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The Other Reason Trump Hasn’t Fired Scott Pruitt: His Evangelical Christian Ties

Taking the stage at the glitzy Mayflower Hotel in Washington last November, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt casually quoted the New Testament as he recited his pitch for reimagining the role of the country’s top environmental regulator.

“We as a country ought to have ordained with amazing natural resources, ” he told the gathering gathered for an American Principles Project Foundation gala, according to previously unpublished audio HuffPost obtained. “And to whom often is given, much is required.”

The reference to Luke 12:48 was likely not lost on the crowd mustered that Wednesday night for the republican theological think tank’s fourth annual Red White and Blue Gala. The event’s pamphlet, a simulate of which HuffPost examined, rolled the group’s planneds on “bioethics and life” and “religious flexibility, ” and advertised a downloadable white paper responding to the way in which “politics as usual has neglected Christian conservatives.”

Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire GOP megadonor and magnate of anti-abortion radicals, Christian colleges and climate change denial think tanks, bankrolled the confab, in agreement with the circular.

Brent Bozell, founder of the right-wing Media Research Center, opened the program as the master of ceremonies before Pruitt sacrificed his approximately four-minute lecture in following of an allotment for “human dignity leadership.” The Rev. Thomas Joseph White, a prof at the Catholic Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, followed him with an invocation.

Alex Edelman via Getty Images

This was Pruitt’s hometown populace. Until 2017, he had performed on the board of trustees at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, an institution that called for “a partner are presented with herself graciously” to her husband and formally defended “all forms of sex sin, including … homosexuality.” The bio on Pruitt’s now-defunct official Twitter account as Oklahoma’s attorney general reads: “Husband, Father, Christ Follower.” He been attending Bible studies with Vice President Mike Pence and other Cabinet secretaries since shortly after taking office at the EPA last year.

While Pruitt’s penchant for rolling back environmental regulations and bolstering the fossil fuel industry is widely bragged as the reason President Donald Trump has refused to fire the EPA chief amid a four-week typhoon of ethical and spending scandals, that largely overlooks Pruitt’s other resource: His honour as a zealous activist for conservative Christian politics.

For a chairperson bird-dog by accusations of adultery and sexual impropriety, that sort of reputation has money. The ostentatiously devout Pruitt sacrifices Trump cred among evangelical Christian power players at a time when five Republican lawmakers and 170 Democrats in Congress are announcing for his departure. On Thursday, the EPA head testified before two House hearings for a total of six hours, during which Republicans leaped to his justification, arguing the administrator was the victim of “Washington politics, ” “innuendo and McCarthyism, ” and “a humiliating attempt to belittle the drive that’s being done at the EPA.”

Neither the White House nor the EPA returned requests for comment.

“Pruitt is clearly part of the Christian right wing of the Republican Party, and it’s possible that these society Christian right structures are safeguarding him, or they’ve mailed some kind of meaning that this is our chap, ” answered Lydia Bean, writer of The Politics of Evangelical Identity. “He’s resisted abortion and worked as an attorney for religion liberation actions, so he checks the right containers for Christian right evangelicals.”

White missionaries overwhelmingly patronize Trump’s job performance, at 61 percent in a December Pew survey, compared to only 32 percent of voters overall. Still, that labels a significant decline from the 78 percent permission in February 2017. Among nonwhite missionaries, his approval rating sinks, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis.

Pruitt has played an outsized role in courting presidents on the missionary right. In September, Trump hosted a dinner with “grassroots chairmen, ” including evangelical heavyweights such as Concerned Women for America CEO Penny Nance, Faith& Freedom Coalition Chairman Ralph Reed and Tim Goeglein, a vice president at Focus on the Family. In a photo posted to the White House website, Pruitt sounds at the table opposite Trump, the only Cabinet secretary in attendance, though his specify is not listed in the caption.

Shealah Craighead/ White House President Donald Trump hosts a dinner on Sept. 25, 2017, in the Blue Room at the White House with religious grassroots captains, including Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America; Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith& Freedom Coalition; and Tim Goeglein, vice president of external relations, Focus on the Family. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, evident at the end of the counter, was not listed in the White House’s caption.

