Baptist News Global: How Low Will They Go?
The author of this piece in BNG, Dr. Susan Shaw, recalls a statement made in 2016 by Dr. Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the flagship theological school of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Mohler is a biblical pontificator and dispenser of theological and doctrinal opinion attempting to shape the opinions and perspectives of Southern Baptists. Back in 2016, Dr. Mohler angered a lot of conservatives in his denomination when he stated that Donald Trump was "morally unfit for the Presidency, and if he were to vote for Trump, he'd have to go back and apologize to Bill Clinton."
Dr. Mohler is one of those "finger in every pie" kind of Baptists, an influence peddler, conciliator and duplicitous, deceitful self-promoter who used connections to influential Baptists, along with a lot of flattery and brown-nosing to move himself from being editor of a weekly news journal circulated among Southern Baptists in Georgia, to the presidency of the denomination's largest and most influential seminary. At the time he made that statement about Trump, he was expecting to be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, based on his connections and maneuvering himself in media speculation to the "next in line."
But he discovered that sharing anti-Trump sentiment with Dr. Russell Moore, then executive director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, was not popular with Southern Baptists who, as it turns out, value extremist right wing politics over Biblical truth any day of the week. And when it cost him the election as SBC president, of course, rather than stand up for his convictions, he decided to grovel after the power and influence, and he changed his opinion. The "serial adulterer, never-ask-for-forgiveness, lying, cheat insurrectionist," as Dr. Shaw calls him, was apparently not immoral enough to incur Mohler's judgment any more, especially since it apparently cost him some power and influence.
So Mohler abandoned biblical truth, morals and integrity for the sake of his own denominational political career. It hasn't helped him. He no longer has a chance to win any denominational office and his duplicitous flip-flop on Trump has made it impossible for anyone to trust him. He continues pontificating to a small group of wannabes who listen to his podcasts and read his columns, but his audience is no longer what it once was. And he, perhaps more than just about any other well known Evangelical figure, epitomizes the hypocrisy that is the direct result of the mix of conservative Evangelicalism and extremist right wing politics.
If It Looks Like a Duck, and it Quacks Like a Duck...
Dr. Susan Shaw, the author of this piece, is a professor of women's studies at Oregon State University, and is also an ordained Baptist minister who holds both a master's and doctor's degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Mohler is President. She has called it as she sees it from the position of a theological and doctrinal expert in Evangelical Christian beliefs.
"How can anyone suggest, with a straight face, that the serial adulterer, never ask for forgiveness, lying, cheat, insurrectionist is anything like Jesus?"
I've been asking the same question, of Evangelical Christians I know who support Trump, the same thing. I never get a straight answer, I always get the cliches, the unbiblical justifications and the attempts to twist catch phrases and half-sentences from the Bible into support for Trump. I must conclude, these people are either pitifully ignorant of a faith they proclaim to believe, have heard preached to them for most of their life, and with which they have self-identified, or they have determined to pursue the kind of worldly power it offers because they have concluded that God hasn't answered their prayers when it comes to their singular, selfish mind set so they are abandoning him to seek after political resolution.
"The attempt to turn Trump into some kind of messiah figure smacks of desperation and idolatry," said Dr. Shaw. "It suggests that its purveyor knows so little about the Jesus of the New Testament that he can't recognize his antithesis in Trump. Or perhaps, to be more cynical, he's so hungry for power he's willing to see Trump as his savior in a quest to hold onto the dominance of white, cisgender, heterosexual masculinity," she said.
And there is the explanation that answers the questions I've had about why it is that conservative, Evangelicals have allowed themselves to be beguiled by a person who comes very close to fitting the Apostle John's definition of "anti-Christ" which he uses in two of his epistles.
"Test the spirits," says the Apostle John in his first epistle, chapter 4, verse 1, "to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world."
"By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world." I John 4:-13, NRSV
So it would appear that there are prominent leaders among those identified as conservative, Evangelical Christians who are not confessing Jesus, but who are turning to a different savior of the political variety to accomplish their own agenda.
