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Trump Proclaims Religion Is the ‘Glue that Holds’ America Together

Michael Foust

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump underscored the importance of religion in the United States during an interview Monday while reflecting on his church-going childhood and the influence of ministers like Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham. The interview by Paula White at the National Faith Summit in Powder Springs, Ga., covered multiple issues, including Trump's own faith and his goals for president if elected. It was sponsored by the National Faith Advisory Board.  

Many of the nation's problems, Trump said, stem from a diminished emphasis on faith.

"We're going through a lot of problems in our country. If you take a look at the anger, the problems that we have -- and a lot of it is that it's less based on religion now than it was 25 years ago and 50 years ago," he said. "We were a really, people would say, a Christian and really religious, even other faiths' country. And that seems to be heading in the wrong direction. I think as that goes down, I think that our country goes down. I really do. I think this is a country that needs religion. It's like the glue that holds it together, and we don't have that."

Trump told the religious leaders in the audience, "You are the most important people." The Biden-Harris administration, he charged, is "trying to hurt you, they're trying to stymie you."

Trump said his mother and father were religious people.

"My mother was from Scotland, and she was religious. I don't know [she was] as religious as some of the people in this room, but she was religious. She was a believer. And my father was a real worker, and he was religious, too, but he was working all the time," Trump said.

Trump said his father would often place $100 in the cup held by a homeless person on the street.

Trump grew up listening to the sermons of Norman Vincent Peale at Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, he said. The congregation was always packed, he added.  

"He was a fascinating person to watch. He was great," Trump said.

"My father would take me to Yankee Stadium to see Billy Graham. That place would be packed, and he was amazing. He had a gentleman who was singing, How Great Thou Art."

That person was Graham's friend George Beverly Shea, who sang at each crusade. Trump recalled he once asked his father who sang How Great Thou Art better -- Shea or Elvis Presley. 

"He said, 'Not Elvis.'"


Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Scott Olson/Staff

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.