President Trump met with evangelical religious leaders as they faced criticism in a column for a “cultlike” embrace of the president and his policy objectives.
Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed was spotted on the White House driveway around noon Tuesday after meeting with Trump and two dozen other religious leaders in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room.
Reed told Newsmax reporter John Gizzi that the meeting was about “matters of common interest.”
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, American Values President Gary Bauer, and former Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann also attended.
“They took the time to pray for the President and for the Nation,” the White House said in a statement.
Local religious leaders who attended included megachurch pastors Paula White of Florida and Robert Jeffress of Texas.
White is a proponent of the “prosperity gospel,” a controversial theology that claims faith — and donating to churches — will cause God to reward people with financial riches.
On Monday, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson criticized white evangelicals for indicating in a poll that 99% oppose Trump’s impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Democrats while 90% favor new immigration restrictions.
Gerson wrote that Trump may survive impeachment because “evangelicals lost their taste for character and gave their blessing to corruption.”
“Rather than shaping President Trump’s agenda in Christian ways, they have been reshaped into the image of Trump himself,” he wrote. “Many evangelical leaders now lie drunk, naked and exposed.”
White, the Trump meeting participant, recently declared that Christians who vote against Trump will “stand accountable before God one day.”
