While Southern Baptists Face Declining Membership and Attendance, the Churches They've Kicked Out are Prospering

Baptist News Global: Saddleback's Retired Pastor Wants to Focus on the Great Commission

At its annual convention in June, the Southern Baptist Convention's messengers acted on a motion presented at a meeting two years prior to remove Saddleback Valley Community Church from its position as a church "in friendly cooperation" with the denomination.  The reason given for the motion was that the church had violated a common interpretation of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, which is the confesssional statement establishing the doctrinal and theological beliefs held in common by the seminaries, mission boards, commissions and executive committee that make up the denomination itself, and which are supported by offerings given by its 45,000 cooperating churches.  

Saddleback Valley had ordained three women to the gospel ministry of the church and put them in positions of ministry responsibility on the church staff.  One of them, Stacie Wood, the wife of the church's recently called lead pastor, Andy Wood, was named "teaching pastor" and occasionally has preaching responsibilities in the Sunday morning service.  Those actions were deemed out of step with the SBC's doctrinal statement prohibiting women from serving in the office of pastor.  

A messenger made the motion to declare Saddleback as "not being in friendly cooperation" with the denomination at the convention's annual meeting in Nashville in 2021, and the convention's President, chairing the meeting, referred it to the credentials committee.  There's no real guidance regarding exactly how closely churches must follow the Baptist Faith and Message to be considered "in friendly cooperation," except on a few specific issues identified in the bylaws, such as actions which affirm or approve of homosexual behavior or which are deemed to be racist in nature.  So, while the credentials committee "studied" the viability of the motion, not issuing a ruling on it in 2022, another messenger, a pastor from Arlington, Virginia, drew up a proposed bylaw that includes churches which call women serving on staff "pastor" also "not being in friendly cooperation" with the convention.  

Contrasting Saddleback Valley Church With the Rest of the Southern Baptist Convention

Rick Warren, author of two of the best-selling books in Christian publishing, and retired founding pastor of Saddleback Valley, says the church focused on "the Great Commision."  That's a way of saying their main interest wasn't playing denominational politics, it was finding people in the church's community and leading them to an experience of Christian conversion, or salvation as Evangelicals call it.  And so they have.  

In a Baptist church, as the name hints, when someone converts and becomes a Christian, they are baptized by immersion in water, and made a member of the local church.  Since its founding in the early 1980's, by focusing on the Great Commission, Saddleback Valley has grown into a multi-campus congregation that has the largest membership and attendance of any church in the Southern Baptist Convention.  That's unusual for a church located in suburban Orange County, California, far away from the dixieland "Bible belt" where culture and tradition is the biggest attraction to membership of Southern Baptist churches, not evangelism.  

In fact, while Saddleback Valley has grown into the largest church in the SBC, the rest of the denomination is losing members at a faster rate than the mainline Protestant denominations are doing.  Since it reached its peak in 2006, more than 3.2 million members have left the convention, and weekly attendance has dropped by 2 million since that time.  It is significant that more than half of the membership and attendance declines have occurred in just the past four years.  So in spite of being kicked out of the convention because it has three women pastors on its ministerial staff, Saddleback Valley continues to grow at a fast pace, baptizing more new converts in a year than several entire state Baptist conventions do.  And while 90% of Saddlebacks baptisms are adults, more than 90% of those in the rest of the Southern Baptist Convention are under 12, and are the children of church members. 

Shortly after Saddleback was disfellowshipped from the convention, another large megachurch, Elevation Church, based in Charlotte, North Carolina with several affiliated congregations in both North and South Carolina, also announced its exit from the SBC.  The wife of Elevation Church's pastor Steven Furtick, is also a co-pastor of the church and their exit was pre-emptive, deciding on their own that they would go rather than being voted out.  These two churches account for more than 3% of the total baptisms in the SBC in any given year.  In a denomination where baptisms have declined by 80% in less than two decades, that will cut deep. 

Elevation's departure is also a very likely sign of things to come.  More than 3,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention have women on the staff serving in some kind of pastoral role, though very few actually have a woman in the senior pastor, or lead pastor role.  Some will simply wait and see if they're on the "hit list" compiles by the same pastor who made the motion to adopt the bylaw requiring the dismissal of churches with women pastors.  But, in weighing the value of the ministry of their local congregation in their own community againt their affiliation with the SBC, I think most will pick their own internal ministry, since being Southern Baptist has become a confusing tangle of loyalty to fundamentalist doctrine and theology that falls outside the scope of most SBC churches, along with the interference and confusion of intruding right wing politics.  According to the hit list that has been compiled of the names of those churches who are next for being kicked out, most already have left the denomination of their own accord.  By the time the convention in Indianapolis rolls around next June, I'd say 2,800 of the 3,000 churches will have stayed loyal to their female pastors, and dumped their SBC affiliation.  

Prosperity Under God's Blessing versus Declining Membership and Attendance

Along with Saddleback, Fern Creek Baptist Church, a congregation of about 150 active members in Louisville, Kentucky, was kicked out because it has a female senior pastor, Linda Barnes Popham.  Reverend Popham has been on staff at Fern Creek in ministry for 40 years, and has been pastor since 1990.  Fern Creek is a much smaller congregation than either Saddleback or Elevation church, but under Pastor Popham's leadership, the church has constitently ministered to its community, maintained a stable membership, and baptized about twice the number of people that a church its size normally sees in the course of a year.  

Fern Creek is in the shadow of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the denomination's flagship theological school is just 10 miles away.  Countless seminary students over the years have been influenced by Pastor Popham's leadership and preaching.  It's not hard to imagine that women who were students, and who may have attended the church, found inspiration for their own ministries there.  It's not a church, like some others in the area, that either severed ties with the SBC, or joined with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as an alternative to the autocratic SBC.  They stayed, and continued to support the denomination until they got the boot.  Critics can be as caustic or as dismissive as they like,  those who are members there see God's hand at work in their church, and know they wouldn't see that if God's blessings weren't on their pastor.  I don't think this is as big an issue, as far as God is concerned, as it is for the Southern Baptist Convention.  In fact, I don't think God cares much about it at all, since he's the one Pastor Popham says called her to serve there.  

Warren points out the flaws in the conservative interpretation of the few places in the New Testament they use to determine women shouldn't be pastors.  The link from Baptist News Global gives a good rundown of his perspective.  I have a tendency to trust what he has to say, based on his education, his leadership, clearly blessed by God in reaching thousands of people with the Christian gospel, and millions who were inspired and blessed by his ministry through The Purpose Driven Life.  The manner in which he has handled both his ministry success, and his personal success, exemplifies the humility that Jesus called being "poor in spirit" in the Sermon on the Mount.  

So if he has discerned, from his study of the scripture, an interpretation which allows the spiritual gifts of women to be used in the church, unprejudiced by the influence of ancient cultural biases against them, then I trust his judgement to a greater degree than I do those who seem to be protecting the patriarchy they've created, rather than opening the door to blessing for the church.  And when I see the ministry of Linda Barnes Popham, as the lead pastor of a church that is being the body of believers that Christ intended for them to be, that's an affirmation of her call to serve the church and of God's hand of blessing on her ministry.  

Compare that with the fussing, bickering, Southern Baptist Convention, facing a rapidly declining membership and attendance, factionalism and divisiveness, characterized by vicious attack blogs tacitly approved by a faction that calls itself the Conservative Baptist Network, and unable to figure out how to handle a large and crippling clergy sexual abuse scandal, turning on the female victims instead.  A denomination in which a faction succeeded in driving off the head of its Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission because his spiritual conscience discerned how a right wing political candidate many Southern Baptists were supporting was the moral and worldly opposite of the pursuit of righteousness that characterizes the Christian faith.  

Do I trust them to correctly discern the meaning of scripture passages related to the role of women in the church?  No.  Not until they resolve the issues that are bringing them down and causing millions to look for spiritual leadership and discernment elsewhere. Not until there's evidence of their dependence on God's spiritual leadership, and not on their own claims to theological and doctrinal superiority.  

Here Are Some Virtues and Values Which Will Define a Person as "Woke"

Author's note:  This is a long discussion and it puts a lot of references to the Bible in place.  My intention is to put on paper an acknowledgement that the blending of right wing poitics with the Christian nationalism and conservative literalism of most Evangelical Christian churches is standing against the Christian gospel in its anti-woke agenda.  For whatever that's worth, whether it convinces a few Christians that their rignt wing politics and being "anti-woke"  are out of step with their professed faith, or it affirms for some Christians that it is possible to be a practicing Christian , have strong faith, believe that the Bible is a truthful record of the gospel of Jesus and still be a Democrat, the author will have achieved his purpose. Being "woke" is consistent with the Christian gospel and especially with Jesus' interpretation and application of the whole spectrum of Judao-Christian philosophy.

This only scratches the surface, and is a small representation of the places where a correctly interpreted New Testament supports what conservatives, in their current definition of terms, call being "woke."  As you read along, you will see the purpose for my comments.  There's enough for a whole series on this subject, which the author is working on as time permits.  

