Since the Romans Jews and Christians have lived in the Iberia Peninsula. When the Muslims invaded in 711 Muslims the Christian kings fled to the north. Thereafter Al Andalus was home to the 3 religions. At times they coexisted. This allowed “an enlightened vision of Islam” to create “the most advanced culture in Europe.” At times the Christians and Muslims fought for control of the land.
The borders of Portugal were formed in the 1200s when the Muslims were driven from the Algarve. Among the things they left behind was their scientific knowledge. This helped the Portuguese 2 centuries later when they began the Age of Discoveries. The Jews also made important contributions during this time.
The Portuguese Inquisition similar but different from Spain’s was formally installed in 1536 and abolished in 1822. It focused on the New Christians and the crypto-Jews. After this the country went into decline.
The Inquisition had a negative impact on the development of the country. It laid the foundation for Salazar’s dictatorship. It had a stifling effect on the Portuguese psyche. I still see examples of this in my own family.
Our founders knew what they were doing when they wrote about the separation of church-state. I don’t remember there being such a public discussion of religion before the 1980s. It has infiltrated our politics and contributed to the division. Religion needs to be kept in the private sphere!
SEE
nytimes.com/2002/03/28/opinion/a-golden-reign-of-tolerance.html
5
Sadly, no where in here does the author face the real reason his fellow 'Christians' support Donald Trump: white supremacy. Christians of color are just as upset about abortion as white Christians, yet there is astonishing divide in their support for trump. Those who pretend they're voting for trump because 'of his stance on abortion' are lying to themselves. Another word the author seems afraid to use: Satan. Yes, that guy. Who benefits by an alliance between a loathsome, obviously evil man and the group of people who have loudly claimed for themselves the title 'the real Christians"? The enemy of God, who wants to stop people from hearing the lifesaving message of Jesus. Christianity has been completely slimed by this sickening partnership and literally millions of people are now convinced all Christians are disgusting people and they want to hear nothing about it. Trump and his white evangelical minions are all going to learn what is worse than 'having a millstone around their necks and being cast into the sea."
9
I came to the conclusion long-ago that so-called "Christians" whose primary mode of expressing their "Christianity" is hate, fear, petty judgment, self-righteousness, and more hate and fear are not Christians at all--- they are Satanists-- and that's what we should call them.
42
“Trump worship” by conservatives is indicative of the hyper-hypocrisy of organized religion and it’s proponents. Do as I say, no as I do-ism is not only rampant, it’s repugnant.
No thanks.
They’re all fools or liars, and living in some immoral, principle-less alternative reality, from my perspective.
Being blind to plain facts is both undeniable and detestable.
26
Note to Evangelical Christians; white Jesus isn’t coming.
36
Maybe the "big" moral issues have been red herrings all along. Christian Conservative's real agenda is to regain White supremacy and male hegemony. It's almost transparent. They love the Devil. They voted for him and want to vote for him again.
31
How many times since organized religion reared it's head have we been told the end times are upon us?
Blah, blah, blah.....We've got better things to concern ourselves with rather than some mumbo jumbo based on nothing logical, rational or reasonable.
12
OK, Peter!
How amazingly similar are the religious beliefs and actions - against education of anyone and s especially women unless its their type of brainwashing; to totally control women, who should walk a few paces behind and defer to their 'man'; for every man to have and carry a gun (no beard?), and for their craving for a racist theocracy with harsh and discriminatory "justice" - of the Republican party and its fervent, hypocritical evangelical supporters to the religious actions and beliefs of the Taliban? Perhaps you could examine this and give your thoughts on how apocalyptic it would be if the Evangelical Republican party were to control America?
Not a happy propspect considering all the harmful things Trump is doing to the poor and disadvantaged with the evangelical right's full-throated support!
12
Let these Christians wash the feet of the children caged at the border, then talk of morality.
34
If you want to be a Christian, to not have an abortion, to pray often, to be straight rather than gay, to not go to the library when trans people are holding workshops, go right ahead: no one has any intention of stopping you. But what is your problem that you want the rest of us to fall in line with your personal beliefs? It's not enough that you have your own beliefs--an entire nation has to agree with you? You aren't Christians; you are just selfish, entitled, arrogant bullies.
53
Eric Metaxas is no Christian. He clearly does not believe in the teachings of Jesus. He meant to compare Hillary Clinton to Hitler or he wouldn’t have made the comparison just like he and the Republicans meant to compare Barack Obama to Hitler or they wouldn’t have done it. Believe people when they show you who they are. Instead of asking for forgiveness for his sins, Metaxas arrogantly says he didn’t mean to commit the sin. To deny it is just filthy lying, something neither Jesus nor the Old Testament support. But he will lie just like Trump and violate every tenet of Christianity in order to preserve his cultural, non-spiritual vision of a White America and a White Christian.
17
Sadly, one of the key founding principles of our democracy, the separation of church and state, has been corrupted by hypocrites who have falsely wrapped their beliefs
in the American flag at the tragic expense of everyone else who doesn't agree with them. Welcome back to 30s Germany where, as it's stated in this excellent article, 'devout Christian Germans prayerfully thought it un-Christian to be involved in opposing Hitler because to do so would have dirtied their hands with politics.' Today it's become un-American. How shameful.
14
John Calvin Rides Again—- on his white horse rumbling out of Michigan gathering “the elect” and redeemed by Donald “the chosen one” Trump.
The Christian Soldiers will cook the planet.
Now that’s truly sad. Ask not who doesn’t believe in climate change. Whew.
7
As Trump diehards, these Christian conservatives and their leaders are complicit in the failure to stem the climate catastrophe, in the collapse of the US's diplomatic and military alliances, and in the growth of the neo-fascist movement of white nationalists, anti-Semites and anti-feminists. May their God have mercy on them.
11
The so called christians who support Trump ought to go back to the Bible and refresh themselves on the ten commandments. With the genocide he instigated by our abrupt abandonment of the Kurds in Syria, Trump has now broken every one.
11
The moral crisis we are in is so many Christians think they are worshiping God when actually they are worshiping the devil.
10
Nice apologia for the so-called evangelical Christians. Unfortunately, you have it backwards. Christianity has been hijacked by a cult of white, racist misogynist men who see a pluralistic society as a serious threat to their control of popular culture. Not only do they support a craven, amoral bully for their president, but they love their so-called "pure" vice-president who won't even allow himself to be in a room alone with a woman because he either fears he himself has no personal self-control or because he fears women not to have self control. These are not acceptable leaders for a great, modern country. Take your blinders off. Your beloved religion is being used by world-class grifters. I assure you, Jesus is very sad.
27
I think it's all about the fact that gay people who have always been gay are now being gay without hiding their gayness. And it freaks some people out who for some reason care what other people do in the privacy of their homes.
12
Since Constantine, Christians have hooked their wagon to despots. Christians seek political power first, money second and morality as a ruse to gain the latter two. It's suffocating!
17
God has not provided us with Donald Trump except as a lash. We have no problem starving children, abusing the poor, bombing hospitals because there might be an enemy lurking. We have no problem denying a Samaritan's aid because it might cost us some of our excesses. We have no problem calling out children born as welfare brats and thugs. Trump will be our downfall, cheating his way through his life and leaving us with a $2,520,000,000,000 bill for our grand-kids grand-kids to pay off. Pity American Christians, drunk on the gospel of prosperity.
16
Humanity's end of days is indeed arriving soon.
It's called human induced climate change.
After supporting the Grand Oil Party, believing its lies, and enabling the largest act of genocide in human history conservative Christians will be able to say "I told you so".
11
Let US be clear. Trump is a racist and a misogynist. That Steven Miller still works in the White House after the world has seen his white supremacist emails is all the evidence one needs.
White so-called Christians support Trump because they support his racism and his misogyny. Remember the history of the Southern Baptist and other conservative Christians. They supported slavery and Jim Crow, American apartheid (apart hate).
Their support of Trump has exposed them for the idolatrous hypocrites that they are. No judgrment, simply a description.
14
"They seem to have some kind of psychological craving for apocalyptic fear." Sounds about right. But is it possible for millions of people to suffer from such derangement? Unhinged support for the odious Donal Trump argues in the affirmative.
10
hypocrites and about something that doesn't exist.
2
I guess it is too much to expect these Christians to realize the greatest threat to their religion is them.
12
Of course you don't see it, because in the world view of the conservative "Christian" openly calling gays an abomination and seeking to legitimize discrimination against them in the marketplace in the name of "freedom" (yours, not theirs) is somehow godly. As is forcing religion into public schools, but only your religion. As is a denial of established science ("intelligent design" is not a legitimate scientific hypothesis and does not belong in science class). As is a general hostility to anything not "Christian," whether it be yoga classes or clubs for Muslim students. You see yourselves as the only real Americans, when in fact you are no more American than the Guatemalan or Yemeni immigrant who took the oath of citizenship yesterday. You do not see your bigotry because you're proud of it.
17
Their hypocrisy is unmatched, perhaps only by republicans in the senate, well, republicans nationwide actually. They support the ultimate hypocrite, Donald Trump. He is a sociopath, a liar, a criminal, a sexual predator, likely a rapist, a traitor to our nation who is in Putin’s pocket.
That they think he will save them would be hilarious if not so dangerous.
Having said that, most of us “sane” Americans do not appreciate extremes on the right nor the left. Problem is, compromise to get things done, is no longer allowed by either side. But the far-right is apoplectic about imagined societal breakdowns, and have sold their souls to the devil that is Trump. We can thank the opportunist evangelical preachers and Fox News. Both are destroying America.
9
It must be remembered that when the "Pilgrims" came to America, it was for "religious freedom", their freedom, not anyone else's.
Much to its detriment America has been hag-ridden by Christianity since The First Great Awakening.
A theocratic, reactionary government is easier to maintain and govern than is a liberal/progressive democracy. Neither thinking nor governance is required to maintain an autocracy/theocracy.
Is that, perhaps, the true aim of a "Christian nation"?
For Republicans and other conservatives birth control, abortion and other sexual matters are NOT about morality but ARE about the power of white, Christian, heterosexual males over anyone else.
12
This kind of rhetoric is loud now because those sorts of Christians know *their* end is near. When Trump is out of office, no more pandering to religious right demagogues, much less Christian-only flavored freedom of religion groups.
These individuals should read their history again. There were many good Christian German Nazis.
After all, they were God's Chosen Ones. Mr. Metaxas and others of his ilk should know that feeling, that heartfelt belief, very, very well.
6
Nope. The end is neigh.
Jesus would despise “Christian” conservatives.
10
Most American Christians are simply not Christians. They've become some odd hybrid form of Gnosticism and Old Testament Temple Judaism, worshipping at their Mega-Churches, and slapping White Jesus's face atop everything in an attempt to be perceived as a holier than us. When you actually read the New Testament (as opposed to just memorizing it and then deploying verses out of context), these folks are clearly not followers of the Good News of Yeshua bin Miriam.
7
Now is a great time for "The Chosen One" to perform miracles.
Tell the world you, DONALD J. TRUMP "found" 130 trillion dollars. Show the world all the sins and omissions the Vatican caused and covered up. Humiliate Dos Popes, and take over a universal religion. Appoint your children Saints. Sell Trump brand indulgences. Give war criminals a parade. You can live off tithes ... and golf all the time!
2
"If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian."—Mark Twain's Notebook
16
Nancy Pelosi's remarks about praying for President Trump were more Christian than anything coming from the "neo-christian cult of hypocrisy". She emphasized Christ's direction to hate the sin but love the sinner and to work on your own faults before confronting other's.
1 John 4:20
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
Matthew 7:5
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
James 1:26
If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.
7
The quotations marks around the word "Christian" are repeatedly, and to great error, omitted.
6
This is why one often hears that people in their community are moving to Canada, Europe... anywhere but where the nut jobs are running things.
5
Today’s “climate truthers” sound a lot like the Christian doomsayers. And anyone you dares to challenge is a heretic who must be shunned by society.
Repent! The end is near!
1
Just to be clear, according to the values of these people mean that the South should have won the Civil War, Germany WWII.
3
The moral crisis is facing you in the mirror !
The Trump era is the era of projection.
1
The evangelical cult needs to be put in check. Yes you are free to believe whatever you want, but you are not allowed to destroy the world in order to fulfill your prophecy.
When you have to bend your moral compass to excuse the behavior of your leader, you are in a cult.
8
Christianity and hypocrisy are now synonyms.
7
maybe we need some data about who cheats on their spouse; who is a serial consumer of porn; who is living on the « down low »; who frequents white nationalist websites; who is a child abuser, drug addict or alcoholic.
Hypocrisy and mendacity is the order of the day, and Trumpism is its personification.
5
Are these the same people who said Bill Clinton was an immoral womanizer who therefore cannot lead?
13
Let's see. Ralph Reed, an alleged "man of God" said; “There has never been anyone who has defended us and fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump. No one!”
I'm sure Jesus is up there saying; "Really Ralph?!!! 'No one'?!!! Not even the guy who died on the cross?!!!"
In Ralph Reed's book, Jesus has never defended him nor fought for him. But he preaches Jesus.
What's the adjective I'm looking for to describe Ralph Reed and the likes?
9
Well, it's official. Stupidity is now a highly contagious plague. Paint "Darwin was right" on your door in blood and hide until it's over.
5
Christian evangelicals are against Abortion AND against homosexuals ..well who have less abortions than homosexuals??
4
I’m so sick of hypocritical Christian Evangelicals. Why do you all think everyone has to live their lives according to your ridiculous idea of morality and religiosity? Live your own repressive lives as you wish and stop trying to convert people who want nothing to do with your increasingly nutty ideas. Separation of church and state, remember that oldie but goody, along with freedom of religion; that guarantees freedom from religion.
6
When Jesus was about 33 he hiked up a hill, sat down under an olive tree and began to teach the people: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”
In other words: it is those who know their own spiritual poverty, their own limitations and ‘sins’ honestly and trust God loves them in spite of themselves who already live in the Kingdom of God. How comforted we will all be, when we see, we haven’t got a clue, as to the depth and breadth of pure love and mercy of The Divine Mystery of The Universe.
God’s name in ancient Aramaic is Abba which means Daddy as much as Mommy and He/She/The Lord said, “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not yours.” -Isaiah 55:8
Jesus said: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled.”
In other words: how comforted you will be when your greatest desire is to do what “God requires, and he has already told you what that is; BE JUST, BE MERCIFUL and walk humbly with your Lord.”-Micah 6:8
Jesus knew: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God.”
In other words: how comforted you will be when you WAKE UP and see God is already within you, within every man, every woman and every child. The Supreme Being is everywhere, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Beyond The Universe -and yet so small; within the heart of every atom…
5
"Religion is the opiate of the masses." These religious fanatics are so "hopped up" on their dogma and biblical mythology they can not see the great holes in their belief system.
"If you are not with us you are against us". Therefore religion is under attack in their well brainwashed disambiguation.
I don't care is some people believe in an invisible extraterrestrial deity as long as they don't bash me with their foolishness.
8
I disagree with Mr. Wehner.
Christian Doomsayers haven't lost it at all.
