Baptist News Global: Rodney Kennedy, "Why I Keep Writing About Donald Trump"
Rodney Kennedy has become one of my favorite authors this summer. I picked up his most recent book, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy in June, and it has been my summer reading. Clicking the link will take you to bookshop.com where you can order it and support your local, independent, freedom of conscience-supporting book shop owner.
To Evangelicals who Support Trump: You Must Own Who He is and What He Stands For
Kennedy's description of Trump is pretty succinct.
"He is a low grade fascist, a demagogue, a renegade populist, a rhetorical pervert, a serial liar, and a rhetorical arsonist who will not hesitate to light the fire and burn down the house of democracy."
That works for me. And I will add that he has already helped his conservative, Evangelical supporters burn down their faith, and their church, destroying its reputation, its ability to fulfill its evangelistic, Christian, biblical mission and purpose and he has created massive divisiveness and introduced heresy in the form of criticizing the person of Jesus Christ and rejecting his core teachings. If you need evidence for any of that, take a look at church membership and attendance records since Trump became President in 2016.
Across the board, Evangelical groups and churches are seeing plummeting attendance and membership, way worse than what COVID brought about, [though Trump can be blamed for the problems that has caused as well]. And not all Evangelical leaders are loathe to admit the truth. Check out Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America, by Dr. Russell Moore, the former executive director of Southern Baptists' Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and current editor in chief of Christianity Today. Moore is an evangelical who tells the truth about the devastation of the Trump effect on Evangelicalism in America, and issues a call to repentance, yes, repentance from it as the only path back to God for apostate Evangelicals who have thrown Jesus under the bus and made Trump their savior.
Was it Worth It?
The only accomplishment of the Trump administration that some Evangelicals can claim on his behalf is the appointment of three Catholic justices to the Supreme Court, not a single Evangelical among them, which tells me all I want to know about what Trump thinks of the level of intelligence among one of his most supportive constituencies. These three justices made for just enough of a majority to overturn Roe v. Wade. Those who think this is worth what they now must own as a result of their support for a demagogue and charlatan must consider not only the damage that has been done to American democracy and to national security as a result of those four years, but what could happen in the future. Who benefits the most from a second American Civil War that Trump followers, and Trump himself, are now openly pushing?
Evangelical Christians claim that they believe in a spiritual transformation which occurs, prompting repentance and a turn toward dependence on God as the conversion experience bringing a person into the Christian faith. If that is what they genuinely and sincerely believe, there's no evidence of it at all in their approach to politics. Laws can be passed which require obedience based on religious principles, but that doesn't result in any spiritual transformation.
In fact, the support Evangelicals are giving to Trump is sending a very clear message that they no longer believe in spiritual transformation, which explains why people are leaving their churches in droves, and they're not seeing the revival they claim to desire. Depending on a political candidate, especially one who projects an image via a lifestyle of worldliness which contradicts Christian teaching at every turn, is destroying their testimony and resulting in declining and closing churches in record numbers.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in the heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the water that is under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. Exodus 20:4
So, was it worth it?
Owning the Lies of a Serial Liar and the Lack of Moral Character
Having political conversations with Republicans these days goes nowhere. Once I start citing facts, that usually ends the discussion. I've challenged a couple of my neighbors to come up with something Trump has said, or concluded, that is actually truthful. One of them responsed right away, "Well he's a politician and politicians never tell the whole truth." So the argument, that we don't really know the truth and can't get to it, is all they've got.
But that's very weak, in the face of what are literally hundreds of obvious, provable lies, thousands, actually, that emerged from the lips of the former failed President 45 over the course of his Presidency, and since. It's nothing new, it was a pattern that covers his entire business career, and according to those who knew him when, he's been a serial liar all his life. His own niece points this out and backs up what she has to say with evidence. Ignoring that, attempting to discredit his critics, or simply not believing it doesn't change the fact that his supporters must own his lies.
These aren't just fibs or "little white lies." They are lies told to deliberately deceive the American people, especially his own supporters. Many of them contradict earlier lies, displaying a personal measure of contempt for the intelligence and credibility of his own followers. If he thinks they'll believe everything he says, then he must think they are bottomlessly naive and incredibly ignorant, to allow such blatant manipulation.