Many among the conservative, Evangelical branch of Christianity in the United States are fond of claiming that a person's Christian faith depends not on the grace of God as the scripture says it does, but on believing a set of doctrines they often refer to as "fundamentals of the faith."  They'll tell you that you can't be Christian if you believe something different than these fundamentals, which are based on their interpretation of the Bible, not on a recognized, historically correct interpretation of it.  I would never say that a person's sincerity of faith depends on whether they accept or reject a particular philosophy of life whether it is consistent with the Christian gospel or not, but I would say that being anti-woke is an inconsistent position to take by someone who claims belief in the Christian gospel.

"Woke" has its Definition in both African-American Vernacular English and now, in a Conservative Distortion

The term "woke" has, in a very short period of time, come to define a sense of awareness of bigotry and prejudice aimed at people who are racial, ethnic, social, religious, economic or cultural minorities among the population at large.  It is an adjective, derived from African American vernacular English, meaning "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice."  

That definition has expanded and is used by right wing political extremists to define "politically liberal, as in matters of social or racial justice, in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme."  And so it has worked its way into right wing political criticism of anything or anyone that exhibits such an awareness and is active in promoting any kind of social or racial justice.  

So, if we take this definition and use of the term to its logical and reasonable conclusion, the far political right is opposed to any form of justice and any form of equality.  They're the ones who have said that, in so many words, and affirmed it by their actions, including support for political candidates who are identified with that position.  They are unequivocally opposed to social justice and racial and ethnic equality and that is a fact, provable with the evidence that is coming out of various presidential campaigns, their members of Congress.  Play a few news reports of Trump speeches, or those of Desantis or any of the other Republicans running for anything.  

The Biggest Problem for Anti-Woke Republicans is Holding a Position Which Contradicts the Christian Gospel 

It's really difficult for me to understand how a political party and a conservative branch of the Christian church can be so tightly wound up together that political positions are almost indistinguishable from religious beliefs, and still be anti-woke.  Either the Evangelicals who are politically engaged in Republican politics don't really understand that their religious convictions have an objective basis and are more than just a label, or they are completely ignorant of much of the content of the Bible which they claim to believe is inerrant and infallible in its original manuscripts, and have no idea about how to interpret it in context. 

For those Christians who are reading this, and who hold the general belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, I am including specific references to the scripture as evidence that the Christian gospel supports what conservatives now call, with intentional derision, being "woke."  Using a correct hermeneutical approach to interpreting the ancient text in its historical and cultural context, the case for being woke is made by Jesus Christ and by the Apostles who wrote to interpret his govpel message as they led the early church.  

Being anti-woke is virtually point-by-point denial of the core teachings and principles of the Christian gospel, starting with those things that Jesus taught and modeled for living, and then, moving through the works of the Apostles that are preserved in the New Testament.  They introduced the idea of human equality, including racial, ethnic, political, and social equality, into a culture that knew nothing of it.  So it would be incredibly inconsistent with Christian values to support a political party that is promoting what has become the prejudiced status quo of society, or worse, to continue to interject ideology that is deliberate and willful in its racist bigotry and its economic prejudice.  

Jesus himself separated the Christian conversion experience from any other ideological, political or social requirement.  His words, recorded in John 3:16-18 make this clear.  

Right after that passage, in John 4, the apostle relates an experience which illistrates this principle.  In leaving Jerusalem and going back to Galilee, Jesus led his disciples to travel through Samaria, a province whose people were despised by the Jews because of their mixed ethnicity and their pagan religion.  Most Jews, travelling from Jerusalem to Galilee, took a longer route west of the Jordan River that bypassed Samaria but Jesus went straight through the country.  He had a specific purpose in mind for doing so.

In this account, he breaks down two barriers, one racist, one sexist.  He engages a woman in a conversation as he sits by a well, asking her to draw water for him and talking to her about her life, focusing the conversation on her, not on himself. This broke the strict social and racial barriers that existed in the culture, and in the Jewish religion, at the time. Then, the women returned to her nearby village, and came back with most of the rest of the population because of her having related the account of her encounter and conversation with Jesus.  Many of those who heared the Christian gospel from Jesus became Christians.  Jesus reached out and broke down a social barrier related to gender discrimination, as well as one related to race, with Samaritans being among the earliest converts to Christianity. It would be something his critics would cite as justification for his crucifixion.

If we just changed the time period, such an event would be considered "woke" by modern day conservative political definition.  Anyone who ignores social, ethnic and religious prejudice and offers people on the other side of those barriers the same opportunity as the "privileged" already have is labelled "woke," and that is what politically conservative right wingers are fighting to stop.  

It is legitimate and fair, then, to compare modern day religious, political conservatives to the Pharisees who agitated for Jesus' crucifixion because of his wokeness.   

The Apostle Paul affirms this principle in all of his church epistles.  To the church in Rome, where the ethnic and racial distinctions that existed in the Roman Empire were brought together, and mattered in every aspect of life, Paul said, "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.  For, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." [Romans 10:12-13, NRSV]  The use of the term "Greek," or "gentile" in some translations, identifies all non-Jewish persons and is particularly significant, given the ethnic makeup of the population of Rome at the time.  This was also a message to the Romans, who thought of themselves as superior to the ethnic and religious minorities that they had conquered.  

To churches in the Roman province of Galatia, Paul makes a similar proclamation.

"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." Galatians 3:28-19 NRSV  

That is a very remarkable statement for the period of time in which it was written, and far, far more progressive for its day than the racial justice and political unity we seek in our day.  Judaism's religious leaders guarded the promise of Abraham jealously, and under the rule of pagan empires since the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 587 B.C. was the only point around which their nationalistic hope and cultural identity was wrapped.  So if the term had been in use in those days as it is now, that perspective would have been very "woke."  

To the small Christian church in Colossae, a town in a beautiful valley in the southwestern part of the Anatolian peninsula, Paul clarified the unity in which people who believed in the Christian gospel were brought together, setting aside all of the various kinds of barriers that divided them.  

"In that renewal [a reference to the churches] there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all, and is in all." Colossians 3:11, NRSV 

Both of the leading Apostles of the early church, Peter and Paul, had personal experiences which they describe as being moved by the Spirit of God to understand and accept the equality of humanity, and the record of their experiences is part of the New Testament narrative.  Peter had some difficulty accepting the religious principles which extended equality to all regardless of their ethnicity or racial ancestry and had to be corrected publicly by Paul.  Paul is sometimes criticized for patriarchy and even misogyny, but those criticisms are based on isolated examples pertaining specifically to local cultural restrictions.  In fact, there were multiple women whom Paul recognized as leaders of local churches and whom he trusted as associates in his apostolic ministry.  

So it is accurate to say, using modern-day vernacular, that the Apostles of the early Christian church, who wrote the New Testament, were "woke" by the American conservative definition and use of the term.  

Anti-Wokeness Comes from a "Root of Bitterness" which Defiles People, Making Them Immoral and Godless

"Let mutual love continue," says the writer of the book of Hebrews, written to Jewish converts to Christianity.  "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers [referring to those who were of different ethnic and language groups, and who may have been immigrants or refugees from other parts ot the Empire, or slaves transported away from their homes] for by doing that, some have entertained angels unawares."  Hebrews 13:1-2 NRSV

This is really a recognition of what the conquered people of the Roman Empire had in common.  And in this particular epistle to a church that was identified by its former religious and current ethnic and racial culture, the writer is bridging the gaps of former prejudices, biases and religious differences with a spiritual unity, recognizing that people may have been living among them whose life circumstances offered them no other choice.  Some of them were fleeing oppression in other places, or trying to escape from some kind of tyranny which was one of the ways the Romans dealt with the diverse ethnic and religious populations over which they ruled.  

Even the old Jewish covenant recognized the need, produced by political upheaval and tyrannical rulers, for refuge and safety to be provided to people who were literally fleeing for their lives.  Their own experience led to a complete understanding of the need for this.  Circumstances, such as they were, produced wokeness.  The parallels we see here that are related to asylum seekers from Latin America attempting to enter America are very similar and this passage from Hebrews, correctly interpreted, can be applied to the attitudes and actions aimed at helping these people experience some kind of humanity and peace in their struggle to be free from whatever tyranny they are escaping.  That's at the core of who we are as Americans.  Anti-woke Republicans, standing against that, are also anti-American.

So the draconian measures our previous Presidential administration imposed on those who were trying to escape, the lack of genuine hospitality and indeed, the hostility they faced at the border, and still do, is very much in complete opposition to this Christian principle, outlined in the scriptures.  Do we get this now?  I haven't even begun to scratch the surface when it comes to the fact that, point by point, that an anti-woke position is completely and totally inconsistent with the Christian gospel.  

"Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured as though you yourselves were being tortured."  Hebrews 13:3, NRSV

I cannot read this passage without thinking of the images of parents and children being separated at the border, of their being crowded into fenced-off areas of whatever buildings were available for use, wondering whether there was any provision made for providing meals or how uncomfortable and miserable it must have been to try and sleep, to be forced to sit there for days, treated in such an inhumane manner.  Does that sound like a political party and presidential administration sympathetic to or influenced by Christian principles?  

The fact that such cruelty is still being advocated, in fact, celebrated as a political campaign platform plank, a position some candidates think with earn them votes, is clear evidence of the complete incompatibility of anti-wokeness with the Christian gospel.  The explanation for the anger, hatred and bigotry that those who take this position express toward refugees and asylum seekers is a "root of bitterness" [Hebrews  12:15-16] which defiles people and makes them immoral and godless.  That's the only way to describe the kind of cruel heartlessness and inhumanity that some people want to inflict on refugees seeing the peace and safety of our country.  

