Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain intruders have stolen into among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
These are grumblers and malcontents; they indulge their own lusts; they are bombastic in speech, flattering people to their own advantage. Jude, V. 3-4, 16
I saw this tweet and just had to put it here:
"I'm so sick of seeing Christians in America claim persecution. You aren't being persecuted for loving Jesus, you're being held accountable for not acting like him.
In the midst of a decline in attendance and membership among Evangelical Christians in the United States, a trend that is highly disconcerting to many of its leaders who have boasted for decades that their church growth, compared to the declines in the "liberal," left-leaning Mainline Protestants, was a sign of God's blessing on their "correct theology", it has become popular to create analogies between the biblical accounts of the nation of Israel living in exile in Babylon, and the Christian church in America living in a "cultural Babylon."
It's easy to blame the declining attendance and membership in their churches on pressures and influences of what many Christians label a godless, immoral culture, with hints that certain political party affiliations advocate and promote it, and not on their own ineffectiveness in preaching the Christian gospel and in evangelism that has been watered down by chasing after money and prioritizing wealth, and an inordinate investment of time and resources in the pursuit of political power. People are leaving churches because the gospel of Jesus Christ has been pushed off to the side in favor of the gospel of conservative, right-wing politics with economic priorities that favor big money interests.
The fact that some Evangelicals who are considered leaders in the church or the movement are themselves executives of multi-million dollar non-profit entities, like Samaritan's Purse, which has amassed $1 billion in assets, makes it difficult to sympathize with complaints about persecution. Megachurches require gigantic infusions of contributions from members to keep facilities operating, and to pay large payrolls for staff members who head up "ministries" which are designed, not for evangelistic outreach, but to attract more members and their checkbooks from smaller churches which can't offer the smorgasbord of programs. Christians in other parts of the world where there is real persecution might have trouble applying that term to those in America whose biggest problem on Sunday is having to decide between walking to the church auditorium from the outer parking lot, or waiting for a shuttle.
I don't believe the Babylon analogy is valid. It sounds biblical, and it's easy to convince those who already presuppose that anything they don't understand, or don't like, is to blame on the evil around them. They are also presupposed to believe anything that their pastor, or an evangelical leader who heads up a large ministry or pastors a megachurch, says or writes. But Christian churches in America have complete freedom to gather, worship, preach, teach, operate ministries, raise tax free money, operate schools, children's homes and crisis pregnancy centers, without any interference whatsoever, and absolutely nothing like the restrictions the Israelites faced in Babylonian captivity. There is some religious discrimination in America, but not against Christians. It's a nice propaganda gimmick to gather support, but America isn't Babylon, the church is not being held captive in a foreign empire and white, Protestant Christians are still privileged with a measure of freedom that others don't have.
The answer to the often asked question, "How can you be a Christian and vote for a candidate who supports abortion?" is simple. If I let that single issue determine how I cast my vote, to the exclusion of all other issues, I will be contributing to the election of many incompetent politicians who do not support representative democracy, equal rights and individual freedom, regardless of their stance on abortion. In most cases, they're really not pro-life so much as they are interested in how they can profit off of that position in terms of getting elected. I'm free to practice my Christian faith because of constitutionally guaranteed religious liberty. If the religious liberty of those who hold a different faith perspective than I do is in jeopardy, then so is mine.
The Real Problem is That Intruders have Stolen into the Church and are Wreaking Havoc
It seems to me to be a little bit on the inconsistent side (I'm really being tongue-in-cheek here, so bear with me) to moan and complain about Christians being captives in an immoral, pagan, Babylon-like culture, while supporting politicians, specifically one in particular, who spent their entire life crafting a public image that bears the same marks as Babylonian paganism. Since the rhetoric is being used, I'll consider that permission to put my point in those same terms. If the secular culture of America is analogous to that of ancient Babylon during the captivity of Israel, then Trump is the chief Babylonian.
Making deals by throwing in a few political points that appeal to the religious right is not the same thing as actually having personal integrity and convictions, and believing in the principles associated with those issues. Trumpism has an agenda, and those few bones that he throws to his Evangelical supporters are just a means to an end, which includes the dismantling of the Constitution and American representative democracy in favor of a Putin-style oligarchy with himself and his billionaire allies in control.
