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.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign launch the Russia-Gate myth — a myth that lacked substance from the beginning and has been thoroughly debunked over time — intended to cripple Donald Trump’s presidency.
Now Trump has launched his own disinformation campaign in prophetically declaring the presidential election fraudulent before it even occurred.
His loyalists continue to hold to this position despite all evidence to the contrary. It is sad but not surprising.
The Democrats should have known. Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. Conservative America is now prepared to undermine a Biden presidency as vehemently as Democrats worked to undermine Trump.
In politics, wild dogs always come back to bite those who released them. Pelosi, Shumer, and the rest should have known.
Though I often disagree with him, Fareed Zakaria puts it well:
Billy Graham’s granddaughter, Cissie Graham Lynch, spoke at the Republican National Convention last night to recite the predictable pablum of the Religious Right.
No, it was worse than that. Mrs. Lynch spewed rank idolatry for the Republican party. It’s the kind of behavior that got Old Testament Balam scorched by the Lord.
But nowadays, she is only one among many, for Trump seems to keep a kennel of false prophets on hand for every conceivable occasion.
Lynch opened her speech with a declaration on the importance of “our faith.”
She didn’t mention whose faith happens to be our faith, but the confusion was quickly clarified. She meant the pagan, American faith placed in our blasphemous civil religion.
This became evident as she listed her topics of concern. They were all the gems of Religious Right activism: abortion, the Supreme Court, and transgendered civil liberties.
Lynch’s flawless interweaving of (1) her descent from Christian evangelist, Billy Graham, (2) a rote recounting of Religious Right political priorities, and (3) the themes of American civil religion all stamped Mrs. Lynch as yet another immoral Siren working hard to bewitch the innocent, the ignorant, and the depraved into shipwrecking themselves against the rocks of bogus national piety.
Alas, if only the Christian faith WAS being persecuted in America today! Perhaps the genuine church could finally shed itself of this dead wood and dull-witted false teachers.
Notice that Mrs. Lynch’s examples of what she means by the Christian faith being “bullied” in the public square all consisted of threats, not to Christian faith or practice, but to the various privileges that church institutions enjoy at public expense.
I am fairly certain that Jesus never commanded his disciples to build religious institutions like schools or hospitals while demanding tax breaks or other special dispensations denied others operating in the same public arena.
Tax breaks and exemptions are nice, if you can get them.
Just as religious institutions (operating in a world unto themselves, ignoring the standards to which others are held) are beneficial, if you can build them.
But PLEASE stop pretending that those things have anything to do with either religious freedom or practicing the Christian faith. They don’t.
Just as losing those privileges has nothing to do with a loss of religious liberty.
So, Cissie, listen up:
No one is stopping you from following Jesus through the American public square.
No one is prohibiting you from living out your faith to your heart’s content.
Stop confusing religious privileges with religious freedoms. They are very different animals.
And please stop the horrible confusion of American civil religion with the Christian gospel.
I fear that you’ve set your grandfather spinning in his grave.
Cascade books (the publisher that will eventually release my forthcoming book on Israel-Palestine) recently released a significant book entitled The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump.
The book is a timely collection of 30 essays by prominent, and not so prominent, evangelical Christians in the hope of convincing evangelical voters NOT to vote for Trump in November.
I hope and pray that the book will be a great success.
If you have family, friends – or even complete strangers our regularly see at the coffee shop – who voted for and continue to support Donald Trump, they are the target audience for this book. Go out and buy a box load and distribute them widely in your local evangelical, fundamentalist churches.
It will be a worthy act of responsible citizenship in a country desperately in need of a genuinely moral majority.
The majority (but not all) of the book’s 30 essays are written by conservative, Republican, evangelical Christians. Some of them admit that they voted for Trump in 2016 and have come to regret that decision.
All of them offer substantial, pointed, evidence-based denunciations of Trump’s egregious moral and political failures over the past 3 1/2 years. Several essays document Trump’s habitual misogyny, his pathological lying, his malignant narcissism, his public, petty demeaning of those who disagree with him, his race-baiting and endorsement of white supremacy, the abuse of immigrants and asylum seekers at our southern border, the financial profiteering from his presidency, his consistent abuse of executive power, and his utter disregard for the constitution.
I was happy to see that a few of these Republican authors even condemned the Republican controlled Senate for acquitting Trump at the end of his impeachment trial.
The best essays, for my money, are Randall Balmer’s chapter on the long (and nearly extinct) history of evangelical social activism.
He offers an important history lesson for the entire evangelical church, reminding us of evangelicalism’s past commitments to pacifist, anti-war activism, anti-capitalist economics, anti-big business, anti-slavery, prison reform, public education, universal health care, women’s rights, and much more.
I found Balmer’s dissection of the Religious Right’s origins to be especially interesting. He argues that the modern juggernaut of religious, conservative, political power was not sparked by the anti-abortion sentiments that we see today — as so many imagine. In fact, the Religious Right began as a white, pro-segregationist movement fighting against the desegregation laws emerging from the civil rights movement, especially in the south.
It was no accident that both Bob Jones and Jerry Falwell were running segregated, all white educational institutions at the time. The seeds of the Religious Right sprouted and grew in the soil of racism, the degradation of life, not “pro-life” activism.
Against this backdrop, it’s not very surprising to see how many of today’s evangelical leaders continue to condemn the Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality movement.
Steven Hayns’ chapter about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and contemporary evangelicalism’s distortion of Bonhoeffer’s social, political theology – especially at the hands of moral miscreants like Eric Metaxis, the deluded, self-proclaimed Bonhoeffer “expert” – is particularly helpful for anyone who wants to think more deeply about Christian political engagement.
(Ahem…my book, I Pledge Allegiance, would also be a great follow-up read for those who are interested in thinking more deeply.)