Did President Clinton lie? Yes, he did. And the Christian right attacked him ruthlessly for it, claiming it disqualified his claim to being Christian, and disqualified him as a leader, especially President of the United States. But apparently, among some Evangelical Christians, lying is only a sin when committed by Democrats. Their hypocrisy on this knows no bounds. Let's just be honest. Lying is a sin and the unqualified support given to Trump by politically far right Evangelicals undermines their credibility and their Christian testimony.
Evangelicals certainly took former President Clinton to task for his indiscretions, claiming that his marital infidelity disqualified him from the Presidency prior to his being elected and then using that very issue to bring about an impeachment in his second term. Fine, if that's the line they want to hold, then where is it now? Has their definition of good moral character changed that much, or is this now something that they are willing to overlook because it doesn't suir their purposes any more politically. Either way, it makes them hypocrites.
CNN: The 15 Most Notable Lies of Donald Trump's Presidency
The Hill: 30,573 False Claims Made by Donald Trump as President
Owning Anti-Democratic, Anti-Americanism
The bottom line is that there is a segment of conservative Evangelicalism in America that has always held a very distorted view of the intention of the founding fathers behind the development of this country. Making the United States into a Christian theocratically-ruled nation is a higher priority than preserving the idealism that the founders wrote into the Constitution and put into words for future guidance. They set the churches free, with religious liberty and breaking the ties to the state, but they intentionally separated the two institutions with divergent missions and purposes.
So the attacks on democracy, including the insurrection on January 6th, 2021, aimed at overturning a legitimate election, isn't such a big evil to them, and this is something that they do own without resisting the ownership. They don't see it for what it is, however, in its purest form as an anti-Patriotic, anti-American style of tyranny. They don't care about tyranny as long as they aren't the victims of it. They don't care about law and order. And they don't seem to care that this is all a complete abandonment of their faith and the basic principles and doctrines of the Christian gospel.
Jesus was a Weak Liberal
Newsweek: Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting "Liberal" Teachings of Jesus
Sooner or later, it had to come to this. Russell Moore, the author mentioned earlier, who is the editor of Christianity Today and former Executive Director of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, points out that Evangelicalism is now in crisis because of Trump. He notes that there are some Evangelical preachers and leaders whoa re denouncing the core teachings of their faith because it is "too weak and liberal" for their liking.
"Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching--'turn the other cheek'--to have someome come up after and say, 'where did you get those liberal talking points?" said Moore in an article in Newsweek.
"When the pastor would say, 'I'm literally quoting Jesus,' the response would be 'Yes but that doesn't work anymore, that's weak. When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis." [emphasis mine]
Frankly Speaking...
The modern-day Christian "movements" or branches that have developed under the broader label of "Evangelicalism" in the United States all have doctrinal and theological flaws resulting from a lack of unified mission and purpose as the religious liberty of the United States let to the development of thousands of independent churches and hundreds of denominations, each competing with the other for membership that brought financial resources and stability to the congregations. Out of the various revival movements came some spectacularly ridiculous occurrences, such as the Millerite movement around the turn of the twentieth century, when people believed the "rapture," a gigantically misinterpreted, misrepresented occurrence in scripture was imminent.
So it was inevitable that a heretical doctrine, full of emotional appeal and lacking any sound foundation in the Bible's written record, known as "Christian nationalism," would intersect with white supremacy and far right wing politics to produce a very fascist political perspective hiding behind the Republican party and promoting itself as mainstream American politics. While it is aimed at subverting democracy, because of the liberal idea that all are equal under law, it has also produced an apostate branch of the Christian church, one which has not only distorted the gospel message of Christ, but is turning against Jesus himself in finding a new messiah who will better meet their own selfish needs
The country, and its churches, are in a crisis. The protective walls built into constitutional democracy have, up to this point held. They are dependent on the discernment and wisdom of the majority of the population seeing this for what it is, and using the tools they have been given, mainly the law and the ballot box, to defend the Constitution and protect the nation from subversion that would result in the extinction of individual freedom.
It will be up to the remnants of church leadership to fix their crisis. Conservative Evangelicals have been praying for "revival" for decades, but depending on politics and government to bring it is a certain guarantee that the church will continue to be in crisis and decline. It has lost its first love and is giving away its loyalty to someone who will only destroy it, not save it.
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