Category: Christian Living/Church Related

Christianity Today: “Humoring the President Was Not Harmless”

The editors at Christianity Today have hopped aboard the mea culpa train with many other conservative, Republican, evangelical news outlets.

However, I don’t know whether to say, “Better late than never,” or “Too little too late.”

On second thought, I think I’ll go with option two. Because it’s all way too little and much too late.

It’s too late because the inevitability of violence, fueled by Right-Wing lies about the election of Joe Biden, was as clear as the nose on your face for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Trump eagerly and persistently fomented it over and over again, every time he opened his foul mouth.

Right-Wing radio and television, a category which includes ostensibly “Christian” broadcasting networks as well, only intensified the already high levels of anger and resentment among Trump’s base over the president’s mythical conspiracy stories.

Yet, I never saw nor heard a single, Christian conservative fact-checker offer even minimal push-back against the bogus election fraud charges cooked up by the Trump-Guliani-Sekulow-Powell-Mitchell cabal of greedy, power-hungry, “legal” opportunists.

Not one.

Yet, now the editorial staff and talking heads at such bastions of Trump- mania as Fox, Newsmax, the Trinity Broadcasting and the Christian Broadcasting Networks (check here, here, and here) have all joined hands to sing kumbaya and condemn the violent assault on our nation’s capitol.

An assault that their reporting had helped to stir up and create.

Christianity Today has now joined this circle of lame repentance at the evangelical campfire.

Yet, it is far too little. In fact, it is grossly inadequate.

Remember, as far back as October 2016, candidate Trump insisted that Hillary Clinton was going to rig the election. He insisted that she could only win if she “stole the election” from him.

Where was this newly discovered evangelical moral fiber then? Trump’s long-term plans were obvious then and there. Why wasn’t he called on it?

Early on in this more recent presidential campaign, Trump was replaying the same old tune warning that “the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged.”

The remarks below were made in August.

Trump was clearly previewing his strategy for contesting the outcome of the election should he lose.

Figuring this out was not rocket science.

So, where was the Christian wisdom and warning about these obvious presidential shenanigans last fall, when it might have made a difference?

Where were the serious Christian warnings about the dangers of conspiracy theories, and the irrational behavior they can cause, when Trump first initiated his ultimate conspiracy theory that is now tearing the country apart?

I don’t have time to run through the litany of impeachable offenses committed by this president over the past four years, but they began in the first week he sat down in the Oval Office when he refused to divest himself of his business interests.

Where were the evangelical voices then, ready to condemn his refusal to abide by the Constitution?

Trump’s habitual violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses were only the beginning of his presidential criminality. And, believe it or not, we see that it his theft has never stopped as his staff now steals — yes, steals — historical artifacts from the White House (see below)!

Where was this evangelical moral concern in January of 2017?

Or. how about the Muller Report’s thoroughly documents claims that Trump had committed obstruction of justice at least 10-12 times in the aftermath of his phone call with the Ukrainian president?

Where was the evangelical worry about telling the truth then? Who was calling out William Barr’s lies for Trump then?

No, “humoring” this president is THE LAST thing his conservative, Republican, evangelical base has been doing.

Rather, they have been enablers, sycophants, co-conspirators, and mindless cheerleaders for the most incompetent, criminal, and psychologically dangerous president in American history.

So, finally I get to it. Below is Christianity Today’s wholly inadequate editorial. It’s facile references to the Bible offer only a veneer of seriousness to an otherwise shallow attempt at self-criticism:

The administration officials and members of Congress who enabled President Trump’s attempts to delegitimize the presidential election did not truly believe he won. They chose to coddle the president’s deception (and, I suspect, self-deception) because they thought it would endear them to his most loyal voters, and they assumed no one would get hurt.

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” an unnamed senior Republican official told The Washington Post in November. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”

I think Trump will indeed leave, as he finally said he would in a brief video Thursday. But that doesn’t mean there was no downside. It doesn’t mean no one got hurt. In Washington on Wednesday, we witnessed a “failed insurrection,” to use the phrase of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in which pro-Trump demonstrators, some armed with guns, stormed the Capitol and rioted inside. The chaos claimed multiple lives as it made credible all but the direst warnings about what Trump’s elevation to the highest office in our country could bring.

Humoring him was not harmless.

For Christians, this should be no surprise. Scripture warns us that small patterns and habits grow to shape our lives in large ways. This is true of both faithfulness and sin, virtue and vice. “Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?” Paul asked the Corinthian church, incredulous at their acceptance of open, incestuous adultery in their congregation (1 Cor. 5:6). . . 

. . . What we saw in Washington last Wednesday is what happens when the president insists he won an election he lost and, instead of telling him and the American people the truth, his allies go along with it. It is what happens when they file lawsuit after lawsuit without a whit of merit, pushing legal claims so bad they are dismissed in court after court, by judge after judge—including judges nominated by Trump himself.