John Fea provides a refreshing chapter entitled “What White Evangelicals Can Learn About Politics from the Civil Rights Movement.” It is the only chapter I read twice.
If you are looking for a good resource explaining the spiritual dangers of the Trump presidency, written by conservative Christians for other conservative Christians, then look no further. This is the book to give to family and friends (even if they are not Christians) at the 4th of July family barbecue, summer outings, fall dinner parties, and everything else in between.
Now for a brief critique.
For a reader like me, the book’s strength is also its weakness; and it’s a serious weakness.
Written by conservatives for other conservatives, the majority of its criticisms against Trump predictably conform to the standard conservative, evangelical view of the world.
Only a few of the contributors (thankfully there are a few) indicate that Trump’s moral failures have led them to re-frame, or re-imagine, what their expectations of a Christian moral politics/politician might look like beyond the old, evangelical culture wars.
For most of the book’s contributors, America’s #1 moral failing is abortion. Full stop.
A handful of essays thankfully include racism, poverty, and income inequality to this list of corporate sins, but they are a small minority.
No one calls out the corporate, structural oppression created by American imperialism, the military-industrial complex, our global war mongering, the economic sanctions that kill tens of thousands of people in other nations, or America’s continuing sponsorship of military coups…and that is only the short list of issues ignored here.
The majority of the book’s criticisms focus on Trump’s personal demeanor, individual immorality, and its personal consequences.
I very much agree that all of these are serious issues.
Yet, it is also symptomatic of evangelicalism’s obsessive individualism, something that offers them very few tools for knowing how to construct a more just and equitable politics for the whole of our society and our global partners.
Trump’s principle problem, it seems, is that he has stretched the elastic, moral boundary of evangelicalism’s ethical code beyond its very flexible breaking point.
For too many contributors (but again, not all), Trump himself is the problem — as opposed to being a symptom of deeper political problems in our country. Once he is replaced by a morally acceptable Republican candidate (no Democratic could ever fit the bill, of course) the nation’s troubles will be solved – provided he (or she?) continues to fill the Supreme Court with conservative, anti-abortion justices.
For instance, whenever a contributor offers examples of good vs. bad candidates, the opponents are always Republican vs. Democrat. Apparently, with the exception of Donald Trump, Republican candidates who fight abortion are always good by definition, whatever their other policy positions may be.
Bill Clinton was a bad president because he was an adulterer, not because his draconian crime bills stoked the prison industrial complex, helping to put 1 of 4 African American men in prison, most of them for no good reason.
George H. W. Bush was a great president, despite the fact that he supervised numerous atrocities while head of the CIA, as well as several dirty wars in South and Central America that slaughtered thousands of innocent people.
But at least Bush didn’t swear in public.
Many of the contributors rightly condemn Trump’s womanizing, his multiple marriages, and his extra-marital affairs.
Yet, none of these folks would condemn their iconic Ronald Reagan, a prolific Hollywood fornicator and twice married star whose second wife regularly consulted a spiritualist medium in the White House. Never mind that Reagan’s administration was subject to more ethics violations inquiries (up to that point) than any previous presidency.
At least Reagan didn’t swear in public.
I know, I know. None of this is the point of the book.
Yet, the fact remains, only a select few of the contributors have a broad enough Christian vision to poke their heads up beyond the pious horizons of American, evangelical culture.
Grayson Gilbert, a regular blogger at Patheos, has written another white evangelical “analysis” of the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. He repeats the shallow message of evangelical individualism that I recently criticized here.
As I read more and more examples of this gospel of American individualism (and become increasingly aggravated by their frequency and continuity) posted on Facebook, blogs, and chat boards, I decided to offer a more detailed critique of this white, evangelical gospel, using Mr. Gilbert’s piece to illustrate my points.
Below is an excerpt from his Patheos post to give you an idea of what he says. Or you can read the entire post here, but please come back to digest my criticisms and reflect on what the church needs to do differently.
Unfortunately, Mr. Gilbert expresses many of the theological and practical failures endemic to white evangelicalism in this country.
As a result, he also sadly illustrates why white evangelicalism has so little to offer in the way of practical solutions to many of America’s deepest problems.
“…This leads me to perhaps the most important point that I can make: if you want to see what needs to change, take a look in the mirror. It is not a system that needs to repent or be overthrown by human hands. It is not a single people group. It is not a minority or a majority ethnicity that needs to repent. It’s everyone. Every tongue, tribe, and nation is called to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Every individual on the face of the planet needs to bow before their Maker in repentance and call upon Christ as Lord for the forgiveness of their sins and the simple reason for this is that every man is a sinner.
“Until sin is seen for what it truly is and actually dealt with at the cross; until repentance and sanctification ensues, nothing will change in the heart of men at large. They will do what they do best: sin. Yet on that Final Day, God will do what no man can do: bring about complete and utter justice that is consistent with His covenant. If you’re not in Christ, you don’t want that kind of justice because it’s not good news for you. You want the gospel. And yet many professing Christians seem to think the gospel is incapable of doing anything at all to solve the issue, mainly, because they want results now…”
Do more research. Mr. Gilbert appears to limit his news exposure to watching the Fox network. He needs to think more deeply about how he is being manipulated by the corporate media, as I mention here.
Yes, looting, property destruction, and violence have occurred in many places. But Gilbert doesn’t seem to be aware of the many protest leaders who have condemned the looting, condemned the instigators exploiting their demonstrations, and turned out with volunteers to clean up and repair the damage done.
Like so many others, Gilbert paints with a crude, broad brush when he condemns the whole for the sins of a few. This is a standard tactic used by demagogues whose knee-jerk reaction is to defend the status quo rather than to honestly confront the social sickness that needs to be cut out of America’s body politic. I also recently wrote about this issue here.
Over the past several days, I have watched many videos showing (a) the police assaulting peaceful, unarmed demonstrators without provocation, sometimes causing serious injury; and (b) massive, peaceful demonstrations with no apparent mayhem anywhere.
