This was a devastatingly helpful book. I grew up in a politically and theologically conservative household and have struggled in recent years to nail down how family members could be profoundly good, kind people and still support Donald Trump. Choosing Donald Trump helped me be more understanding of their positions as individuals and of conservatives' positions in general. I recommend it for anyone who finds themselves attempting dialogue between two worlds.

If you are hesitant to support Donald Trump I’m not sure this book help you. The author paints a real picture of our President and doesn’t hold back on the truth. It was a bit hard to read at times because I do support him. I love that he just says what he thinks and doesn’t care what others think. I love that he has done a lot of great things for this country, that he won’t be bullied by the other side. But facing the reality of who he really is is a bit tough.

If you want to get to know him more I would recommend this book.Just don’t bother wearing your rose-colored glasses 🙂


A copy of this book was given to me through Netgalley.com. All opinions are my own.

Mansfield's book is a summary of everything / everyone that Trump fought against and still won the presidency. It also imbues religious right and their support of Trump apart from Trump's history of faith, family, policy.) Nothing new, but lays out Mansfield's view clearly.

The election of Donald Trump shocked the world and continues to shake the American political world. In Stephen Mansfield's Choosing Donald Trump: God, Anger, Hope, and Why Conservative Christians Supported Him, Mansfield considers the question, How did this crass, foul-mouthed businessman and serial adulterer become a hero to the Christian right?



Mansfield is no fan of Trump. He doesn't go full "never-Trumper" but at times he's close. He is certainly not an apologist for Trump's well-known moral failings, crass personality, and habit of name-calling and personal vendettas. What Trump did was take up the mantle of the concerns of conservatives, including the Christian right, after they had suffered through eight years of feeling like their concerns were sidelined and disparaged.



Under Obama, conservatives got gay marriage, men in the girls' restroom, targeting of conservative groups by the IRS, told they "cling to their guns and religion," have their businesses shut down if they won't bake a cake for or photograph a gay wedding. Hilary promised to continue this trend, and called people who oppose her "deplorable." She stated that opponents to abortion should change their religious beliefs. She claims to be a faithful Methodist, but many Christians saw no friend of the faith in her words and actions.



Along comes candidate Trump, who, despite his consistently secular lifestyle, appealed to evangelicals, telling them he will be their voice. Many conservatives and evangelicals saw him as "someone like them--raw, imperfect, but fierce in defense of what they believed." During his campaign and now his presidency he has been consistently pro-choice and pro-Christian, in ways that Clinton never would have been.



Besides this break down, Mansfield also explores Trump's personal faith. Trump's pastor for many years was Norman Vincent Peale, famous for his book The Power of Positive Thinking. His teaching and attitude had a huge impact on Trump. In recent years, Florida pastor Paula White, known as fgva proponent of the prosperity gospel, has been a close religious advisor to Trump. Both of these pastors are Christians and include the core of the gospel in their teaching, but their respective emphases tend to overshadow their gospel teaching and explain why Trump tends not to express his Christian faith in ways that most evangelicals relate to.



In my mind, the explanation for Christians' support of Trump is simple: he was not Hillary. That tells part of the story, but Mansfield fleshes out the story and adds important background to Trump's religious experience and beliefs. As many have said, we did not elect Trump to be our pastor. But conservative Christians in the U.S. did get an ally and defender in the White House, for which I, for one, am grateful.





Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview Choosing Donald Trum by Stephen Mansfield.
Not my typical choice for reading so for me this was a bit of a struggle, not because of the writing but because I find books like this do not fit my reading enjoyment.
But this book surprised me. I got a very good perspective on Trump and how he integrated himself into the conservative political arena.
Well written and thought provoking. Even if you are not a Trump supporter, you will get a good view of him and why some people supported him, voted him in, and made him the President.
3 Stars.

Thank you for allowing me to review this book. I appreciate it. I found, however, that it was quite different than I anticipated, and I can't provide a favorable review. Rather than negatively review a book that didn't suit my preferences, I will just provide this feedback directly to the publisher. I am sure that there are others who loved and enjoyed this book, but it did not suit me.
Thank you for understanding.

I must admit that I read this book as someone who is biased in that I did not vote for Trump, nor am I supporter. However, I tried to read it with an open mind, because his presidency is something that continues to baffle me.

I found this book to be clearly written to defend any conservative Christian who voted for him. The author spent a large part of the book trying to explain what every Christian I know who voted for him, tells me, “We were tired of how things were going, how we were being persecuted, etc., etc., etc. We wanted change. Sure, he’s gruff, perhaps, but, we need things to get done, and he can do it. God can use anyone.”

I did find some of the information about his upbringing interesting, especially the reverence he has for Norman Vincent Peale, and tidbits about his father, but overall, I finished reading the book without any clear, unbiased insight to why any Christian would have voted for him.

If you are in favor of Trump, and voted for him, you will probably enjoy this book.

I received a free electronic copy of this book from NetGalley for review.

Other reviewers have provided excellent detailed synopses, and I won't duplicate their efforts here. And while I appreciate the author's detailed analysis and insights on how a bombastic non-politician was able to be elected president and why so many evangelicals voted for Trump, I think the answer is actually a lot less complicated than some have tried to make it.