It is what happens when they prioritize power over honesty and cosset mass delusion, even in Jesus’ name. It is what happens after two months of the president and his associates telling millions of disappointed, frightened, angry people that they were cheated, that the foundation of our representative government was undermined, that they really ought to do something about it, that maybe that something should be violent, and that they should “never concede.”

Well, some of them did do something. This is what the dough looks like leavened. This is where dishonesty in the little things leads.

In the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s events, I’ve seen defensiveness over assignment of responsibility to white evangelicals because of our unusually high support for Trump at the ballot box. Is it fair, some have asked, to blame all evangelicals for actions (storming the Capitol) many would never condone, or for the election of a president many backed for policy reasons if at all?

Chris Hedges on “The Great Delusion”

Chris Hedges

Today’s Opinion piece from journalist Chris Hedges is entitled “The Great Delusion.”

Personally, I do not fear the end of the world.

I do fear the increasing magnitude of human suffering that will inexorably pave the way for the final Apocalypse.

And I deeply lament the sinister role now played by the evangelical church in advancing Satan’s goals.

By only reading the book of Revelation as if it were a human history horoscope, the evangelical church (in league with the Religious Right) remains blind to the fact that it has long been conquered by the Beast.

John the Seer warns God’s people that only those “who overcome” will stand victorious in the end.

And that charge ain’t describin’ much of evangelicalism today.

Below are a few excerpts from Hedges. You can read the entire piece here:

Joe Biden and the systems managers of the deep state and empire are returning to power. Trump and his coterie of buffoons, racists, con artists and Christian fascists are sullenly preparing to leave office. U.S. pharmaceutical corporations are starting to disseminate vaccines to mitigate the globe’s worst outbreak of COVID-19 that has resulted in more than 2,600 deaths per day. America, as Biden says, is back, ready to take its place at the head of the table. In the battle for the soul of America, he assures us, democracy has prevailed. Progress, prosperity, civility and a reassertion of American prestige and power are, we are promised, weeks away. 

But the real lesson we should learn from the rise of a demagogue such as Trump, who received 74 million votes, and a pandemic that our for-profit health care industry proved unable to contain, is that we are losing control as a nation and as a species. Far more dangerous demagogues will arise from the imperial and neoliberal policies the Biden administration will embrace. Far worse pandemics will sweep the globe with higher rates of infections and mortality, an inevitable result of our continued consumption of animals and animal products, and the wanton destruction of the ecosystem on which we and other species depend for life.

“One of the most pathetic aspects of human history,” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.”

Biden’s appointments are drawn almost exclusively from the circles of the Democratic Party and corporate elite, those responsible for the massive social inequality, trade deals, de-industrialization, militarized police, world’s largest prison system, austerity programs that abolished social programs such as welfare, the revived Cold War with Russia, wholesale government surveillance, endless wars in the Middle East and the disenfranchisement and impoverishment of the working class. The Washington Post writes that “about 80 percent of the White House and agency officials he’s announced have the word ‘Obama’ on their résumé from previous White House or Obama campaign jobs.” Bernie Sanders, apparently rebuffed in his efforts to become secretary of labor in the Biden administration, has expressed frustration with the Biden nominations. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was denied a seat by House Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee because of her support for the Green New Deal. The message of the Biden administration to progressives and left-wing populists is very clear – “Drop dead”. . . 

 . . . The perpetuation of the deeply unpopular wars and onerous neoliberal policies by the Biden administration will be accompanied by a fevered demonization of Russia, most recently blamed for cyber-attacks.  A new Cold War with Russia will be used by the corporate Democrats to discredit domestic and foreign critics and deflect attention from the political stagnation and the corporate pillaging of the country. It will allow MSNBC and The New York Times, which spent two years slogging empty Russiagate conspiracies, to disseminate a daily stream of emotionally charged rumors and shady accusations about Russia.  Cable celebrities such as Rachel Maddow will hyperventilate night after night about Russia while ignoring the corruption of the Biden administration.  The only reason Russia is not blamed for rigging the election in 2020, as opposed to 2016, by the Democratic Party is because Trump was defeated. . . 

. . . The belief that we can maintain current levels of consumption, especially of animal products, capitalist expansion, imperial wars, a reliance on fossil fuels and abject subservience to unfettered corporate power, which has solidified the worst income inequality in human history, is not a form of hope but suicidal self-delusion. We are not headed under the policies of the Biden administration and the global ruling elite for the broad sunlit uplands of a new and glorious future, but economic misery, vast climate migrations, waves of new and more virulent pandemics, of which COVID-19 is a mild precursor, along with irreversible ecological systems collapse and frightening forms of societal breakdown, authoritarianism and neofascism.         

Global warming is inevitable. It cannot be stopped.  At best, it can be slowed. Over the next 50 years the earth will most likely heat up to levels that will make whole parts of the planet uninhabitable. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of people will be displaced. Millions of species will go extinct. Cities on or near a coast, including New York and London, will be submerged. . . 

