Anti-Trump election ads tell Christians he's 'using' them

Trump's photo op with a Bible was criticised in the advert. (Photo: CNN)

Christians have been told they're being used by Donald Trump in political ads opposing the US President ahead of the November election.

The TV ads, by Republican Voters Against Trump, aired in North Carolina last week and showed several Christians talking about why Trump wasn't their pick.

One Republican voter called Tommy said: "I grew up in the church. I attended a private, Christian high school. You look at a way someone lives their life, and you believe them."

Another said that Christians were supposed to love their neigbours as themselves before the advert cut to a video that Trump retweeted in which a man at one point chanted "white power".

Republican voter Pat criticised Trump's photo opportunity at a church near the White House last month. Pat said he didn't like to see police "bludgeon and gas" protesters in the area so that Trump could walk to the church and pose there with his Bible.

"The moment that he held up that Bible, he revealed that this president is using us," Pat said. "Christians have to resist being used to justify things that Jesus would never justify."

The advert was also spliced with an audio clip of Trump using offensive language about women, and another in which he talked about "very fine people on both sides" after violence broke out between nationalists and counter protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Another Republican in the advert, Shawn, said: "What's going on now is wrong. And as a Republican, as a Christian, we simply cannot allow this man to be re-elected."

Recent polling found that Trump's approval among evangelicals - a key supporter group - has slipped in the last few months after Black Lives Matters protests erupted across the US.

The Pew study found a 6 percentage point drop in approval from white evangelical Protestants between April and June, from 78% to 72%.