The Dumpster Fire Has Finally Spread to Evangelicals
Christianity Today, mouthpiece of the evangelical movement since Billy Graham founded it in 1956, finally turned on Trump last week when its editor in chief, Mark Galli, published “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” laying out the case against him that most normal people have understood for years. While lying that Trump “…didn’t have a chance to offer his side of the story…,” Galli did say,
The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.
The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.
This is not the first time that the magazine has weighed in on impeachment, but the first time it has come down of the side against a Republican. In 1973 it offered milk toast support of the process but remaining neutral on Nixon’s impeachment, and in 1998 supported Clinton’s removal. Galli used the same reasoning this time to call for Trump’s removal. At least he’s being intellectually honest, which doesn’t hold with other publications like the Christian Post, which stubbornly remains in Trump’s corner.
The piece in the Christian Post published on Monday repeats the willful blindness we’ve come to expect from evangelicals who’ve been happy to look the other way on Trump’s moral bankruptcy and criminality just because they’re getting judges who believe that the Earth is flat and only 4,000 years old as well as in the subjugation of women. In their piece, the senior editors bashed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, AND Beto O’Rourke, calling their words on Trump supporters and religions a “…toxic emotional and spiritual stew…” Their ultimate justification for overlooking Trump’s conduct? He was elected. Essentially, they repeated Trump’s own argument that, since he was elected, he is immune from all legal scrutiny or even investigation of his criminality and corruption.
The piece is so poisonous that Napp Nazworth, another editor at the Christian Post, threw up his hands and abruptly resigned, tweeting out, “Announcement: Today, rather abruptly, I was forced to make the difficult choice to leave The Christian Post. They decided to publish an editorial that positions them on Team Trump. I can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice.” He continued that editors had in the past worked through disagreements, but now has “chosen to represent a narrow (and shrinking) slice of Christianity.
What we’re witnessing is actual Christians beginning to find their voice against the falsehood of Falwell’s political lobbying company masquerading as a church. Although evangelical support of Trump remains over 80%, Trump is starting to lose that edge he’s enjoyed up until he got caught red handed extorting a foreign government to gain domestic political advantage. Evangelicals (I know many personally) have been hijacked by the Fox Noise version of Republican Jesus filled with the spirit of assault rifles, anti-vaxing, gay bashing, and Bible thumping. It’s high time that actual Christians find their voices and speak up against this corruption of Christianity, or at least vote against it in the voting booth.
I’ve always been careful to distinguish between Christians, who actually believe in Christianity, versus Kristians*, who are a cheap imitation of the real thing. You can tell a Kristian by the contempt with which they hold Christ’s teachings while claiming to be following in Christ’s footsteps.
*Just as “Krab” is fake crab, Kristians re fake Christians.
1Seeing Trump’s base splintering is the best present I got for Xmas.
2Wow! I used to know some evangelicals of the Falwell variety but they moved out of the area they deemed as liberal. Yeah. An area full to the brim with military families near a well known military reservation. I actually hope they have been able to get some help from “being blinded by the might.”
3An awakening for evangelicals? There’s something about it that makes me want to break out into a chorus of “I Don’t Care I love It” by Icona Pop http://www.songlyrics.com/i-don-t-care-i-love-it/i-don-t-care-i-love-it-lyrics/
Two things never to be trusted: reformed Republicons and Dixiecrat theocrats by whatever name they choose in any given decade such as Teabaggers or Freedumb Caucus. Bridey Murphy was a more believable case for reincarnation than any of the players in this phony internecine squabble among phonies for the ‘newly awakened’ banner.
4Don’t confuse me with facts. My mind is made up.
5RepubAnon#1 – I like your label Kristians. I’ve always thought of them as Cafeteria Christians, a big slice of prosperity gospel, pass on helping the poor, big slice of Christmas fun, barely no charity work. Jesus had some pretty liberal and progressive ideas and evangelicals are just not up to the task!
6I don’t know if Paul D. Miller is speaking for the Christian Post but I was surprised to read this.
By Paul D. Miller, Voices Contributor
FTA: Christians should advocate for President Donald J. Trump’s conviction and removal from office by the Senate.
While Trump has an excellent record of appointing conservative judges and advancing a prolife agenda, his criminal conduct endangers the Constitution.
