'It's a free-for-all': Trump gives evangelicals permission to embrace flawed candidates like Herschel Walker
The Georgia Senate race between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker has turned into a matchup between two contrasting versions of American Christianity.
Walker, who has used his faith as a defense against concerns about his character and fitness, represents the merger between conservative Christianity and right-wing politics, while Warnock, a lifelong minister who now leads the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s church, embodies a tradition where faith challenges injustices, reported the New York Times.
“We are witnessing two dimensions of Christian faith, both the justice dimension and the mercy dimension,” said the Rev. Dr. Robert M. Franklin Jr., a professor in moral leadership at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
An ex-girlfriend has come forward to claim Walker paid for her to have an abortion, although he supports banning those without exception, but those revelations haven't seemed to cut into his support from evangelical conservatives who see him as a vehicle to retake the GOP Senate majority.
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“I always vote for policy more than personality,” said Jentezen Franklin, pastor of Free Chapel in Gainesville.
Donald Trump's presidency has raised the tolerance for personally flawed candidates who pledge to deliver political results, regardless of any religious hypocrisy.
“It’s a free-for-all,” said Joseph N. Cousin, who leads Allen Temple A.M.E. Church in Cherokee County. “If you really bring it along racial lines, perhaps it is a group that was in the majority for so long trying to stay in that majority, but on the flip side, you have to draw a line and say right is right, wrong is wrong.”