Where, in the Anti-Woke Agenda, are These Christian Values Visible?  

In the opening narrative of what is known as Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, which is more than likely a compilation of multiple "sermons" he preached as he went from place to place teaching and preaching, a set of virtues are described.  These are known as the "Beatitudes," and they are a description of the character produced by the set of life principles of the Christian spiritual conversion experience known as salvation.  The beatitudes describe who we are, not so much what we are about.  In these eight virtues, Jesus praises the kind of people his followers, Christians, will be.  

Those who are "poor in spirit," is a description of personal humility, in whatever way being humble can be a virtue, the absence of arrogance, and the willingness to be dependent on the strength of other human beings, and on God, in recognizing our own weaknesses.  "Those who mourn," is a recognition of the problems inherent in human existence, a measure of depravity which underlines human nature as characteristically unable to save itself without some kind of motivation toward aspiring to be better than we are and achieve what we are capable of being.  In a Christian context, this is the recognition of the nature of humanity as inherently sinful, in need of the creator God's redemptive power.  

Meekness is also a virtue that allows us to embrace each other for who we are, understanding that we are unique, and that the diversity created by unique cirumstances is a strength of humanity, not a weakness.  It goes hand in hand with those who seek after righteousness, which is not a set of do's and don'ts, a list of rules stating this is right or wrong, but it is the recognition that acceptance of the differences and uniqueness of each human being is acknowledgement of the sanctity of life.  

Being pure in heart is a virtue which is the opposite of the characteristic of selfishness.  Understanding that desiring what is best for others is also a benefit to ourselves.  Lifting other people up, and helping them achieve their potential also helps us achieve our own as a member of a community that helps each other, respects each other and works together in unity.  

The highest virtue among the beatitudes is that of peacemaking.  Violence and hostility are produced by selfish ambition and evil intentions.  It leads to the destruction of the unity of humanity.  Peacemaking brings people together, something that Jesus clearly intended for his gospel to do.  Jesus reserved the highest honor of being called "children of God" for those who were peacemakers.  

Being a peacemaker, and seeking the peace of the community generates hostility and violence toward the peacemakers from those whose selfish ambitions are driven by evil intentions.  Jesus himself was crucified, not because he had done anything wrong, but because he had angered those whose personal position in life, and whose own prosperity was threatened by the kind of peace and unity that Jesus preached and taught.  Jesus turned the status quo upside down with his statements, "You have heard that it was said...but I say to you."  Those who profited from disunity and chaos were the ones who conspired to have him crucified.  

By the way, one of the key interpretive statements of the whole Bible is found just after this passage in the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus says, recorded in Matthew 5:17-18, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.  I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.  For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished."  

What it means is that Jesus and his gospel, his preaching and his teaching, and the written references recording it in the New Testament, are the criteria by which all of the rest of the Bible is to be interpreted.  Jesus claimed to fulfil the law and the prophets, and in this passage, begins to appply his unique interpretation to it.  The law always existed, and would continue to exist until all is accomplished.  When he was being executed on the cross, Jesus declared all to have been accomplished by stating, "It is finished."  

In the vernacular we are using in this discussion, Jesus was woke.  He was crucified by those who weren't.  

Where, in the right wing political movement that claims its agenda and platform is "anti-wokeness" do you see any of the virtues and values of Jesus' beatitudes, or of his gospel exhibited?  If, as many right wing religious and political conservatives claim, America was founded on Christian principles, then doesn't that make politicians who stand against those principles, which can be clearly defined as being "woke," anti-American?  

I think it does. 

Controlling the Narrative with Distractions is the GOP Campaign Strategy

We are experiencing one of the most successful, effective Presidencies since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Economic growth is soaring, inflation is abating, just as the President said it would when he cautioned Americans that there was no quick fix, that the economy was reacting to the effects of the pandemic and things would settle down and work.  Prices have stabilized or come down in some cases, and the recession that has been warned about, talked about, speculated about and used as a means of attacking the President's economic policies, has not materialized and it has left conservative economists who don't like Biden in a quandary, because, well, it's just not working out to their advantage.  

But we are hearing very little about it in the mainstream media.  Even the one cable news outlet that can be considered to be favorable, or at least, fair in its reporting on Democrats and on the Biden Administration keeps the narrative on Trump, Trump, Trump.  And if the focus isn't on him, or on the moribund "race" among multiple GOP wannabees, which is not news because it's going nowhere, it's on some silly, ridiculously racist bigotry or attack on civil rights by Ron Desantis, or the dead horse of impeaching the President, which has no chance at all of succeeding.  

And when I say no chance of succeeding, I mean, it won't ever get past the house, even with its slim GOP majority.  Watch and see.  They have no issue on which they can debate, or even offer an alternatie plan, so they are resorting to whatever gets them headlines.  And it's working.  

Democrats Can Stay on Message and Still Grab Headlines

If I were advising Democrats on campaign strategy, or on their public relations and messaging, I would be imploring them to do things to get media attention and make sure that what's happening gets covered.  There are a few scattered Democratic candidates for Senate and for Congress who are on the attack, aggressively going after their opponent, and they are getting attention, even in local media in red states, and it is working for them.  But the success of the President in economic policy, foreign policy, on the infrastructure bill, should not be left up to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene to sing its praises, though I have to admit, that is going to get a whole lot more mileage before it runs its course.  

We've been through an entire week now of story after story decrying Ron Desantis' attempt to change history objectives in Florida with a learning objective claiming that slavery provided benefits to slaves by helping them acquire skills.  I get that this is a despicable, racist, historically uninformed, statement that has prompted multiple commentaries against it.  But it has covered up a week's worth of news time that could have been focused on the economy or the way the infrastructure plan that the President put forth is working to create jobs and improve the infrastructure, that the way the administration is managing and covering the costs of these things isn't causing a recession.  

What if the media had just ignored Desantis and his comments, treating it as it deserved, by giving it absolutely no attention whatsoever?  Of course his position on slavery's benefits was despicably racist and horrific, coming from a modern day politician running for President.  But ignoring it would have denied him the attention, and free publicity, he was seeking.  Covering him up with better news about the improving economy, which was much more newsworthy, would have sent the clear message to him that the media thinks he is pretty much irrelevant now, and what he has to say or what he does is no longer of any consequence.  

An Ongoing Problem That Needs to be Solved

I could almost not believe what I was hearing when MSNBC determined it would no longer cover every single Trump rally, nor show footage of him making a speech at a rally.  Why bother?  He says the same things over and over, and has become so stale and boring, even his own base is avoiding his rallies as if they were spraying COVID viruses in the air conditioning system.  If the media is going to cover his every move, every time he erupts in a rage over facing consequences for something he's done, every cough, every time he makes a trip to the toilet, then Democrats need to be doing things to get the same kind of attention.  

The GOP has not offered any kind of alternative plans or agenda to the Democrats except whining about how bad the world is and claiming that they can make it better.  While we should win elections on policy, where Democrats have a distinct and almost unfair advantage, we have to make sure that message gets out.  Republicans have several media outlets that function as propaganda arms of the party, which is one of the problems.  But connecting the issues to the feeling of real people is another matter entirely.  

As boring as Trump's ongoing monotone of complaints can be, over and over again, people are also easily bored by the list of issues and political achievements of Democrats.  Most people are lost when the economy is the subject of conversation, and they are much less included to pay attention to the manner in which legislation is benefitting them.  And frankly, the messaging, combined with the sensationalism of Republican propaganda outlets is the explanation for why the President's job approval is stuck in the mid-40% range, and his disapproval is over 50%.  

It's hard to say how much mileage the Biden campaign will get, in terms of attracting voters, from MTG's inadvertend rousing "endorsement," but that's the kind of thing that makes headlines, draws people especially on social media, by the millions if the info on this one is correct, and keeps the attention focused on the message.  It goes against the grain of Democrats, who call this "tabloid politics," but the electorate is no longer all that engaged in stats and figures showing them how well off they really are while they are spending a big chunk of their change on credit card interest.  

So control the narrative.  Think out of the box.  Get creative.  The politics are heavily weighing on our side.  We need to help generate enough support to win decisively in 2024, to put Trumpism away for good.  

The Wheels of Justice Can Move Quickly

On the morning of May 22, a fire suddenly broke out in the historic building of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in the border town of Douglas, Arizona.  The historic building, 110 years old, shares a historic block in the center of the town known as "Church Square," on which three other churches, including First Presbyterian, First Baptist and Grace United Methodist, also sit.  The fire in the historic building was intense, and there was some smoke and fire damage to the First Presbyterian Church building next door as a result.  

Unfortunately, overnight, flames re-ignited in the First Presbyterian Church building, also causing significant damage.  Both buildings, historic gems on a block that had been set aside for worship more than a hundred years earlier, were total losses.  Evidence indicated the fire in that church was also caused by arson.  The congregations have pledged to rebuild, but the historic character of the buildings that stood on Church Square is lost forever.  

