Leviticus-Quoting Fundamentalist Calls Ted Cruz a Liberal
The African nation of Uganda, a political disaster that once "elected" a President who admired Adolf Hitler, has been heavily influenced by American Evangelicalism, largely because of intense missionary efforts and large amounts of financial support. The result of that influence was its national government, under President Yoweri Museveni, passed a law that makes being homosexual a criminal offense with the penalty of life in prison, and "aggravated homosexuality" being a death-penalty offense. Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who is not politically liberal by any stretch of the imagination, publicly criticized the law, using terms like "horrific, wrong, a grotesque abomination."
With Cruz, it's hard to tell whether his words are political rhetoric spoken to gain favor with a more moderate constituency he knows he and his party must have to win elections, or whether it comes from genuine conviction. I lean much more toward the former explanation, since I don't think Cruz has any genuine conviction that is a matter of real conscience and not something aimed at getting votes somewhere down the line. But he made his feelings known publicly, and apparently spontaneously, and drew the ire of one Tom Ascol, a caustic, hard-line Calvinist Southern Baptist from Florida, who pounced on Cruz's comment and threw Leviticus 20:13 back in his face.
Ascol, a hard line Calvinist Fundamentalist agitator in the Southern Baptist Convention, to the right of even the denomination's conservative leadership, denied that he favored executing homosexuals, but stuck by his claim that the Levitical text represents God's perspective on the subject, regardless of the fact that it was only applicable law to ancient Israel under a covenant relationship that came to an end when Jesus Christ made a new covenant with all humanity through his sacrifice, in his gospel. Ascol, who heads an independent ministry group called "Founders Ministries," in addition to being the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, is involved with an ultraconservative group in the Southern Baptist Convention called the Conservative Baptist Network, and has close ties to Florida Governor and GOP Presidential Candidate Ron DeSantis.
And it's that connection which makes this make sense. It seems the Ugandan government has a lot in common with DeSantis' vision for Florida.
If Ted Cruz is a liberal, then that is quite a definitive statement about what hard right Christian nationalism looks like, and what government would look like under its influence. It would bear absolutely no resemblance to the Christian gospel preached by Jesus. It would be a cruel, judgmental, evil system of government, to put it mildly. It would be worse than German National Socialism or Soviet Marxism.
A Brand of Christian Nationalism Has Been Imported into Africa Through the Presence of American Evangelicals
Mark Wingfield, an editor with Baptist News Global, notes that American Evangelicals have spent massive amounts of money in African coutries to influence national governments with an anti-LGBTQ agenda. Uganda is where most of the money has gone, half of some $58 million spent between 2007 and 2020. Wingfield notes that their influence has achieved what it has not been able to succeed at doing in the United States, and that is getting anti-LGBTQ legislation in some form passed in over 30 African countries.
And of course what has followed the passage of this legislation is violence, caused by what is perceived to be an "open season" against homosexuals. It is difficult for them to escape these attacks, since many of them had come out and were known to their communities prior to these kinds of laws being passed. This isn't an evangelistic outreach, it is, according to the National Catholic Reporter, "meddling " by Evangelicals in Africa, and in Uganda in particular. Traditional missionary work, in which Christian conversion was the end result, is being replaced by this heresy. Even on the foreign mission field, Evangelicals are abandoning their belief that conversion, following conviction of the Holy Spirit and repentance, leading to grace by faith in Christ, is the answer to the problem of human sin which separates us from God, replacing that core, foundational belief with reliance on political power to legislate its moral principles and practices.
And it's what we'd see in the United States if these people ever get near the positions of power and influence.
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