President Trump: Hypocrite

From the Friendly Atheist:

...Donald Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, the same event at which he once promised a repeal of the Johnson Amendment (which never happened) and trashed Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He didn’t make any promises this time, and he stuck to the prepared remarks, but that didn’t mean his speech was without glaring problems.

Just take a look at the transcript and you’ll see why this speech wasn’t just some generic support for people of faith. It was specific support for Christians at the expense of everybody else. And it perpetuated the myth of the “Christian nation” at every turn:

America is a nation of believers, and together we are strengthened by the power of prayer. This morning, our hearts are full of gratitude as we come together for the 66th annual National Prayer Breakfast.

That’s a lie. We are a nation of believers and non-believers, and the latter group is growing at an incredibly fast rate. Americans United for Separation of Church and State noted that even President Obama made sure to be inclusive of people who didn’t believe in the majority religion.

...It’s not hard for politicians to be personally religious yet still acknowledge that some Americans aren’t interested in being people of faith. President Barack Obama is a Christian yet when he spoke about faith, he often included non-believers when discussing the incredible range of religious and philosophical thought in the country.

Trump also suggested our nation was Christian at its core because of the ways God is referenced in our history:

Each year, this event reminds us that faith is central to American life and to liberty. Our founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence. Our currency declares, “In God We Trust.” (Applause.) And we place our hands on our hearts as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance and proclaim we are “One Nation Under God.” (Applause.)

Notice that he refers to the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution, which has no reference to a Creator. (As the saying goes, the word “religion” appears twice in the Constitution, both times preceded by the word “no.”)

“In God We Trust” is on our currency for the same reason “One Nation Under God” is in the Pledge. They were shoved in there in the 1950s as a conservative response to the scourge of Communism, not because there’s some inherent truth to those statements. They were political moves. And Trump used them as evidence of some mythical historical Christianity our nation is founded upon...

See also Amazing Disgrace.