Just two days later, federal officials, working with local police, who had determined that the fires were intentionally set, had a suspect in custody.  Eric Ridenour, a local Douglas resident, became the primary, and only, suspect in the case.  Ridenour was an outspoken opponent of gay persons serving as pastors of churches, and also of women serving as pastors.  The pastor of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church is a gay man, and the pastor of First Presbyterian Church is a woman.  The pastor of Grace Methodist, also on the same square, is also a woman, but their building was not damaged in the fire.  There is other evidence, including security camera footage, implicating Ridenour.  

On Friday, in Federal Court in Tucson, Ridenour was arraigned, and pled not guilty to two counts of arson.  His trial date was set for August 22.  That's August 22, 2023, less than a month from the date of his arraignment.  

And That's the Point, Isn't It?  

The only daily newspaper in Cochise County, Arizona, where Douglas is located, The Sierra Vista Herald, has been covering this story since the fires occurred.  They've laid out the evidence that has been reported, including the motive that law enforcement believes was behind the arson incidents.  It doesn't appear complicated.  The suspect's comments, and prior behavior, along with the camera footage, seem to be pretty conclusive.  That's what we know from the media reports.  His lawyers have a month to get ready, as does the prosecution.  Then we'll find out how this turns out.  

So we have a case that took exactly three months from the comission of the crime to the opening date of the trial.  Three months.  

Now it might be quite obvious where I am headed with this.  Eric Ridenour is a citizen of the small town of Douglas, Arizona.  He has a prior record of violent outbursts, involving an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend.  He's an ordinary, regular citizen who is now a viable suspect in a crime, which will be thoroughly investigated.  He is being held over for trial because the federal judge determined he would be a danger to the community if released.  

Just an ordinary American citizen.  Three months from comitting the crime to the opening date of the trial.  

And that's the point.  

Are we a nation of laws?  Apparently, for Eric Ridenour, we most definitely are exactly that.  A nation of laws, true to its constitutional principles, right down to a speedy trial in front of a jury of his peers.  

So now, let's move to the crimes committed at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.  

Telling me that this is an apples and oranges comparison to the point I am making will not change my mind about it at all.  In the church arson case, the investigation into the crime began immediately.  On January 6th, that may have been the case, but the Department of Justice has admitted to deliberately slowing things down and dragging their feet, without an explanation as to why.  With our Democracy at stake, and the instigator of that insurrection already having gotten away with multiple crimes, outlined in what we now call The Mueller Report, that's not justice. The deadline for any verdict to be effective in administering justice is January 20, 2025, unless Joe Biden is re-elected to the Presidency.  But whether or not he is shouldn't be a factor here.  Justice is justice and if there's a way for a criminal to escape it, even by appointing his own justice department to do him favors instead of enforce the law, then it's not justice and we are not a nation of laws. 

Of course January 6th is a more complicated case, and it takes more time to gather necessary evidence, though Congress certainly produced a mountain of it from their investigation.  Let's just admit that things have not been handled with regard to January 6th in the same way any other trial with evidence would be handled, express our regrets, and then get these trials moving as quickly as possible toward justice.  And while we're waiting, let's treat Donald Trump the same way we are treating Eric Ridenour.  After all, they are both Americans entitled to equal application of their constitutional rights.  

Ridenour is being held because he is considered a "danger to the people."   Since his trial is happening on August 22, that's not an unreasonable amount of time to wait it out in jail.  He's been indicted for setting two churches on fire, motivated by religious bigotry because he disagrees with their choice of pastor.  It seems to me that there's a little more danger to the people from someone who incited an insurrection intended to overthrow the government by attacking the Capitol building with the intention of either sparking a civil war or preventing the results of a legitimate election from being certified which would amount to overthrowing the government.  It would be fair, and reasonable, to hold the perpetrator of an insurrection until trial.  

This is One of Those Watershed Moments

We have a political party in this country that is pouring effort, support, and millions of its dollars, into an effort to completely change reality.  Part of the blame for that happening is the laziness and lack of interest in political affairs that is a disease in the United States, where we take going into a voting booth so much for granted that experiencing the consequences of having done that is still baffling and defying expectations.  Fascism is staring us in the face, much more obvious than it was in the 1930's in Europe, but it seems we recognize it even less than the Europeans did back then.  It's even using a lot of the same methodology and tools that it once did.  

We're still a constitutional democracy, and we must do whatever that permits us to do to preserve it, protect it and keep it working for us.  A big part of that is holding our leaders accountable, and make them realize who it is that they are serving, and for whom they are working.  No matter who it is or how rich they are or how powerful they are, they must respect the law and they are subject to equal justice under it.  Even those with whom we share political convictions in the same party need to understand they are accountable to we, the people.  Democrats expect honesty and give trust.  This is the issue of the day and the means to address it was given to us in the Constitition by the founding fathers.  

So use it.  

  

 

Inside the Tangle Created by the Intersection of Conservative Evangelicalism and Right Wing Politics, It's as Bad as it Gets

Baptist News Global: Russell Moore is Preaching to the Choir with "An Altar Call for Evangelical America" 

"In Moore's Evangelical America, it's always election day, and never Easter."  

The Southern Baptist Convention has retained many of the social habits and customs of the Confederate States of America, unwittingly, perhaps, but partly because those customs and habits could be hidden inside, and protected by the walls of the church.  Though its operational polity, as a voluntary collection of independent, autonomous, Baptist churches, most of which are located in the eleven states of the old Confederacy plus border states of Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma, is democratic, the elected leadership and the paid executive staff of the executive committee's Nashville headquarters, along with its entities that include six seminaries and two mission boards, is the product of a network of nepotism, influence peddling, favor-granting, back slapping, glad-handing good ole boy relationships.  The high dollar jobs in the entities and at the executive committee are filled based on who the candidates know, not on how qualified or how well they can do the job.  

Russell Moore was riding high in this system.  He had, in the vernacular of the aspiring, wannabe leaders among the pastors and denominational employees, "hitched his wagon" to the right good-ole-boys, namely Dr. Al Mohler, the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Moore had studied and served as a provost, and wound up as the Executive Director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.  The ERLC had undergone a metamorphosis from its former days as the "Christian Life Commission," when Richard Land, a high level insider among SBC conservatives in the early days of their takeover of the convention, became its President.  It went from being committed to supporting and lobbying for the protection of the first amendment's "wall of separation" between church and state, to lobbying in favor of initiatives that slowly erode and tear down the wall, blurring the lines and increasing the influence and power of conservative Christianity in government.  

Land led the agency from 1988 to 2013, treating it as a personal fiefdom. But Land got into trouble and earned a reprimand from trustees over his comments on the Trayvon Martin case, and retired shortly after realizing they weren't going to back down.  Moore became his successor, and had, among the commission's trustees, a majority of personal allies, friends and supporters from Southern Seminary and who had connections to his mentor, Al Mohler.   

Although still conservative, Moore's approach was broader than Land's had been when it came to advocacy and support for issues in which the SBC felt it had something to say.  Some of what the ERLC did under Moore would be criticized as being too "woke" by far right conservatives in the denomination, like its support for the North Korean Human Rights act, and the Sudan Peace Act.  I have no idea why conservatives in the SBC are against peace, given that Jesus mentions it in his initial list of identifying characteristics of a Christian.  Where they get their opposition to human rights is anyone's guess.

But Moore committed two unforgiveable sins which led to his decision to step down, as attacks from conservatives threatened to break the ERLC apart.  One was his outspoken opposition to Donald Trump's candidacy for President in 2016, and his continued opposition to Trumpism, criticizing Trump's immorality and worldly image, saying that choosing a national leader whose lifestyle is contrary to Christian morality and values disqualified him for Christian support.  The other was his leading the ERLC to support victims of the massive clergy sexual abuse scandal in the SBC, following the publication of a years-long investigation in The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News.  Under Moore's leadership, the ERLC took the lead in support for victims, rather than the pastors who victimized them or the SBC executive committee, which resisted, and has continued to resist, involvement in any meaningful resolution.  

Moore was still supported by ERLC trustees, but the attacks on him were relentless, and there were powerful members of the executive committee bypassing the constitution and bylaws of the denomination to attempt to intimidate or force the trustees to fire him.  After exposing their shenanigans in a letter to the ERLC trustees, which was leaked to outside sources, he resigned, becoming the director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today, and currently, its editor-in-chief.  Though still an ordained Baptist minister, he is a member of non-denominational Immanuel Church in Nashville, a congregation which, ironically, leases the former worship space of a Southern Baptist church.  

Focus on Where This Becomes as "Bad as it Gets" and Why This Matters

There is probably not any other person whose experience characterizes just how far right wing religious conservatives have gone off the rails, and have departed from Biblical Christian faith and practice, and from the gospel of Jesus Christ than the manner in which they have treated Russell Moore.  Moore is no closet liberal.  His credentials as a Southern Baptist conservative are as impeccable as they come.  He was a protege of Dr. Al Mohler, the long-time President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who is one of the original leaders in the "conservative resurgence" that gained control of the SBC in 1979.  

He is a doctrinal and theological conservative, a believer in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, and in a literal interpretation of it.  His views on women in the ministry, abortion rights and LGBTQ rights line up with the most conservative leaders in the denomination.  He was a professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dean of the School of Theology, and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration, second in command.  He was the executive editor of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.  He served as pastor of Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, one of Kentucky's largest and most conservative SBC congregations.  He was a correspondent for Baptist Press.  