The Constitution is more important than the prolife cause because without the Constitution, prolife advocacy would be meaningless.
The fact that we live in a democratic republic is what enables us to turn our prolife convictions from private opinion into public advocacy.
In other systems of government, the government does not care what its citizens think or believe.
Only when the government is forced to take counsel from its citizens through elections, representation, and majoritarian rule do our opinions count.
Our democratic Constitution — adopted to “secure the blessings of liberty” for all Americans — is what guarantees that our voice matters.
Without it, we can talk about the evils of abortion until we are blue in the face and it will never affect abortion policy one iota.
The Constitution — with its guarantees of free speech, free assembly, the right to petition the government, regular elections, and the peaceful transfer of power — is the only thing that forces the government to listen to us.
Trump’s behavior is a threat to our Constitutional order.
Trump’s acquittal (coupled with Clinton’s, in 1999) would mean that, over time, a future president can abuse his power, obstruct justice, commit perjury, profit from office, defy Congress, ignore subpoenas, seize Congress’ power of the purse, never reveal tax records, admit to sexual assault, violate campaign finance laws, intimidate witnesses, and disregard truth with impunity, firm in the knowledge that he faces no accountability, no check, no balance, no consequence, and no higher law.
[…]
Trump’s acquittal would mean that future presidents will eventually be “absolutely unrestrained,” and become above the law.
If the president is above the law, we do not live in a constitutional republic in which every citizen is guaranteed equal justice under law.
It will mean that a public official has more rights and privileges than you or I, that the law does not apply to him, and that he can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequence.
It would mean the Constitution will become a powerless, meaningless piece of paper that no longer governs the American government.
The American experiment in free government would give way, more or less, to an elective monarchy.
If that is true, then our prolife cause is at an end.
For the sake of our intellectual honesty, Christians should try this thought experiment: Would we trade the Constitution for a prolife monarch?
Some might genuinely answer “yes” because of the depth of the evils of abortion.
They would welcome the efficiency and firmness of a single monarchical declaration outlawing abortion once and for all.
But those who are tempted to trade away the Constitution misunderstand monarchy.
[…]
We must defend our Constitution because precedent matters.
What we do today shapes what the other side will do to us tomorrow.
We have to play by the rules if we want them to respect the rules when they are in power.
There is no way our side will stay in power forever.
Someday, our political opponents will control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
When they do, we will rue the day we traded away the Constitution’s guardrails.
Trump’s defenders claim that the other side has never been fair and cannot be trusted no matter what.
That might be correct — but the other side’s duplicity doesn’t justify Trump’s criminality.
https://www.christianpost.com/voice/convict-trump-the-constitution-is-more-important-than-abortion.html
7I welcome all the hitherto-deluded Christians who have finally seen the light and recognized Trump’s basic immorality and total lack of anything purporting to be Christianity–but I think that they are probably too few and too late to have much impact on the next election. I hope I’m wrong.
8Basically, this is about conservatism. As usual, this country get sit wrong. Take a look at a piece written by Max Best in today’s Washington Post. You can see it online. The conservatism in Britain between the World Wars was based on some very Christian principles, one of them being good manners which unfortunately today is often referred to and derided as political correctness. Tried to explain this one day to my college educated daughter and she just didn’t get it much to my dismay as we, her parents, worked like a team of dogs to breed good manners into her. Oddly enough, she won’t tolerate bad manners in her own children – thank goodness – but she still thinks political correctness is something mysterious.
9Once some one starts to “believe” in the delusion of a magic man in the sky they have opened their brains to further delusions and the mythical conspiracies that go along with those delusions.
10Just as some one who has the flu, or the measles, are more susceptible to pneumonia and other infections.
Delusional belief in a magic man in the sky is the opening for the death of reason and surrender of free will.
The end of all moral order in the name of your mythological being ordering you to commit heinous acts to curry favor.
So no it isn’t necessarily a difference between “decent” fabulist’s and those judged to be foul fabulists the difference is how far the rot of delusions has infected ones brain, warped your behavior and justified inhuman abuse of “the others”
Saw this the other day. I thought it perfectly describes the Kristians who love trump because of all the conservative judges that will help do away with choice:
” ’The unborn’ are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn… You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
11Dave Barnhart
Column: Thanks be to God for Christianity Today’s actually evangelical message
By John M. Buchanan
Posted Dec 24, 2019 at 4:16 AM
John M. Buchanan▲
The Christianity Today editorial supporting President Donald Trump’s removal from office is a remarkable and important document. It is also courageous. Widely read and widely respected, Christianity Today is thoughtful, its tone is consistently civil and it is unapologetically evangelical.
