That’s an entirely different issue for Christians in the state of Iowa. “This is a guy who can’t even quote a Bible scripture to someone”, Mike Demastus, a pastor at Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, told The Des Moines Register.
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“It’s incorrect to assume that an evangelical will only vote for an evangelical”, said Anthony Gill, a political science professor who studies issues of religion and politics at the University of Washington. “To many evangelicals the fact that he’s a Seventh-day Adventist is less interesting than the fact that he’s a very observant one”. Religion is important, but more and more religious people are less concerned with denominational affiliation than they are with how deeply connected you are with your faith. If Trump thinks using Carson’s religion will help him with evangelicals, he’s wrong.
Donald Trump isn’t so sure about Ben Carson’s religion, skeptically telling a Florida rally on Saturday, “I mean, Seventh-Day Adventist, I don’t know about”. That’s down the middle of the road in all fairness. “And you know, we haven’t – Donald Trump has crudely tried to raise this as an issue, as Trump is wont to do with most things, but I do think there are serious issues here about his faith and how he intends to apply it, should he win control of the federal government”.
Several prominent GOP evangelical strategists predicted the comment by Trump would offend evangelicals. Adventist Today, a major independent Adventist news site, reported Tuesday that “in major surveys of the general public conducted for the Adventist denomination, about half of Americans say they have never heard of the Adventist faith and nine out of ten say they know nothing about it even if they recognize the name”.
But theologians say most Adventist beliefs do overlap with those of evangelical Christians, especially when it comes to hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage. “All I said was, ‘I don’t know about it, ‘” he told ABC’s “This Week”. “My observation is that Seventh-day Adventists are looked askance [at] to a few degree”.
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“I think there are still a few taboos that people still try to invoke to scare people, where there is no reason to be scared”, said Rev. Jay Wolin. “So it’s easy to overlook denominational differences they may have”.