This is exactly who they are.
The modern evangelical movement traces back to Brown vs. Board of Education. Millions of white families pulled their kids out of public schools because they didn't want their kids in school with African-American kids. Those families turned to private, religious schools. The evangelical movement thus became one with racist parents.
They've always seen doom just around the corner. After Brown, it was the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the list kept coming. The idea of America being a multi-racial, multi-religious democracy where women have an equal role is what they fear, and no matter what they've tried, America has become closer and closer to what they fear.
There should be no small irony that Hillary Clinton, a Sunday-school teacher who did lots of work for children, was seen as the equivalent of Hitler.
13
"WOE to the Pharisees on the Day of Judgment."
Republican Christianity is an empty religion full of hypocrites. They follow a fake god, and Donald Trump is his prophet.
Honestly, their sincerity about the values of Jesus Christ is as real as Melania's undying love for her husband.
The Millenials know that 'God is dead and the Republicans killed Him'.
4
I find it fascinating that one of main Christian fanatic obsession is homosexuality. I just read Catholic Bible's 4 chapters where its reported what Jesus did and said. Due to argument with one person. He claimed that Jesus "called homosexuals perverts". I couldn't find such a statement. Only few vague references to Sodom and Gomorrah. And as I remember in that story was an attempt to rape angels. The host offered his daughters instead to the crowd. Then in the end daughters got him drunk and had sex with him to procreate - if that is not perversion I can't imagine what is. I really don't think Christians read Bible. Because there are lines and lines about not eating pork and circumcision. However they don't care about it at all. But homosexuality is apocalyptic issue somehow. And I'm heterosexual female by the way.
9
I'm not into religion by any means but it seems sacrilegious to basically equate a cretin like Trump with Jesus. I fail to see what the Bible thumpers find appealing in a person like Trump.
6
Best Wishes to all Evangelical Ministers with seven-figure salaries and mega churches, who support a New York city real estate agent, who inherited lots of money from his KKK father.
Please keep in touch, and let the rest of us know how your 15 minutes on Judgement Day went down.
9
Christopher Hitchens was right: religion poisons everything.
10
Fundamentalists and evangelicals are not Christian...
They are cultists whose radical beliefs and actions are antithetical to the teachings of Christ.
Hypocrisy being the currency of Trumpism, they fit right in.
5
Satan took Jesus on the mountain and promised him all the kingdoms of the earth. Trump took the Evangelicals to the mountain and promised them everything. Jesus would not worship the devil but Evangelicals are willing to.
6
This, or any other religion has no role in modern society. This baseless stupidity is ruining humankind.
7
Trump' s supporters are worshipping an evil egocentric man who serves himself first that has nothing to do with true christian values.
4
If Jesus were to appear in disguise on our shores and ran for office to heal the US from all that ails this nation, he would be feathered and tarred by our oh-so-pious Evangelicals for his liberal teachings and promptly deported because of a lack of birth certificate.
8
"I like your Christ. However, I do not like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ."
---Gandhi
10
It’s time for some of that “Telling it just like it is” that Trump supporters love so much. And here’s what it is... evangelical Christianity is a 100x greater threat to America than radical Islam... unless we treat it as such we’re on a path to disaster
6
All religion is superstition, but any religion that espouses Trump is insanity.
7
If Trump is all that stands between "Christian doomsayers" and the apocalypse, they better batten their hatches.
2
It's been this way for a long time and we still didn't see the warning signs.
But remember that, without a 'devil', religion would be relatively meaningless, so they must create one (or more).
The same thing for Cult-45 (formerly known as The Republican Party), which fears untold numbers of 'devils'.
In this way, both China and Russia have us at a disadvantage (as well as in as several other ways, like superstition-free education). Organized religion isn't allowed anywhere near government, it's just treated as the Dog & Pony show it is and 'soma for the masses'.
But if they basically force America into becoming a permanent theo-fascist nation, then the world will isolate us like never before.
Who could ever trust a nation as powerful as ours that based it's reasoning and actions on a white christian religion so far removed from the Words of Christ that it's nothing more than a sad, evil joke?
Isn't that the same reasoning they use to justify their hatred of Jews, Muslims and non-white ethnic minorities?
No, in the New American Christian Bible , the words 'irony' and 'hypocrisy' do not exist.
2
I love how the media portrays Trump as evil and morally corrupt, when he’s the most transparent and least corrupt president in the last century.
Trump has not jailed journalists like Adams, Lincoln and Wilson. Trump has not suspended habeus corpus like Lincoln and Wilson. Trump has not interred Americans in concentration camps like FDR. Trump has not ordered the IRS and FBI to target his enemies like FDR, JFK, Johnson, Clinton and Obama.
Trump donates his presidential salary. He will leave office in January 2025 considerably poorer than when he arrived. Most career politicians leave office extremely rich on a government salary.
Obama just bought a $14MM house on Martha’s Vineyard. How come no journalist is investigating where he came up with that cash?
2
I am so glad the NYT has taken the step to publish this piece.
I was brought up by evangelicals and it hurt my life so much. It actually nearly killed me......until I opted to leave and deprogram myself.
I feel so abandoned by well meaning liberals who will not criticise religious people and thought so as not to offend. Please.....there are people in those places who ought to be held to account for their nutiness and manipulation of their flocks.
4
Saint Paul wrote: "God has not given us a spirit of
History will recognize that the most important point Hillary Clinton made about the GOP voter was that they are deplorables. They are intoxicated with Christian fascism, bigotry, misogyny, guns, empire builders, etc.. They are held together by illogical fear that those who differ from them are their enemy and most be destroyed at all costs.
However without these people, the GOP would never have a chance to win in any elections so to fester their plutocracy. They cannot brag about their failed trickled down economic policies, or their morality or patriotism to win election any more. Fear has been used many times in history in many nations, by evil politicians to ascend to the throne in times of stress and the GOP playbook is nothing new. To ensure their power they keep their people under more stress while cleverly blaming others who differ from them as the cause of their increased stress.
These christian doomsters are no different than the other GOP collection of deplorable voters. The majority of which are also uneducated whites over 50 who are the economic losers of the 21th century. In fact it is the GOP plutocracy that has ensured thier misery. Having a hate for profit successful news network as their ministry of misinformation, in Murdoch's faux news also helps their cause.
The GOP is an evil force in America and as other evil political dynasties in history, eventually the evil that ensures their power will kill them. I hope it is not too late for us!
5
Religion is to believe rather than to know.
2
Here we go again - it’s all Trumps fault. Don’t know for sure but I think he’s responsible for Jesus’ death too. Wow, incredible.
1
Typical Never-Trumper establishment-Republican baloney. Keep demonizing the base, Peter. See if that leads to a Romney administration....
Now that the anti-Christ is finally in the White House, why is it we don't hear about him anymore? The religious right is really letting us down. (If you couldn't tell, I'm being facetious. )
2
Yet another iteration of the Cult of Victimhood so effectively espoused by the Faux News set. Somehow they manage to gnore the fact that Christians form by far the majority in this country. Of course, some of these folks don't consider Catholics to be Christians. . .
1
It always seems to come down to sex. Christian conservatives biggest concern is that is that other people are having it and enjoying it. Meanwhile, they'll vote for a foul mouthed bully who lies, philanders, and defrauds those who do business with him. I don't think Jesus would be very impressed.
5
As a life long believer in science and facts, I sometimes feel its a bit strange that all of you religionists believe in invisible gods and realms of the dead. Really strange...
3
A corollary being Christian Doomsayers at one time "had it all together"? Zealots are rarely on a correct path. Let's briefly consider fear used by some Christian sects.
We've all seen a sidewalk mystic carrying a placard proclaiming "The World Ends on __(date)___. Open your heart and be saved". The world never ends and yet they'll soon display that same sign again. Why do some sects of Christianity continue to rely on fear (and guilt) to encourage religious conformance?
Leaders and zealots use fear of eternal damnation and hope for eternity in heaven, two mythical realms never proven to exist, to control Christians. They could use Jesus' promise of love and compassion, but too often resort to fear and implied guilt for sinful thinking.
While we're unlikely to help Christians stop "The End is Near!" behavior, we can see it for what it is. German philosopher and economist Karl Marx is misquoted, "Religion is the opium of the people" but that misquote has a fundamental truth.
Religion is not inherently good, nor bad. Like all social constructs from tribe to nation, it can be a source of identity, meaning, and belonging. Religion can also be used by corrupt leaders to steer people's behaviors for that leader's benefit. Case in point, "the prosperity gospel" preached by televangelists who skim money from the church/congregation.
So let our Christian brothers and sisters preach doom, but compassionately warn them that a religion using fear might be corrupt.
2
I'm no religious scholar, but doesn't this all seem very.....Anti-Christ-y to people? A deceiver, who himself renounces the father and son (but somehow pulls one over on everyone anyway?)
Just saying.
4
How far do you have travel, how many people do you have o talk to, how many basement “churches” do you have to visit to find such people? Never met them, never talked to them—do they really exist? If so—-So What!
2
Social conservative Christians can believe whatever they want, including all the tin foil hat conspiracy theories making the rounds on right wing media. They just need to be defeated at the ballot box so we can begin making progress again.
3
News flash for evangelicals: Jesus was a progressive. Read the social gospel of the book of Matthew: “...what you did to the least of these, you did it unto me...”
6
There is no “ Christ” in the Christian sect’s unwavering support for DJT. The justification that an unethical, immoral, un-christian individual is necessary to implement their belief system is the same rationale as the Germans utilized in the 1930-1940’s.
6
With Christian evangelicals, a label I now regard as oxymoronic, right to life stops at birth. Need health care? Only if you can pay for it. Hungry? Forget about food stamps? Want a university degree? Only if you can buy your way into one of Betsy DeVos's diploma mills. Wanna go to heaven when the rapture comes? Buy your prosperity preacher another Lear jet.
10
This kind of false consciousness is terrifying and stupid. It hates reason and objectivity. I grew up during the Cold War and it prevailed then. Robert Aldridge's book,
The Counter Force Syndrome captured it well: The Russians are going to destroy us, which is why we need this overwhelming arsenal that is superior to theirs in every way and guarantees we will destroy them, until the next round of funding, at which time the Russians are going to destroy us...
3
Mr Wehner, don't you know Jesus's Second Coming is coming. If you don't know that, then you aren't a true Christian.
For all the other Christians with the dark apocalyptic vision of Christ and his Christian army highlighted by Mr. Wehner, they know God, the Merciful, wrathful God will surely save them when Armageddon Comes, Enrapturing them in his love while burning the hopeless masses of sinners, over and over again.
Not one word about how these are followers of apocalyptic death cults.
Thanks a lot for a lot for along honest.
Women have every right to control their own reproductive health. We are all African. Jesus' mother and father were jews. He never converted. He protected the weak from the strong.
He was an educator. We are not entitled to 'sacred' ignorance. We are not entitled to worship our own opinion.
When you are frightened, try not to say its the end of the world please. Just imagine that you are under the same sheltering sky as Jesus was.
1
The ends justify the means. Any means? Yes. Onward Christian soldiers!
Isn’t there a third way?
After 2,000 years, this is the best that you can offer?!
What would the Prince of Lies be saying to humans?
3
It’s interesting to note that Jesus, the guy for whom Christianity is named, never said anything about abortion, pornography, gay marriage or creeping socialism. So where do all of the “evangelical Christians” get this from?
5
I don't know what these "Christians" are thinking, after all, Jesus would be a Bernie supporter.
5
My prayer; Dear God, Please save us from your worshipers. Amen.
7
To my fellow Christians,
The keeper of the church is Christ, after all he is the one who said ‘the gates of hades shall not prevail against it’ (Matthew 16:18) Trump is only a mere mortal and only a politician — a corrupt one as it turned out. Honestly, is Donald Trump really a Christian? Or is he using Christianity like the way he became Republican to run for presidency? He certainly doesn’t sound like a Christian at all, ‘his speech betrays him’! We know for sure that he is a liar. Christ warned us from his likes, ‘Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing’ !(Matthew 7:15)
Let’s put our hands together with the Congress and our fellow Americans, to clear up the White House and rise up and build, let’s roll!
1
If Christ were alive today, he certainly would not be an evangelical Christian.
4
Anybody remember that series of Xtian books, the "Left Behind" series?
They were angry and sadistic towards the secular and other religions. The books went into great detail of the deaths and tortures of the unbelievers. This what Evangelists are: vicious, hateful and power-mongering. They want an end to this world.
Remember Thomas Kincaid, the awful painter? Evangelical Christian. Those paintings were all a desire to jettison this world.
They are dangerous people, and most of them are armed (as many righties are)—to the teeth, and would love to do nothing more than kill lefties.
Their god, though omnipotent, must have human agency, I guess. Or at least invention.
3
Interesting that teaching kinergartners about gender expression causes more moral outrage among Christians than the molestation of children by priests and ministers.
9
Christian Doomsayers have NOT lost it - they are winning.
This is why:
That Jesus did not view the world as a battle zone is the wishful thinking that is indoctrinated into believers minds. In the linage of the warlord David, Jesus was the Messiah - for Christ's sake - and his task was to conquer the Promised Land and to subject the world to his believe.
'Love' is merely a marketing marker of an otherwise aggressive Christianity.
Yes, there was someone Evangelicals loved more than Trump: Hitler.
Hitler was lifted to power with the help of Evangelicals BECAUSE of his outspoken anti-Semitism - induced by their leader Martin Luther - manifested in blatant bigotry, supremacy, and racism.
The Catholics initially stood by because their party was the competition. After its collapse, they all supported Hitler likewise.
Why?
The Apocalypse is supposed to bring about a renewal of the world under one faith. This goal is what all Judaic followers give their lives and livelihoods for.
You might be underestimating the dangers that organized religion presents for America's democracy.
A.J. Deus
Social Economics of Poverty and Religious Terrorism
2
Why don't the theocrats ever address the casual sex that leads to unwanted pregnancies?
Is it because christian men only marry virgins who they stay with
"'till death do us part", so it doesn't apply to them?
So strange how divorce used to be a major sin for christians, until they found they couldn't live without it.
Gambling, another big taboo, because it often leads to ruin, somehow gets a pass these days.
The zealots never talk about Nevada, where prostitution is legal.
Their cherrypicking of sins and virtue have more to do with what they have an interest in, and what they don't.
I hope their current overreach collapses on them, since superstition, delusion and hypocrisy will lead us away from Bronze Age myths of the so-called "evangelicals".
They are dangerous people.
4
Radical Christians are just as bad as radical Muslims. They both need to be eliminated.
These apocalyptic visions they both crave might eventually come to reality only due to their own misguided and evil intentions. That’s why I will say what I have been saying for a few years now. Radical Christianity and white supremacy are both connected and go hand in hand. They need to be eliminated from the American experience at all costs. That’s why counter terrorism efforts should be first focused on terrorism at home. All white supremacist groups specially need to be banned and eliminated by force if necessary. If we do that radical Christians will be automatically weakened and eventually irrelevant.
5
What would Jesus do?
He wouldn't entertain the duplicity of the current occupant of the White House.