The Heritage Foundation: Turning American Evangelicalism into a Full Blown Cult
Among Evangelicals who have led the church straight down the path to apostasy with the heresy of Christian nationalism and the insertion of right wing politics into the pulpit, no organization can take more credit for his horrendous subversion of the Christian gospel than the Heritage Foundation. Calling these people a "think tank" is an oxymoron. They don't think, they abhor and condemn intelligent thought, corrupting everything they touch and promoting a worldview that is as close to barbaric as we've seen since the middle ages.
This whole kind of pseudo-religious structure is set up for the purpose of sucking resources out of the Christian churches and is put to use defending the hateful, racist, mysogynist, anti-Christian rhetoric and perspective of Trump. While this group has not done a single thing in its entire existence to advance the Christian gospel, or to promote Christian evangelism, it has committed itself to leading the Christian church into apostasy by promoting the use of its influence for political purposes.
The Apostle Paul left behind words in his second epistle to Timothy, that are an accurate description of what the Heritage Foundation defends:
You must understand this, that in the last days, distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. 2 Timothy 3:1-5.
Though this was meant by the Apostle to describe what was happening during the period between Jesus' crucifixion and the desstruction of the Temple in 70 AD, he found some words that apply literally to the kind of corruption that is occurring in the Christian church today, in those who have embraced Donald Trump's politics and candidacy, and who, like the Heritage Foundation, set aside the principles and beliefs of Jesus Christ to support him and give him loyalty.
"So these people of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith also oppose the truth," the Apostle Paul continues, "but they will not make much progress because their folly will become plain to everyone." (2 Timothy 3:8-9)
The folly of the Heritage Foundation is the introduction of heresy into the church and the corruption of the values of the Christian gospel by the promotion of the lies and corrupt character of a Christ-denier. They have thrown Jesus under the bus.
I've Questioned the Sincerity of Much of Evangelical Christianity in America for a Long Time
The Christian faith in which I grew up was very heavy on the things of the afterlife and other-worldliness. Most of the motivation they taught came out of a fear of going to hell upon death, rather than any focus on the virtues and values which I believe make the practice of Christianity real and sincere. According to the biblical record, Jesus placed the highest priority of faith on a simple statement that established the monotheistic religion of Judaism, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
And Jesus added this, as a second priority of the Christian faith he was establishing, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
And it's pretty clear, from the virtues and values of the gospel, that Jesus intended for Christianity to be a living faith, something that led to a higher level of human existence in this life, making the most of the time that human beings have while they are alive, with a set of life-enhancing values, including the equality of all humanity as having been created in the image of God. As he was beginning his public ministry, he taught that his followers were to be the "salt of the earth," not divisive or violent or destructive, but that the purpose of their faith, lived out, would be life enhancing. He said to be "the light of the world," and the image of bringing light to darkness, lifting people up out of oppression and need.
Christianity, as taught by Jesus, is a spiritual transformation of the mind which produces virtues such as humility, comfort, meekness, a hungering and thirsting for righteousness, mercy, pureness of heart, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
I heard a lot of this preached from the pulpit in the years that I was growing up, but did not see it in practice among those in the church. My Dad was the only person I knew who showed me how to love my neighbor, to be blind to bigotry, to be an honest person of truth and integrity and to value the lives of the people with whom we lived in community. And he learned that from serving seven year in the Navy during the Second World War, not in the church where he grew up, nor the one he joined after he came home.
Where I first saw this in practice, in a sincere and honest way that I'd never really seen before, was among the educated liberals when I went to college. Yes, as a matter of fact, the very environment that caused me to embrace the Democratic party was also the only place in my life where I'd actually seen Christianity lived and practiced as a real faith for this life, rather than pie in the sky by and by.
As Dr. Susan Shaw has concluded here, what kind of faith is it that leads to support for a "serial adulterer, never ask for forgiveness, lying, cheat, insurrectionist" candidate for President?
It's not Christian faith, that's for sure. Trump, according to Dr. Susan Shaw, and according to the biblical record, is the antithesis of Jesus Christ.
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