Texas’ James Robison wants ‘open door’ for Trump spiritual advisers
The message from faith conservatives last year was that Donald Trump was like potter’s clay ready for God to shape.
Now, even one of his closest and strongest supporters wonders if something else is shaping him.
In an interview with a Forbes contributing columnist, Euless-based evangelist James Robison said the president has not been hearing his spiritual advisers and that he prays Trump will “come to the table of reason.”
“Mr. Trump has to keep the door open,” Robison told Pennsylvania financial writer Jerry Bowyer.
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s as open as it needs to be.”
Robison, 73, leader of Trump’s Inauguration Day service, has said before that he is praying for Trump to act wisely and “the jury is still out.”
Robison co-hosts a TV show, “LIFE Today,” and leads LIFE Outreach Ministries. Along with Fort Worth televangelists Gloria and Kenneth Copeland, Dallas First Baptist’s Rev. Robert Jeffress, Haltom City evangelist Mike Murdock and Southlake-based Gateway Church pastor Robert Morris, they helped Trump earn favor with white evangelical voters who might have doubted a thrice-married Presbyterian.
Now, Robison told Bowyer that he fears he might have to “build a tunnel to Mr. Trump.”
In a new book, “Living Amazed: How Divine Encounters Can Change Your Life” (Revell, 224 pages, $19.99), Robison claims a “Republican Guard” of establishment gatekeepers kept evangelicals from influencing Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
In the Bowyer interiew, Robison said White House staffers “deceive” presidents into thinking they protect the people by blocking pastors away: “It’s very damaging.”
Robison said he spoke to Trump daily most of last year, “praying that this great big lump of clay would be yielded totally to the Master Craftsman Potter,” referring to God.
Right now, it’s going to be a real test of whether or not he’ll get people to come to the table of reason and invite wisdom from above to flow freely.
Televangelist James Robison to a Forbes columnist
Robison said he told Trump, “If you’re receiving Jesus the way you’re receiving me, then you’re going to be one of the greatest miracles the world has ever seen.”
But even Bowyer wrote that such politicking might be hurting Christian leaders: “The religious right in general has come out of the Trump election looking like kind of a cheap date.”
Yet when Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. introduced Trump at commencement last weekend, Falwell delivered only praise.
“He reaffirmed this nation’s support for the state of Israel,” Falwell said.
“He appointed a conservative, strict constructionist, pro-life justice to the Supreme Court. He appointed more men and women of faith to his Cabinet than any president in recent memory. He bombed those in the Middle East who were persecuting and killing Christians. And earlier, he chose Mike Pence as his running mate.”
Falwell said already, no president in his lifetime has done so much for Christians.
The question is how much more Christians should do for Trump.
Bud Kennedy: 817-390-7538, @BudKennedy. His column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
This story was originally published May 20, 2017 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Texas’ James Robison wants ‘open door’ for Trump spiritual advisers."