To speak only about the looting while ignoring the core message animating the thousands upon thousands of black, brown, and white citizens marching peacefully through our streets, demanding social justice, is reprehensible.
In this way, Mr. Gilbert displays an obtuse disregard for the black experience in America.
Such willful ignorance typifies the majority of white evangelicals that I know. (Check out John Fea’s survey of Twitter comments from leading, evangelical Trump supporters for more examples of this ignorance parading itself as leadership).
Become self-critical. Gilbert is utterly unaware of his personal investment in defending the political powers-that-be. In effect, he writes as a stooge for the establishment status quo. But this is not surprising. It is what a majority of white evangelicals normally do.
The first step in healing this particular blindness requires grasping what it means to be a Christian disciple who lives as a citizen of God’s kingdom first, last, and always. (Again, check out my book!) No Christian’s primary allegiance is ever to American law and order.
Our allegiance is to Jesus Christ. And he does NOT teach us to obey the laws of wickedness.
The second step in overcoming such blindness requires an honest reappraisal of oneself. Mr. Gilbert talks about the need to confess our sins if we want society to change. I agree. Let’s all “look in the mirror,” as he suggests, and confess our need for Jesus and his salvation each and every day.
But that is where Mr. Gilbert abandons us, implying that once you’ve come to Christ, your problems with sin are over. Here is where his theological individualism becomes a trap.
As Mr. Gilbert elaborates his interest in sin and confession, he quickly shifts the responsibility for such confession onto the protesters. When, in fact – in this historical moment – confessing our collective failure to confront systemic racism and the habitual police brutality suffered by our African-American brothers and sisters is what white evangelicals ought to be doing.
Pointing fingers at the looters is an immoral, arrogant evasion of the real issue. As Jesus says, “Take the log out of your own eye before picking at the splinter in your neighbor’s.”
Remember, it was the slave masters who condemned slave revolts. It was the white, evangelical elders and deacons who accused their slaves of ingratitude for failing to appreciate the benefits of the white, Christian slave-owner’s “benevolence.”
How is Mr. Gilbert any different?
Confusing the world with the church and the church with the world. Gilbert’s very confused discussion of Micah 6:8 slyly insinuates the common evangelical shibboleth of imagining that America is God’s covenant nation.
But there is one covenant now – the New Covenant — established by Christ with his church. Applying covenant language to anyone else (like the crowds of demonstrators) is not only bad theology, it allows Gilbert to deflect attention away from the real problems of racism and police violence.
Gilbert’s cultural misappropriation of God’s covenant with Israel is the unspoken presumption at the root of white American privilege, not only at home but throughout the world. America habitually abuses, exploits, bombs, invades, occupies, and kills people of color without compunction on an international scale.
Slaughtering illiterate brown people around the world is an American right. Or so we are told.
That is the operative assumption underlying US foreign policy. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to see increasingly militarized police departments executing similar, draconian values at home.
Gilbert illustrates how bad theology, combined with a lack of critical thinking (I cannot help but notice that he received his master’s degree from Moody Seminary, a Mecca for American fundamentalism), leads to bad public practice and anemic discipleship.
Such tunnel vision can only see “unruly” protesters in need of reproach, blinding the evangelical critic to the all-pervasive American violence unleashed at home and abroad through our infamous military-police-industrial complex.
Yes, I realize that this is too large a mouth-full for any one instance of protest to address, but Gilbert’s narrow individualism, together with his failure to engage the world as a citizen of God’s kingdom, blinds him to the cultural and political issues at stake.
Don’t follow in his footsteps.
You can’t tell God’s people to endorse their government’s injustices. Gilbert trots out the predictable evangelical calls for “law and order” by telling his Christian readers that they must “obey the authorities instituted by God.” (Cue the national anthem and America the Beautiful).
Here Gilbert uses another classic, demagogic argument slung about like a blunt ax by unthoughtful people making religious arguments in defense of deeply entrenched injustice.
Such demagogic rationales – based in flawed interpretation, by the way – are intended to demonize the anti-establishment “enemy” while pacifying God’s “law abiding” church-folk into a drowsy acceptance of the unacceptable. THIS is the true opiate of the masses, as Karl Marx would say.
But, of course, in this instance of obedience to the powers-that-be, what Gilbert and his Christian cronies judge to be acceptable and unacceptable has more to do with the color of one’s skin than it does with whether or not anyone is obeying the law.
It is the classic argument drawn from white privilege. Think about it. When was the last time we saw a video of an unarmed white person being choked to death by the police on a public street in broad daylight while politely pleading for relief?
This is the point being raised by the popular upheaval we are witnessing in our streets. Unjust actors, whether they are cops, lawyers, judges, criminal justice systems, or entire governments, are unjust because they do NOT “protect the innocent while punishing the guilty.”
THAT is the problem my evangelical friends fail to grasp.
[By the way, I exegete these New Testament passages in my book, I Pledge Allegiance, and show (conclusively, in my mind) that allegiance to God’s kingdom requires that Christians not obey governments that impose injustice on its citizens.]
I struggle to understand how people like Mr. Gilbert can continually fail to apprehend this dynamic. When citizens protest against unjust policing and systemic injustice in high places, God’s kingdom citizens should be leading the way as the most vocal critics of the status quo and most vehement defenders of the oppressed.
Misapplying scripture, as Mr. Gilbert does, in order to condemn demonstrations against injustice and oppression is merely a continuation of the scriptural arguments deployed by Christian slave- owners defending their ownership and abuse of other human beings.
A failure of empathy and critical thinking. Historically, evangelical foreign missions have been in the forefront of finding creative ways to meet human needs. While I don’t entirely agree with the old saying, “You can’t share the gospel with a starving person,” (personally, I think that this way of thinking was a major shortcoming of Mother Teresa’s), it does contain a kernel of truth.