. . . One of the lessons I learned from covering wars and revolutions as a foreign correspondent is that the political, economic and cultural systems that are erected by any society are very fragile. The façade of power remains in place, as I saw in Eastern Europe during the 1989 revolutions and later in Yugoslavia, long after terminal rot has consumed the foundations. This façade fools a society into thinking the structures of authority remain solid, impervious to collapse. So, when collapse comes, which should have been long predicted, it appears sudden and incomprehensible. The ensuing chaos is disorienting and frightening. The cognitive dissonance between the perception of power and its rapid dissolution feeds self-delusion.  It creates, as I witnessed in the former Yugoslavia, what anthropologists call crisis cults, as well as bizarre conspiracy theories, fascism and the embrace of inchoate violence to purge society of the demons blamed for the national debacle. Hatred becomes the highest form of patriotism. The vulnerable are scapegoated. Intellectuals, journalists and scientists rooted in a fact-based world are despised. Ruling elites and ruling structures lose all credibility. This collapse is often a portal to a world of nihilism and blood-drenched fantasy. 

After four years of lies, the stoking of racist violence, stunning ineptitude, rampant corruption and an abject failure to cope with a national health crisis, Trump expanded his base by 11 million votes. This should be a huge, flashing red light. Worse, 70 percent of Trump voters, 51 million Americans, believe that “radical Left Democrats” and the deep state rigged the elections through “voter fraud,” including the importation of Venezuelan voting software, illegitimate mail-in ballots and the wholesale destruction of Trump ballots by election officials. One hundred and twenty-six Republican House members joined a lawsuit filed by 18 Republican state attorneys general asking the Supreme Court to overturn Biden’s victory. The vast majority of Republican senators refused to acknowledge the election results following the November vote. Electors from the Electoral College were forced in several states to deliver their votes to state legislatures under armed guard. Some two dozen armed protesters carrying American flags and chanting “Stop the Steal” descended on the home of Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Seven hundred members of the white nationalist group the Proud Boys took over streets in Washington last weekend to protest the alleged theft of the election, leading to more than three dozen arrests, four stabbings, the vandalizing of four Black churches, and Black Lives Matter banners and signs ripped down and burned.

Trump may be gone soon, but he leaves behind a party that is openly authoritarian, dismissive of democratic norms, an enemy to science and fact-based discourse and which attempted a coup d’état. The next time around they won’t be so disorganized and inept.  This hostility to democracy by one of the two ruling parties, supported by millions of Americans, many of whom were betrayed by Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party, will not dissipate but grow, especially as the hammer of economic dislocation, including the looming evictions of millions of Americans, pummels the country. . .

. . . The decades-long corporate assault on culture, journalism, education, the arts, universities and critical thinking has left those who speak this truth marginalized and ignored. These Cassandras, locked out of the national debate, are dismissed as unhinged and depressingly apocalyptic. The country is consumed by a mania for hope, which our corporate masters lavishly provide, at the expense of truth. It is this delusional hope that will doom us. . .

. . . We cannot use the word hope if we refuse to face the truth. All hope rooted in self-delusion is fantasy. We must lift the filter from our eyes to see the danger before us. We must heed the warnings of our own prophets. We must destroy the centers of power that lure us and our children, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, to certain doom. The walls, daily, are closing in around us. The radical evil we face is as real under Trump as it will be under Biden. And if this radical evil is not smashed, then the world ahead will be one of torment and mass death.

Jericho March Speaker Says, “We have to align our spirituality to our politics.”

First a quick update: I have been away for a while for several reasons.

First, I have finished the manuscript for my next book which will tentatively have a title (I hope) along the lines of Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism, Israeli War Crimes, and Palestinian Suffering.

While I wait to receive the remarks of my outside reader (an expert in the field selected by the publisher; it’s often called “peer review”) I have been slaving away at the marketing questionnaire given to me by the publisher. Yikes! What a task…

Second, I just returned from a multi-day trapping excursion trying to capture a new falcon. My peregrine was tragically killed by a coyote a few months ago in eastern Montana. So I am currently birdless. I was able to trap one falcon of the sort I want, but she was an adult and we are only allowed to keep  immature birds taken from the wild.

Anyway, I have a bundle of posts I intend to make in the days ahead reflecting on the current political-evangelical-Donald Trump industrial complex and its implications for the immediate future of American Christianity.

But for now I want to thank my friend Steve Tompkins, a pastor in Seattle, for sending me an article by Rod Dreher published in The American Conservative. It’s entitled, “What I Saw at the Jericho March.”

I have no affinity for Mr. Dreher’s politics, but he is a fellow Christian with important insights into the feverish pagan ceremonies now consuming certain “evangelicals” — at least, that’s what they call themselves.

Selected excerpts appear below or you can read the entire piece here:

Alex Jones speaking at the recent Jericho March in Washington D.C.