But he made enemies in the SBC because he let his Christian convictions and beliefs guide his political choices, and correctly, openly and vocally opposed Trump's candidacy on Christian principles.  Who he had been up to that point counted for exactly nothing among the conservatives in the SBC who went on the attack against him.  Nor did anyone figure out, from his well-stated, Biblically-centered arguments against supporting Trump's candidacy, that a solid, conservative, Southern Baptist insider was making a sound Biblical argument against Christian support for Donald Trump. He separated his personal opposition to Trump from his position at the ERLC, but that didn't matter to his critics.  

Then, when the messengers gathered for the annual meeting of the denomination and finally started acknowledging the need to do something about the sexual abuse problem that had been exposed by the Texas newspapers, he led the ERLC to be the first to take action.  They sponsored training for church leaders to help them counsel and comfort victims of abuse, most of whom had been abandoned and neglected by the churches in which they were abused.  He had several abuse victims as part of the conference, several of whom had been advocating for the denomination to take action for decades, and that didn't sit well with conservatives.  They were willing to use this as another way to attack Moore, and attempt to force him out of his position.  

Other Issues Which Angered Conservative Critics of the ERLC

Under Land's leadership, the ERLC was not much of an advocate of anything.  Land was content to use his position as a means of hobnobbing with important Republicans and making sure they were able to use the influence of the nation's largest Protestant denomination to their advantage.  Moore took its mission and purpose seriously, and interpreted its advocacy based on Christian faith principles and values.  The ERLC became much more active in the areas of religious liberty, human dignity and rights, family stability and civil society.  

Under Moore's leadership, the ERLC began working with parents of gays and lesbians, saying that the Christian response for parents was not shunning them and putting them on the street.  "The answer is loving your child," he said.  And that did not sit well with his conservative opponents.  He was opposed to displays of the Confederate flag, saying that "The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting fire to the other," following the mass shooting in Charleston.  He condemned the 2017 Charlottesville white supremacy rally.  The ERLC encouraged Christian families to sponsor, house, and help refugees coming to the United States from Syria.  Moore also criticized Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, saying that Trump's proposal to shut down mosques in the United States was a violation of religious liberty and Cruz's proposal that a religious test for refugees would violate the first amendment and condemn innocent women and children to death simply because they held different religious beliefs other than Christianity.  

The ERLC was, in their opinion, "too woke."  In other words, Moore had led the ERLC to be far more Christian than Southern Baptists' conservative network of leaders was willing to tolerate.  

An Illustration of What we are Dealing With Now

The influence of right wing politics, which have become pretty extreme by any definition of the term, is leading many Christians into apostasy.  There's a combination of reasons at work here, one of them being a lack of trust in the power of God to resolve issues that conservative Evangelicals see as symptoms of worldliness, sin and evil.  Rather, it's a lack of trust that God will do things that they want to see done, mainly punishing those that they consider enemies.  

I have a hard time believing that someone like Ted Cruz is as oblivious to the provisions of religious liberty and freedom of conscience found in the first amendment as some of his proposals, used to pander to the ignorant, seem to indicate.  Cruz knows exactly what is in the first amendment, and it does not suit those whose Christian nationalist beliefs compel them to make everyone who isn't their kind of Christian a subservient, second class citizen.  The conservative Evangelicals who have picked up the Christian nationalist narrative are leading their churches into apostasy, a departure from doctrine and theology found in the gospel of Jesus, and indeed, a complete departure from everything Jesus believed, taught, and by which he lived his life. 

Moore resigned from the presidency of the ERLC at the end of his term, leaving behind a letter for trustees, which was leaked to the religious media, that called out the manner in which he had been attacked and vilified by his enemies.  I'm sure they were hoping to isolate him, not only from Southern Baptists, but from the Evangelical community at large.  But he landed on his feet, and the fact that his record speaks for itself is encouraging.  He did leave the Southern Baptist Convention behind, but he is probably in a position to be more influential among Evangelicals than he was at the ERLC.  He is the editor in chief of Christianity Today.  And he is a member of a large, influential, independent, Evangelical church in Nashville which, ironically, uses the abandoned worship space of a former Southern Baptist congregation.

I'm not here to sell books, however, Moore's newest offering, Losing Our Religion, which is due for release August 1, contains much of his perspective on the capture of American Evangelicals by right wing Republican politics, which is leading it down the path toward apostasy.  Ordering any title from Bookshop.org supports independent, locally owned bookstores.  

The Signal Press continues its commitment to exposing the undermining and misuse of Christian faith for political purposes.  

The Divide in American Christianity Over Right-Wing Politics is Deep

Baptist News Global: What's Really Happening with the "Never Attenders" and What Does Donald Trump Have to do With it? by Rick Pidcock

Americans who are politically liberal, and who tend to be religiously unaffiliated or not directly involved in a Christian church, can sometimes be dismissive of something they've resolved in their own minds, and which they now see as having developed from a major nuisance to a danger to American democracy itself.  If it is, indeed, that much of a danger, then being dismissive isn't going to resolve the issue, nor will it be of much benefit in confronting the problem and solving it.  

The linked article above, by freelance author Rick Pidcock, appears in Baptist News Global, a publication produced by the Baptist General Association of Virginia, a state affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention which is decidedly far to the left of the national denomination doctrinally, theologically, and as a result of that, politically.  I have many liberal friends who, once they're read something in BNG, scratch their heads, having difficulty wrapping their mind around the fact that there are Baptists within the Evangelical tradition, who have a "human rights and freedom" orentation toward faith and government that makes sense to them.  But that is a historic, traditional perspective of Baptists.  Some still believe in those traditions and historic perspectives.

Understanding Evangelical Support for Trump Requires Understanding The Dynamics of Leadership in Evangelical Churches 

Congregational polity is the organizational principle of Baptist churches, and is one of the distinctives which set Baptists, along with many other Evangelicals who follow similar tradition and practice, apart from other denominations.  What that means is that each church identifies its membership as those persons who have made a public profession of their faith in Jesus Christ, and have been baptized, by immersion.  That makes one a member of the local church, and gives them the ability to participate in business sessions where the church makes decisions regarding its ministry.  Each member, including the pastor, deacons or elders, also have one vote.  

So theoretically, a Baptist church, and non-denominational, independent Evangelical churches, are democratic in their governing polity  But what has developed is anything but a democracy.  What has developed, influenced heavily by the televangelist culture and para-church ministries which compete with local church budgets for donations and contributions from the same pool of supporters, is an oligarcy in which a significant number of members of conservative churches are dependent on celebrity preachers and the "consumer church" model for their doctrine and theology.  And because of the influence these leaders have, and the loyalty they demand, their followers are also dependent on them for their politics.  

In the editorial by Rick Pidcock, linked at the top, this dependence on strong, autocratic leaders who aggressively "attack" all of the straw men and perceived "enemies" of conservative Christianity is exactly why Trump was able to gain such a folllowing among Evangelicals like he has in no other constituency in his base.  The majority of the church members are not grounded in their faith, and have little working knowledge of doctrine and theology, so they trust, and depend, on what the high profile, well known, media personalities tell them.  And so it is with politics, too.  They have little understanding of how a constitutional democracy functions, and little tolerance for the fact that it extends equal rights to all citizens, including those who don't share their religious or political convictions.  And so a brash, bombastic, loud talking, boasting, bragging buffoon, who makes things up as he goes along to get a reaction from the crowd, gets their attention.  

Among those who have made themselves rich by "peddling" their own version of the Christian gospel are multiple examples of individuals who have been deceptive, manipulative and mentally abusive to those who give them total loyalty and obedience.  The recent series, Shiny Happy People, uncovers the absolute influence of Bill Gothart and his "Basic Life Principles" seminars, to the point where people give up their personal freedom to follow a legalistic set of rules which they believe will get them a heavenly reward, that is so contrary to Christ's gospel, and in the process, hand handsome sums of cash over to Gothard.  There are dozens of "ministries" like this, controlling lives in order to keep the revenue flowing in.  The extent of their control, and their departure from any true spiritual Christian faith is evident in the many scandals and falls that have occurred among this group, including at its very highest levels.  

This is why a demagogue and a charlatan like Trump has attracted more support from conservative Evangelicals than any Republican candidates since the Moral Marjority and Christian Coalition were first founded.  Trump himself is not a Christian, by his own definition of his "religious beliefs."  He has stridently avoided any confession or admission of sin, or of his need to be forgiven, which is an absolute necessity, according to Christian doctrine, for conversion to take place.  He has created a god in his own image, to suit his own needs.  His worldly lifestyle, which is is brand, is a direct contradiction to every principle of Christian faith and practice.  But none of that matters at all to those among the Evangelical branch of the American church who support him.  He takes an aggresive approach to the use of the powers of office, and is willing to share just enough of it with them to help them accomplish what they are seemingly unable to accomplish spiritually, or to somehow get God to do for them.  

And so, he becomes their savior and their god, in effect, a power that they can manipulate by flattery and support, in a way that they can't do with God.  They are focused on achieving their ends, and their will, not God's, and so they're willing to settle and compromise with this worldly demagogue to get what they want.   