4
Crisis-addicted Christians drive their church into the ground and rejoice.
Making themselves glad objects of mockery and fear Christian leaders, Evangelicals and conservative Catholics alike, take as a model the louche piggery of monks of repulsive lore.
They drive Americans from the church as surely as godless Europe was driven away.
Ignorant, self-righteous, they parrot the European church of a few hundred years ago. Domineering, radically intolerant, prone to ludicrous misinterpretations of the Bible.
Trump is an excellent example. Hailed as God's newest savior, they rationalize the choice with tales of Cyrus saving the Jews. An ungodly man. Pagan, heathen, barbarian. So why not Trump? "God moves...mysterious ways".
But in Cyrus God chose a perfect savior, and proffered a lesson Christians will never learn.
Educated, extravagantly tolerant, just, encouraging cultures and religions not his own in ways that put Christians and Jews alike to shame; Cyrus was a Christian leader like no other.
To our half-blind Christians he is merely the bogey-man who let them live. Today they despise Cyrus and all his descendants.
No Christian leader comes so close to Christian life as the kindness, tolerance, wisdom, godliness of that barbaric ruler.
Lauding sex-obsessed preachers, money-grubbing theology, Christians claim intimate knowledge of the mind and motives of God.
Today's worldly Christians lead one to consider again premonitions of the Anti-Christ.
4
Christians and the like vote as told to vote. They are after all sheep their Shepard is telling them when, where and what to eat drink and vote. It is after all his “flock”. Go figure
1
Trump has sex with porn stars, and had one out-of-wedlock child that we know of (he married Marla Maples after Tiffany was born). So this qualifies him to protect America from pornography and unwed mothers in what way exactly?
3
Indeed, they really have lost it! Listen to 'Catholic' Nancy Pelosi telling us that she 'prays' because the end of civilization is near.
1
I suggest that the righteous Christians who seek to reform those sinners and defilers among us be required to read W. Somerset Maugham's short story Rain. Either that or they should take long cold showers and try to understand the demons within them which provide a justification for supporting a man who took children from their mothers arms and put them in cages.
1
This insane fear of "persecution" and the reactionary reflex to strip the rest of us of our constitutional rights is having its effect on normally rational people like myself. If these hypocritical religious bigots want to turn the United States into Gilead, they will identify to the rest of us as a disease threatening the body of our republic. And then they'll see some real push back.
3
What possible appeal could a religion that has chosen Donald Trump, with his narcissism and amorality, as a savior, have to a sane, rational person?
4
Conservative Christians need to remember that when you make a deal with the devil, the devil always wins.
4
Well, if that's the case why were the evangelicals a political no-show in the 2016 election? Maybe now, with the Democrats showing their true colors, they'll flock to the polls and vote GOP in 2020. Each vote being another nail in the Democrats political coffin. We might also rid ourselves of smarmy liberal opinion pieces in the NYT (though I seriously doubt it). If this opinion was about any other religion, it would have never made it past the editors.
Funny, a lot of what conserviatives decries liberals for, things like helping the poor, taxing the rich, caring about your community and the environment, are based on biblical concepts.
What would Jesus do? He certainly wouldn't put the poor and downtrodden in cages at the border and separate their children from them.
4
Wondering how much Evangelicals rely on Facebook and its unquenchable need to outrage and rile up.
3
I would love to know how many abortions Trump has paid for.
7
I hear the faint sounds of tax free coins hitting the coffer plate whenever I read or hear about Metaxas or Paula White, which reminds me of Lyndon Johnson quote and to paraphrase “if you can convince someone of doom and moral decay then they won’t notice you picking their pockets, give them examples of something abhor and they will empty their pockets for you”
3
"None is righteous, no not one . . . no one does good, not even one." (St. Paul, Romans 3:10 & 12)
There is no seizing the moral high ground for the Christian when it comes to the law, "For ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
Claiming to do so only makes one a hypocrite, "like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness." (Jesus, Matthew 23:27) We live by grace through faith alone.
The abiding mind-set of Christians is a persecution complex. Is there any current self-identified political group that reminds you of?
2
I can only humbly quote the deep wisdom of an old bumper sticker:
“Jesus save me from your followers.”
3
In my 60 years, almost without exception, the most vicious, sexually immoral, dishonest, corrupt, racist and hate-filled hypocritical people I have known considered themselves religious conservatives. For me it’s a red flag. As I see these people gain control of our government, it’s a an even more worrisome giant red flag. They would turn this country into A Handmaid’s Tale for money, power and tribalism. I wish Jesus was around to clean out the temples.
3
When people get lazy and use religion to ignore human-made problems, we all lose. Religion is a disease of the mind in my opinion, and it is making our whole country sick. Trump is as corrupt as a president can be, and yet those who purport to be Christians, support him. Another tale of upside down world.
3
That so many who call themselves Christians and profess to believe in the teachings of Christ, in mercy, love and compassion, support the loathsome creature in the White House is a mystery.
He is a hypocrite and a liar and his religiosity consists only of being in thrall to himself. He knows as much about Christianity and religion generally, as he does everything else, that is, nothing.
It is one thing to profess to believe all the gimcrackery of religion and the mumbo jumbo of the churches with their medieval garb, sexual predators and cover-ups. That's a hard stretch.
But for so-called religious Christians to contort themselves into cats' cradles to justify support, and more importantly, encouragement of trump shows what they truly are: a crazed cult of personality so bent on abortion that they have abandoned their savior for a cruel sideshow clown.
3
True Christians are tolerant. These folks are fakes, just like trump.
3
Obviously, God doesn't give a rip. If he did, he'd just wave his magic hand and make all these supposed problems go away. Since he isn't doing that, he must not see them as problems.
2
Please don't refer to fetuses as "the unborn," it's a Christianist slogan.
5
Please, stop lumping all Christians together. It's offensive and intended as a slur.
1
Fundamentalist Christians who believe that a fertilized egg or barely detectable fetus has the same agency as you or I are beyond the reach of intelligent discourse. If you didn't believe that before the Trump debacle, you should now.
These people want us all to live in their demented theocracy, and they deserve the same respect as the snake handlers and their co-worshipers speaking in tongues.
6
Please, get real. It has been and always will be about gaining/holding power. White evangelical Christians are freaking out that they are losing this power and will promote any narrative to the faithful to hold it, even go the Jim Jones route if necessary.
4
Please distinguish between White evangelicals and other conservative “Christians”. Nothing Christian about these folks only idolatry and hatred of anyone and anything not THEM!
3
Fun Fact:
The Judeo-Christian Bible begins with a story about human ignorance and gullibility and the human penchant for trusting "snakes".
5
Trump devotees should watch Bikram on Netflix, so many parallels between these two monsters
1
Religion is the cause for 99% of our wars. Rightwing clown kooks who pine for the End of Days and will lurch towards any remote possibility that will happen with their nudge are the biggest scare we will face for humanity's future. Religion is not here to SAVE mankind, but to doom it.
5
This is frightening.
They attribute a decrease in crime and abortion to one man who had nothing to do with either.
They ignore his adultery, sodomy and abuse of the poor.
No wonder Christianity is dying.
4
The elephant in the room is dominance. Christians who support Trump want to dominate the government and the citizens of this country. They are an American Taliban. They see Trump as their ticket to a theocracy. Trump sees them as gullible marks. They're using each other, and our freedoms are the casualties of this alliance.
4
The poor southern folk forgot what a carpetbagger is. Back in the 60's these slick talking preachers would come to town, pass out flyers promising heaven, pack a big tent full of true believers, take the rubes money and move on to the next town. Praise the Lord the Chosen One is tweeting.
2
Nut jobs, really, these so-called christian conservatives, full of fear and hatred for their fellows. There's nothing Christian about them.
5
Deliberate ignorance incited to rage by a Murduch propaganda network; leads to rationalized nonsense, and a mob ready to burn down the library.
A fascist is a fascist, even if he is carrying a Bible.
We want our Country back.
6
"Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It"...Really? Have they ever had it to lose? They're just another "I know it all" cult, that abides by "do as I say...not as I do".
4
This column reminds me of a prayer my old granny used to say:
"Dear Jesus, please save us from the Christians."
3
It's not clear to me why anyone would strive to find reason in the mind of someone who claims to be Christian and supports philandering, locking children up in cages, blatant lying, and cutting food stamps to give tax breaks to billionaires.
What would one find in such a tortured mind?
1
These days, I'd worry lots more about a white evangelical "Christian" reading to my kids than I would a drag queen doing the same. It seems the majority of these folks have become moral nihilists.
3
Ghandi said it best:
"I like your Christ very much; I don't much like your Christians."
3
Can anyone say False Prophet? Trump is the very definition.
2
There is nothing Christ-like about Evangelical Christians. They are nothing more than one-trick ponies raging on and on about abortion. Their sainted President just cut food stamps for the most vulnerable among us. How loving us that?
1
Instead of supporting Trump, Wehner seems to leave the door open to acquiesence to Democrats who would foster abortion and the LGBTQ agenda on other people. However, there may be Christians who have acquiesced to Trump's dictatorial conduct, positions on the economy, environment, and foreign relations, posing even a greater danger. It is Machiavellian: the end justifies the means. It would seem the "Christian" way would be just means toward a just end. Our republic, our democracy, is threatened by Trump's dictatorial, above-the-law, conduct. It is not to be minimized. The Fascists had Mussolini, the Nazis had Hitler, the Republicans have Trump.
"You frighten us, because Fox and Rush say you're bad, so we are morally o.k. to do anything!"
Jesus would scare the living daylights out of a lot of these folks--and guess what they'd do to him.
2
As an ex-Catholic, turned Secularist, turned Evangelical, I've been ashamed watching too many of my brethren seduced by this P.T. Barnum in the White House. Bonhoeffer biographer Metaxas (whom I have met) ought to recognize the real Nazi metaphor at work here is is the one featuring a master manipulator whose tweet-rhetoric pushes any “moral issue” button available to stimulate a base to keep him in power. Any con man knows there's "a sucker born every minute.” We should all know by now this one would sell out the country, or his own mother, for a better TV rating, or more opportunities to continue feeding his own outsized ego.
1
"Ralph Reed, one of the movement’s most influential political figures, recently declared, “There has never been anyone who has defended us and fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump. No one!”"
Jesus Christ. I mean really, "Jesus Christ!"
2
If your religion is losing adherents and donations are dwindling and the country is accepting as norms behavior that you find abhorrent, here's a tip. Instead of aligning yourself with the most unchristian man ever to occupy the White House, look at what you stand for and ask yourself if it addresses the needs of 21st Americans. If not then no amount of help from the devil's own will turn things around.
2
Ironically, there exist parallel "doomsday" theories from various 20th century "evangelical" sources that predict from Rev. 18 how the church(es) will "play the harlot" --compromising their faith in God and collaborating with evil -- in order to gain worldly (political) position, as they are doing now with DJT. It's as though they have predicted their own "lukewarm" betrayal & demise.
1
Mr. Wehner, you left out that now phony, delusional Christians like CNN's Forever Trumper Alice Stewart claims that God appointed and blessed us with Trump as president. Praise Jesus!
2
Regarding the obsession of conservatives with abortion, I say, “An acorn is not a tree.”
2
As for Ahmari he changed his robe same mind set. Rephrasing here Gandhi said I like your Christ but don’t like your Christians
2
I’m sorry but I missed the element of Christianity that approves of and endorses lying, hating, philandering, destroying the planet, worshiping money, promoting an oligarchy, promoting white supremacy, misogyny, and oh yea, locking children in cages to make others fear coming to America. Any Christians out there able to help me resolve this? Thanks!
4
As an evangelical Christian who supports President Trump's reelection, I daresay that some of this Op-Ed would be addressed to me. So I respond in a civil and respectful manner: 862,000 abortions in 2017 is tragic beyond words. It is the loss of 862,000 innocent and vulnerable lives. To describe that as a "success" is morally grotesque. It is worth noting that Mr. Wehner never at any point invokes the Bible or specifically the New Testament on this issue, or any issue. Using florid language to ridicule the position of evangelical Christians like myself ("existential moral crisis") is certain to assure virtue-signaling among the woke left readership of the NYT . It does nothing to communicate to me, an attorney. The concerns of conservative Christians began well before Mr. Trump became President, and will continue long after. Since Mr. Wehner apparently does not read the Apostle Paul's Letter to the Romans, he surely does not read the Book of Revelation. Mr. Wehner's characterization of President Trump cannot be squared with Romans 13:1-7. Trump Derangement Syndrome, characterized by a never-ending stream of insults directed at the President, has no intellectual content with which to begin a serious conversation. Many Christians like myself are greatly hopeful about our world and our nation; I do not entertain apocalyptic fears, but I found little of substance in Mr. Wehner's Op-Ed. He ridicules and insults us because we don't share his left-wing politics.
43
@Tom Wolpert Indeed, Mr. Wolpert, the concerns of conservative Christians began well before Mr. Trump. From where I stand, coming of age in the segregated South, they began with civil rights. Engraving an image of God as a political action figure was brilliant for political conservatives. God's Peace.
74
@Tom Wolpert I trust that you will wholeheartedly advocate for the shuttering of all fertility clinics, where -- if "embryo = human being" is what you truly believe -- death is a grotesquely frequent outcome. That people who pour vast sums of money into these facilities are doing so in hopes of ending up with a (healthy) baby doesn't mean that the resulting of thousands if not tens of thousands of "babies" each year when many of the pregnancies fail is any less criminal.
Just because someone wants a baby doesn't mean it's somehow "okay" for them to commit actions that they know are likely to "kill" "babies". What is the term I'm looking for? Negligent homicide? Manslaughter?
Are you advocating that all these places be shut down in order to stop the carnage?
65
@Tom Wolpert You seem to have missed the gist of this article, which is that Mr. Trump is exploiting many good Christian believers by appealing to exaggerated fears, and demonizing people (like me) who want the same things you do, such as fewer abortions - zero would be grand - but have a different idea about how to get there. He's encouraging the love and generosity which you and I also share, me through my Jewish faith, you through Christian faith. Rather than see Trump as a defender of the faith, I suggest you see how little moral standing you have if you stand by him. I am reaching out to you out of love and asking you to look at Mr. Trump with an eye to how much he is wounding you.
346
Wow. Religious fundamentalists have gone way down the rabbit hole. Up is down and down is up. Let’s see if I understand, progressives who support lending a hand to the less fortunate, treating all men(persons) as equal, and treating others as you expect to be treated is bad. Separating families, locking children in cages, carelessly destroying the environment, lying, and generally being corrupt is considered being faithful to religious principles. This is why I abhor organized religion. It’s just meaningless opiate for the masses.
6
Had trump run for president as a democrat, the evangelicals would’ve stoned him, not idolized him, as they do now.
4
I don't even know where to start. I have read many of the comments here. The things that Evangelicals say, stand for, their history and many of the alarming changes that are taking place are absolutely antithetical to everything I believe and stand for. I want to be open and tolerant to as many people as I can but it is asking too much to go along with this administration and be cordial to the religious right when I sense that they would be willing to take away my rights to get what they want. Trump is a liar and a criminal, there is a a sizable religious cult faction that wants this country to go backwards in order to make them feel heard and satisfied. I don't want their religions ruling this country.