In that a significant majority of white evangelicals support Trump and about a third say there is virtually nothing he could do to diminish that support, the coming backlash against Christianity Today is inevitable.
It might cost the magazine subscribers and advertisers. So, I register my gratitude and respect for Christianity Today.
I write those words as the former editor/publisher of the Christian Century, the recognized voice of mainline Protestantism and progressive Christianity. The late Billy Graham founded Christianity Today, in part, to counter the influence of the Christian Century. The two journals are different, often espousing different theologies and social positions.
But both take seriously the role of Christianity in the world and the body politic and both are devoted to truth-telling. Both Christianity Today and the Christian Century hold to the biblical promise that “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
As always, whenever anyone dares to criticize him, Trump had a digital tantrum, calling Christianity Today a left-wing magazine and claiming that it is failing. Neither is remotely true, and this once again reveals the president’s profound ignorance. The iron grip he has on evangelical Christians, despite lying, serial adultery, making fun of people with physical and emotional handicaps, separating infants and children from their parents at the border and confining them in cages, betraying allies and cozying up to dictators, remains a mystery.
I ponder all the suggested reasons: that it’s a matter of appointing judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade, that it is a response to secular, liberal culture; that it is a Faustian bargain to slow the pace of broader social change. But none of those seems to warrant evangelicals’ unquestioned, lock-step support. Nor does it adequately explain the unwavering support of the GOP, once the party of “family values” and traditional morality. And it makes Christianity Today’s position all the more remarkable, important and courageous.
There is no doubt that the president of the United States used the power of his office to try to coerce a foreign government, an allied government under siege, at war with Russia, to open an investigation into the president’s potential political rival to enhance his own chance of winning the next election. That is, quite simply, wrong: politically wrong, humanly wrong, morally wrong.
I happen to believe that the founders were on to something profound, indeed something very close to the political anthropology of the Bible, when they set forth a government based on the brave assertion that we are all created equal and have God-given rights.
They built an ingenious government balanced on three centers of power: executive —the presidency; legislative — Congress; and judicial — the courts. Each of the three branches lives in tandem and has respect for the autonomy and authority of the other two branches. The president’s utter dismissal of the authority of Congress to hold the executive branch accountable is perhaps the most egregious — and surely a “high crime and misdemeanor” — of his dismal behavior.
But at some point, the president’s personal behavior and political policies collide with values that are central to Christian faith and practice, the values that Jesus taught.
Christians all — liberal and conservative, evangelical and progressive — are about to celebrate Christmas, recalling the story of Jesus’ birth. Part of that story is King Herod’s murderous rage at the news that a new king had been born. His response was to order the slaughter of all baby boys in and around Bethlehem. Mary, Joseph and their newborn fled to Egypt to escape.
As the president tightens rules about immigration, even for people fleeing violence and persecution, Christians are reminded that their Lord himself and his family were political refugees.
Thanks be to God for Christianity Today, for the courage and faithfulness to speak an evangelical word of truth and justice.
John M. Buchanan is pastor emeritus of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago and previously served as head pastor of Broad Street Presbyterian Church in Columbus.
Column: Thanks be to God for Christianity Today’s actually evangelical message – Opinion – The Columbus Dispatch – Columbus, OH
https://www.dispatch.com/opinion/20191224/column-thanks-be-to-god-for-christianity-todays-actually-evangelical-message?template=ampart
12The problem with the idea of “actual Christians” stepping up is the fact that so many actual Christians have become so repulsed by the fakes that they walked away long since.
I left during the 1970’s —- and I’m far from alone.
As a former Christian, I know when this movement actually began — and it was a long, long time ago. Look at the difference between John and the other gospels. John requires only belief in order to be ‘saved,’ while the other early Christian books require good works.
Praying in public — and boasting about it — is frowned upon in Matthew, Mark and Luke — not in John.
Today’s Xtianity seems to adhere to the easy business of believing while ignoring the actual work of Christianity — and mostly that belief consists of, “I’m better than you because -Jesus.”
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