For my sins, I guess, I watched all six hours of the Jericho March proceedings from Washington today, on the march webcast. I say for my sins, but in truth, I decided to watch it because I am interested in what the activist Christian Right is saying, and how they are thinking, in the wake of Donald Trump losing the election.

Except he didn’t lose the election, according to them. It was taken from him. This is an article of faith, not to be doubted. If you doubt, you are a traitor, a coward, in league with the Devil. I’m not exaggerating at all. I saw an interview that the influential Evangelical broadcaster Eric Metaxas gave to the populist activist Charlie Kirk this week, in which he boldly claimed that patriots must fight “to the last drop of blood” to preserve Trump’s presidency, and that those who disagree are the same as Germans who stood by and did nothing to stop Hitler (Metaxas is best known as a biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer). In the same interview — I wrote about it here, in “Eric Metaxas’s American Apocalypse” — Metaxas said it doesn’t matter what can or can’t be proven in court, he knows, and we know, that the election was stolen. When Kirk, who is very sympathetic to Metaxas, asked him what he thought of where the cases stood, Metaxas blithely claimed that he is “thrilled” to know nothing about them.

. . .It’s one thing to claim that God told you to change churches, or something like that. It’s another thing to claim, especially if you have a national microphone, that God told you that the election was stolen, and that people need to prepare themselves to fight to the last drop of blood — an actual quote — to keep the libs from taking the presidency away from Trump. Watching the Jericho March, I saw that what I encountered for the first time in conversation with my friend over two decades ago is actually pretty common. Most of the Jericho March speakers, in one way or another, asserted their certainty about the election’s theft. The fact that courts keep throwing these Trump lawsuits out only proves how deep the corruption goes.

See how that works? They are willing to tear down the country for a belief that they cannot prove, but that they will not believe is disprovable.

. . .Retired Gen. Michael Flynn came onstage, saying that his MyPillow gave him the best sleep of his life. Then he recited the Our Father. Jesus, America, hucksterism: that was another theme of this rally. At times during the webcast, the screen would split, with the speaker on the left, and a My Pillow commercial on the right.

This Flynn speech was important, though. He said, “The Courts don’t decide the election, we the people decide.” But later: “The rule of law is at stake.”

Well, which is it? The rule of law in our Constitutional republic means that the courts operate in the name of We the People. Flynn declares mob rule over our constitutional institutions in the same speech in which he decried the loss of the rule of law. He obviously didn’t get the irony, nor, I’d wager, did a soul in that crowd.

He also told the people to ignore their minds and listen to their hearts, because in your heart is where you determine truth. It’s. All. About. Feeling. Don’t think, feel. This is 100 percent what Metaxas was saying this week on Charlie Kirk’s show: logic & evidence don’t matter if your heart tells you that Trump won. You watch: this movement is going to end up demanding that Gen. Flynn become the military dictator of America.

Rudolph Hess

Get this: at the height of Flynn speech, Trump appeared overhead in Marine One. Like an apparition! After Trump choppered off to the Army-Navy game, Flynn resumed his address. Every time they attack Trump, he said, they’re attacking you! Total identification of the collective with the individual man, Trump. I despise facile comparisons, but this is a core fascist trope. At the 1934 Nuremberg Party rally, Nazi functionary Rudolf Hess told the faithful, “The Party is Hitler! But Hitler is Germany, as Germany is Hitler!”

The Evangelical Christian Director of the NIH Asks Churches to do “The Altruistic, Loving Thing” and Remain Closed

Dr. Francis Collins is a devout Christian who has never been hesitant in talking publicly about his faith.  Thoughtful, responsible churchgoers ought

FILE – In this May 7, 2020 file photo, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins speaks during a Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool, file)

to pay attention to his advise.

NPR has posted an article by Tom Gjelten accompanied by a 4 minute video describing Collins’ advice to the country.

The fact is that both rates of infection and death from covid19 are MUCH higher than they were earlier in the year when the initial lockdown orders were issued.

This past Wednesday, more than 3,500 Americans died of covid….in a single day. The virus is running rampant in large part because people are ignoring medical advice and listening to right-wing disinformation campaigns instead.

Why are any churches continuing to hold on sight congregational services right now at a time when the virus is infecting and killing more people than ever before?

All those who continue to insist that the new infection rate is itself proof that lock downs and isolation don’t work are conveniently ignoring the fact many locations across the country have never abided by the lock down measures or mask wearing from the beginning.

Below is an excerpt of the NPR article, or you can read the entire story here.

With COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths at record levels, a top public health official called on religious leaders to keep their worship spaces closed, despite rising protests from some church leaders.

“The virus is having a wonderful time right now, taking advantage of circumstances where people have let their guard go down,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “Churches gathering in person is a source of considerable concern and has certainly been an instance where super spreading has happened and could happen again.”