8
Lost it? They had it?
2
An abortion is indeed somewhere on the scale of killing, that’s not really even debatable but removing food stamps for single people trying to make a better life for themselves, in a world (USA) where a doctor’s visit can have a deductible of a thousand dollars or more, is like water-boarding the person you “saved” every day of their life!
3
Trump's fervent evangelical supports are obviously not "Christians".
Rather, they're "Machiavellians" - worshiping at the altar of "the ends justifies the means".
3
Boiled down to its essence, the old saying Is that evangelical christians only care about the fetus, once free of the mothers “apartment” their holy concern evaporates, ie: the children at the southern border.
3
Comments like those of Ralph Reed sure make me glad I'm an Atheist. Funny how christians think liberalism is moving us to the the brink of the apocalypse when in actuality it's religious right causing most of the divisiveness in this country.
5
Nothing fossilizes-in the ignorance of the United States more profoundly than neglect to enforce "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" on that body which has become such a conspicuous attractive nuisance to nitwits and lunatics with religious agendas. We are supposedly doomed to this obsolete scheme of liberty to enslave forever because God made it so. The US is governed for five year olds. There isn't an adult in the Republican delegation to Washington.
3
Thank you for the warning about Eric Metaxas. I am a church librarian and I will vet his books to make sure that they are not Trojan Horses for political propaganda.
It’s called “dirty work”. Trump is doing the dirty work. He’s covered in it. You got to serve somebody.
1
CHRISTIANS have "lost it." This is why people, all over the world, are turning their backs on it, every single day. It is the height of magical thinking and hypocrisy. Nothing but a quest for money and power. Why do you think the Catholic
Church, and others, only recruit in 3rd world countries, these days? Can't make any headway in western nations. Thank goodness.
4
The Rapture - a great way to sell a lot of guns to 30% of the country.
Remember how it was promoted when Obama was in office.
1
Trump, the GOP, conservatives, and other Americans need to become Biblical Christians to overcome the evil that only seeks power and will lie, and do all sorts of other evil to obtain that power in the name of their socialist utopia.
They are not Christians. Christ said much about seeing to one’s fellows, nations as men. He said nothing that I know of about abortion. Caring hysterically about a blastocoel and not a whit about an actual child has nothing to do with Christ.
1
This is all of a piece.
Modern Christian churches seem to think it's just fine for multimillionaire preachers to extort money from their flocks through lies and misrepresentation. They have chosen to look away from the hideous spectacle of children being raped and women being exploited, making female submission to males a central tenet of their all-male establishments. They croon and convulse over a man who has broken every Commandment gleefully, who lies incessantly, who is unable to even imagine putting anyone else's interest before his own.
They, like Trump, worship at the altar of the dictator. When threats of eternal damnation fail to move anyone outside of their true believer cult, they want to seize the levers of civil power to force their "moral demands" on others.
They lost any credibility, any claim to a moral high ground, when they blinked over systemic rape and fervently embraced a man who is the diametric opposite of the Christ they claim to serve.
Nowadays, establishment religious leaders serve only themselves.
2
Religious extremism is all about gangs, nothing more, gangs that promise eternal life in exchange for slavish devotion to the current state of the dogma, in this case opposition to abortion, which should be subject to education not legislation. Fundamentalists are a very white subset of the America gang, now under the thumb of "don," milking devoted followers for every drop of power he can squeeze out of them.
1
The decline in abortions, murders, etc. is in spite of and not because of religion. Imagine how much better the world will be when people quit believing myths and lies invented and told by men over 2000 years ago.
2
How can we prove Trump was chosen by god? Nail him to a cross and wait three days. Easy Peasy.
3
The Christian doomsayers can join forces with the Climate Change doomsayers. They all share a religious fervor that most of us find authoritarian, puritanical and illiberal.
The tipping point is abortion, Dems are viewed as baby killers, unfortunately the candidates and news media augment this perception. Right to choose has been converted into right to kill, has to change before you get this group back.
Thank you Peter Wehner, for a reasoned and encouraging piece.
Recently Franklin Graham was a guest on Eric Metaxas' podcast.(https://www.metaxastalk.com/podcast/wednesday-november-20-2019/)
Graham expressed the opinion the those who oppose Donald trump are "almost a demonic power." Metaxas disagreed with Graham indicating that in his opinion they are not "almost a demonic power" they are actually a demonic power. Graham concurred that "it is a spiritual battle."
So, Peter, you and I, and a few million other Christians who oppose Trump for a variety of reasons, need to know that we are now servants of Satan. Repent!
1
Preaching to the choir, are we Mr. Wehner?
How about speaking some hard truths to these so-called Christians who support the lawless criminal occupying the Oval Office?
There is nothing Christ-like about lying and stealing and obstruction.
There is nothing Christ-like about putting children in cages.
There is nothing Christ-like about supporting such an individual, personal politics aside.
And for Christ’s sake, stop calling these people Christians for they are anything but adherents of Christ’s teachings.
2
The religious fanatics you talk about seem fixated on abortion because they believe in the sanctity of all human life. Yet, when it comes to the death penalty and gun control, issues they usually oppose, where is their concern for the sanctity of life?
Their inconsistency leaves them open to ridicule, deservedly.
2
Rick Wilson's "Rolling Stone" article, "The Traitors Among Us," offers many examples of domestic traitors, such as the GOP Republican Congressmen and Senators parroting Russian Federation talking points, or these Christian Traitors, who preach love, but only back up and support hate--and are gleeful when they see brown immigrant children dying (six so far) under this monster of administration. They don't care about sixteen year old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez--but I do. I care more about him than any of you, that is for sure.
2
There are, unfortunately, some eerie echoes with our modern political climate to the run up to the Spanish Civil War--an ugly war that made our civil war look like a picnic. If our country continues to fracture along lines of race, religion, and class, it will become impossible to resolve any differences peacefully.
People on the left also need to remember that a communist dictator can be just as dangerous as a fascist dictator. Pol Pot may not have been as bad as Adolf Hitler, but he was still pretty bad.
2
These are not moral people.
It is not right to describe conservative christianists as Christian. What these folks follow is deeply corrupted theobabble that is pure politics dressed up as Christian theology.
1
If you read Revelations, which I doubt most of these Prosperity Evangelists have, before the Last Judgement, the AntiChrist has to appear first. If ever there was a description of Deviant Donnie, that would be spot on.
2
Evangelicals oppose abortion and birth control because they think that's the way to control the sexual behavior of women. In fact, they oppose the expansion of women's rights for much the same reason.
But professor Wehner missed the primary, central reason why evangelicals adore Trump: They fear a "takeover" of white America by an ever-increasing number of people of color.
The KKK of old has reconstituted itself over the years into the many rural evangelical and all white churches with little demagogic preachers who preach hate, fear and intolerance toward democracy and the modern world.
That is the overwhelmingly dominant reason for evangelicals to slavishly revere a criminal psychopath as their Fearless Leader. They see him as their Fuhrer who has no boundaries and will do anything to stop the "takeover" by so many people they have been taught to hate.
1
If Hillary Clinton could have destroyed Christianity as so many evangelicals believed, then perhaps they should look at eh strength of their religion before blaming others.
It can also said that hateful, fear based religion needs to be destroyed to make room for the love and compassion it pretends to extend.
Many of these 'christians' are self-proclaimed christians and Christian at all. They are theocrats that had the bad luck to be born in the United States where our constitution gives us freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion.
They seem to have forgotten Mark 12:17 as well as many other teachings of Jesus. Perhaps they would feel more comfortable starting their own country in say Jonestown, Guyana.
Imagine putting other people’s sex lives “at or near the top” of your concerns, and then trusting Donald Trump (of all people) to restore whatever it is you consider to be order. American Christians are truly lost.
1
Those who accept the literal fire and brimstone version of religion ought to be happy enough to know that those heathens who don't behave in the proper way will meet their reckoning at the pearly gates, with a very toasty afterlife.
And knowing that such future punishment will happen ought to be enough for them.
Perhaps they believe trump will somehow hasten The Rapture. Three of his top appointments are believers:Pence,Barr and Pompeo. And since they are truly bearers of The Word, they will most certainly be spared. Trump is their tool,living proof that the lord,indeed, works in mysterious ways. And what a tool he is.
I am 73 years old and have never held any religious belief but I do believe in good and evil behavior, kindness and caring for the only planet we will ever know. Our current president doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between good and evil, shows no signs of kindness and cares not at all about the planet that our descendants will live on. The self centered religious fanatics that worship Trump's belligerent behavior don't seem to care about their fellow humans or the planet we live on. They constantly misinterpret their religious texts to suit their own beliefs and have no love for their fellow humans unless those people march along with them much as the fascists did. They believe guns and the killing of those who disagree with them might just be acceptable behavior. they should be ashamed. Trump knows one thing, how to play to a crowd. Christian fundamentalists in our country are no different than the Taliban or ISIS. They want complete control of everyones behavior. This is sick and shameful.
2
Evangelical Christians -- I don't see Donald Trump defending you and fighting for you. I see him using you. But then, maybe it feels good to be used? Your loyalty is, um, fascinating. Worshipful, nearly.
1
So many making comments apparently conflate “religion” with “Christianity”. It may be impossible for Christians to understand, but there are other religions. You know, the infidels Christians victimize.
Rachmones is a very useful Yiddish word denoting mercy, kindness, compassion and pity.
If Fundamentalist Christians leaders had a dime’s worth of it in their hearts for the migrant mothers and children still confined in detention camps alongside our Southern border and elsewhere, they wouldn’t be Trump supporters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/migrant-children-border-soap.html
2
They never had it.
Christian conservatives are concerned that the imminent "end times" will show god's disapproval of America allowing abortions; I hope their god will let them know how much he disapproves of the desecration of the environment, his work after all, for which he labored seven days.
The god of Genesis was careful to warn Adam and Eve about the Tree of Knowledge. (“Don’t eat of it.”) But somehow he forgot to warn them about the talking snake. (“Don’t listen to it.”)
An unexamined religion is no better than a superstition. And as religions that practiced human sacrifice prove, a superstition can be fatal.
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Pro-Trump vs anti-Trump Christians. Just one more example of how, since religion is entirely made-up, you can use it to justify any position you like.
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Anyone supporting Trump and claiming that they are Christian, debases and disgraces Christianity.
Most Christians are not end of days nut cases, but since Corrupt Trump came on the political scene, nut case jihadists Christians have come out of their right-wing coops and caves.
There is no point to pointing out to them that their dear leader and their support of him celebrates the antithesis of Christianity. In other words which they may understand, they are supporting pure evil and behaving like pagans.
Frankly, these radicalized
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"He who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon"
These self-described religious people can not find a spoon long enough to distance the from Trump.
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While fundamentalist Christian men may not want their wives to have abortions, they certainly want their mistresses to be able to. They are a misogynist group who do not want women to have power or the ability to say no. The literally want the option of rape and still control the control the outcome in the case of a resulting pregnancy. That gives total power over the conditions of the lives of women to them.
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It boggles this church lady’s mind everyday that a poster boy for the seven deadly sins would be the subject of such idolatry by so many Republican Evangelicals. As my dad used to say to my siblings and me when we were little, “Is that what you learned in Sunday School?”
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There is a recurring theme in the Bible from Genesis through the Acts of the Apostles that God favors the sinner and the scamp to do his will. (Moses was a murderer, Jacob a liar and a cheat, Paul a sanctimonious persecutor). A popular hermeneutic is that God does this so humans will understand the words and deeds are divine. Conservative Christians can use this to accept this President's deplorable character and simultaneously believing he is doing God's will.
Notice how social indicators in the more “Christian” (read: red) states tend to badly trail those in the “heathen” (read: blue) states. Red staters, generally, are more likely to get divorced, to have their teenaged daughters get pregnant, to die by a violent crime, and so on and on, than their blue state compatriots. And let’s not even compare American social indicators with those of the godless Europeans. The presence of piety is no guarantee of morality. Jesus knew this full well, BTW, particularly in his dealings with the Pharisees, and warned repeatedly of the dangers of blind obedience to doctrine. In their clammy embrace of the false god known as Trump, evangelical Christians have shown themselves to be nothing more than idolators. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m a Christian and find the whole thing beyond appalling.
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From Jesus to Donald Trump? The messianic movement has seen better days...
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You don't get it? They believe he's here precisely to bring in the apocalypse, the second coming, and the rapture.
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When anyone declares about America, as Trump did, "Only I can fix this!", they are wrong, or lying, or stupid, or some combination of the three. Anyone who supports such a person is at best misguided, desperate for a savior but willing to settle for anyone who claims to be.
WWJD! Elect a corrupt Pharisee?
"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive ... treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people."
2 Timothy 3: 1-5
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I’m not sure who those evangelicals are following but it’s not Christ. They tend to forget our leader was a homeless guy that never took an offering in his life...except when he fed 5000 poor people. He advocated for children, living children, and warned against harming them (those children dead and in cages at our borders). He loved foreigners and supported all people.
The religious right are the Pharisees of our day: hipocritical leaders that value money and power over people. Jesus would have thrown over their money tables and called them out.
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It is sheer arrogance that these TRUMPERS-TIL-THEY=DIE believe that they have to defend God. Does the strength of their God depend on what humans do? Surely they jest if they believe that God can only survive if Christianity survives and if it is defended by the despicable human being they worship. In fact I think there is something in the Christian faith that says you can not serve two masters at one time: they either serve a just God a human who even they know in their hearts is corrupt and hateful. I feel sorry for them because truly they are lost sheep.
It is a battle zone with the likes of you people.
Your ideas are manipulated by your faith.
You want to tell us that you have all the answers, you don't.
We are all free from other thoughts which are not ours.
Christ may be a personal savior to individuals; but he is unrecognizable to a crowd of apocalyptic Christians who feed on each other’s fear and loathing during Fellowship coffees.
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Religion, not the free press, is the enemy of the people.
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Trump's Christian supporters are every bit as Christian as is he.
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Mr. Wehner summarizes continued Christian support for Trump as:
"Mr. Trump may be unethical, unscrupulous and morally dissolute, but he is by far the lesser of two evils."
And what might this other evil be? The leading candidate, of course, is the Left, most often self-described as Progressives. We have seen this before.
Germany in the 1930s was 95% Christian (2/3 Protestant, 1/3 Catholic) with Jews at <1%. The evil that those Christian's responded to in supporting Hitler was the socialist threat that they saw Soviet Communism posing. And so while they understood and tolerated the evil of the Nazis, they did so in the belief that what Communism threatened was even worse. Never mind that Hitler was an atheist who intended to eventually destroy Christianity because he believed that Christian principles were incompatible with his view of the superman.
Are we in now in a similar cycle to what Germany, and the world, experienced 90 years ago? If gauged by the impenetrability of many Christians to their belief in Trump regardless of what he does, then there is reason for concern.