None of the Republicans who have served as President since Jerry Falwell and James Robison brought Reagan into the fold with their endorsement in 1980 have been Evangelical in the practice of their Christian faith.  As it turns out, Reagan, according to Nancy's statements about it after his dementia set in and his death, was involved in New Age religion, considered a cult by Evangelicals.  Bush Senior was a liberal Episcopalian, a weak, wishy-washy President pushed around by stronger elements in the GOP, resentful of much of what they made him do.  Dubya was a member of a liberal Methodist church, in spite of "knowing the lingo," did not share a lot of conservative theology and doctrine with conservative Evangelicals.  Trump is just a more worldly, unethical, morally bankrupt character whose lack of knowledge of anything having to do with Christian faith is obvious and visible.  

But having strong Christian credentials and setting a strong Christian example doesn't matter.  Conservative Evangelicals have invented a thousand convolutions to get around Biblical instruction and Christian principle when it comes to their embrace of right wing extremism as their political expression.  They do not see the inconsistency of this, and, as Rick Pidcock points out, it is driving the sincere, genuine Christians whose convictions and faith practice are governed by the gospel of Christ, out of the church.  And it has caused the disillusion of two generations of young Americans who have turned away completely from any interest in Christian faith, and made many of them hostile to the conservative, Evangelical version of it.  

For those looking for a reason behind the sudden free-fall of attendance and membership in Christian churches, and in particular, conservative, Evangelical churches, this is it.  It is, what I call, the "Trump Effect."  Some congregations, with pastors who can see what's happening, and are exercising the leadership strength that they have to prevent its intrusion into their congregation, are successful in holding it together, though some of those who buy into the lies pick up and go elsewhere.  Others are seeing members leave in large numbers, because the spiritual presence of God has left, and the human effort that remains is misguided and misleading.  

I've quoted Jude verse 4 many times as a warning to Christians in this country about the intrusion of this destructive, anti-Christian political faction into the church.  Although he was writing in the first century, to a church that was experiencing similar problems, his words are relevant and prophetic, and give a warning that church leaders need to heed before they lose the essence of their gathering as an "ecclesia."  

And all Americans need to heed the warning, before we lose our Democracy.  

There's an Exodus From Evangelical Churches Because of Donald Trump's Politics

Baptist News Global: How Much Does Donald Trump's Presidency Have to do with the Growth of "Never Attenders" Leaving Churches? A Lot, According to This Author 

"What if evangelicalism's allegiance to Trump has simply been the catalyst that gave us the courage to walk out under the stars?"--Rick Pidcock, freelance writer, graduate of Bob Jones University, Northern Seminary who counts himself as a "never attender." 

There is nothing in Christian faith and practice, no supporting scripture references, no tradition or traditional teaching, no part of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself, that reconciles the political support given by conservative, Evangelical Christians to Donald Trump.  Support of his candidacy and Presidency by this group, characterized by claimed belief in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, leading to a literal interpretation of its content, is an inconsistency that undermines Christianity altogether, and is explainable only by the cultural influences that occur when extremist right wing politics merges, and overtakes, conservative, Evangelical faith practice.  

So, in order to get the kind of support Trump has received from Evangelicals, something in that branch of the church itself had to be out of step with the Christian gospel and the teachings of Jesus Christ in order to cause this merger of politics and faith.  Pidcock identifies it as the culture of Evangelical churches themselves, which he says is found in the way Evangelical churches are structured.  

They are "structured as an empire led by powerful men who see reality through a lens of supremacy and power.  Its [the Evangelical church] worship services stoke passion for entitlement and celebrate violent retribution.  And its churches are overrun with scandals or quiet submission," says Pidcock.  

That certainly explains the attraction to Trump among many Evangelicals.  They are more than willing to accept a flawed leader who exemplifies virtually none of the values or beliefs of the Christian gospel because he is the means to their ends, which is not, by the way, the fulfillment of any vision of Jesus Christ for the world.  Christians who are committed to and educated in the doctrine and theology of the Christian gospel, which interprets the whole Bible through the lens of Jesus' recorded words in the four written gospel accounts of his life, see how inconsistent it is to support a leader who not only doesn't exhibit convictions based on their values, but who subverts them and trashes them to get what he wants.  So congregations where the leadership is openly supportive of Trump, which would include preaching right wing politics from the pulpit and demanding partisan loyalty to Republicans as a tenet of practice, would become hostile territory to true believers.  

That sounds blunt and judgmental.  But unfortunately, as Pidcock points out here, it's reality.  

Support for Trump, who is openly not Christian, and who is as worldly and antagonistic to the values of the Christian gospel as one can get, has opened the eyes of those in Evangelical churches who have aligned their values with those of the Christian gospel and the teachings and example of Jesus Christ, and have seen how the blending of extremist right wing politics with conservative religion has exposed this heresy within the Evangelical branch of the church.  As a result, churches which are led this way are losing members who are committed to the genuine practice of the Christian gospel.  It is, statistically, a significant loss.  

A Paradigm Shift in Congregational Polity has Occurred Among Evangelicals

The small, Southern Baptist church in which I grew up, a congregation of about 70 people, was operated by "congregational polity," derived from their interpretation of the Bible's description of the church.  The only designated member of the church who was ordained as an "elder" was the pastor.  A small group of Deacons served the congregation by taking care of its ministries and serving as congregational trustees and caretakers of the property it owned.  The deacons were volunteers, the pastor was paid out of the offerings.  

Pastors were hired by the congregation, which would choose a committee of members to interview candidates and make a recommendation on which the whole church would vote.  Consensus, rather than majority rule, was the standard by which a "call" would be extended to the church.  The pastor was responsible for the worship and for the spiritual ministry of the church, preaching and providing spiritual counsel to members.  The Deacons managed its business affairs.  The church, by conviction, believed it functioned to evangelize, or to lead people to express faith in Christ through conversion, to worship together as believers in Christ, to instruct members in Biblical principles in order to grow and mature in the practice of their faith, to fellowship together, to extend the ministry of the church outwardly to serve the community as an expression of the gospel of Jesus.  

That was the way almost all churches identified as "evangelical" operated.  The Apostle Jude wrote a very short, but significant, epistle to the first century church warning against "intruders" bringing worldly values and worldly practices into young, newly formed congregations for the purpose of pushing their own agenda.  His words are remarkably relevant to what has happened to modern, American Christianity, and particularly Evangelical Christianity, as agenda-driven politics has intruded into the church to use it for political purposes.  

The megachurch movement has created a level of church leadership that has corrupted congregational values based on the Christian gospel.  Pastors are no longer just leaders of their own churches, and preachers to their own congregation.  The business of raising the kind of money necessary to keep a congregation of 15,000 people in adequate facilities and providing for their needs has created an atmosphere in which pastoral leadership becomes autocratic and dictatorial, to protect assets that include their own lucrative conference-speaking business and book and video publishing enterprises.  

That kind of leadership has also allowed for the intrusion of heresy, such as white supremacy blended with various forms of Christian nationalism, which are themes used to unite congregations around certain pastors and church leaders, for their benefit, not for that of the church. And they are using the political agenda of the far right, Trumpism, to get people on their side.  The result is that churches are bereft with scandal, some high profile scandals have hit the front pages in increasing frequency because churches have departed from the practice of the Christian gospel and its values, and have placed their allegiance and dependence on accomplishment in right wing politics.  Evidence for this shift in values is everywhere.  The Roys Report is a resource that provides research into specific scandals with the aim of "Reporting the truth, restoring the church."  

A New Constituency for the Democratic Party? 

The exodus from Evangelicalism is significant.  Even those within the church who do this kind of research are pointing to the accelerating loss of millions of people from church attendance and membership.  The Southern Baptist Convention, which lays claim to being the largest Evangelical denomination in the United States, has lost 3.4 million members since its peak in 2006, with almost 2 million of those reported as having taken place since 2016.  Blaming it on COVID, or on quirks in the manner in which churches record members doesn't change the fact that the increased loss of membership corresponds with the election of Trump.  

Republican politics embracing Evangelical political points is nothing new, it goes back to the endorsement of Ronald Reagan's candidacy for President by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, to counter potential support among their constituents for Jimmy Carter, who was himself an Evangelical in contrast to the secular, worldly former "B list" actor.  But, as people leave churches by conviction, because they are "too political," it is not necessarily an automatic transition to also becoming a Democrat.  As Pidcock alludes to in his article, the very nature of being a "non-attender," is independent thinking, from both a Christian perspective and a political one. 

There are those who see that politics and Christian values don't necessarily have to align completely in order for a Christian to vote for a candidate of any specific political party.  I would put myself in that category.  I joined the Democratic party by conviction when I first registered to vote at age 18, and the core values of the party, which promote equality, respect diversity and believe the government exists for the benefit of its people have kept me a Democrat.  I don't have to agree with a specific position to support someone's right to hold it.  In Jefferson's terms, unless it "picks my pocket or breaks my leg," its a matter of someone else's conscience and they have to be accountable for themselves.  

But, while support for Trump is abhorrent to those Christians who are taking the exit ramp from church as a result of it, that doesn't necessarily mean the political support will change.  Listening to a talk show this morning, a commenter said she wasn't going to vote for Trump, but she couldn't vote for Biden, either. What that tells me is that there's a gap in the message.  Nothing Biden has said or done would be contrary to someone's Christian convictions, but sometimes that has been so tightly wound up in politics that there's no separating the two.  