Western missionaries have made major contributions to developing countries everywhere. Often, the earliest literacy programs, schools, health-care initiatives, hospitals, irrigation systems, and more have been developed by evangelical missionaries whose compassion and empathy inspired them to do much, much more than simply “preach the gospel” to the lost.
So, why does Christian compassion and creativity wither and die on the vine when discussing social disruption at home?
No, I am NOT suggesting that evangelicals need to suit up and put on a colonial savior-complex by resurrecting a domestic version of “the white man’s burden.” But I am struck by the absence of both empathy and critical thinking among my white, evangelical brothers and sisters.
Frankly, we need to sit down, shut up, and listen.
We need to hear the stories of our black brothers and sisters. We need to believe them and take them seriously. We need to ask ourselves, “How would I feel if I were in their shoes?” Then, before offering our thoughts on solutions, we need to ask what they think should be done. And we need to listen some more.
We need to ask the Lord Jesus to forgive us for our persistent indifference to the pain and struggle of African-Americans in this country – pain and struggle often inflicted by a system that criminalizes black people for the color of their skin.
I have never been nervous about the threat of being arresting for the crime of “driving while black.” And neither has Mr. Gilbert. Neither of us knows what that is like.
My mother always told me that the policeman was my friend; that he was there to help me.
African-American mothers must educate their children in how to avoid antagonizing a policeman so they won’t get shot.
That is the American reality, a reality that white evangelicals like Mr. Gilbert appear to know nothing about. And they don’t seem to want to know. But if they really don’t know anything about this version of our racial reality, it can only be because they have plugged their ears and closed their eyes to the plight of their fellow human beings.
Such inexcusable ignorance is testament to the strangulation of sympathy within America’s white evangelical churches. And it is inexcusable.
As I have said before, citizenship in God’s kingdom not only requires that we share the gospel of Jesus Christ as widely as possible, it also requires us to think as deeply as possible about how we can contribute to making this world a better place for everyone, equally.
If our missionaries can build schools for boys and girls in countries that frown on educating little girls, then why can’t we also think, plan, and act in ways that will make our society more just, more fair, and less dangerous for its non-white citizens?
Yes, racism is a sin. And sin is rooted in the human heart. Sin can only be uprooted through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. But suggesting, as Mr. Gilbert does, that mass evangelism is the only solution to racial injustice is the lazy pietist’s way of shirking responsibility.
Sure, people may come to Jesus one at a time, and Christian individuals certainly ought to work for truth and justice wherever they find themselves, but changing systemic evil demands systemic solutions. On this front, too many white evangelicals appear to take pride in their ineptitude.
God’s people are called to be “salt and light” to the surrounding society, to exemplify the righteousness, mercy, justice, and equality of God’s kingdom come. We do this, first, among ourselves, as living, breathing examples of God’s new, multi-racial creation here and now.
Then we simultaneously engage our society, working practically to create a reflection, the semblance, an approximation of God’s kingdom in the broken society we now live in.
But that, my friends, is the cross-cultural component of Christian discipleship that white, individualistic, American evangelicalism rarely seems to grasp.
I believe that political engagement is an important task for the Christian church. I don’t buy the rationale that says secular politics is a distraction from gospel priorities. On the contrary. Political engagement is demanded by gospel priorities when properly understood.
If believers in Jesus Christ take his Lordship seriously, then submission to our Savior King requires us to behave as citizens of God’s kingdom in every element of our earthly citizenship. Politics in the public square is unavoidable.
The question is, what does that mean in practice?
I know that I am not alone in believing that the church needs to be
Rev. Jerry Falwell
politically active. The African-American church has always understood this fact. Jerry Falwell helped American fundamentalists and evangelicals finally come to grips with this, too. Obviously, maintaining this conviction makes for strange bed-fellows nowadays.
So, is Christian political activism nothing more than the public expression of privately held religious preferences; preferences created by the kind of neighborhood you grew up in and whether it was on the right or the wrong side of the tracks?
Answering this question is crucial in the present era of “Christians for Trump.”
I am firmly convinced, and quite happy to debate anyone who cares to
MIAMI, UNITED STATES – JANUARY 03, 2020: Evangelical supporters of Donald Trump are being led in prayers inside the El Rey Jesus church. – PHOTOGRAPH BY Adam DelGiudice / Echoes Wire/ Barcroft Media (Photo credit should read Adam DelGiudice / Echoes Wire / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
disagree, that the evangelical church’s uniform support for Donald Trump, the Republican party, and their policy agenda, has exposed the thorough-going secularization of American Christianity.
It is symptomatic of the wholesale debasement of genuine Christian faith into unabashed, nationalistic civil religion. And that is the definition of American apostasy.
This damning secularization of Christian thought and action is, perhaps, the most influential legacy of the Religious Right. Anyone who takes his/her
Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition
marching orders from partisan political strategists (like Ralph Reed, for example) has abandoned the Lordship of Christ. The ethics and righteousness of God’s kingdom do not align with any of the Republican or Democratic party agendas given to us.
Obviously, many religious conservatives think otherwise. I don’t doubt the sincerity of their convictions, but sincerity alone doesn’t manufacture truth. Aristotle and Ptolemy sincerely believed that the sun orbited around the earth, and they were sincerely wrong.
The question becomes: Which partner is leading in the evangelical dance with politics?
Is your partisan, political commitment leading your life of discipleship?
Or is your citizenship in the kingdom of God leading your political commitments?
We all know what the correct answer is. And, of course, members of the Religious Right insist that they are living out that answer, for example, in their support of the “pro-life” movement, their fight for staff-led prayer in public schools, and their hostility against equal rights legislation for LGBT human beings.