The lack of morality in today's shameless Republican Party is appalling. The Republican survival strategy has created an unholy alliance, a fusion of White Nationalist racists, gun rights activists and white Christian Evangelists - perhaps the most hypocritical faction.
This immoral Christian base maintains a virulent disrespect for a woman's rights to seek healthcare on her own terms. For Evangelists defeating Roe v. Wade overcomes every other Christian value. The objective of these religious extremists is to convert the USA to a one-religion Christian State under the leadership of the amoral Donald Trump. shame on them all.
No American who still respects this nation can support today's Republican Party
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So these so called Christians believe trump is the Anti- Christ? I thought the Anti-Christ would be better looking and a lot smarter. Who knew?
The incursion of religion into our politics is one of the main reasons for our strident polarization.Christian Evangelicals want to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us. They have made their efforts a religious crusade. They forget that our founding fathers were explicit that there must be a separation between Church and State. Of course they are very much hypocrites on issue of abortion since most who claim to hold belief that all life is sacred support capital punishment, love hunting and oppose gun controls and are not registered pacifists. Many view women as 2nd class citizens whose proper place is in the home. They act holier than thou but cheat on their spouses and watch porn as much as the liberals they claim to hate
Largely these devout Evangelicals are blinded by their religious beliefs and anyone who doesn't share their views somehow is evil and need to be slain.
Which kids would Jesus put into cages? Which ones would He disqualify from food stamps? Which ones would He take health insurance from?
Evangelical Christianity looks less like a denomination and more like a PAC all the time.
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If you believe that sex is for procreation and only within a marriage, then birth control is not needed ( sex is only to make babies not for pleasure). Sex education is not needed since having coitus is a 'natural' act. Couple this insanity with the Calvinistic taint of 'predestination' and you can see why the Republican and their supporter think taking $4 million for feeding poor children is absolutely alright. For these people proof of God's love is having money. No money and you are less than...
"He is also the only person preventing a takeover of America by the Democratic Party and progressives — and that, they insist, would produce a moral calamity nearly unmatched in American history." So, separating parents from children is moral? Who knew? These "Christians" and their magical thinking will be the death of the republic.
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Stunning, is it not, how deluded and irresponsible these people are.
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That Graham, Falwell Jr. and so many other American evangelicals still support proud sexual predator/adulterer/racist/liar/bully/crook Trump further confirms what we already knew: their invocation of moral and religious values as the basis for their political views and actions is a shameless lie. They subordinate their so-called principles in favor of money and political clout, plain and simple.
The one positive aspect of all this is that their moral hypocrisy is now so obvious no one can fail to see it. They are a cancer on both Christianity and conservatism, and men of true principle when it comes to both recognized that long ago.
“I think every good Christian ought to kick [Jerry] Falwell right in the a-s.” – US Senator Barry Goldwater, Time Magazine July 1981
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Why didn't Christians show more enthusiasm for Jimmy Carter who actually "walks the walk"?
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Hopefully, more and more young Americans will turn away from Christianity and we will become a more secular, and that is to say, a more ethical and just society. Why shouldn't we hope for this? After all, it is the religious right who are the most ardent supporters of the porn star president. We're talking about a guy who is a serial liar and con man. A guy who is on his third marriage and has openly cheated on all of his wives. A guy who has a history of cheating small contractors out of their pay. A guy who is just plain nasty and ugly, who uses junior high level insults against anyone who crosses him.
Enough of what the religious right wants. I will vote Democrat as it is the party that embodies what is truly moral and ethical.
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The author of this article completely misunderstands these christians. I don't think people have really tried to understand their perspective on the world.
"Jesus didn’t view the world primarily as a battle zone. Neither should we." -Peter Wehner
"Don't think I have come to bring peace on the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword." -Jesus
These christians look at the world is a battle zone because they feel their method of effecting change in it (which they call the process of repentance) is itself being attacked. They don't believe they are the belligerents in this battle but the defenders.
They view as a sin not just homosexuality but also "effeminacy" (1 Corinthians 6:9) They feel "God created them male and female" and that everything from Obergefell vs. Hodges to email signatures stating pronoun preference promotes sin in the world. They feel any effort to silence their call of repentance to the gay and effeminate as an attack of their MO.
Not all these christians have the same view about Trump. Mostly, they feel that at least someone is giving them a national voice and not condescending to them as ignorant, uncouth, homophobes like NYT writers and readers would do.
They don't look at the abortion numbers having halved since its peak but at the 1 billion lives murdered world wide through abortion (free or forced, as in China) and abortifacients in the last 50 years.
you seem to be awfully fixated on abortion. If you are against abortion, then don't have one. The right to an abortion is the law of the land.
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Wehner's piece is appalling. It boils down to saying that American Christians' support for Trump comes from being a wee bit more concerned about abortion than the facts warrant.
How can you write about Christian opposition to abortion without calling out Christians for pushing policies that increase demand for it? They promote "abstinence only" sex education (that is, lack of education about sex) and oppose making birth control available, even though real sex ed and birth control are effective ways to lower unwanted pregnancies and abortion. In doing so, they promote an unrealistic vision of what our teens' lives should be like--sexless and ignorant (oh, excuse me, "pure")--even though promoting it increases what they themselves think is even worse: the "murder" of fetuses.
And how can you write about Christian support for Trump without noting how supporting Trump means supporting a man who tears families apart to purposely terrorize them, and puts innocent kids in cages, quite literally leaving them to die?
The claim that Trump is an "imperfect vessel" for promoting Christian values is utterly corrupt. It entails tolerance for racism, sexism, rape, bribery...so much that real Christians should oppose. What it really amounts to is anti-abortion fanaticism overwhelming so many other important moral values.
And Ralph Reed? Don't even get me started on that charlatan.
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Could it be that Trump is the true messiah for most of the Christian faithful in the USA? Remember Jonestown.
The arrival of the apocalypse is to be welcomed by the faithful.
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I guess when your sense of morality allows for you to follow a man like Trump, bastardizing the teachings of Jesus probably comes pretty easy.
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The backlash from their children alone is going to be devestating to evangelicals and their so-called "Christian" churches.
Funny how these people are so eager to usher in the Second Coming, which underlies their fervent support for Israel as their sacrificial lamb, but are also praying for Jesus to make them millionaires in the meantime. Who says you can't have it all?
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Thou shan’t Hate: that goes for everyone including gay people.
Thou shan’t Lie: that includes to yourself about Trump being OK.
Thou shan’t worship False Idols: that goes for capitalism, the USA and the Republican Party, and any religious faction.
Thou shan’t Steal; that includes elections by cheating with gerrymandering, and vicious capitalism like the student loan market and other Gotcha Capitalism.
Thou shan’t kill: like ignoring our effect of drug use on our southern neighbors...
Rachmones is a very useful Yiddish word denoting mercy, kindness, compassion and pity.
If Fundamentalist Christian leaders had a dime’s worth of it in their hearts for the migrant mothers and children still confined in detention camps alongside our Southern border and elsewhere, they wouldn’t be Trump supporters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/migrant-children-border-soap.html
Why no mention of the roles of Fox News & Ent. and evangelical preachers in keeping these fine people angry and full of hate.
To Ralph Reed: Trump defends Christianity?
Trump made child abuse an official policy of the U.S. Government.
You are worshipping Baal.
Read your Bible and love your neighbor.
Hope that God has a short memory where your politics is concerned.
Uh... 862,000 abortions in 2017 is FEWER than 898,000 abortions in 1974, not more. 36,000 fewer.
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Speaking of Doomsayers, what ever happened to Greta Thunberg?
Trumpers and evangelicals today would condemn the historical Jesus as a radical, socialist, pro-immigrant, pro-sex worker hippie whose life of poverty and views on serving the poor and the vices of hoarding money are drastically different from the pretend "prosperity-Jesus" these folks conveniently made up. I have reached a point where I am okay not knowing exactly what it is I believe, but one thing I do know is that whatever Higher Power may exist in the universe would condemn the hypocrisy, greed, hatred, xenophobia and racism found in today's Republican party and within the White House. These people are shameless, vacuous, ignorant, ciphers for a neo-fascist President who acts in concert with a former kgb operative-now dictator. They are all traitors, plain and simple, a clear and present danger to our nation and to our freedoms. Anyone who does not see it is neither a Christian in the true sense, nor intelligent in any real way.
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All those conservative evangelical 'Apocalyptic Christians,'—including Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, and so on—make lots of money by fomenting anger and a sense of being embattled. The more agitated and panicked their followers, the more $$$ for them.
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All of the noisy evangelicals named here get more power, money, and mammon through their debased and fantastical exaggerations about the people they don’t like. Lying for the Lord this way is pathetic and delegitimizing. Their flock is being fleeced.
A delusion can be passed from one person to the next.
It's called "religion."
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You can be a Christian. You can support trump. But you can't do both. Period.
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Anti-Christian social policies embraced by Christians will come at a heavy price. We live in a world where access to every known thing is available via the nearest cell phone. The result will be that the children and grandchildren of these 'haters' for Jesus will renounce their parents. Haters don't make good team players in the workplace, their social attitudes lead to increased illness and sick time, and they are, simply put, unpleasant companions. In the long term, the kids will be alright while their parents increasingly will die off.
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It should now be acknowledged that the moral code of the liberal Christian is quite different from the moral code of the conservative Christian. Speaking as an atheist to my Christian brethren, only half of you can rightfully claim to be basing your moral code on the Scriptures; the other half is wrong and misinformed. Which half is which? You should discuss it among yourselves. As an outsider, I would like to submit that those among you who watch Fox News are the most misinformed and have adopted a moral code that is contradictory to your sacred texts. Please repent and seek salvation and accurate information before the 2020 election.
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Teens are having less sex and taking fewer recreational drugs, but they are killing each other in schools at rates never before seen. How goes their use of prescription drugs, which likely are at all time highs?
The 10th Commandment is against envy, to be against coveting your neighbors' stuff. This used to be an American trait centered around liberty and equal protection; now it's a quaint thought where all we hear about is a party that wants to take your money and give away more free stuff using other people's money and then wonder why people are a mess.
The preponderance of good Christian scholars understand that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. He saw the end of the world and the final judgement as events that would happen in the lifetime of his own disciples. “Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.” (KJV)
Therefore, every generation of Christians believes this statement to be directed to them. And, allegorically, it is.
Thus the mindset of the Christian is always one of the final moments.
Christianity is the only religion that demands everyone believe it or face damnation. “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” This quotation means that Christian soldiers must always be fighting- on the mythological level against the devil, and on the physical level, against Satan’s followers on earth, who in our moment of history are gays and abortionists.
Thus for fundamentalist Evangelical Christians, the battle of Armageddon must be always going on. It’s always 10 minutes to midnight for an American Evangelical. And they will rally behind anyone who is against the satanic trends of that day.
Jesus warned of false prophets. Evangelicals proclaim that Trump is Cyrus, come to free them from their Babylonian captivity. They apparently don’t see the Trump Tower of Babel.
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The "Christians" you speak of do not reflect the teachings I heard growing up. They wrap their religion around an anti-abortion commandment only. The other 10 original ones can go by the wayside especially the one that condemns bearing false witness.
Donald Trump, a man with no fear of a higher moral authority would, but for the U.S. Constitution, do anything that serves his lust for power and money. Children in fetid detention camps would lead to detention center for terrorists as that word would be defined by Donald Trump. Without the restraints of our Constitution Trump would quickly become America's Vladimir Putin or worse. Would any clear thinking Christian seek an alliance with a John Gotti, or a Joaquin Guzman? Take heed, Donald J Trump is not your ally.
The overall effect of these religious nay saying zealots is to further “tarnish” Christianity. It’s being weaponized, distorted, abused, and politicized (again and again throughout history). And Bill Barr? What does he have in store with his particular brand of religious oppression and belief in theocratic rule. It appears that Christianity (as an organized religion) has become the opposite of good. There’s “evil” everywhere one looks, but it’s particularly pernicious in the smug, misguided, religious right who are holding the rest of the country hostage to a malign "religious conspiracy theory".
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It is beyond ironic that a segment of the population so consumed by the notion of declining morality and social rot picks as its champion a man who is the absolute embodiment of both. Not only is Trump the personification of immorality and pretty much everything else that’s wrong with society, he is an active promoter. How they can look at this grifter who puts children in cages, lies constantly, compromises our national security and hasn’t met a wife he won’t cheat on and believe he’s preferable to someone who wants to give them health care and a living wage is something I will never, ever understand. The notion that they are brainwashed by a constant diet of right wing media only holds water for just so long. Everything about the guy is antithetical to all they claim to believe. They have clearly and quite simply made a deal with the devil.
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As my husband quipped recently, if Donald Trump is the kind of person you might find in heaven then I want no part of it.
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There is and has been a false myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation" and many seem to believe Trump (of all people) will return America to its rightful place as a "Christian theocracy". The Founding fathers were mostly diets and many were Masons.
Many are concerned about the moral demise of America but do not realize that there is ZERO correlations to moral standards and orthodox religion.
History will likely look back at this period and realize that this current coalition of Trump ( of all people) and the Christian fundamentalists will result in the total discrediting of Christianity and the RINO Party by the young generation. If this movement reflects "Christianity"......many will walk away.
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The conservative Christian trumpophiles seem attracted to the Iranian model. One religion (theirs, of course), morality police, strong man leadership, and phony elections. Free choice, not so much.
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A glance at the most popular Evangelical Christian childrearing manual-- Raising Kids God's Way, by Garry Ezzo-- will tell you why a large number of evangelicals are unhinged. They were abused children.
The policies of this book -- which include hitting infants with implements-- lead to Attachment Disorder, black & white thinking, misogyny, violence, self medication, extreme suppressed rage requiring scapegoats, etc-- all we see before us.
Pence and Pompeo are overjoyed, especially since Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem.
The crazies belief in the Rapture is closer to reality - but so is global warming and natural disaster. Self-fulfilling prophesies for sick people.
Mr. Tom Wolpert,
Such concern for the people who aren’t here yet. While we have an epidemic of homeless going on. Not to the mention the Trump made human disaster at the border. How would Jesus view that??? Can’t we take of the people that are here first?
Isn’t really about power and telling others how to live there lives.
I love how you always work it in to blame the messenger. The Times is only telling the story.
Also, if history has taught us anything the Faustian deal never works-out.
M.Storch
Idaho
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“it’s important to understand the perspective of Christian social conservatives, many of whom put sexual ethics and especially abortion at or near the top of the list of their concerns.”
Abortion? How perverse their defense of a few cells over post birth fully conscious and aware life they abuse so viciously in policy if they do not blindly follow and adhere to THEIR faith and only their faith, because they hate all other religions that challenge their own. Abortion is merely a pretext to divide and unite in hate.
Sexual ethics? More than likely it's their inadequacy and prudish embarrassment with sex - a wonderful biological experience for obvious procreative reasons - turned into an unnatural filthy immoral notion - hence their illogical vindictive anti-contraception interference imposed on the lives of others - causing more abortions and unwanted kids!
