Sarah Huckabee Sanders says God wanted Trump to be president. She's not the only one who believes that.
NASHVILLE – Did God really want Donald Trump to be president?
That's what White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders thinks, according to an interview she gave Wednesday for the Christian Broadcasting Network's news program.
"I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president," Sanders said, according to CBN News. "That's why he's there and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about."
Sanders' roughly 20-minute discussion with CBN News covered a range of issues. But it is her remarks about God desiring Trump's presidency that grabbed headlines and stirred discussion on social media.
That belief is not unique to Sanders, but one many evangelical Christians share, said James Hudnut-Beumler, an American religious history professor at Vanderbilt University.
Interpreting Romans 13
It is rooted in an interpretation of Romans 13 that claims Christians need to obey leaders because God put them in positions of power for a purpose, Hudnut-Beumler said. In that section of the Bible, the Apostle Paul is explaining how to handle an oppressive, external authority, he said.
"Contemporary evangelicals, because they are so biblically driven, when they find a leader they particularly like, they love to go to Romans 13 in thinking about why people should obey or why God has perhaps raised up this leader in this time and what providential role this leader, in this case President Trump, should have," Hudnut-Beumler said.
Romans 13 fueled controversy last summer when then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the verse in support of Trump's immigration policy to separate parents from children at the southern U.S. border. In the midst of pushback, Sanders supported Sessions, explaining that enforcing the law is biblical.
But Christians that apply Romans 13 to leaders they like often turn to other parts of the Bible where God is replacing one leader with another to address the ones they do not, Hudnut-Beumler said.
"There is, of course, another American evangelical tradition, even a biblical tradition, and that is that all rulers are sort of provisional and subject to the direction of God," Hudnut-Beumler said.
People are entitled to their views, including that history is providential, but the U.S. has popular sovereignty, he said.
"Our constitutional theory is that the people are sovereign and they chose a leader to do their business as best he or she can," Hudnut-Beumler said.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Sarah Huckabee Sanders says God wanted Trump to be president. She's not the only one who believes that.