Collins, himself a regular churchgoer who speaks often about his Christian faith, discussed measures that church leaders can take to protect their congregations in a Zoom conversation on Thursday with Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Most churches really ought to be advised to go to remote services, if they’re not already doing so,” Collins said.

When the Powers-That-Be Decide Whose Religious Liberty is Worth Defending

Justice Amy Coney Barrett

The wildly different responses of the Republican party and the Religious Right to the religious convictions of Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the Rev. Raphael Warnock demonstrate the hypocrisy of our political debates over religious liberty.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett that she was worried about how” loudly the dogma lives within” Judge Barrett, Republicans went bananas in deriding Feinstein’s “assault” on Barrett’s religious freedoms.

Barrett became the latest poster-child illustrating the supposed liberal hatred of Christianity and the Democratic party’s continuing attacks on religious liberty in America.

But now the tables have turned.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock is a Democratic senatorial candidate in Georgia,

Rev. Raphael Warnock

where he is waiting for the run-off election in early January. He has been the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since 2005.

Now, the Republicans are deriding Rev. Warnock as unfit for office because . . . wait for it . . . you guessed it: because the dogma lives too strongly within him.

Having gone through the pastor’s old sermons, the Republicans are calling him unfit for office. Listen to Warnock’s most offensive words:

Setting aside the abortion issue, the simple fact of the matter is that pastor Warnock is being condemned for proclaiming the words of Jesus. Jesus’ teaching is clear: no one can serve both the military and God, neither can anyone serve both God and money (Matt. 6:19-34).

The conservative hypocrisy in this backlash is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

CBN News continues to demonstrate that it is nothing more than a “Christianized,” civil religion cut-out of Fox News as it carries water for the Republican party.

The whole escapade is really quite disgusting.

I have very clearly demonstrated in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America, (Eerdmans, 2018), just how biblical Rev. Warnock is when he decries Christian involvement in the military. He represents an ancient Christian tradition.

And Jesus’ condemnation of excessive wealth is a signature trait of his teaching. Remember, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25).

In this respect — not forgetting that Warnock is an African-American running for office in the southern state of Georgia — those who condemn this southern, black pastor are imitating the godless leaders who condemned Jesus of Nazareth to hang on a cross.

We are seeing a vivid example of what happens when the truth of the gospel confronts sinful human beings.

It also exemplifies how difficult (if not impossible) it is for a faithful, Christian witness to flourish in the midnight garden of political power.

 

Religious Freedom or Christian Privilege?

Is American religious freedom under threat?

Many religious leaders are convinced that the answer to that question is YES. White evangelicals, for example, have been persuaded that president-elect Biden is a raging socialist who, by definition, is bent on eradicating Christianity from the public square.

Vice President Pence accuses all Democrats of religious intolerance suggesting that a Biden presidency will threaten our Christian liberties.

But, of course, in issuing these warnings Pence and others fail to mention that Joe Biden is a devout Roman Catholic and Kamala Harris grew up attending a Church of God in Oakland, CA. Her mother also took her to visit Hindu temples when she was a child and her husband is Jewish. There is no lack of religion or an appreciation of its free exercise on this ticket.

So, what’s going on?

It’s simple. The real issue here is the implicit redefinition of terms that has occurred through the court cases and propaganda campaigns led by the Religious Right. Nowadays, whenever a white evangelical complains about the loss of religious freedom in America today, he/she is actually complaining about challenges to longstanding traditions of Christian privilege.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

For a Christian in America, the Bible and the First Amendment give direction for the free exercise of Christian faith. Christians are free to gather for worship, to talk and write about their faith, to possess and to study the Bible, and to perform whatever other activities or “sacraments” Christians are directed to perform by scripture.

To the best of my knowledge there are no laws anywhere in this country prohibiting any of these religious activities. Christianity has not been outlawed. Group gatherings are not prohibited (those who think that church buildings housing many people in a confined space are the only legitimate place to worship fail to understand the New Testament; John McArthur ought to be ashamed of himself).

So what’s the problem?

The real issue is that Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, generally don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else when they step into public space. The traditions of western Christendom have handed the Christian church many benefits that live on in our society today.

The popular face of these benefits appears in the preferential treatment Christian individuals and organizations receive in shaping the public square (i.e. Christian iconography in public buildings) and gaining access to the public purse (i.e. generous tax exemptions). Christian business owners also benefit when their for-profit businesses are given special consideration, exempting them from regulations applied to others.

The development of religious schools, hospitals, adoption agencies, and other public services is a wonderful thing. I am happy they exist, but let’s not get confused. None of them are required for the church to be the church. Neither is it clear why Christian entrepreneurs deserve special considerations not provided to others.

Our Lord’s Great Commission does not say, “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Build institutions, service organizations, and businesses wherever you can enjoy tax benefits and profit by special treatment excusing you from the standards required of others.”

