Collin Hansen recently interviewed Os Guinness for the Beeson Divinity School podcast and asked Guinness about evangelicals and the 2016 presidential election. You can listen below at 2:07 or read my transcription below the audio.
Collin Hansen: One of the opportunities we have essentially to take stock of ourselves as evangelicals often comes in the aftermath of presidential elections… What would you say that you learned perhaps about yourself or about evangelicals in the aftermath of the presidential election?
Os Guinness: I’m not sure I learned too much about myself in the election. Evangelicals though, they were roundly attacked for say the 81% who voted in Donald Trump (I thought unfairly). I think a lot of misunderstanding surrounding the president as I understood it (the evangelicals I know), it wasn’t that they voted for Trump, ’cause they knew that he was an extraordinary character who’s got some obvious flaws. But it was more that they voted against not just Hillary but all the henchmen and women she would have brought in with her because culturally speaking, if that particular party had got in apart from the grace of the Lord in revival, the culture and it’s trends in America might have been irreversible. So it was a vote against that rather than for Trump. The way I put it is I think President Trump is God’s wrecking ball stopping America in its tracks [from] the direction it’s going and giving the country a chance to rethink. Now we’re not putting our hope in the president or in politics, but you have a window to regroup, to rethink. The church profoundly needs reformation in all sorts of areas. So there’s a breathing space.
You can listen to the rest of the interview above, or visit the podcast page here.