There's no such thing as a "Christian" way to vote. Voting for candidates who promise a short list of political reforms judged to be "favorable" to right-wing Christians, while those votes support candidates from a party in which the current direction is to dismantle voting rights, the representative democracy and the constitution that limits government power, overturn religious liberty in favor of an established, approved religion and set up an oligarchy of the billionaire class. I don't believe for a minute that every candidate who claims to be pro-life holds that position out of conviction. It's a bargaining chip.
The verse I cited at the top is a warning from the Apostle Jude to a specific church where a pagan ideology was finding its way inside because the church wasn't careful about the people they were trusting when it came to leadership and teaching. These intruders were pushing the gospel of Jesus out, replacing it with pagan ideology and teaching, using their personal power and influence, "bombast" as the Apostle describes it, denying the disciplines of the faith with a licentious lifestyle and even using flattery as a means of gaining influence. Sound familiar? It's happening in churches everywhere now.
Don Jr., speaking at a Turning Point USA gathering in Phoenix last year, told the audience that he "sort of understood" the Christian practice of turning the other cheek, but that doing those kinds of "Jesus" things was not getting them anywhere in domains of worldly power. Trump has mentioned the practice of being "meek," in some of his rallies, noting that meekness is a trait exhibited by "suckers and losers." Those kinds of statements, along with denying having ever done anything requiring forgiveness, defines a set of values that I cannot vote for, and which are clearly opposite the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Yes, My Christian Values do Influence My Vote
Thomas Jefferson once said, "Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg,"
The American constitutional republic, and the Bill of Rights, have protected religious belief and practice since it was ratified in 1789. I am able to be a Christian and practice my faith without hindrance in this country because of the separation of church and state, set in place by the establishment clause of the Constitution. That's not worth a trade off to abandon support for democratic principles in exchange for the support of a politician for one or two issues in a platform that may align with my religious beliefs, or may just be some kind of deal. It's not worth losing voting integrity and voting rights, and risking the abandonment of the Constitution of the United States, along with my own religious liberty.
There's nothing in a whole long list of Christian values, like integrity, equality, community, good stewardship, righteousness, meekness, perseverance, and being a peacemaker, whom Christ said would be known as the children of God, that has the ability to generate controversy or spark violence, especially not an insurrection aimed at subversion of the peaceful transfer of power. And the fact of the matter is that if anyone's freedom is at risk in this country, because their rights have been threatened, then no one is truly free. And that includes the basic guarantee of the rights of those who hold no religious belief, or are Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim, as well as the rights of Christians.
It has become more apparent, over the past four years, that my best chance at keeping my religious liberty, lies with electing Democrats to office. The Republican party has been moving toward establishing an oligarchy of the rich, something they do every time they are in position to get legislation passed. They can't seem to win elections at the state or national level where they cannot manipulate the way congressional and state legislative districts are drawn, so they are now placing the outcome of elections in the hands of their own party's elected officials, not in the hands of the voters. That's a long first step toward selective application of constitutional rights for the privileged and powerful, not for the meek, disadvantaged or for non-Christian religious minorities. Doing so supports the whole scope of Christian faith and practice. I won't judge Christians who vote differently, like some of those who insist that voting Republican is synonymous with "voting Christian." Depending on the candidate and what the party is doing, voting Republican is a vote against religious liberty. But that's a personal conviction, just like my choices are.
There is no "Christian way to vote," because Christian faith does not need any political power to fulfill its mission and purpose. The current intrusion of ungodly, bombastic, grumblers and malcontents, using flattery to deceive, is pushing the Christian gospel out of the churches that have embraced it and they are seeing the consequences of that. "It is these worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions," says Jude. "And have mercy on some who are wavering."
My loyalty as a Christian is to God, and my Christian faith is practiced according to the gospel message of Jesus, the Christ. As an American citizen, it is to the constitution and the freedom it protects, to the principles it upholds and the institutions it creates to protect freedom, and to all of my fellow American citizens who share in it. My vote is cast to elect politicians who will protect this, not tear it apart for their own self interests.
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