As far as I am aware, the persistent warnings about the imminent loss of religious freedom in this country are typically complaints about a perceived loss or reduction of a Christian privilege.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. that the white evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby should be exempted from providing health insurance coverage to their female employees for certain contraceptives. The owners of Hobby Lobby objected to those particular drugs on the basis of their religious conscience.

The court ruled in their favor, agreeing that the Christian owners could not be asked to violate their religious convictions by being required to include the full range of contraceptive options in their health insurance coverage for female employees (Note: although Viagra for men is always covered).

The recent case of the Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v.

Sister Loraine McGuire with Little Sisters of the Poor speaks to the media after Zubik v. Burwell, an appeal brought by Christian groups demanding full exemption from the requirement to provide insurance covering contraception under the Affordable Care Act, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington March 23, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Pennsylvania is very similar. The Roman Catholic spiritual order of the Little Sisters objects to all contraception, which of course is their right.

They, therefore, also asked for an exemption so that they would not be required to provide that particular piece of health insurance coverage to their employees.  The Little Sisters also won their case on the basis of defending religious freedom.

Evangelicals and Catholics alike rallied around both cases, warned of government attacks on religious freedom, and cheered both decisions as victories for religious liberty in America.

Yet, to my mind the definitional over-reach on display in both cases is startling.

No one was forcing either the owners of Hobby Lobby or the Little Sisters to take any of these contraceptives themselves. Their own religious liberty was not under threat. They not being told how they could or could not worship, pray, gather together, or circumscribe their personal behavior.

Rather, in both cases the Christians wanted permission to enforce their beliefs onto others. They did not want to pay for a full coverage health plan that allowed others access to personal options that they (the employers) did not approve of.

Neither case was about religious freedom, not really.

Both cases fought for the maintenance of Christian privilege in the public square. They both exhibit the modern vestiges of western Christendom and the hold it continues to exercise over Roman Catholic and evangelical thinking in this country.

Both cases were about control and the ability of “religious organizations” to maintain that control through the smoke and mirrors of bogus complaints about government assaults on the freedom of religion.

Let’s Put an End to Baseless Calls for “Unity”

The call has gone out for unity. Public figures are talking about the necessity of unifying a divided nation. Religious leaders lament the divisions within their fellowships. Somehow or another everyone is now supposed to find a way to come together, to put their differences aside, and to find common cause.

But the question is, What is the unifying cause?

Unity for unity’s sake is doomed to failure. Its fabric is too thin to hold. The innumerable differences that distinguish us one from another are too sharp. They will not long remain suppressed by the artificial gauze of abstract  mantras like “unity.”

Genuine unity, like authentic community, emerges as the byproduct of a common purpose, a shared mission. Why are we here? What moves us? Where are we going? How do we get there? Why is it worth the effort?

The many Trump supporters who remain convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from their leader know how to answer those questions. They are already united, and they have little if any interest in compromising their political principles – however unprincipled anyone else may think them to be.

The fusion of white evangelicalism with conservative, Republican politics – especially with devotion to Donald Trump – means that millions of church goers now measure spirituality by the yardstick of fervor for a particular set of political outcomes.

Working for those outcomes, such as prayer in school, outlawing abortion, denying homosexuals the right to marry, is what unifies political conservatives and white evangelicals in their spiritual mission. They labor together for (what they believe is) a righteous cause.

No “true believer” is going to compromise their conservative commitments for unity. Unity smunity! That kind of unity is actually compromise in the world of the Religious Right.

White evangelical faith now most powerfully appropriates the immaterial realm of conspiracy theories, evidence-free assertions of election fraud, and the ipsissima verba of Donald Trump. The most important moments of  fellowship throughout the week occur as everyone sits at the feet of Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, Breitbart, and Infowars. These are the prophets and spiritual leaders of white, American evangelicalism.

I heard a sermon a few months ago calling the church to unity. “We need to come together!,” we were told. But we were never told why or how.

The New Testament, however, is very clear in addressing those issues.

Scripture tells us that the adoration, service, and glorification of Jesus Christ is the purpose for unity in the church.

A community of saved sinners collectively overwhelmed by God’s abundant grace, working to conform themselves to the example of Jesus of Nazareth, ready to suffer, to serve “the least of these,” to lift up the downtrodden, and to cultivate humility, that is the brand of unity pleasing to God.

So, when I am told to seek unity within the church, my first question is, “Which Jesus are we linking arms around?” Is he the suffering, crucified Jesus of the gospels or the gun-toting, warlord Jesus who attacks his enemies in the streets? Is it the Jesus who “came not to be served but to serve” or the macho Jesus who ridicules others with demeaning nicknames. cursing, and licentious hands that assault innocent women?

I am sorry. Genuine unity is a function of a common cause, a shared adoration. And I simply do not find that commonality with the vast majority of the white evangelical church today. We are now worshiping different God’s. We serve different Saviors. Our expectations for sanctified living have drifted eons apart.

