Donald Trump was well received by an evangelical conference on Friday, emphasising his promise to repeal the Johnson Amendment which bars churches and other religious institutions from engaging in political advocacy.
Addressing the Values Voter Summit, hosted by Tony Perkins, the head of the right-wing Family Research Council, Trump gained the most applause when he said: "Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president."
Last year at the same conference, Trump was booed for calling his then rival Republican candidate Marco Rubio "a clown". That speech, in which he focused on the importance of saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "happy holidays" was widely considered to be a failure.
But this time the Republican nominee cut a more statesmanlike figure as he spoke from teleprompters and railed against the Obama administration and the state of education in the US in particular.
His main focus, however, was the Johnson amendment. "The Johnson Amendment has blocked our pastors and ministers and others from speaking their minds from their own pulpits," he said. "If they want to talk about Christianity, if they want to preach, if they want to talk about politics, they're unable to do so. If they want to do it, they take a tremendous risk that they lose their tax-exempt status.All religious leaders should be able to freely express their thoughts and feelings on religious matters. And I will repeal the Johnson Amendment if I am elected your president, I promise. So important."
The speech came as Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival candidate for president, fell ill with pneumonia at a memorial for the victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
In an episode that has renewed interest in the question of Clinton's health, she cancelled a trip that she was scheduled to take to California on Monday for fundraising and other campaign events, an aide said, declining to provide further details about her schedule for the week.
Clinton, 68, was diagnosed on Friday but her condition only came to light several hours after a video on social media appeared to show her swaying and her knees buckling before being helped into a motorcade as she left the memorial early Sunday.
The race to become president in November has tightened in recent weeks, with the RealClearPolitics.com polls average showing Clinton now ahead by only three percentage points.
However, a Washington Post poll released on Sunday shows Clinton leading Trump by 45-to-35 per cent among registered voters.
Meanwhile, leading evangelical Robert Jeffress, host of radio show Pathway to Victory and pastor of the 12,000 member First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, issued a strongly worded attack on Clinton during a debate on Fox News. "I am getting sick and tired of these namby pamby panty-waisted weak-kneed Christians who say they're gonna stay home in November out of moral principle," Jeffress said. "Will you please tell me what great moral principle there is in the universe that will allow a prohibition, anti-religious liberty candidate like Hillary Clinton to become the president? I believe any conservative Christian who refuses to vote or throws away his vote in November is nothing but a hypocrite and a fool."