“the justification for their support ...: Mr. Trump may be unethical, unscrupulous and morally dissolute, but he is by far the lesser of two evils.” The other evil? Healthcare for all, living wage, housing, food, truth, reason, facts, humanity, environmental defense, and especially evils like compassion, empathy and a bleeding heart.
Religious types should keep their religion to themselves and stop trying to dumb down the rest of us to their level. Indeed, there should be a law against inflicting religion on minors which should be a choice upon reaching adulthood when maturity and intelligence can make a reasoned choice.
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The outrage over abortion flies away when medical care, shelter, education for that very precious newborn are needed.
If Donald Trump is Jesus' agent on earth, then the Devil has won. Cataloging Trump's sins of adultery,greed, lying, are only a starting place.
Jesus will not be welcoming the Donald to heaven.
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Christians are hypocrites who hide behind archaic philosophies while the Earth warms, drought and flooding increases, more hurricanes and tornadoes destroy lives and communities, more Americans die in mass shootings, the social safety net is attacked, corporations get wealthier, and more children live in poverty.
The Jesus I studied and follow was a social activist who fought on behalf of the disenfranchised and marginalized voiceless people. So-called Christians don’t know him, and they don’t follow in his footsteps; rather they knowingly worship at the feet of the anti-Christ.
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I would say that much of modernity and the 15-the century ethos of the evangelical right is unsuitable for the 21st century; let's start learning from the past instead of hiding behind forced ignorance and self-deceit. Of course, if all you really care about is your own skin, and you don't mind compromising for convenience, and are terrified of your grandmother, join the right.
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In the Humpty Dumpty world of Trump’s America, a carnival upside-down world, projection, lies, and conspiracy are everything. Zealous evangelical Christians project their own desires for control onto everyone.
It is not gays, transgenders, and women who work wanting to transform the world and convert all Christians to their “heathen” ways. Quite the opposite.
It is the delusional, conspiracy-believing Christians who desperately and ever so angrily want to control the rest of us or get rid of anyone who offends them (eg. Fritts).
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It seems to be all about sex and controlling women's sexuality.
Is the Flat World Society still in operation?
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Good Christians...I ask that you pray for the scores of thousands of innocent babies, mothers, fathers, and elderly grandmothers and grandfathers who have been killed or maimed by American bombs since Bush and Cheney took us into our never-ending wars in the Middle East based on lies and abject incompetence. Also pray for the millions of suffering innocents who have become homeless refugees as a result of these same wars. Amen.
Duncan Lennox Canada: "Actually Jesus was a Torah observant Jew ..."
Evangelicals don't refer to the "Torah", but to the "Old Testament". And you have inexplicably mixed quotes from Old and New together.
As for Wehner's claim about "a battle zone" that you quote, evangelical Christians are very willing to cite the Old Testament as needed.
And, as this passage says, God is on their side:
"When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the Lord thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 20:1, KJV)
NB: The NIV uses "war" instead of "battle", which expands the context to the point of incoherency: "When you go to war against your enemies ..."
Brilliant. Must reading with an open heart.
Evangelical Christians are an existential threat to the United States. They actively engage in activities that seek to bring the end if time do that Jesus can rule the world. I asked one, ," what would happen to the US Constitution?" The person replied" that it would no longer be applicable "
The word "Christian" has become meaningless in and of itself. Especially when "Christians" support an immoral demagogue who openly lies, advocates violence and racism against people he doesn't like and is about as un-Christlike as they come. Right wing evangelicals don't get to define Christianity for the rest of us!
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With all due respect to hard line Christians everywhere, anyone who condones or embraces Mr. Trumps misogyny, bullying, cheating (both on his wives and in his dealings) , lying, greed, gluttony and general unchristian countenance for in essence few metaphorical bags of silver (read - interfering with peoples private choices) is doing a greater disservice to themselves, their families and all Christians everywhere going forward. Sorry, there is absolutely no honor or heavenly future in that sort of practice.
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Most trumpy supporters are less Christian, more religious zealots. Their zealotry is largely flavored with ethnic discomfort. It's isn't without relevance that most trumpy supporters are uniformly white and middle-class. They rationalize their support for trumpy with exaggerated and often dishonest concern for issues such as abortion rights, although their interest in the young, of any ethnic heritage is marginal, if any at all. They have little, if any empathy for the less economically advantaged.
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The author only touched on the apocalyptic fervor of the evangelicals, but to my mind, it is here that we find the gruesome reason they love Trump so much:
He is the Yellow banana peel upon which the world will slip and fall into apocalypse, and the completion of the prophesy found in the evangelicals’ most beloved book: Revelations.
Who cares that Trump is destroying everything? That’s the whole idea! Once everything is destroyed and Satan has won, Jesus will return to collect the saints and leave the sinners to their doom. Guess who the saints are.
I have an adopted son in a Christian leadership academy/seminary school who talks about it constantly. According to him (and his teachers) there is a certain prescribed cascade of world events that will trigger the Rapture, if we’d just let it happen.
Too many evangelicals today quietly support and believe in this rationale: That God’s hand can be forced into action thru calamity. It’s indicative of the suffering of those who have lost their place of power in society. They seek validation thru the accomplishment of prophesy. Pridefully, they pray for the unassailable righteousness of being right about God, but they do not seek the restoration of Gods kingship, but that of their own. They look forward only superficially to watching their God ascend the throne. What they really look forward to is watching their neighbors burn.
Pride blinds the evangelicals, and envy powers them. May God judge them.
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Good advice, and hopefully it will penetrate a few skulls.
Someone shared with us, in a meeting recently, the following:
In Lakota tribal custom, when a young person does something viewed by others as wrong, he is made to sit in the middle of the village for a day. Others, when they pass him, tell him that he is important.
Think about that.
“He [Trump] is also the only person preventing a takeover of America by the Democratic Party and progressives — and that, they insist, would produce a moral calamity nearly unmatched in American history.” Moral calamity understates the problem. Everything goes when Putin takes over. Trump has been a useful fool for both Putin and the rapture-seeking fundamentalists.
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I'm so tired of religion driving our policy and national direction. Following and believing tales that are beyond the realm of reason and rational thought makes it too easy for practitioners to take belief in fantasy policies based on nonsense.
O'Rourke had it half right: revoke the tax exempt status of all churches!
1
A pal writes: "If the very core of your belief system is to believe in a being and a system for which there is no hard and factual, ongoing, everyday evidence, doesn't it make sense that that same group of folks will *ignore* that same kind of evidence that points one in the opposite direction of that belief?"
You know I have long thought that evangelicals are key to understanding Trump. You make a compelling point re the belief in things unseen and it's correlation with believing in Trump despite evidence. I think also, this relates powerfully to the doctrine of Calvinism ... or neo-Calvinism for the present. Specifically, God manifests His Divine approval of humans by granting them material success. This is the profound message of "prosperity Christianity" - that is, God WANTS you to be rich (well, not you specifically, but me for sure !) And in fact, to believe that God wants the best for you, which sounds fairly innocuous, is pretty easily transformed into, "God wants me to succeed" which translates to, "God wants me to be rich !" which then creates new-Calvinism: you can tell who are God's elect by simply noting who is successful - and surely, a man who uses a Gold commode is among God's elect ! So, if God manifests His favor with wealth - surely, the Trump is among the elect ... an arch-angel, at a minimum. But all men are flawed, and Trump bravely struggles against the temptations of The Evil One. God wants him to succeed - hence, we must support him.
“They seem to have some kind of psychological craving for apocalyptic fear. I wonder if walking it back is even possible.”
That is one of the fundamental core beliefs of being a Christian or a very conservative Catholic...you actually do want Armageddon to bring about the Reckoning... that in itself is a deeply disturbing threat to human survival in the 21st century.
If the Trump era has shown us anything, it is the validity of studies showing that the mindless gullibility of people raised to believe patently silly stories continues unabated into adulthood. Throughout history gullible people have been willing to follow their leaders off of cliffs, destroy their own homes and families and even kill themselves rather than ever engage with reality. That millions of self-professed Christians worship Trump, a man of pure, unadulterated evil, is proof that the gullible suffer no cognitive dissonance when holding diametrically opposed views. Add in the equally dissonant undercurrent of wholly unchristian greed, bigotry and superiority complexes so common among modern American Christians and the assessment of them as having lost it is apt.
1
For too many of these Christians, they seem to think they are persecuted when they aren’t allowed to force everyone else to conform to their religion. Why do they think they have the right & moral duty to foist their religion on everyone else? If you believe in a religion, by all means live your life by those rules. No one is stopping you. But you don’t get to force me to do the same.
1
This will solve the dilemma. Let the Evagelicals create homes for all the disabled children allowed to mature to full term and support their lives. Do something positive for mankind.
What's that? " Not in my back yard?"
1
Trump and the Evangelicals are attempting to overthrow the Constitution of the United States of America and convert it to a Theocracy.
1
Conservative Christians are facing an apocalypse of their own making because of a lack meaningful participation in the conversation about gender, sex and marriage over the past 50 years. Conservative churches talked a lot about gender, sex and marriage, but with lots of “don’ts”, fire and brimstone and guilt attached. The problem is that fire and brimstone and guilt really don’t connect when you’re up against Elvis Presley, miniskirts, Playboy, hip-hop culture, Madonna, co-ed college dorms, Mylie Cyrus, and internet porn, and who really knows what fire and brimstone is these days anyway?
Conservative Christians are now faced with the fact that the sexual revolution has succeeded, and America’s Puritan cultural core has crumbled leaving conservative Christians with nothing to hide behind. The culture’s and courts’ normalized stances on gender, sex and marriage are now an existential threat to conservative churches because these stances directly challenge the authority of the Bible, the nature of the Divine-human relationship, and Christian anthropology.
Jesus did view the world as a battle zone, however, conservative Christians need to be careful about the weapons they bring to the fight, and Donald Trump should not be one of them. Conservative Christians should instead focus on demonstrating their Christian faith and changing societal norms through conversion -- one individual at a time. That approach changed the Roman Empire and 18th century Britain and America.
I have a question for these extreme “Christians“. What are they going to do about the gigantic secular nation to our north? After all, actual Canadian law (legal abortion, banking and environmental regulations, registration of guns, etc.) is considered leftist extremism in the US. To top it off, they do not consider themselves a Christian nation, but rather a secular nation. Therefore, the Canadian apocalypse must be around the corner.
Given these facts, I would think that our so-called “Christians“ here in the US should be preparing for the massive, inevitable collapse of the Canadian government, with millions of desperate refugees making their way across the border. That’s where we’re going to need a wall, wouldn’t you think?
"[I]t’s important to understand the perspective of Christian social conservatives, many of whom put sexual ethics and especially abortion at or near the top of the list of their concerns."
They care more about consentual sex, and woman making their own decisions about their bodies, than literal children in cages and children being permanently separated from their parents.
They have lost the right to call themselves ethical. They have proven to me that myth and lies about death don't make people good. Quite the opposite.
1
I would be more sympathetic and inclined to listen if this wasn't so blatantly about power over others. It's as if the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second is if you find people you don't think love God, force them!
The only thing making abortion illegal does is create criminals. It doesn't eliminate abortions or the difficulties that come with looking at abortion as a solution. There are demonstrably better ways to eliminate abortions than making them illegal.
Plus if these so called Christians weren't so obviously hypocritical—Bill Clinton can't be trusted because he had affairs, but some how Trump can be trusted? We need to force rappers to use civil language because, you know, words matter. Yet none of Trumps words matter. LGBTQ is destroying "marriage" and the family yet the religious leaders with extramarital affairs (both straight and gay) and the divorce rate in the Church is not a problem. Only the chosen ge to use the excuse "We live in a fallen world". Everyone else needs to "Repent or perish!"
This is why "Nones" are the fastest rising Christian faith.
BTW, the divorce rates cited aren't in relation to married. I would love that number.
Joe
All any of you are talking about is a gang. A legal one; well developed; tax free; rich . . .
Interesting that all the Revelations-readers don't see Trump as the Beast or the false prophet. His actions fit that character almost precisely.
Nothing unites people like having an enemy. Most people never get out of high school with its cliques, football teams, and prom queens. They age, but don't mature. They move on to religion, whether the religion is church, or the halls of Congress, or both. Instead of retaining a child-like sense of wonder, they wallow in childishness.
If, as in the thinking of many, abortion is such a crime, why do the same people insist on closing Planned Parenthood Clinics which supply low cost/free contraceptives?
“There has never been anyone who has defended us and fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump. No one!”
And that especially includes Jesus Christ.
t rump has publicly admitted to lusting after his own daughter. With his life history can there be any doubt that he has persuaded someone, or paid for someone, or forced someone to get an abortion? I think not.
And when these so called evangelical leaders refer to the decline of the Church (capitalized in the quote) what "Church" are they talking about?
It seems that freedom for these yahoos means they can point their guns at my head and force me to go to their church.
These are the same pharisees, scribes, and merchants that Jesus threw out of the temple and spent his ministry pointing out their hypocrisy.
Maybe the “good news” from this article can be made Into a one page (fold out to 4 panels) document, beautifully illustrated, and mailed to the millions of Christian & evangelical US families. Mr Bloomberg could be encouraged to use his billions to help pay for this. Calm the waters with truth and love. After he loses his bid for the White House. 😏
I think the whole faith issue is a false flag . MAGA is the code for evangelicals pursuit of 1950s America. Jim Crow laws and George Wallace standing in front of the university doors is central to their “faith”. It’s just a front to keep white supreme.
Mr. Werner has got it wrong. The truth about Conservative Christian support is that Trump personifies its hate for everyone who is not just like them. Trump hates and abuses women. In the Conservative Christian Churches, women are third class citizens who are slaves of the Church and their husbands. Non-whites are welcome in very few of the Conservative Christian Churches. The Conservative Christian churches spend enormous amounts of money building billion dollar Church buildings instead of spending that money on bettering the lives of Americans. When they do spend money "helping other people is is manly on converting the "heathens" in other countries to their version of religion.
1
"Many Christians have become invested in a dark narrative. As a friend of mine puts it: 'They seem to have some kind of psychological craving for apocalyptic fear. I wonder if walking it back is even possible.'”
Welcome to the USSP: The United States of Self-Pity.
1
Did they ever have it to lose?
It's pretty simple: you cannot be a true Christian in spirit if you support Donald Trump. Rationalize it all you want, but he absolutely represents everything that Jesus was supposedly against: greed, duplicity, lies, slander, hedonistic behavior, unfaithfulness...the list can go on and on and on. Christians shame themselves by supporting him. Every American who supports him shames themselves.
1
The collective Apocalypso panic mindset, be it a variety of Christian groups or the conspiracy skewed cult crowd is generally on the fringes of hysteria in these ‘strange days’. When domestic/world tumult foist rapid fire changes in every aspect of daily life, humans tend to contract with fear-they either move with the times and retain their core values/beliefs without needing to projecting fear onto the ‘other’ the ‘new’ or they contract into an adult fetal position-it’s all just too much, too fast. Yet paralysis is deadly, as the first humans running from predators knew everyday.
Yet the old adage applies just as much to these times as in any epoch: Time and change wait for no one
“In world history, there are very few nations that have been as accommodating to Christianity as the United States is today...”