The evangelical church has crossed a watershed in this nation’s history. The Religious Right has proven itself victorious; victorious in convincing far too many that exchanging their devotion to the kingdom of God for a bowl of secular, political pottage is the right thing to do.

No, now is not the time to call for unity.

Now is the time to call for confession and repentance.

Now is the time for real leaders to require authentic discipleship in following the real Jesus of the New Testament.

Now is the time to emphasize that neither patriotism, nationalism, militarism, nor American exceptionalism have anything to do with service in the kingdom of God. In fact, they are all enemies that work to undermine God’s kingdom, every last one of them.

I cannot be “unified” anyone who does not understand these basic theological truths. I can help them to understand, if they are willing to learn. I can teach the scriptures to them. I can pray with them as we together seek the Holy Spirit’s correction and maturity.

But shapeless, amorphous, contentless calls for abstract unity…well, that’s just a waste of time.

David Sirota: “Trump Holds Coup Meeting With DeVos-Funded Lawmakers”

As Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos has worked very hard to dismantle public education in this country. She and her husband, Rich, have

Betsy DeVos

also been reliable, big-money donors to Republican politicians and their causes, including Trump’s presidential campaign.

This week journalist David Sirota published a report at his blog, The Daily Poster, detailing the DeVos’ substantial financial contributions to the two Michigan legislators now being pressured by Donald Trump to overturn the results of Michigan’s presidential election (Biden won).

The DeVos’ are utterly unscrupulous billionaires with a long track record of ignoring the law whenever it suits their political ambitions. They also lamentably call themselves Christians, and Betsy is a graduate of Calvin College. The place where I use to teach.

Below is an excerpt from Sirota’s article:

The Republican legislators that Donald Trump is relying on to overturn Michigan’s presidential election results have been bankrolled by the family of Trump’s current education secretary who would lose her job if Trump leaves office. 

On Friday, Trump is scheduled to meet with Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield. Michigan Republican Congressman Paul Mitchell “said he expects Trump is bringing Shirkey and Chatfield to the White House to pressure them to appoint pro-Trump electors to circumvent the popular vote as well as lean on the state’s GOP canvassers not to certify the election,” according to the Detroit Free Press. 

President-elect Joe Biden won Michigan by roughly 150,000 votes, according to data compiled by the New York Times.

The family of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is collectively Shirkey’s third largest career donor and Chatfield’s fourth largest career donor, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network. Chatfield also co-chairs a caucus of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), a group bankrolled by corporate interests, nonprofits tied to Trump’s judicial adviser, and the DeVos family as well. 

Shirkey and Chatfield have previously pledged to honor the results of the popular vote. However, the Associated Press reports that “if Trump succeeds in convincing Michigan’s state board of canvassers not to certify Biden’s victory in the state, state lawmakers could be called on to select electors.”

That would put Shirkey and Chatfield in a position to boost or block a slate of Trump electors.  

Key Lawmakers Bankrolled By The DeVos Family 

During their careers, Shirkey and Chatfield have received nearly $140,000 from the DeVos family. Those donations represent only a fraction of the money the DeVos family has delivered to Michigan Republican legislators who could decide the fate of the state’s elector slate. 

In the 2020 election cycle alone, Michigan’s Republican House and Senate campaign committees received nearly $1.2 million from the DeVos family members, according to data from the Michigan Secretary of State’s office. That made the DeVos family the largest donor to Michigan’s Republican legislative committees by far — the next largest source is a family whose relatives sent $125,000.

DeVos family members also delivered a combined $100,000 to a series of committees called the Chatfield Majority Fund (1-4).

During her confirmation hearing, Betsy DeVos pledged that she and her husband would halt their campaign contributions — but the Detroit Free Press recently reported that her husband has subsequently donated more than $500,000 to campaigns and political causes. The newspaper noted that the family has donated $1 million to a super PAC backing Trump.

DeVos also publicly campaigned for Trump’s reelection in Michigan, as Trump administration officials traveled around the country openly flouting a longstanding federal law designed to deter government officials from explicitly political activities.

Study Shows White Evangelicals at the Margins

[I am indebted to John Fea and his excellent blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, for drawing my attention to this study. I have excerpted his post below.]

“The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia just released its 2020 survey of American political culture. It is titled Democracy in Dark Times. James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman are the primary investigators/authors.

“It is a very thorough study. Read it here. A few things the study tells us about White Evangelicals:

“7 out of 10 “white evangelicals” believe that most opponents of Donald Trump are “socialists.”

“9 out of 10 “white evangelicals” believe that the Democratic Party wants to transform the nation into a “socialist nation.”

“86% of African Americans believe racism is a serious threat to America and its future. 70% of Hispanics believe this. 68% of White non-evangelicals believe this. But only 36% of “White Evangelical Protestants” believe racism is a serious threat to America and its future.