All of this begs the question. How should the Christian’s citizenship in God’s kingdom transform the way we live out our American citizenship? If Jesus’ teaching about kingdom righteousness becomes our benchmark for public engagement, then what elements of our partisanship (whether to the right or the left) must be thrown away and replaced with Jesus’ new kingdom ethic?
Here is an historical example:
Members of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer is in the 2nd row at the far left
When the “Confessing Church” (composed of German, Protestant leaders who opposed Hitler’s attempts to control their churches) began its resistance against Nazi religious policies, debating these questions eventually led to a deep divide in their movement.
Everyone agreed that resistance to Nazi attempts at manipulating Christian worship services and determining church membership was every leader’s duty before God. But where should they draw the boundaries? The leaders often disagreed over which acts of resistance were (a) necessary expressions of Christian faith (so everyone could support it) and which actions were (b) merely an expression of personal political preferences. Seldom was there unanimity on this question. In fact, bitter arguments sometimes erupted threatening the organization’s future.
Of course, those accused of being “too political” or “unspiritual” in their
A Nazi German “Christian” flag
proposals responded by pointing out that it was impossible to separate the gospel’s ethical requirements from one’s evaluation of a patently immoral government policy. (I will ignore the ghastly role played by Martin Luther’s “two kingdoms” theology in the German church’s submission to Hitler).
The angry differences that erupted among these sincere, committed
churchmen exposed the differing horizons of their moral universes. After all, isn’t immorality in the eye of the beholder? Well, it shouldn’t be if everyone claiming to be a disciple of Jesus actually “fixes their eyes on Jesus,” as the writer to the Hebrews insists we should (12:2).
Every Christian’s moral universe ought to align with Jesus’ example of living as a righteous citizen in the kingdom of God.
Among all the members of the German Confessing Church, the leaders most remembered and applauded today are those who traced out the most expansive moral universes, with boundaries unconstrained by partisan politics or subservience to government authority.
After the war, surviving members of the Confessing Church sometimes admitted that, for all the risks they had taken (and some were imprisoned and/or executed), they had not gone far enough. Their ethical boundaries had been too narrow. They had not always acted as faithful citizens of God’s kingdom.
Martin Niemöller (who was imprisoned) became one of the most outspoken in lamenting the fact that the Confessing Church had never publicly
Karl Barth’s statement on the failure of the Confessing Church to defend Jews throughout Europe
condemned Hitler’s policies of anti-Semitism. They had never publicly defended their Jewish neighbors. Nor had a single church leader publicly opposed the Nazi eugenics program that took thousands from their medical asylums and sent them off to die.
This is our challenge today.
Every Christian’s lifetime goal must be the conformation of one’s own moral universe to the righteousness of God’s kingdom as taught and modeled for us by Jesus of Nazareth. As our Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Seek first the Father’s kingdom and his righteousness, and everything else will follow” (my paraphrase, Matt. 6:33).
I once preached a message on those words of Jesus in a white, middle-class, Protestant church where the elders nearly banned me from the pulpit. [There were two services. An elder walked out of the first service in protest. I was summoned to a meeting with the others before the second service. At least one of them believed that I ought not to preach again).
The goal of my message was to pose this challenge: How should our commitment to live as righteous citizens of God’s kingdom here and now shape the ways we think and behave as earthly citizens of an imperialist nation with a massive military budget that loves to make war?
IF we want to take Jesus’ words seriously, that we seek God’s kingdom righteousness first, then we MUST grapple with these kinds of questions. And change our behavior accordingly.
Tragically, those church elders were spiritually crippled, straight-jacketed inside a minuscule moral universe grossly deformed by their American first, nationalistic, Republican party world-view. They were not interested in seeking the Father’s kingdom and righteousness FIRST in EVERY area of life. They were not thorough-going disciples of Jesus Christ.
We are currently facing a spiritual pandemic that is killing evangelicalism and its public witness.
An American “Christian” flag
The church is infected with a deadly political virus called partisanship. That partisanship is an ugly symptom of our deeply rooted secularism. In pursuing the cause of militaristic nationalism, we have taken our eyes off Jesus.
Huge swaths of the church have been coopted by the commercialized, smoothly marketed messaging created by high-paid political operatives who began courting evangelicals during the Reagan presidency. Rather than seeking God’s kingdom, we seek victory for their side, predominantly Republican, in the next political campaign.
This brand of herd loyalty is easy to implement. Whereas, conforming our lives to the pattern given to us by the suffering, crucified Jesus of Nazareth is far more difficult and costly.
Following a crucified Savior entails suffering, but it also demands carefully focused, consistent thinking, from top to bottom. How must Jesus’ kingdom-directed life and teaching transform the way we address our contemporary problems? There is no political playbook from any party providing easy answers to that question.
Take for instance the “pro-life” movement. The label itself is an example of a very self-conscious political framing. The words pro-life do not honestly describe the movement. As many others have pointed out, the pro-life movement is not actually pro-life. It is anti-abortion and pro-birth, but the movement’s pro-life interests vanish quickly once a baby is delivered.
For example, it is a demonstrable fact that publicly funded preschool programs, the WIC nutrition program and Head Start, to name only a few, make significant improvements in the future prospects, health and well-being of young children, especially those growing up in poor communities.
Yet, conservative “pro-life” voters typically back policies intended to defund these sorts of community assistance programs that give a leg up to our most vulnerable citizens. In this regard, supposedly pro-life conservatives most often vote anti-life.
Worse yet, these faux pro-lifers support politicians who want to slash the budgets of social benefits programs and in order to channel those funds to
A US bomber over Afghanistan
the ballooning budgets for military contractors and our wasteful Pentagon. Instead of helping to enrich the lives of America’s most vulnerable, our tax dollars are spent on expanding assassination programs, and devising new weaponry intended for the efficient slaughter and impoverishment of hungry people around the world who happen to stand in the way of American empire.