People of faith generally recognize that no human leader (or any human at all) is going to be perfect, without fault. Thus, when choosing how to cast one's vote, it comes down to which candidate's imperfections will do the least damage to that voter's vision of what American life is supposed to be. Or, which candidate requires one to hold their nose less tightly. In presidential elections in this era, one of two candidates will become president; a third party candidate might at most serve as a spoiler. So when the choice is between bad and worse, some voters will choose to stay home. Others will vote for the lesser of two evils, sometimes with no other intent than to obstruct the candidate they deem worse. In other words, it's not a vote FOR one candidate, rather a vote against the other.

The polls didn't give Trump much of a chance to become president. Yet he is now what some describe as the most powerful man in the world. How did that happen? Having read a biography about Trump, I was well aware of his character. I was shocked when I found out that Trump won the votes of 81 percent of white evangelicalism. (Loc 1260/2679) How did that happen?

Mansfield has done an excellent job of explaining how Trump was elected and the particular role of the conservative Christians in that accomplishment. He identifies the anger of Christians, feeling that the country they knew was slipping away. They wanted change at almost any cost. Trump won them over by promising to give their country back to them. (Loc 1282/2679) He won over Christian leaders by promising to abolish the Johnson Amendment, the law restricting pastors from speaking openly on political issues or endorsing candidates from the pulpit. (Loc 1314/2679)

Conservative Christians were so desperate for political power and change that they were willing to overlook Trump's lack of experience, his foul language, his bullying business practices, his disrespect and lack of compassion for the marginalized, his lack of familiarity with what it meant to be a Christian, his public boasts of marital infidelity, and his offensive behavior in general. (Loc 92/2679) Mansfield writes that Christian leaders were “interested in allying themselves to power at any moral cost.” (Loc 241/2679) Other Christians believed God had called and would use an immoral Trump much as God had used an immoral Cyrus in the Old Testament. (Loc 1944/2679)

Mansfield explores the spirituality of Trump and covers the great influence of Norman Vincent Peale in the distant past and Paula White in the recent past. Mansfield is direct on criticizing Trump's claim to be a Christian, noting his lack of knowledge of Christians things and his lack of moral character. (Loc 337/2679)

Mansfield also explains that conservative Christians have now wed themselves to Trump. They are responsible for putting Trump in the White House. They took a risk and now they must reconcile what the Trump administration becomes to what they believe about God and truth. (Loc 1490/2679) Mansfield also writes of the prophetic voice that must come from Christian leaders as Trump will need spiritual counsel.

Those Christian who voted for Trump need to read this book to understand the ramifications of their choice. Those who did not vote for Trump need to read this book to understand how we got to this place in American history.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

I don't know that I can fairly review this book because the author's bias is so loud. He seems to be operating under the illusion that any person serving our country as president must be the brand of Christian he deems the real deal -- traditional, conservative, and, well, a Republican sort of Christian. Obama's and Hillary Clinton's Christian faiths don't count - too much separation of church and state for the author's comfort level in the former, and too broad a concept of humanity and well-rounded ability to make intelligent sense of the world, in the latter.

Having said this, the book wasn't 100% offensive to me all the time; there were some fun facts I haven't seen elsewhere. I did really enjoy learning about Trump's connection to Paula White and the early influence of a pretty bizarre, new age-y pastor on his -- I guess you would call it "belief system?" One thing that really struck me about the pastor was his conviction that attitude is more important than facts. That must have resonated, as it's clearly a message Trump internalized, and clings to to this day.

I think the author takes a fairly decent stab -- as an insider -- into how Trump wooed the Christian right. The answer he gives that makes the most sense to me is that Trump was painted by some Christian leadership as a sort of Cyrus, a purposefully unsavory brute character whom God is working his miracles through. The message to conservative Christians was that they were not supposed to understand Trump's appeal, only accept it, and vote for him, wait and see. It is not for us to question, or something like that. Well, we see where blind faith has gotten us, and it's only getting worse.

I just was not convinced that Trump is a Christian or even moral person. We've seen too much in contradiction at this point. The funny thing is, I'm not sure exactly what the author believes on this point either. He puts in a last-ditch effort to defend Trump by publishing a couple speeches "in Trump's own words" which I guess are supposed to showcase him in a more human light. But these fall completely flat. I've grown tired of the argument "he has a good heart." I feel like it's code for "we literally have nothing solidly positive to say about this person, so here is something you can't logically refute."

I can not justify the purchase of this title for my library because by and large it is narrow-minded and the author does not back up most of his opinions with facts. Our community, though conservative, is well-learned and I just think too much unkindness and inhumanity has been done at this point (I'm writing this the day after the speech he gave in Puerto Rico about how the people there should be "proud" that only 16 people died as opposed to a "real" catastrophe like Katrina) to lend any credence to this kind of empty argument. The biological info about Trump can be found elsewhere, and better written. This is a singing-to-the-choir title -- the book might have done well just after the election, but at this point it is strictly fodder for conservative Christians who voted for Trump.