about the Republican’s standing
in the eyes of the religious community. The Republican primary race, in
which Trump continues
to hold favorable poll ratings compared with nearest rivals Ted Cruz
and Marco Rubio, moves next to the deep south where evangelical
conservatives wield considerable sway.
Trump
was confirmed as a child at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica,
Queens, and has always self-associated as a Presbyterian. He says he now
worships at the Marble
Collegiate Church in Manhattan, part of the Reformed Church in American
denomination.
Parsons,
who is known as the “stated clerk” or chief executive of the 1.6
million-strong Presbyterian Church in the US, said he would stop short
of the pope’s suggestion
that Trump’s views on immigration rendered him “not a Christian”. But
he did say that “Biblical mandates are important – how people care for
the oppressed and the alien acts as a marker of whether they are
following their faith.”
For more information, go to: www.bevrlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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