Evangelicals without Standards

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

You see, Trump has an (R) next to his name, so all is forgiven.

It's forgiven because Jesus paid the price on the Cross.

I tend to respect religious sentiment. But, frankly, I simply do not believe it, when produced by a Trumpista. It is obvious that every Trump voter would, if he were to find himself on that hill near Jerusalem, happily put a few extra nails through the body of Jesus.

Nah, he'd most likely be offering to buy Jesus' cloak from the centurions, in exchange for a few drachmas to be paid later, which he would have no intention of paying.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The world has evolved immensely since Christianity was founded.

Back then, government was an external entity to Christians, as they had no say in how the government was operated. The teachings of Christianity were largely based on the government being the outside force.

Actually, not quite true. Sure, that minor Jewish prophet, Jesus, and his direct followers were outsiders. But teachings of the Christian church, as we know it, were developed substantially later. Nicene Creed - the statement of faith for most Christians today - was adopted in 325, just as Christianity was beginning the process of becoming the Imperial religion. The composition of what Christians consider the canonical New Testament was formalized around the same time, or slightly later, during the fourth century, and for the same reason, really: the government of the Empire needed a well-defined set of beliefs to distinguish "good" loyal Christians from those, whose loyalty was suspect. I could see the argument, of, say Jehovah´s witnesses or Mormons, who have abandoned the Trinitarian orthodoxy established during that period, that their faith was/is not born of symbiosis with the government, but, for most of the rest of those calling themselves Christians, it is simply not a historically correct statement.

While the canonicity of a few minor epistles and Revelations was not universally accepted that early, by the end of the second century the core canon of the four gospels, Acts, and the Pauline epistles were essentially canon in all but name. While the jargon used to identify certain theological concepts would take another few centuries to develop, that doesn't mean that the belief system wasn't in place. Becoming a State Church under the later days of the Roman Empire did not lead to the establishment of heterodoxy, it only curbed minority heretical viewpoints.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

ag, it certainly would have been possible for a few minor details in what would become part of the orthodox understanding of Christianity to have come out differently in the third and fourth centuries. However, those details wouldn't have affected their understanding of what the relationship of believers to their government should be. The Trinitarian/Unitarian argument is largely one for eggheads. It has no substantive bearing on how a Christian should act.