If Donald Trump were the Pope or another Christian leader, the majority of US Christians likely wouldn’t have minded that he signed a Bible.
Only 39 per cent of Christians in the US think it would be inappropriate for a pastor, priest or Christian leader to sign the cover of a Bible. Similarly, 35 per cent think it would be inappropriate for the Pope to do the same.
But a Morning Consult poll released Monday shows nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) of Christians in the US found it inappropriate when Trump signed the covers of at least two Bibles earlier this month at a Southern Baptist church in Alabama while visiting a community recovering from a deadly tornado outbreak.
President Trump signs a Bible as he greets people at Providence Baptist Church in Smiths Station, Alabama, on 8th March. PICTURE: Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
The poll comes after videos posted online showed people holding out their Bibles to the president and first lady Melania Trump to sign. Slate reported that a 12-year-old boy was the first to ask Trump to autograph his Bible. Other photos show the President’s signature scrawled in large writing across the covers of a pair of Bibles.
Two-thirds (64 per cent) of all US adults, including non-Christians, view that action as inappropriate, according to Morning Consult.
More white evangelical Protestants in the US – who overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2016 and continue to largely support the president, according to the same poll – found it inappropriate (45 per cent) than appropriate (35 per cent).
But Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College near Chicago, said signing Bibles is not unheard of in some Baptist circles in the South.
In fact, Stetzer said, he’s been asked to sign many Bibles when he’s appeared as a guest speaker. He generally tries to demur, and he wouldn’t ask someone to sign his Bible, he said, though he also is conscious not to commit a “cultural faux pas” when visiting places where it may be more common.
“It’s worth noting that sometimes there are regional customs that people follow, and that doesn’t make them hillbillies or hicks,” he said.
Stetzer tweeted at the time that the outcry over Trump signing Bibles was a “made up controversy”. And a report from The Associated Press noted that presidents including Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt also signed Bibles, though those Bibles were inscribed privately with spiritual messages as gifts.
Historians told Morning Consult that what made Trump’s actions different from previous presidents’ was white evangelicals’ embrace of “God and country,” including Trump.
And most US Christians said it would be inappropriate for any president (62 per cent) or politician (71 per cent) to sign the cover of a Bible, according to the poll.
Nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of respondents in the South found Trump signing the covers of Bibles in Alabama to be inappropriate, it said.
Trump voters were the least likely to report they found the current president signing Bible covers to be inappropriate, almost evenly split between 43 per cent who approved the action and 42 per cent who disapproved, it said.
The poll surveyed 2,201 adults over 12th to 15th March in the US, according to Morning Consult. It had a margin of error of two percentage points.
