Trump's takeover of the Republican party, and the blending of those right wing politics with conservative, Evangelicals have caused their departure from the biblical version of the Christian faith and have transformed Trump-supporting Evangelicals into pseudo-Christians. They use the language, some of it anyway, and they give off an appearance of being Christian, but there is a lot of evidence which proves that most of them have given up their Christian faith to place their trust in something, or someone else other than Jesus Christ.
The prayers,, given by pastors prior to Trump rallies, and written out for them, are a dead giveaway. First, telling God that, from their perspective, the leaders of this country are evil, and "with every passing day, we slip farther and farther into George Orwell's tyrannical dystopia."
If that is happening, it's not necessary to fill God in, that is, if you believe who the Bible says he is. He'd know that and the sermon in the prayer, which is not directed at God, but at the audience, is the first clue that we're not dealing with someone who has an understanding of the Christian gospel, the Christian faith, or prayer.
The prayer cited in The Atlantic link was a real shocker. No mention at all of the fact that Christians believe that only Jesus was sent to redeem and save, and that wasn't to redeem or save countries, it was to redeem and save people. By any orthodox Christian doctrine and theology, this pastor's prayer, or political speech as it would better be described, is blasphemous. And that doesn't include the fact that everything he said about Trump in the prayer was a lie.
Politically Engaged Evangelicals Had a Choice Between The Holy Spirit and Political Power, and They Chose Politics
The turn of Evangelical leaders toward right wing, Republican politics, during the election of 1980, was an admission that their prayers were not being answered by God and they needed to take things into their own hands. They did not like the fact that President Carter, who was perhaps the most visibly Evangelical President in modern American history, because he lived out his faith and wasn't a phony, and he respected the boundaries of the Constitution when it came to the separation of church and state. They did not want the wall of separation to exist, they wanted to go back to a time when Protestant predominance gave their churches privileges which violated the first amendment, such as required prayer and Bible reading in public, government-funded schools, because they could.
As their numbers declined, and their influence waned because of it, the turn to the GOP by Evangelical leadership was an attempt to continue to use the law to prevent church-state protections from being enforced. The Roe v. Wade decision, making access to abortion a constitutionally protected right, in 1973, became the rallying point to register Evangelicals and get them to vote. That was the beginning of a slippery slope into heretical apostasy, leading to the infiltration of churches with pseudo-Christian ideology and leaders who, as the Apostle Jude said, "were designated for this condemnation as ungodly," in his epistle written to warn early Christians of just such political intrusions.
These people "pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Lord and Master, Jesus Christ." [Jude v. 4]
So every prayer at the beginning of a Trump rally, written to attribute Trump with savior and redeemer status, denies Jesus Christ and perverts grace into licentiousness.
Trump Himself Rejects the Christian Gospel
Trump denies one of the core essential doctrines of the Christian faith, when he publicly proclaims that he has done nothing in his life which requires God's forgiveness. And he's essentially invented his own "god" whose character and power bear no resemblance to the descriptions of the Deity in the Bible. But most politically engaged Evangelicals are either completely unaware of his repeated statements, or they are willing to pass them over and ignore them because it is more important for them to get what they want from Trump than from God. Trump is their gateway into political power, which is exactly what they want, so they throw Jesus under the bus to get it.
In his first epistle to the church, the Apostle John tells Christians to whom he is writing, many of whom were being persecuted by the Roman government at the time, not to believe every spirit but to "test the spirits to see if they are from 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. [emphasis mine] And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it was coming, and now it is already in the world. [I John 4:2-3, NRSV]
In order to confess Jesus Christ, conviction of one's sin and acknowledgement before God of one's need for forgiveness must occur. Trump's refusal to acknowledge this is a refusal to confess Jesus as Christ, which makes him, according to the apostle John, a follower of the "spirit of the antichrist." And that makes any prayer which attempts to acknowledge him as "the only one" or an anointed one" when it comes to saving the country, whatever that means, a heretical blasphemy. It's pseudo-Christian because it resembles the real thing, antichrist, because it places the redemption only brought by confessing Christ onto a false savior.
