100% of this 30% hasn’t read their Bible.
And have long term brain damage due to lead poisoning.
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.
So he withdrew his support of trump in 2020? No they'll say, that election was stolen. So democrats are more powerful than God? Sounds like you chumps are worshiping an inferior being. Get with it. Biden for God, 2024.
There's no use using logic to argue someone out of a position they didn't arrive at by logic in the first place.
They just hand wave anything away as "this is a test of faith in this life, but it is only the eternal afterlife that matters." There's literally no arguing with 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.
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.
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?
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”.
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.
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.
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.
Hey, that's an improvement! That's down from the typical "a majority of Americans".
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.
“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
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.
As a plague?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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?