But, how else can you explain the persecution complex?
“They seem to have some kind of psychological craving for apocalyptic fear. I wonder if walking it back is even possible.”
Can you talk a Nihilist off a ledge, when they’re quite credibly threatening to jump? Some things remain a mystery.
I haven't any idea why anyone likes a man who cannot believed in anything he says.
I'm an ordained minister in a progressive Christian denomination. My conservative Christian friends who support Trump used to baffle me. But I think the answer is hinted at in the article. This manufactured war being waged against Christianity in the form of abortion, homosexuality, etc is central to keeping the pews and coffers filled. 40 years ago conservative evangelical pastors preached nightmare scenarios about the Soviet Union and the demon communists. I no longer waste my breath arguing with people like this. I detest Trump and the conservative social agenda. The Jesus I know is all about affirmation, grace, and love. So some of us continue to work hard to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and work to end oppression for all people. Thanks to these hypocritical conservative Christians, I am nearly embarrassed to be associated with the name.
43
As an atheist who grew up in a secular household I keep wondering why my tradition does not matter. Christians, Jews , Muslims, Hindi, Buddhists etc proclaim their moral superiority and demand a society in their image in which all adhere to their code of conduct. Then they go about killing those who refuse -- nice. Religion as a personal search for comfort in the face of mortality may bring solace but keep it out of public life. "American values" -- give me a break what do they think our forefathers were running from ?
19
God is love. End of story. If your religion guides you with a leash woven out of fear, then you’re not being guided by God. I cannot understand how one can look upon this President and not see that his greatest weapon is his ability to masterfully conjure fear within the hearts and minds of Americans, regardless of your political affiliation. He scares liberals. He stokes the fears of conservatives. Nobody is immune to it. And if Trump is an arbiter of fear, then he is the absolute the antithesis of what I understand God to be.
For the record, I am agnostic. If I go to church service, I gather with the Unitarian Universalists.
18
The GOP made a risky bet when, for political gain, it hitched the party's wagon to the evangelical Christian horse.
The truth is that most, if not all, of what these Christians fervently believe in are not the beliefs of the majority of this country. They seek to impose their religious will on every American, which is why they do so love all the right wing judges McConnell is putting on the federal bench.
The hypocritical Christian fanatics who adore Trump are not only turning the separation of church and state on its head, they are undermining our very democracy. Americans do not want to live in a country where women cannot make their own reproductive choices--including IVF and surrogacy, which the latest judicial confirmation sees as a plague on society--or where it's legal to deprive gay and lesbian citizens of their rights.
Americans do not deserve to lose their freedoms because the GOP decided anything was permissible in order to keep their demographically dying party on life support. The Republican Party's always risky alliance with the Christian right has reached its inevitable conclusion under Trump, and the party is now nothing but a cult of personality for a man who has not one Christian bone in his body.
One can appreciate the irony while still fearing for our country's future with hundreds of Trump judges determining it.
18
“They seem to have some kind of psychological craving for apocalyptic fear. “
No, they have a psychological craving for the apocalypse. Precise language please. The point is that evangelicals have become nihilists, people who have given up all hope: they no longer have the energy to put into leading fulfilling, moral lives; they don’t believe in the possibility of building a stable society to support such an aspiration. Their “hope” is that everything willbe destroyed while they themselves are magically transported to a better place.
The evangelicals fervent support of a criminal like Trump is a perfect expression of their current spiritual state.
17
This opinion piece completely misses the point. Evangelical christians who like Trump like him because he is a wanna be dictator. They want Trump to lead a takeover of all of our lives and force adherence to their particular variant of christianity. I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. They preached against Jews. They preached against Catholics. They preached against Methodists. They preached against Episcopalians and other mainline "social" churches. They preached against all the other branches of evangelicals, and all the other evangelicals did the same, but they have called a temporary truce for the sake of power. Everyone should be afraid to let these people to have any more control over public life than they already do.
18
Christianity is a man made self help system – one of many - addressing the existential predicament.
Good in parts.
But which should have stayed out of the bridge, after it got lucky and inherited Rome’s old house.
Instead it cost the „West“ about a millennium then fought like mad when was finally red carded.
2
I very much appreciate Peter Wehner's voice, both as a genuine Conservative and a life-long Christian. Genuine Conservatives are necessary to identify, value and protect those things that are of benefit to the people of a society. Genuine conservatives also understand that there are problems that weaken or harm a society, and which must be identified and corrected. This is the necessary work of Progressives. Genuine Conservatives and genuine Progressives understand that they must respect and work with each other to achieve the best possible outcome - for the wellbeing of all. Religious goals and behavior require the same balance, to serve the human family and all life on our very threatened planet. Jesus said: Love Go(o)d ... and your Neighbor as Yourself! Good cannot be served by choosing to support and follow leaders, or 'partys' who are driven by personal lust for power and greed, and who reject truth and reality. It is time to change.
6
"For many evangelical and Catholic Christians, these developments [challenge] certain of their core beliefs. Yet [they] hardly qualify as existential threats. ...To my fellow Christians, then, a friendly reminder from a conservative who shares many of your concerns: We are not living in Nero’s Rome...America is hardly on the edge of a moral abyss."
Pay attention: this is the moment the real argumentative slight of hand by Wehner happens:
First, Wehner takes at face value evangelists' moral panic - an exaggerated panic, as he represents it - as the basic and true explanation for their loyalty to Trump.
In this view, Evangelist Trumpism is all about Trump - and Republicans, generally - as an agent of the supposedly supreme Evangelist moral value of opposition to abortion.
But what if "cultural," "social" right wing attitudes about sex are a stand-in for less sayable attitudes about race?
Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that racism and anti-immigrant views are the greater, driving force of right wing Evangelist support for Republicans/Trump:
[https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/30/17301282/race-evangelicals-trump-support-gerson-atlantic-sexism-segregation-south]
In failing to note the strong racist and anti-immigrant attitudes of US Evangelists, Mr. Wehner does not simply make an 'intellectual error'; he practices a deliberate subterfuge that allows him to wag a reproving finger at Evangelist extremism' while avoiding admitting one of its deepest causes.
4
Not one word about racism in evangelist culture - apologetics by some evangelist spokespersons, and partial and self-serving studies of its historical record notwithstanding.
No reason to think evangelists simply "put up with" Trump's racism and attacks on immigrants vs. seeing positively see him as a defender against what they fear as a rising, non-white tide:
"The Racial Demons that Help Explain Evangelical Support for Trump," Nancy D. Wadsworth, Vox Magazine, 2018:
[https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/30/17301282/race-evangelicals-trump-support-gerson-atlantic-sexism-segregation-south
5
Religious fundamentalists have only one real concern, their perceived loss of the ability to control other people in society. White Christians see themselves alone as uniquely, even divinely, entitled to govern, and autonomy and individualism will always be perceived as threats to their eventual kingdom, regardless of the facts. Eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty.
14
Perhaps Bruce Springsteen said it best:
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear's a powerful thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust
Wehner is correct, when he writes, "One of the things I have been most struck by in my conversations with Christian conservatives is how moral concern has given way to moral panic.... Many Christians have become invested in a dark narrative....'They seem to have some kind of psychological craving for apocalyptic fear.'”
Sadly, this description currently seems true of many, if not most, people across the political spectrum, though about other issues, including Trump. For the current degree and breadth of polarization to exist, it takes two (or more) to tango.
We seem to be in an age where it is as if the Biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel has taken hold, and we can less and less understand each other. When "fake news" and "alternative facts" are no longer oxymorons, we are in deep trouble.
Problems are serious and real. However, to actually deal with the problems rather than simply be self-righteously rageful and ineffectively indignant, it requires perspective and the ability to listen as well as preach.
Fear is entirely subjective. Pointing out the objective reality does not warrant the level of fear one has is rarely effective. To make a change one must deal with why the subjective level of fear far exceeds the objective level of threat.
5
When an ideology is based on religious fantasy, the expectation to separate its followers from other forms of fantasy seems dubious. It is the fantastical religion itself that is the root problem, not the interpretation of said religion.
14
It sees to me that opposition to abortion is what many of the believers rally around. And I assume Republican politicians use it for what it is worth to garner votes. Terminating a pregnancy within the stipulated time before the foetus has any awareness of it's existence, while not an ideal solution, seems to me a valid decision on the part of the mother in whose body it is. From another angle, evolution is a reasonable explanation of the development of the diverse species on the planet, including us. While we need to maintain that we are separate and chosen, among other purposes to preserve the necessary inhibition we have about killing each other. But are we that special ? I find it unreasonable that while we have moral qualms about a very doubtfully alive and certainly unconscious foetus, we have none when countless aware animals are forced to their slaughter. Most religions are in any case male dominated and therefore their dogma may be so influenced by the forceful attitudes of our male existence. I respect women who are both both for or against abortion; they have lived for and loved children since the dawn of time while we men are too often careless. We have no right to pontificate.
8
people should be encouraged to become spiritualists shunning organized religions. It is too narrow to limit divinity with a specific label and narrower perspective to follow a prescribed rituals and practices. Secular view and moral code of conduct is better way to practice religion.
7
The evangelists do not believe in the principle that made America--religious freedom of diversity.
Not only do they believe that their principles are the only correct beliefs, but they believe the governemnt should exercise its authority to enforce their idea of a single correct religion. They are authoritarians.
Isn't this un-American?
30
While abortions and teenage pregnancy are on the decline, political hypocrisy is on a steep incline. Since W Bush left office, Republican hypocrisy is up a whopping 184%, and Democratic hypocrisy is up 42%. (Dems say this is a natural response to the GOP rise.)
My figures may have been invented--like the cries of cultural doom and gloom from people who ostensibly always complain about it--but don't my figures resonate with general perceived reality more than the evangelical Pharisees Jesus often warned about?
6
@Tom stop calling Republicans hypocrites. Hypocrites have values. They use values to manipulate. They don't actually believe anything.
There is no biblical authority for making a deal with the Devil to do Heaven’s work. In fact all religious texts counsel the opposite and offer cautionary tales as examples of what not to do. This raises the issue of some profoundly un-Christian motives that may be at work amongst those who profess to be Christian and particularly Christian leaders.
21
"state laws that protect the unborn"
But you cannot protect the unborn unless you ensure the health, well-being and social stability of those who carry the unborn inside them. The most anti-abortion states tend to have third-world rates of maternal/fetal deaths and disabilities.
You cannot honestly call yourself pro-life unless you also implement basic public health measures to prevent miscarriages, prematurity, birth defects, and maternal deaths.
Access to health care and family planning, long-term birth control, vitamin supplements, safe water and housing, limiting exposure to toxins and microbes, treatment for addiction, shelter from domestic violence, nutritional counseling...I could go on.
Banning abortion is just a cheap display of piety if you ignore every other aspect of maternal/fetal health and well-being -- assistance that requires money, effort and an open heart.
35
What gets me is the lack of care for people once they are born.
1
I am an atheist. For me, secularism is about loving others and improving their well-being. I do not need to interpose a "god" into this very straightforward and humanist way of life. The laws of physics and the golden rule are more than sufficient for leading a good life, and far less tyrannical that any religion.
17
The laws of physics are tyrannical, they are inviolable. The golden rule is a spiritual, not a secular concept.
2
@Sebastian Melmoth: Physics laws enforce themselves with total impartiality.
The golden rule is religion.
Missing in Mr. Wehner’s interesting analysis is another group of evangelicals who support Trump not to prevent the Apocalypse, but to produce it. These folks have been arguing since 2015 that Trump is God’s chosen instrument, and they believe in him precisely because of his divisive qualities and disruptive actions, including his collaboration with Putin and other dictators. By destroying the liberal secular order both foreign and domestic, Trump will bring on the End Times that these people are eagerly awaiting. Unfortunately, traditional liberals and conservatives debating conventional cultural-political issues like abortion or homosexuality miss this point, because they fail to perceive how willing the “prophecy Christians” are to embrace the coming catastrophe as an act of faith. I don’t know how many people fall into this group, but I suspect that there are more than most of us imagine.
26
Evangelicals have coopted the" Christian" brand for their own movement. I'm not sure where that leaves us who belong to the old, shrinking mainline Christian faiths. We need to come up with another collective name for us before secular society assumes we are all in with the Evangelical variant that is at odds with some of the main tenants of our faiths.
9
@Charles Tiege: Christianity could become a form of Buddhism where everybody gets to Nirvana on their first try is the good news.
While there are many mighty and wonderful features of organized religion there is also one giant bug, namely, the extent to which the group think it relies on can be used by those who seek power and fortune. So in spite of your observation that “there are very few nations that have been as accommodating to Christianity as the United States”, the power and fortune seekers have monopolized the conversation on the right so completely that many Christians in this country are convinced that their way of life is threatened. The right wing news media is making a fortune exploiting this phenomenon and the Republican Party is wallowing in the political power it has afforded them. And now our geopolitical adversaries are exploiting it too. These are powerful forces aligning against what would otherwise be religious virtues such as love and tolerance for our fellow humans. It remains to be seen if these forces are great enough to overtake the rest of us.
6
You cannot walk out your front door without being bombarded by Christmas decorations. Christmas music everywhere. Christmas greetings, Christmas food, Christmas sales. It’s everywhere. One cannot miss the fact that it’s Christmas season. Yet there’s supposedly a huge war on Christmas??? Where? Not here!
@John Dolansky: Negotiation is always more difficult when God is purported to have a seat at the table.
I am not a Christian. I am Jewish, and atheist which many will understand not to be a contradiction.
I have no interest in Christianity or Christian theology beyond that which is required for a well rounded educated person.
You should be able to make an argument for sound social/moral policy without invoking Christ or religion of any kind.
By all means use the principles of your religion to inform your opinions.
If you cannot express them in secular terms, you cannot convince me.
I was distressed by Nancy Pelosi’s fit over using the word hate to her because she is a Catholic. Not only do I not agree with outlawing hate, I objected to her invoking her religion, and at the same time expecting that I, we, should know her religion (if she is to be believed) forbids hate. I would guess that the questioner, James Rosen, is Jewish and probably as uninformed on the Catholic doctrine of hate as myself. I am 70 years old and consider myself somewhat informed on the general principles of Christianity but I’d never heard that one before.
Had she expressed hatred as not a useful attitude and simply said that she herself does not hate the president I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. But, she is a Catholic, she grew up in a Catholic home! It occurs to me now that she has proclaimed her religion quite a few times while speaking.
Although I am a Democrat and support what Nancy Pelosi is doing politically, I find her religious proclamations appalling.
24
@Richard B
To continue.
I was born in the Bronx (1950, ok almost 70) and my earliest memories are that the United States was a Protestant country. Interesting as I only knew Jews and Catholics. Later on we became Christian, a nod to Catholic inclusion, then Judeo Christian in our moral outlook. The Jews have arrived at last! We haven’t moved beyond that latest progression.
Newsflash. Most of the world’s population are not of this stream and the United States is increasingly less Judeo Christian than ever before and will continue in this direction.
Forgive me this allusion, but read the writing on the wall.