The Evidence of Evangelical Heresy and Apostasy
Christianity is a lifestyle that results from what Christians believe is a genuine spiritual transformation which occurs upon the confession of sin leading to confession of Jesus as the Christ. It goes beyond mere intellectual assent to a set of doctrines and a specific theology of the nature of God. Genuine transformation results in genuine change of character that is an observable change in the manner in which those who claim to be followers of Christ live their life.
Jesus himself taught that the most important commandment, loving God with all one's heart, soul, mind and strength, was connected to, and demonstrated by "loving your neighbor as yourself." And Jesus defined "neighbor" in a parable, known as "the Good Samaritan," in which "neighbor" was illustrated in the person of the Samaritan, a man from an ethnic background and religious sect despised and looked down on by the Jewish population. The love to be extended to the neighbor was not conditioned upon the neighbor being of the same religion, race, ethnicity or even a citizen of the same political district or country, since Samaria and Judea were separate provinces under Roman rule at the time.
So I have to ask this pointed question. When we observe politically engaged Evangelicals, who are representing their faith and the Republican party, where do we see examples of their public obedience to this, one of the two commandments Jesus clarified as being "the greatest"?
The Samaritan in the New Testament example could, in our day and age, be someone who is gay or lesbian, or transgender. In Jesus' day, that's how Samaritans were treated by Jews, as pariahs. I find nothing anywhere in the Bible that makes any exception to this commandment, which Jesus says is "like" the greatest one, meaning that it is just as important and that it is not possible to love God and not love one's neighbor unconditionally in the same way.
I'm waiting.
What True Christianity Actually Looks Like is Found in the New Testament
The Apostle Paul uses the analogy of bearing fruit to describe the virtues and values that are produced by people whose lives have been transformed by Christian conversion. These "fruits" include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against these things, says Paul, there is no law.
Jesus himself gave examples of character traits and virtues that are part of the character of a follower of the Christian gospel and a member of his church. These are found in a full list in Matthew 5:1-11 at the beginning of a three-chapter narrative that includes Jesus' most important teaching. So in all of the denigration of political opponents, the lies, the ridicule, the false accusations and the hostility, where is genuine Christian practice reflecting the application of these character traits and values found in Trump Republicanism's approach to politics?
That's a legitimate question, when considering the content of the prayers of some pastors at the beginning of Trump rallies. And I'm not being judgmental here. I'm simply pointing out observations of what people have said and done, and drawing conclusions. There is nothing in the condemnation and the doom and gloom "judgment day is coming for the United States" rhetoric that bears any resemblance to the characteristics and lifestyle which Jesus and his apostles taught were the core values of Christian faith.
There is no biblical evidence supporting the claim that God is going to bring judgment on a country based on the righteousness, or lack thereof, of its citizens. Christians are not held accountable anywhere for the behavior of their neighbors, or the morality of their neighbors or the religious beliefs of their neighbors. God made no covenant with the United States of America, which states that in exchange for our righteousness and our morality and our acknowledgement of his Godhood, we would in turn be blessed with prosperity and as long as we held to the standard, would not experience judgment. Under the Christian covenant, judgment is reserved for individuals, not for countries or nations.
And Jesus never said "love only your righteous, moral, Christian neighbor." He said that one of the two greatest commandments, "and the second it like the first," equating them, was simply to "love your neighbor as yourself." So hating your neighbor because they are Muslim or Mormon, and not Christian, because they are gay or lesbian, and not heterosexual, or because they have determined, for whatever reason within the realm of their own mind, that they were transgender, or because they were born in Mexico and not the United States, or they came here from Venezuela to escape political persecution that is as bad as anywhere in the world right now, is not being obedient to the greatest commandment.
Do we get that?
Most Evangelicals believe that there is an obligation, which accompanies loving one's neighbor, to "share the gospel" with them, leading to their conversion. I have no problem with that, as long as it's not coercive, or takes advantage of the person's situation, and as long as that individual is receptive to it. Christian doctrine also teaches that this is the responsibility of each individual, who is the only person accountable before a Holy God, to judgment. Our nation is not subject to judgment and destruction by God based on the collective moral practices and behavior of its citizens or on whether or not elected representatives are Christians.
There's no real difference between being pseudo-Christian or being anti-Christ. My West Virginia-born mother had a saying that fits well here. "You might as well eat the Devil as drink his broth."
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