As Pruitt’s gossips mount, Christian groups have rallied to defend him. On April 6, the Conservative Action Project publicized an open symbol announcing for Pruitt’s “continued tenure at the EPA” and thanking him “for the significant actions he has taken in response to President Trump’s deregulatory agenda.” The schedule of 186 signatories included Christians for a Sustainable Economy Executive Director David Kullberg, Christian educator Lisa Calvert and Faith Wins President Chad Connelly. Some of the religiously affiliated signatories, such as Anne Schlafly Cori, chair of the “pro-family” Eagle Forum, have a autobiography of backing climate change issues denial struggles, according to experiment compiled by the nonpartisan Climate Investigations Center.

White evangelical Christians, more than 80 percent of whom reinforced Trump in 2016, are the least likely of any theological group in the U.S. to understand the science behind climate change, according to 2015 data from the Pew Research Center. Precisely 28 percent of white-hot missionaries guessed countries around the world is warming due mainly to human activity, compared to 41 percent of white mainline Protestants and 56 percentage of pitch-black Protestants. About 37 percentage of white missionaries don’t guess the environment is changing at all.

In 2005, the National Association of Evangelicals was on the cusp of affirming atmosphere discipline in a brand-new national programme announced “For the Health of a Nation.” But, after overtaking the board unanimously, relevant proposals tanked in a rank-and-file vote that followed a big gift rampage by lubricant, gas and coal-linked radicals. Since then, the same dark-money sponsors — including Mercer — who patronize the network of think tank that furnish contrarian( and readily debunked) experiment contesting the consensus on climate change issues has funded conservative Christian groups. The fossil fuel industry offset climate change issues negation, as Splinter’s Brendan O’Connor described it last year, “the word of God.”

Pruitt hasn’t been shy about propagandizing that opinion. Last-place October, Pruitt invoked God’s alarming to pagans in the book of Joshua to “choose the working day whom you will serve” in a speech announcing a new programme disallowing scientists who receive EPA research funding from performing on the agency’s advisory board.

In a February interrogationwith the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pruitt pronounced, “The biblical worldview with respect to these issues is that we have a responsibility to manage and prepared, glean the natural resources that we’ve been blessed with to genuinely bless our fellow mankind.”

In March, Politico publicized tapes from more than decade ago in which Pruitt quarrels growth: “There aren’t sufficient scientific facts to prove the theory of organic evolution, and it deals with the parentages of lover, which is more from a theoretical position than a technical standpoint.”

The words have annoyed EPA workers.

“It’s terrifying, ” said one EPA employee who spoke on condition of obscurity for fear of reprisal. “The impression we are left with is that his religion has led him to counterfactual beliefs.”

The staffer, who identifies as lesbian, remarked Pruitt’s past affiliations with radicals that take hard-line stances on gender issues and sexuality “are agonizing to confront.”

“Knowing that the man I work for every day is not simply disrespects the agency’s goal but likewise am of the opinion that I, as a pansexual woman, and many other EPA hires … are’ perversions’ in his creed organization, is a ponderous force I find every day at work, ” she spoke.

Though Pruitt’s reputation for reverence may help protect him for now, Bean cautioned that it may not filter down to everyday missionary voters.

“He’s not an individual with a mass following , not a household name for the missionary rank and file, ” she answered. “I do not thoughts Scott Pruitt has a national firebrand as an missionary leader that, by itself, would stop Trump from shelling him.”

Pruitt’s legacy could alienate him from moderate missionaries. Ronald Sider, a professor at the Palmer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, announced Pruitt’s lead role in pushing Trump retired from the Paris climate accord one of the administration’s “really big, longer-term negative programs, ” and said here administrator’s failure to make climate change earnestly will define his tenure for years to come.

“It’s truly dishonest and shocking, ” Sider told. “Unless that can be turned around fairly soon, our grandchildren will pay for it.”



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The Other Reason Trump Hasn’t Fired Scott Pruitt: His Evangelical Christian Ties

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