“86% of African Americans believe economic inequality and poverty are serious threats to America. 68% of Hispanics believe this. 66% of White non-Evangelicals believe this. But only 37% of White Evangelicals believe inequality and poverty are serious threats to America.

“91% of Blacks believe “the police and law enforcement unfairly target racial and ethnic minorities.” 60% of Hispanics believe this. 57% of White non-Evangelicals believe this. But only 17% of White Evangelicals believe this (83% disagree).

“78% of African Americans favor some kind of “financial compensation to African Americans for their historic mistreatment of White Americans” (reparations). 41% of Hispanics favor reparations. 34% of non-Evangelical Whites favor reparation. But only 7% of White Evangelicals favor reparations.

“The authors of the report write:

“In sum, yes, there is a racial divide in America. Whites, Hispanics, and
African Americans do not share the same or even similar perspectives on
the history, experiences, and issues surrounding race, and the consequence
of this is misunderstanding, a lack of respect, and ultimately prejudice in
the everyday experience of Blacks and other minorities. But these points
of division are not equally or uniformly distributed across the population.
The deepest and most consistent racial division is found between White
Evangelicals and Blacks. Reconciliation begins with mutual understanding,
and by these lights, it is a long way off. (emphasis mine)

“. . . The authors of the study conclude that White Evangelicalism, a movement that once was at the center of American religious and cultural life, has become a “cultural other” in the United States.”

Read the entire study here.

George Floyd + Breonna Taylor = A Long Overdue Righteous Revolution

On March 13 Breonna Taylor was murdered by Louisville Metro Police officers while sleeping in her bed.

Police had obtained a “no knock” warrant to search her apartment on the basis of a lie fabricated by the police officers. Three policemen broke down Ms. Taylor’s front door with their weapons draw and entered her home.

Eleven witnesses on the scene all testify that the police never identified themselves.

Taylor’s boyfriend was awoken imagining that dangerous criminals had broken into the apartment. He was correct in this assumption. Except these criminals all wore a police badge, which apparently gives any cop the right to do whatever he/she pleases to any African American, without consequences.

Grabbing his registered handgun, Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend fired once to let the intruders know that he was armed. The police fired their weapons 20 or more times into the darkness. Five to eight (reports vary) of those bullets penetrated Breonna’s body, killing her.

Ms. Taylor was an EMT who worked as an emergency room technician. She had no criminal record. A search of her apartment revealed none of the things the police were looking for.

Today, the 3 officers responsible for Taylor’s death were all found not guilty of murder.

One officer was convicted of “wanton endangerment” because his shots penetrated into the surrounding apartments.

Since no one (fortunately) in these other apartments was injured, we are left to conclude that property damage is a more heinous crime in Louisville, Kentucky than murder. Especially when the murder victim is a young black woman.

Once again, Louisville has proven that black lives do not matter in America. But, heck, we will happily let others die, especially if they are people of color, as long as the police will protect our property.

Another obvious lesson from this injustice is the need for all second amendment, militia types to sit down and be quiet. Repeatedly, we have listened to these “patriots” warn about the imminent dangers of heavily armed government officials breaking into the homes of innocent Americans.

Well, Ms. Taylor’s tragedy is the literal enactment of every gun loving, militia member’s worst nightmare. So, where are they? Why aren’t they marching through the streets of Louisville condemning government oppression with their long rifles at the ready, locked and loaded?

I’ll tell you.

They are sitting at home on their fat butts saying and doing nothing because Breonna Taylor was black. All they are truly interested in is “defending” their vision of a white America.

I fear that the majority of evangelical church leaders will also remain silent over the grotesque injustice of this entire affair. If they do eventually speak up, I predict that it will only be to chime in with Fox News propaganda to condemn the “looters,” and “rioters” who are “destroying property.”

Where have these church people been? In which hole in the ground have they buried their useless heads?

The wanton hypocrisy of such “spiritual leadership” knows no bounds.

Can anyone honestly wonder why we see African Americans – at least, those who are caught on film – running from the police or resisting arrest? The reasons are obvious. In far too many cases, the police are the enemy.

I would behave in exactly the same way if I were a black man in America today. AND SO WOULD YOU, MY DEAR READER. Admit it.

Jesus commands his people “to love your neighbor as yourself.” Love requires empathy.

Godly empathy requires carrying (or at least sharing) the other person’s burden — the burden of their oppression; the burden of unrelieved injustice measured out to them; the burden of grief, lament, and loss; the burden of struggling for righteousness, yes RIGHTEOUSNESS, on this earth.

This was the message of the Old Testament prophets. This was Jesus’ message, too.

Any so-called spiritual “leader” who does not already understand this point needs to resign now, for you do NOT understand what it means to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom.

Neither do you grasp Jesus’ ethical teaching.

I don’t know about you, but my next task is to check out the airfare to Louisville. I hope I’ll see you there, too.

It is long, long past time for God’s people to mercilessly attack the walls of American racism and injustice.

It’s long past time for a truly righteous revolution.