It's not easy to argue the point.  Much of what people believe about President Biden as a politician is part of the false narrative that they believe about most Democratic party politicians.  Can those who have come to the point of making the decision to leave their church over its conflicting values also be convinced to vote for Democratic politicians, based on the fact that they have their own freedom and everyone else ought to have as well? 

I think it is worth a try.  

Are Americans Finally Getting it? And Where's the News Media Focus on this Recent Polling Data

Poll Shows Biden Beating Trump Big Even if Manchin Runs Third-Party

Newsweek: Monmouth Poll Shows Trump's Unpopularity at Highest Levels Ever

Just a couple of weeks ago, the news media, in which the name Donald Trump is featured multiple times every day, was all over the place with the announcement that, in some obscure polling data picked up by one of the major networks, the failed former President 45 was "closing in" with polls showing him either tied, or just a few points behind President Biden in head to head polling.  Now, in going to the websites of composite polls, places like 538 and Real Clear Politics, there's a whole array of daily tracking poll data available from which to pick and choose one's favorites, based on the data that is presented.  But aside from fluctuations caused by what must be a plethora of phone conversations, text messages and emails used to gather the daily data, the trends have been pretty clear.  Trump's "favorability" rating as a Presidential candidate runs constently underwater by a good 15 to 20 points, and while Biden's job approval rating still hovers in the 40's, his unfavorability is nowhere near that high.  

Head to head, or with other factors put into the mix, it's been pretty clear that by a very slight margin, the nation seems to wish that some new candidates would break onto the scene.  But the numbers show a solid and consistent preference of a majority of voters for re-electing the President, given the current possibilities and choices.  While there may be a desire to see new faces, none of the new faces that have emerged up to this point are the ones that voters want to see.  

It's the GOP, not the Democrats, who Have the Problem Here

It's become clear that, other than a shrinking MAGA base, there's no real desire among the American electorate to put the man who was the most corrupt, worst President in history back into the White House.  A majority of Americans never wanted him there, he never got the confidence of the voters, winning only because an anti-democratic, antiquated Electoral College skewed the will of the people in 2016, largely due to third party interference, and then, for four years did absolutely nothing to establish himself as a competent, effective commander-in-chief.  And the end result of his failure was a defeat in 2020, one that, in spite of the Electoral College, and of partisan single-mindedness, was solid and decisive.  

And now, because of the base of MAGA support, and because of absolutely no other reason than that, combined with the sharp, partisan loyalty that George Washington labelled as a negative influence in his farewell address, the Republican party is stuck with a candidate that two-thirds of the electorate won't vote for.  That's if this recent Monmouth poll, not one that is particularly well known or acclaimed, is correct.  

A Significant Change in Political Factors 

This has been out for a couple of days, and yet, I've not heard any of the round-the-clock cable media news sources say much about it, not nearly as much as they do when Trump gains a point here or there. A poll showing Biden ahead by nine points might not be really newsworthy, except that this one shows him even further ahead when Joe Manchin is factored in as a possible independent, third party candidate.  Manchin is between a rock and a hard place right now.  He's going to have the toughest fight he's ever had in West Virginia for his senate seat.  He's played his "guy in the middle" card to the point where he has practically zero support from Democrats, and almost that low level of support among independents who aren't all that conservative themselves.  He also has little support among conservatives, because the polarization of American politics leaves nothing in the middle for fence sitters and self-promoters like Manchin. 

But this is big news.  Democrats have feared a third-party candidate, like Manchin, could put Trump back in office.  Jill Stein's Green Party candidacy was directly responsible for subtracting just enough Democratic votes in several states in 2016 to cost her the election, and that's a mathematically provable fact.  Yet, while Biden's percentage of the vote in the poll drops with Manchin factored in, the presence of the third party actually takes more support away from Trump, dropping his percentages to levels that represent only the very hard core of his MAGA base.  

That's news.  So where is the media jumping on this?  Yeah, that's what I thought. 

Stay Tuned Because There's Much More to Come

The President has strong support within his own party, and no other candidate has anything anywhere near what they will need to qualify for a debate appearance.  If Manchin runs on some sort of third party candidacy, it will be the very end of his political career.  He has to weight whether or not he has a better chance at winning back his senate seat, odds of which are 50-50 at best right now, though he does have a slight lead in the polls over his best known potential challenger.  Either way, Democrats don't have to worry nearly as much about a third party candidacy by Manchin as they would from one on the left, along the lines of Stein's misguided and disastrous run in 2016.  Manchin activity in the senate these past two years has been aimed at gaining support from West Virginia conservatives, so he's not going to pull many votes from Democrats.  He sunk his chances at that with his record these past two years. 

Indictments are finally raining down around the failed former President 45, and it appears that the bulls eye of January 6th indictments is about to be hit with more of them in a court environment much less favorable to the Orange-headed buffoon.  He is getting smacked down in efforts to use his candidacy as a shield from prosecution, an argument that is getting tiresome and weary, and is, in my opinion, one of the reasons why an increasing number of Americans don't want to see him as a candidate for any elected office again.  

I'm optimistic enough, at this point, to think we are going to get our wish.    

 

This "National Embarrassment" Must not be Allowed to Continue

This is more than just politics, more than a test of the limits of free speech and freedom of conscience, more that just a symptom of a bigger political, and educational, problem that now exists within the United States of America.  This is a national embarrassment.  I'm talking about Trump's campaign to be elected to a second, non-consecutive term as President of the United States.  

Trump's Presidency exposed the Achilles Heel of American constitutional democracy  The powers of the executive branch of government, when considered by the founding fathers, who feared an executive officer would develop into the kind of monarchial dictatorship that they had sacrificed to help overthrow a mere decade prior to the meeting in Philadelphia in 1787 when the Constitution was envisioned and drafted, turned out not to be so limited when the checks and balances of government is skewed by extreme partisan rancor.  When Congress is rendered powerless by two thirds limitations on impeachment and removal of incompetent officeholders who are themselves bent on destruction of constitutional democracy, in favor of dictatorial autocracy, there are no checks and balances.  

George Washington saw this, and, in his farewell address, issued a warning against the kind of sharp partisan politics that did not, in fact, take any time at all to develop in the United States.  At the time the Constitution was written, it was difficult to imagine any kind of partisan politics that would over-ride a values system based on trust, honesty, integrity and the kind of patriotism that comes from appreciation of the freedom provided by a nation and its government.  It took the Civil War to get the only criminal restrictions on holding office into the Constitution in the form of the 14th amendment.  Now that they are in place, they need to be used to prevent another civil war.  

There's not a specific mechanism in the 14th Amendment for prohibiting those who engage in insurrection against the United States, such as a conviction in a court, from being eligible for public office. It's initial application simply involved using the record of service to the Confederate States, whether it was in the military or in government, to restrict potential office holders.  We had a Congressional investigation into the January 6th insurrection, complete with thousands of pages of documentation and evidence, which identified the former President as its instigator, with the intention of overturning the results of a legitimate election, fraudulent attempts to appoint fake electors with fake documents, and the complete subversion of the Constitution, all acts which, by definition, meet the standards of the 14th amendment.  

What to do with all of that?  If nothing is done, then it was a waste of time, energy and money.  It does not require a justice department investigation to establish the crime, that's already been done, clearly and decisively, by the congressional committee.  It does appear that there will be indictments coming from the Justice Department's investigation.  But in the meantime, this national embarrassment rolls on in the form of a presidential campaign during which the rhetoric in the speeches given by this candidate is increasingly subversive, vengeful, anti-Constitutional and Nazi-esque.  

So what is there preventing any federal court from also indicting him based on the congressional investigation's evidence?  And, forgive me for thinking in simple terms, but doesn't Congress' investigation establish the former President as being guilty of insurrection?  The constitution does not specify that a jury trial is necessary to do so.  When this amendment was passed and enforced, trials were not held for former Confederates to restrict them from office, all that was necessary was proof that they had supported the Confederate States of America.  We have that same proof, in the congressional investigation.  Who, in government, has the authority to declare the former President guilty of insurrection, based on the congressional investigation, and therefore ineligible for office?  Then let's see if Congress can come up with the two thirds vote necessary to get him off the hook.  

If the Congressional investigation can't establish that fact, then what was all of that effort, time, money spent and all of the television publicity worth?    

This is not his first attempt to overturn the Constitution and overthrow the government of the United States.  The Russians certainly know the full complement of subversive, traitorous deeds the former President got away with because he had the power to keep his justice department from indicting him, simply by appointing a corrupt attorney general who declared, unconstitutionally and without precedent, that a sitting President could not be arrested or indicted while in office.  So the evidence in the Mueller Investigation becomes worthless as far as an indictment is concerned.  But it still establishes, with evidence, the former President's guilt of seditious conspiracy.  There's no doubt about it, and Mueller himself didn't have to leave any hints in his report.  And so, this weakness of the United States, something that should have horrified every single American, is fully known to our most powerful enemy.  