That is the opposite of pro-life. It is pro-death, pain, exploitation, and suffering.
But what about the Supreme Court?! (I hear certain readers ask). This is the new clarion call among today’s pro-lifers. Overturning Roe vs. Wade is the end-all-and-be-all of to a pro-life political victory.
It’s true. Adding anti-abortion advocates like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the court may eventually lead to that result. But in the meantime, America’s highest court is now stacked with justices who regularly act to strengthen corporate power against the interests of the working class.
For example, Justice Kavanaugh only appeared on the president’s list of nominees after his decision as an appeals court judge to support a trucking company’s decision to fire one of their drivers. The driver violated
Brett Kavanaugh at his Senate confirmation hearing
company policy by leaving his truck unattended in order to walk to a nearby convenience store. The truck had broken down in a blizzard. After calling for help and waiting, the driver soon found that he could no longer feel his legs. He feared that he might die of hypothermia as he waited. Should he stay with his truck? Or should he walk to a nearby convenience store to warm up?
What would you have done?
Judge Kavanaugh, the latest pro-life darling, determined that the company was justified in firing an employee who refused to lay down his life for their sixteen-wheeler. That ruling won Kavanaugh his contentious nomination. And the vast majority of evangelicals stood to cheer. (I won’t even begin to comment on the vile conservative abuse spewed out against the women who accused Kavanaugh of sexual abuse).
Was Kavanaugh really a pro-life nominee?
America’s broken, corrupted “justice” system serves the political purposes of bi-partisan mass incarceration laws filling our jails and prisons with people of color who are slapped down by onerous convictions, while white people – especially wealthy white people – receive a slap on the wrist for committing identical offenses. This country’s “injustice system” has become a calcified showcase for the most racist, Jim Crow artifacts in a nation where all people are notequal before the law.
Why did the NYC police department implement its “stop and frisk” policy in black neighborhoods but never on Wall Street? I suspect they would have collected more cocaine stashed comfortably in the sleek suit pockets of hedge fund managers than they ever discovered in the hands of African-Americans walking to the market.
Yet, American evangelicals regularly rally around the bi-partisan flag demanding that officials get “tough on crime” – excepting, of course, the white-collar crime flagrantly committed by men like Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and their corporate donors.
Tell me again. What, exactly, is pro-life about any of this behavior?
America’s population is now separated by the greatest economic divide between the haves and the have-nots since the Great Depression. That divide expands and deepens year by year as a result of government, economic boondoggles ensuring that wealth redistribution is always moving upwards to further enrich the already rich. All the while, most evangelicals link arms with the wealthy, corporate interests who exploit the poor and the working class.
There simply is no excuse for any Christian supporting the policies of either party which perpetuate national behaviors so cravenly antithetical to Jesus’ teaching about the righteousness of God’s kingdom.
Let’s call such public behavior for what it really is, especially when it is endorsed by a majority of evangelicals: grotesque displays of hypocrisy, partisan blindness, and anti-Christian thinking.
Such misguided thinking is an investment in the work of the anti-Christ. The resulting behaviors reveal the overt repudiation of Jesus’ Lordship over his church.
Genuinely pro-life behavior begins among the citizens of Christ’s kingdom who live it out in the streets by enhancing the lives of those who most need help. That includes influencing the culture around us, our society, our leaders, and our nation, by working to enact consistent pro-life policies for all people everywhere.
To further stretch our moral boundaries, evangelicals should be in the forefront of calling for the US to abandon its budget-breaking quest for global supremacy, a quest that tramples other nations underfoot like discarded human refuse left behind for global scavengers to devour.
Now that would be pro-life.
Jesus is clear. His kingdom’s pro-life values declare:
The first will be last, and the last will be first
Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward
Woe to those who neglect to do justice
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry
Our Lord welcomes every immigrant and asylum seeker with open arms.
Our Lord prioritizes the poor. He picks them up and cares for them. He does not ridicule them as lazy creators of their own hardships.
How can any society be positively influenced by a secularized church that long ago exchanged the mind of Christ for the distorted thinking of this evil age?
How can the church show others the importance of thorough-going pro-life policies when we are incapable of implementing them among ourselves?
American evangelicalism has become the useless salt described by Jesus: You are [supposed to be] the salt of the earth, but once that salt loses its saltiness, it becomes useless, good for nothing. It can only be thrown out onto the dirt (my paraphrase, Matthew 5:13).
Jesus’ words address the American church today.
No, Donald Trump is not the church’s greatest friend. He is another in a long line of anti-Christs. He is a parasite who has attached himself to the Religious Right in order to exploit their evangelical base for his own political benefit.
Evangelicals are president Trump’s useful idiots.
I am sorry, but any purported “Christian” who cannot perceive these facts about our president, American politics, and our nation’s behavior throughout the world has become a spiritual alien who knows little if anything about God’s kingdom.
Such people are spiritually malnourished, perhaps even dead, after suckling at the swollen teats of American civil religion, that secular, bastardized gospel which subverts Jesus’ kingdom values while substituting the depraved values of this fallen world.
God’s kingdom is what truly matters. The church is its citizenry. All of which entails much, much more than simply “getting people saved.”
Saved for what?
Jesus calls us to love indiscriminately. To prioritize people in need, no matter who they are. Yes, personal acts of benefaction are crucial, but that is not enough. The scale of America’s social problems is so vast that our government must play a major role in rectifying our problems. Only true citizens of the kingdom of God possess the vision necessary for developing the required solutions.
Will a mass movement of the Christian church stand up to demand that our government take greater and greater steps towards mercy and justice for all?
The book becomes available on June 1st from Wipf & Stock publishers (also the publisher of my next book about Israel-Palestine). I have already pre-ordered my copy, and I am anxious to dig into it.
