Faith and culture expert Alex McFarland spoke to Fox News on the « Lighthouse Faith » podcast about Donald J. Trump’s election victory — and the importance of religious voters.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory is more than a decisive win for Republicans. It’s a referendum on the importance of the religious voter.
The path to the White House still runs through America’s pews, as one journalist intimated recently in Christianity Today.
Trump increased his share of Catholic, evangelical and even Jewish voters. The Catholic vote especially saw a marked gain in support of Trump over 2020.
The election was also about competing worldviews.
Dr. Alex McFarland, a North Carolina-based religion and culture expert, spoke on the « Lighthouse Faith » podcast recently and laid out the difference: It was « a constitutional worldview that presupposes objective morality, which has been kind of the glue that held our nation together for 248 years, versus a globalist woke worldview that assumes morals are fluid, even assumes gender is fluid », he said.
As Democrats ponder what the party may or may have done wrong in 2024 — including on the economy, the border crisis, abortion — McFarland said there was the hum of a more conservative biblical worldview working its way through America’s pews that found its way to the ballot box.
McFarland said, « We believe that truth is not something that we make up for ourselves. Truth is revealed by God. The moral guardrails that hold our society together are not anything contrived by humans, but given by God. »
In other words, it’s the classic Enlightenment-era conflict over whether Man is the measure of all things — or is God?
He added, « Like opinions, everybody’s got a worldview, even if it’s only implied. The dictionary definition of a worldview is that it’s ‘a collection of attitudes, values, stories and expectations about the world around us, which inform our every thought and action. Worldview is expressed in ethics, religion, philosophy, scientific beliefs and so on.' »
Also, it’s « a comprehensive conception or philosophy of the universe and of humanity’s relation to it. »
Religious freedom is a bedrock principle of the United States, enshrined in the Constitution. Religion (or belief systems) informs and fuels worldviews.
But McFarland, expressing a personal view, said the Harris campaign seemed to him to trample or dismiss biblical worldviews. The dictionary definition of a worldview is that it’s ‘a collection of attitudes, values, stories and expectations about the world around us, which inform our every thought and action. Worldview is expressed in ethics, religion, philosophy, scientific beliefs and so on.' »
As one example, when some attendees of a Wisconsin rally shouted, « Jesus is King », she replied, « You’re at the wrong rally » — and laughed.
Yet when Trump’s running mate, Vice president-elect JD Vance, encountered the same shouts at an event, he answered, « That’s right, Jesus is King. »
Also, Harris declined the invite given to both presidential candidates to attend the 79th annual Al Smith Dinner, which raises millions for Catholic charities. Trump was there.
The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue viewed it as a snub to Catholics on a global scale.