This whole clown show is a national embarrassment.  The fact that a sitting President got away with major criminal activity, outlined in a report published in book form and with thousands of copies distributed, outlines for anyone who reads it the exposure of an inherent weakness in the Constitution.  The end result of all of the maneuvering and the false declarations about Presidential immunity just emboldened the criminal to think he could actually get away with an attempted coup.  And the bottom line is, up to this point, he has gotten away with it.  

This is the danger of our time.  It has removed the luxury of "politics as usual."  As we approach another election that is critical to the continued existence of a democratic United States of America, there is no room for playing games or thinking that we are immune to this sort of political manipulation, because of a mythical belief that our system of constitutional democracy is indestructible.  "It can't happen here," is a fatal phrase.  We cannot mess around with third party diversions for those who don't think they ever get their way, or think that such small groups won't make a difference.  

The Green Party's campaign in 2016 turned out to be enough to keep Hillary Clinton from winning.  The single most ironic fact of their misguided political adventure was that they helped the one candidate on the ballot who was diametrically and violently opposed to every point of their platform get elected, defeating the other major party candidate who would have listened to them and who was already compatible with them in more places than they knew or realized at the time.  They got four years of real grief and the use of political power aimed against everything for which they stood and promoted.  Did they learn their lesson?  I sure hope so, and I sure fear that they didn't. 

Anyone who finds themselves at any degree to the left of the current GOP, run by the MAGA faction, needs to find common cause with President Biden and the Democrats, with enough enthusiasm for their own agenda, to keep whomever the GOP nominates away from the White House, because their only aim is to vindicate the big lie, empower the big liar and set things up for them to permanently turn the United States into a theocratic dictatorship.  The end result of that will be the end of both democracy and any form of true Christianity in America.  

The world is watching, and what it is seeing is that its most powerful and prosperous democracy is incapable of stopping a subversive, insurrectionist, criminal from getting into a Presidential campaign and using it as a personal shield against his arrest for crimes he has committed while serving as President.  That's not a good example for this country to set, and it undermines other efforts at democratic reform elsewhere in the world.  It's pretty clear that no leader in the Republican party has the morals, ethics or fortitude to speak up against something in their house that is very, very wrong.  That leaves it up to we, the people, to make sure that this insurrectionist demagogue never sees his name on the ballot of any state for any office ever again.

Update From July 20, 2023

NOTE:  Further research and inquiry has helped determine that the only necessity in declaring the failed 45th President ineligible for elected office is an act of Congress, passed by a simple majority.  Such a bill was introduced by Rhode Island Representative David Cicilline on December 15, 2022 and supported by 40 other Democrats.  That was a courageous act of conviction, and they are to be commended for this.  It was disheartening to hear that Representative Cicilline resigned his seat.  He's the kind of congressman Democrats need. 

I sometimes don't understand why Americans have such difficulty grasping the seriousness of a situation like this.  Letting this orange headed buffoon bounce all over the country, holding rallies, making speeches threatening the core values of American democracy, trashing American patriotism, values, and the Constitution is the equivalent of letting a known and convicted child molester through the front door of an elementary school without supervision. 

The founding fathers gave us an amendable, flexible Constitution with the understanding that, as time passed, reforms and changes which would strengthen it and make it more effective in limiting the power of government and protecting individual freedom as it expanded to include all Americans, regardless of the differences in the practices of individual conscience.  That we have reached a point of crisis in handling a situation that intellect, logic and reason can easily solve, says that it is time to make some changes.  

Free speech is a pillar of the Bill of Rights, but it does not extend to the protection of subversion and sedition, which is a reasonable, and essential, constitutional protection.  Demagogues and charlatans cannot be allowed to seek elected office, period.  The Constitution permits government this restriction.  So we now need to amend it in such a way as to strengthen its ability to identify, and prevent, such people from running for office.  This would include every member of Congress who participated in, publicly endorsed, or failed to condemn the January 6th Trump-led insurrection against the Capitol building.    

There's Quite a Contrast Between Democratic Congressional Investigations and Republican Congressional Investigations

 As one with an increasing collection of political literature, mostly books, accumulating on shelves that are getting close to full, I gave in to the temptation to purchase a copy of The Mueller Report, and then waded through the information provided on over 500 pages of text.  Needless to say, after reading through all of that, I did not come to the same conclusion that former Attorney General Bill Barr did, in determining that "there was no collusion" between agents of Putin's government and the Presidential campaign of Donald Trump.  In fact, "Collusion and Obstruction of Justice" would have been an appropriate title for a non-fiction work based on that subject.  

In college, I majored in history and English, and then earned a graduate degree in an education concentration.  I wrote lots of papers.  I learned, after getting some disappointing grades on my first few attempts, that support for the thesis of the paper was the key to success.  The more sources I found to support the thesis the better.  It did not take long to learn that an A on a research paper was the result of writing skills that presented more than enough evidence to prove the thesis of the paper, or to draw a different conclusion.  

The Mueller report is particularly well documented, the list of corroborating evidence almost as long as the text itself.  The evidence of the interference of the Russian government in the election was already a fact before evidence began turning up that there was collusion with certain persons in the Trump campaign.  The report documents the interference and the connections with Trump's campaign, along with the atttempts to use the power of the presidency to obstruct the investigation and to attempt to keep the evidence and conclusions of the investigation from seeing the light of day.  The attorney general at the time, thwarted any grand jury indictments and Republican partisan control of Congress stifled a legitimate investigation.  

The Difference Between Democrats Conducting the Impeachments and the January 6th Hearings and Republicans Conducting Hearings on the FBI "Weaponization" 

Along with millions of Americans, I watched vritually every public hearing Congress held during its two impeachments of Trump.  One of the characteristics of Democrats on the committees, along with at least two Republicans who participated, was their continuous referral to documented evidence.  I'd be curious to find out exactly how much time was spent during the hearings on references to the page number, and specific headings of documents in the questioning.  Long periods of silence occurred as both those who were testifying and those who were questioning read from documents in front of them.  The presentation of evidence characterized the televised hearings led by Democrats.

I watched about an hour and a half of the recent hearings conducted by the House into the fantasy issue of FBI "weaponization."  Typical of several of the members of Congress who were engaged in the questioning, there was no reference to any evidence, only the citation of a conspiracy theory or a speculative comment with clear, political overtones.  Questions, in fact, are rare.  Most Republicans make assertions first, then ask pointed questions based on their assertion.  There's almost never a reference to any documents sitting in front of the committee or witnesses, no turning of pages, no questions about specifics in any kind of sequence of events.  

In the segments of the hearings that I watched, I give FBI Director Christopher Wray an "A" in the manner in which he handled the questioning.  He deflected almost every assertion by asking that the questioner present evidence to support their assertion before agreeing to answer their question.  In one instance, he silenced Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz by destroying his assertion that "the public approval of the FBI's job performance is at an all time low," by asking to see what data supported that claim (there was, of course, no such evidence), and then pointed out that applications from Floridians who want to become FBI agents is at an all time high.  

I can't take credit for noticing this on my own.  I was clued in to what was happening by several news commentators, most notably Jill Winebanks, a former General Counsel who is an MSNBC contributor, who initially pointed out the lack of any documentation or facts used by Republicans during their public questioning of Ketanji Brown Jackson.  She noted that the Democrats on the committee almost always referenced written documentation while Republicans just popped off agenda-driven questions, never bothering to support their assertions.  

Her observation prompted mine.  I looked back at some of the televised hearings convened by Congress into the January 6th insurrection, and compared them to what I saw in the GOP's investigation of the FBI.  I'm sure Winebanks was not the only one who noticed, or pointed it out.  

If Something Can be Labelled "Political," This is it

I don't think Democrats should be afraid of anything being labelled, or appearing as "political" coming up in the way of investigations into Trump and his subversive, insurrectionist, election-denying crimes.  Being political doesn't take away from documented facts in any case.  The crimes being investigated and eventually charged and tried are certainly political.  Politics was the motive behind them.  

Would the average American, sitting on the couch watching these hearings, be able to pick up on this stark difference in the conduct of hearings between Democrats and Republicans, after having it pointed out once or twice?  I did, and I'm not claiming any kind of special insight or intelligence at all, because it didn't take that to observe it and figure it out.  It does take watching these hearings and the manner in which members of Congress conduct themselves when they are questioning witnesses.  Republicans always turn their question into a political assertion and never cite sources wihile Democrats almost always use some kind of documentation that they have with them and expect the witness who is testifying to refer to the same reference in their answer.  

Of course, that's not always the way it happens, but Democrats, for the most part, don't seem to be prone to the use of conspiracy theories and unprovable assertions like their GOP counterparts do.  It seems like a terribly ineffective, inefficient way for government to operate, since facts tend to provide reliable information that leads to wise decisions.  Perjury is a criminal charge for lying in a court of law, but Congress doesn't appear to have any such standard in its hearings and investigations. 

And most people don't notice, because all they see of most Congressional investigations and hearings are the sound bytes that are presented by the media.  Few people have the patience, or the interest in the subject matter, to watch hour long segments of boring hearings that are difficult to discern the feelings of those involved.  That may be one of the root causes of the problems in politics that we now face.  Unqualified and incompetent candidates should easily be weeded out by the facts.  The presence of such individuals on the current presidential campaign trail on the GOP side, and of multiple members of Congress who are already elected, is proof of this.