While the partisan political blindness of the “Court Evangelicals” (to use the extremely apt term coined by historian John Fea, professor at Messiah College) has gone a long way towards identifying the evangelical label with their own far-right, Christian nationalism, this new book is a much needed antidote to their hijacking of the movement.
Here is the publishers’ description:
What should Christians think about Donald Trump? His policies, his style, his personal life?
Thirty evangelical Christians wrestle with these tough questions. They are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. They don’t all agree, but they seek to let Christ be the Lord of their political views. They seek to apply biblical standards to difficult debates about our current political situation.
Vast numbers of white evangelicals enthusiastically support Donald Trump. Do biblical standards on truth, justice, life, freedom, and personal integrity warrant or challenge that support? How does that support of President Trump affect the image of Christianity in the larger culture? Around the world? Many younger evangelicals today are rejecting evangelical Christianity, even Christianity itself. To what extent is that because of widespread evangelical support for Donald Trump?
Don’t read this book to find support for your views. Read it to be challenged—with facts, reason, and biblical principles.
With contributions from: Michael W. Austin Randall Balmer Vicki Courtney Daniel Deitrich Samuel Escobar John Fea
Irene Fowler Mark Galli J. Colin Harris Stephen R. Haynes Matt Henderson Christopher A. Hutchinson Bandy X. Lee David S. Lim David C. Ludden Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Steven Meyer Napp Nazworth D. Zac Niringiye Christopher Pieper Reid Ribble Ronald J. Sider Edward G. Simmons James R. Skillen James W. Skillen Julia K. Stronks Chris Thurman Miroslav Volf Peter Wehner George Yancey
Please, order your copy now, and help to make this book an important factor in educating the church:
to regain its footing in the gospel of Jesus Christ, rather than Republican politics
to live as citizens of the kingdom of God, rather than “culture warriors” eager to destroy their enemies
to prioritize the poor, the needy, the sick, and the disadvantaged, rather than the opulent corporate enrichment policies of president Trump, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Shumer
to work as true peace-makers, at home and around the world, rather than cheering on the global war-mongers, happy to expand American Empire at the expense of destroying others
Today’s edition of Haaretz has an editorial by Fiyaz Mughal explaining the religious logic of Muslim fundamentalists – extremists (to use his word) who are using the corona virus pandemic as a recruitment tool. The headline reads “Jews and Apostate Muslims Deserve Punishment.”
Click on the title above for the entire article. Or read an excerpt below:
” . . . extremist individuals and groups are using this period of trepidation to try and promote hatred, racism and extremism. Their narratives are simple and sound much like a broken record, though they will have some traction with the disaffected, misinformed and unaware. They are feeding off fear, and – especially for modern societies – the unusual and dispiriting experience of individual powerlessness in the face of the pandemic.
“The narratives espoused by Muslim extremists are depressingly familiar: the ‘other’ is blamed. One target is inevitably history’s favorite scapegoat, the Jews. But ordinary Muslims are in the extremists’ sights as well. . . .
“As Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, director of research at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism notes, ‘Jihadis see the [coronavirus as] manifestation of the wrath of God, both upon the non-believers for their rejection of God’s law and crimes against Muslims, and upon those Muslims who have forsaken the duty of Jihad.'”
In a similar vein, the internet is swamped these days with US church “leaders” proclaiming a similar, if not identical, message.
Obviously, one religion’s fundamentalists are not much different from another’s.
Whether “Muslim” or “Christian,” jihadists all sound alike.
I’ll offer only one example. You can easily find more if you look. Watch the clip below:
So, what’s the difference between this man and an ISIS spokesman?
Rodney Kennedy is a professor at Palmer Theological Seminary. He recently posted an interesting article at Righting America: A forum for scholarly conversation about Christianity, culture, and politics in the US, analyzing evangelicalism’s antagonism to modern science.
Perhaps the most dangerous — at least, from a public health standpoint — expression of the tragic alliance between anti-science evangelicalism and right-wing politics is the decision at Fox News to (1) downplay the dangers of covid19 transmission by (2) demeaning the medical professionals who disagree with Trump and (3) promoting the early end of current stay-at-home orders.
Kennedy’s article is entitled “A Scopes Trial Redux: Evolution, Coronavirus, and the Evangelical War on Science.”
You can read an excerpt below:
“…From the Scopes Trial to the coronavirus pandemic, the pandemonium among evangelicals has always been about opposition to evolution. The symbolic epicenter of the anti-coronavirus movement is the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Inside the tech-savvy Disney theme park edifice is
Anti-Evolution League, at the Scopes Trial, Dayton Tennessee From Literary Digest, July 25, 1925. Image by Mike Licht – Flickr, via Wikimedia Commons
enthroned the king of anti- evolution – Ken Ham. Neither scientist nor theologian he routinely rips apart science and theology. He assures his adoring fans that he doesn’t interpret the Bible; he merely reads it and its message is at once plain and clear. Ham is perhaps the quintessential example of the evangelicals who routinely believe that the Bible gives up its treasures to nothing more complicated than “common sense.”
“The Creation Museum is the Temple of Doom, as it defiles, denies, and attacks science. Ham’s obsession with painting evolution as the “beast out of the bowels of Darwin” provides the foundational ideology for the anti-coronavirus movement. Behind the mistrust of science and expertise, behind the denial of the pandemic’s scope, behind the spectacle of pastors holding mass services in states where people are fighting for their lives : behind all this is the anti-evolution movement.
“Ken Ham’s message has found ardent support among the millions of evangelical Christians who are easily persuaded that science and scientific expertise is an attack on the Bible, the American way of life, and on Christianity itself. So, it is that the ghosts of fundamentalism’s last stand at the Scopes Monkey Trial have returned in evangelicals like ancient witches and wizards gathering for the triumphant return of Voldemort. At the opening of the Creation Museum Ham expressed this residual resentment against Darrow and spoke of repairing the damage: The Scopes Trial “was the first time the Bible was ridiculed by the media in America. We are going to undo all of that here at the Creation Museum.”
“The declaration of the continuing war could not be clearer. Every week, some business person or politician with evangelical ties adds to the creationist-inspired movement against science movement. Hobby Lobby, in direct violation of orders to be closed, reopened its stores, before announcing they would close again. The mayor of Cummings, GA rescinded his lock-down order and re-opened his city. The governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, has chosen prayer over following the recommendation of health officials. The governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, resisted issuing any order to shut down before relenting by telling the people of Alabama a shutdown was the only way to salvage football season. Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, has appealed to Christian convictions in his call to reopen schools and businesses.
“But with the coronavirus pandemic, evangelicals may have overplayed their hand, and finally exposed the soft underbelly of their anti-science, anti-intelligence, anti-history bias. Evolution isn’t as scary as COVID-19. Evangelicals may have once again picked the wrong enemy, allowing Americans, who usually pay no attention to evangelicals, to see just how dangerous they can be. This seems like a foolish attack akin to Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. When General Lee told General Pickett to rally his division, Pickett allegedly told him, “Sir I have no division.” When this current battle over science plays itself out, one can only hope that the forces of anti-science evangelicals will have been shredded and sent back to the woods from whence they emerged. Perhaps we will look back and say that the Trump presidency was the “high watermark of the evangelical movement,” before its collapse. If that is the case, it will be a tragic end to a once proud movement.”
The tightly woven communities of Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Israel are being devastated by the covid19 pandemic. Their neighborhoods are the nation’s “hot spots” for this contagion.
Check out any of these recent articles from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz — here, here, and here).
The explanation for this tragedy is simple: insular, anti-intellectual religion very similar to American Fundamentalism.
First, Haredi families do not allow their children to attend school with “unfaithful unbelievers,” which includes non-Haredi Jews. Their children are required to attend Haredi religious schools with strict curricula where they can only mingle with other Haredi children.
Second, the Haredi curriculum excludes the study of modern science so their communities are ignorant of even the most basic knowledge of modern medicine. In addition, they are forbidden from listening to the radio or watching TV. They live in an information bubble.
Third, they are convinced that faith and Torah will always keep them safe. A firm enough belief in God, the authority of Scripture, and their tradition is all they need to be protected from infection.
Of course, this means that they must continue to gather together in the synagogues for services.
The government finally is deploying soldiers to Haredi neighborhoods in order to enforce government quarantine orders. These soldiers are frequently attacked, physically, by the devout who accuse them of being Nazis and the enemies of religious freedom.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Soldiers in Tel Aviv challenging Haredi man. Haredi folks have been very slow to wear face masks
Now, thousands upon thousands of these fervent believers are now dying, notin spite of their faith, but because of their faith.
I know. A fringe of religious-right, anti-Semitic nutcases are saying that their suffering is God’s punishment for being Jews. (Oh dear Jesus, please deliver your church from such destructive, apostate imbeciles. Amen.)
The obvious American parallel to this part of the Israeli story is seen in the U.S. pastors and churches that continue to defy the medical advice coming from places like the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute for Health by continuing to hold weekly services.
Jerry Falwell, Jr. is good friends with Fox & Friends, is as president Trump
Or University presidents such as Jerry Falwell, Jr. at Liberty University, who parroted Fox New/president Trump talking points about the covid warnings being a “hoax” propagated by “Trump haters” and now insists on keeping the university open.
I cannot help but wonder how many of their followers are living inside their
own information bubbles, sealed off from the rest of the world by the disabling combination of Fox News with a heavy dose of Christian radio and TV.
Many of them subject to an irrational fear – propagated by their leaders – that our government is just waiting for the chance to shut down Christian
Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne leads his congregation during a service Sunday, March 29, 2020 at The River at Tampa Bay Church. [Photo from Facebook]churches.
I am sure that most of us are now familiar with the mug shot of Rodney Howard-Browne, the mega-church pastor arrested for endangering his Tamp Bay congregation by continuing to hold church services.
Please, if your pastor is anything like Howard-Browne or Jerry Falwell, I urge you to find another church (or synagogue).
evangelical Christians in the hope of convincing evangelical voters NOT to vote for Trump in November.
(Ahem…my book, I Pledge Allegiance, would also be a great follow-up read for those who are interested in thinking more deeply.)
A good deal of my thinking on these subjects is also explained in my book, 
their support of the “pro-life” movement, their fight for staff-led prayer in public schools, and their hostility against equal rights legislation for LGBT human beings.
everyone claiming to be a disciple of Jesus actually “fixes their eyes on Jesus,” as the writer to the Hebrews insists we should (12:2).
describe the movement. As many others have pointed out, the pro-life movement is not actually pro-life. It is anti-abortion and pro-birth, but the movement’s pro-life interests vanish quickly once a baby is delivered.
of bi-partisan mass incarceration laws filling our jails and prisons with people of color who are slapped down by onerous convictions, while white people – especially wealthy white people – receive a slap on the wrist for committing identical offenses. This country’s “injustice system” has become a calcified showcase for the most racist, Jim Crow artifacts in a nation where all people are not equal before the law.
collected more cocaine stashed comfortably in the sleek suit pockets of hedge fund managers than they ever discovered in the hands of African-Americans walking to the market.
Let’s call such public behavior for what it really is, especially when it is endorsed by a majority of evangelicals: grotesque displays of hypocrisy, partisan blindness, and anti-Christian thinking.
long line of anti-Christs. He is a parasite who has attached himself to the Religious Right in order to exploit their evangelical base for his own political benefit.
Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. They don’t all agree, but they seek to let Christ be the Lord of their political views. They seek to apply biblical standards to difficult debates about our current political situation.
headline reads “
are required to attend Haredi religious schools with strict curricula where they can only mingle with other Haredi children.