It is past time to eliminate all religions and religious references in public life outside of religious institutions of course.
I can see that Christians don’t want to live in a Godless society. Why can’t they see that I and other likeminded people do not want to lived in a god filled one?
3
@Richard B
Unless we as a people find a way to accept our differences with each other at least enough to live in peace, we appear doomed to being “offended” by our differences. Racism, anti-semitism, islamophobia, homophobia, misogyny have nothing to with tolerance and everything to with dehumanizing others and justifying prejudice, hate and violence. I am not sure how “hate” is constructive. What has hate done for humanity? Explain.
@Richard B: Suspicion of Jews as atheists is the bane of Jewish history.
About 10 years ago, I told a very kind, compassionate and funny friend of mine, who is Catholic, that I had seen a
bumper sticker that said,
“God says it. I believe it. So that’s it.”
I wondered what she thought.
We had a conversation about humanitarianism, Christianity and evangelical Christianity.
So long ago, but today I remembered her summing up of our conversation.
“You know, I really love Jesus
but sometimes I’m just not that crazy
about his fan club.”
30
@Just Me Gandhi made similar comment.
1
The end is nigh, that's for sure. As a kid I enjoyed the New Yorker's cartoons. Especially the ones with the sage, bearded, sandaled, and robed walking down the NY sidewalk with his "The "The End is Nigh sign". He was correct, it is still true, and we still live in a world where the majority still believe in ridicules fantasy. Actually I don't know if my recollection is accurate, or if the image just captured my imagination. Whatever the case it has stayed with me for over sixty years.
2
"Evangelical" by definition is a fairly modest adjective, referring to little more than commitment to the Christian gospel message that Jesus Christ is the savior of humanity. As a child, I attended an "Evangelical Lutheran Church" (the first two words of which essentially are redundant), with "Sunday school" consisting of little more than developing a noninterpretative familiarity with the writings of the Old and New Testaments. Socially, the church pretty much limited itself to Sunday brunches and weddings.
As brought forward today, Evangelicalism seems less about religion than about creating a wide ranging social/financial power coalition, sort of like the early Mormon Church on steroids. If you want to know why Evangelicals don't think Trump is super creepy, watch Joel Osteen give a Sunday morning "prosperity gospel" sermon on TV -- that is what Evangelicals think of as an admirable human outcome.
18
@Carl: Evangelists are present in all sects. Many of those promise post-mortal benefits for practicing rituals. I do not write here to convert anyone to atheism. Liberation from religion is possible and it won't affect anyone's prospects after death.
5
I am very sorry about this article.
Jesus never teach hate or fear, He gave hope to this world. Branding christians like this I think is not accurate. Most of the christians I know (conservative and liberal) disagree with almost every single policy coming out of this administration.
Why is it ok to talk like this about christians and not about any other groups?
3
"Why is it ok to talk like this about christians and not about any other groups?"
Wehner seems to confine himself to "many evangelical and Catholic Christians". That is a large but vaguely delimited group.
But Wehner also refers to "many socially conservative Christians".
Later, Wehner addresses "my fellow Christians". In doing that, he completely garbles his thesis, because he never says what group he is in. Wehner needs to name his Church and cite the Bible translation it uses.
As it is, Wehner is equivocating like a snake on fire.
3
@KNC As a Christian myself, I know exactly who he is targeting at each of the lines you cite. Most Christians do. The only ones who don't, think their's is the only Christianity around.
Joe
2
Francisco, it is okay to talk about Christians like this, we live (thank God) in a free democracy where we ALL have freedom of speech and can say what we like, disagree, criticize, etc. We, Christians are the majority and all too often, Christians have been very cruel, wrong and misguided. We MUST speak truth to each other, otherwise we are headed towards the evil of totalitarianism!
3
I am a Christian. For me following Christ is all about loving others and having constructive hope, a hope always for the future no matter how grim things seem. Remember God loves you and will not abandon you. Jesus says to us do not fear, I am with you always. Sounds too utopian and difficult? Well, that is the radical Christian ideal. Apocalyptic talk and unrelenting excessive negativity should never be in our world view, especially in this season of Advent.
173
@ken wightman Thanks Ken. I have lived and travelled all over the world and visited churches in each of those countries. I have never heard anything preached but love and understanding. In my opinion, the vast majority of Christians are focused on loving God with "all our minds, hearts, and soul and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves". Jesus preached this as the duty of all of his followers. There are radical paths in every "religion" but us Christians need to stick to the path laid out by Christ and show who we are by loving.
24
@ken wightman You said what I feel beautifully. And yet, I hear what you say very seldom in the churches in my very red state. Which is why I stopped going to church.
13
@ken wightman
How a radical doctrine that rejected material wealth and prosperity, temporal power and even the ties of kinship became the putative creed of prosperous, politically active, family centered nationalists is just one of life's enduring mysteries.
21
The picture comes into focus. A large reason that Liberals dislike Trump is because religious supporters are fervent in their ideals. Therefore, they must be as wrong as the President. Standing behind the principles of their religious beliefs and someone who actually shows support for those that do become targets. Liberals spend Sunday's at brunch with mimosas while castigating those who's faith send them to church. That gets in the way of the progress they espouse. Citing declining statistics is used here as a smokescreen, as those same statistics can actually demonstrate the progress of the religious right. An example, advances in contraceptives. which likely includes morning after pills, also hides the real numbers. Mr. Wehner's condemnation and conviction that all is wrong with the President, when he's only been presumed guilty but yet to be convicted, isn't an American value at all. It just fits the liberal narrative. If liberals and progressives are so brilliant, why haven't they fixed the nation's ills when they were in power? Urban Renewal is conveniently forgotten where urban poor was warehoused in towers that created more problems than answers. Obama failed when he pushed for divisive measures instead of forming a consensus when America was ripe for it following the Bush debacle. At least Clinton for all his faults, moved forward an agenda that benefited many more Americans than did Obama, who settled for division and fueled it with his righteousness.
1
Um, no Obama was not trying to divide us. Quite the opposite. He never had a chance though. Too many people automatically opposed everything he did just because of who he was. The republicans simply refused to work with him. They were too busy trying to make him a 1 term president.
4
I do not agree that any religious designation delineates our political views. I feel it is racial at its core. I also feel that is a “lizzard” brain reaction to what we can’t even put into words. We just fear the “others”.
1
At a Catholic prison retreat last month, a fellow team member who didn't know me, addressing another team member, dismissed with dripping scorn "those social justice Catholics."
I said I was a social justice Catholic, and part of the Mystery of the Church is its diversity.
She did not respond with anything I could recognize as Christian/Catholic.
Yet she works to bring a message of hope to the women inmates. So to me it seems that we must love our fellows, atheists to conservative Christians, and try to bring them messages of hope.
5
“For many evangelical and Catholic Christians, these developments pose serious challenges to certain of their core beliefs.” How, I ask, does a GOVERNMENT’S attitude toward ANYTHING challenge MY beliefs? The answer, of course, is: it doesn’t—unless my religious beliefs have become so intertwined with my political beliefs that a challenge to one undermines the other.
14
@D. Carmichael
Our Civil War and the legacy of slavery still haunts us. The deep split in red states and blue states largely reflect this. Red states,particularly in the South, still view the federal government with deep mistrust, fear and resentment of the white survivors of the old Confederacy. Before that terrible war, Christian denominations split over the issue of slavery and eventually split over support for the Confederacy. Christian denominations today maintain that old split. The institution of slavery was justified by a belief that humanity is hopelessly depraved — justifying inhuman treatment, death penalty, even racism.
Only the “saved” escaped that depravity.
But for the blue states, Christianity views humanity as basically good; indeed humans were viewed as possessing an intrinsic dignity. Red states’ Christianity justifies a harsh approach to those who in their eyes do not conform to their fundamentalist religious views. Blue states’ Christianity given their view of humanity are much better able to tolerate differences and adopt a “live and let live” attitude living in the midst of diversity.
1
As a devout Lutheran with a congregation whose moral guidepost is Matthew 25, I too am baffled and even angered by this strain of American, fear-fueled “Christianity.” Ironically, the many non-practicing casual believers or outright atheists in my family and social orbit seem to follow Jesus’ core teachings naturally, without demanding all the faux “moral” requirements these folks cling to. They treat and accept others with compassion and humanity. The true apocalypse is to abandon those simple “rules” to get one over on the great majority of us who can’t stand pious posturing—and can’t fathom using the words “faith” and “Trump” in the same sentence.
17
Valid points, but to the extent that it reinforces progressive antagonism toward those who feel their religious culture under siege, it is counterproductive. There are plenty of non-zealots who feel off-put by strident progressivism and they are the swing vote in the upcoming presidential election.
3
I should cry a river because a religious person perceives they are under siege when they are the majority religious group in the country, while they support an amoral, delusional and mean President that is causing terrible damage to this country? I don’t think so. It’s not my problem nor my duty to coddle someone else just because they are wrongly thinking they are put upon. Call me when mobs are burning down your churches and your religion had been outlawed. That’s real persecution, not whether or not the greeter at Walmart says Merry Christmas.
Although I was raised Christian, I have practiced Buddhism for 50 years. Yet I do consider myself a "Jesusian."
I find that the teachings of Yeshua ben Yosef to carry much the same message as the Buddha when it relates to human interactions. In both cases it comes down to the "Golden Rule," kindness and loving compassion.
I see this as being missing in the fervent supporters of Donald Trump. Quite simply I can't understand how anyone could claim to be a Christian and still support Mr. Trump. Such seeming cognitive dissonance baffles me.
My Presbyterian grandmother was instrumental in my childhood and always brought up Matthew 25: 41-46 as the model for how I should treat those in need.
8
"My Presbyterian grandmother was instrumental in my childhood and always brought up Matthew 25: 41-46 as the model for how I should treat those in need."
You seem to have forgotten the last verse:
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46, NIV)
Do you really see a threat of "eternal punishment" as a "model" for anything?
Trump is the epitome of the moral crisis that they fear. It makes no sense that they continue to support him, let alone think he will fix it. Caged children, some of whom die, asylum seekers forced to wait on Mexican streets in defiance of American law, school, church and synagogue shootings, military base shootings, Jamal Khashoggi, denigration of women and minorities, and the list goes on and on.
17
@Barbara: The snake revealed guns in the Garden of Eden.
Wehner is undoubtedly correct, when he writes, "One of the things I have been most struck by in my conversations with Christian conservatives is how moral concern has given way to moral panic.... Many Christians have become invested in a dark narrative. As a friend of mine puts it: “They seem to have some kind of psychological craving for apocalyptic fear.”
Unfortunately, this description is true of many, if not most, across the political spectrum, though about other issues, including Trump. For the current degree and breadth of polarization to exist, it takes two (or more) to tango.
Problems are serious and real. However, to actually deal with the problems rather than simply be self-righteously rageful and ineffectively indignant, it requires perspective and the ability to listen as well as preach.
Fear is entirely subjective. Pointing out the objective reality does not warrant the level of fear one has is rarely effective. To make a change one must deal with why the subjective level of fear far exceeds the objective level of threat.
4
@Steve Fankuchen
Hey Steve, good to point this out again. I wonder, as do many I'm sure, that if you boil down to several interesting and maybe relatively modern traits of all people that they don't show us examples of this out there everywhere.
When we watch a movie, we tend to want some "interesting" version of extreme. Even if it's a love story. It's got to be a nail biter right to the end as to whether something(s) will derail that couple, etc. Or amazingly bring them together. And action obviously films speak for themselves.
I think to embrace the extreme is both healthy and potentially unhealthy. We see the unhealthy part with active shooters and terrorists and abortion clinician murderers. But the healthy part is that slightly apocalyptic thinking helps us process a pretty scary world. I mean just dealing with one's taxes can make people so panicky that they don't eat or sleep well for days. Let alone how New Yorkers and all Americans felt after 9/11.
2
I am an atheist.
Stop branding Christians as idiots and running headlines like this. Evangelicals are largely out of their minds, yes, but they do not represent all Christians. They are an American construct.
12
@A. Simon: Christianity diverged from Judaism over belief in life after death. There is no Judaic belief in life after death attainable by ritual, though obviously there are Jewish sects who view ritual as essential to life.
I'm a hard atheist. The joke amongst some of us goes that if God was to take the Christians to heaven tomorrow, that would be cause for great celebration.
I guess my biggest concern is the ecology. If you're expecting to go to heaven any day now, there's no need to worry about CO2, right? This is a threat, possibly an existential one, that most climate scientists believe is true. That's like going to see ten oncologists, and nine of them telling you that you have cancer. That can't be true, and we're going to Heaven any day now, anyway. Might as well buy that new V-10 pickup truck.
Also irritating is that the Christian crowd attaches personhood to an embryo the size of a pencil eraser. OK, a mouse - sue me. God has reached down and put a soul in this little body, and if we take it out because mom's a crack addict living on welfare, well, that little soul's going to hell. This is despite the fact that mom could miscarry naturally and the end result would be identical.
There's assorted other goofiness, like painting "God bless our sports team" in the high school foyer, despite the fact that 30% of Americans are not Christians, or praying before starting what was supposed to be the secular process of making laws, or putting the ten commandments onto court houses. Eating shellfish is an abomination - says right in the Bible. After overturning Roe and banning gay marriage, will Red Lobster be next?
17
"If you're expecting to go to heaven any day now, there's no need to worry about CO2, right?"
Instead of travestying Christian theology, you should learn some.
There are Wikipedia articles on "Christian views on environmentalism" and "Evangelical environmentalism".
A web search for "Christian ecology" will find more info.
And here is a book:
"Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans" ed. by Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether (2000).
That is part of the "Religions of the World and Ecology" collection from Harvard University Press.
1
@Andrew
Don't leave out the sign over the judges' heads in our courtrooms: In God We Trust. (Why bother with the judge?)
2
@Andrew: They haven't even established who will inherit the Earth after the Rapture, them or us.
1
Christianity is headed for extinction.
13
@Imperato
People been saying that for two thousand years. We’re not going anywhere.
@Imperato We can only hope.
1
@Imperato: The Evangelicals sure bet their farm on Trump.
Morality is not tethered to religion or Christianity. Morality is based on compassion, mutual understanding, empathy, and humans helping and supporting one another for the mere fact we are all humans and in this existence together. Humans must take responsibility for their own actions and help others without reliance on an external being or belief systems which by default are mutually exclusive, tribal, and limited in scope and perspective. Religions often do good works but they are not necessary for such and are not essential to human prosperity, progress, or a thriving community and society.
10
@Jesse: Sadly, I have found "morality" to be dominated by people who ascribe certain rules to divinities. I stick strictly to ethics, which Rabbi Hillel boiled down to "Do nothing to others one would abhor done to oneself" more or less contemporaneously with the life of Jesus.
Like yourself, Mr. Wehner, I am an "evangelical Christian"--sad! how the term has become tarnished and debased in recent years.
AND--(sorry)--
--I became a Democrat last August. For the first time. Be still, my beating heart!
I talked recently with a close family member. Also an evangelical Christian--still a Republican.
Not exactly a fruitful or productive talk.
Her voice SHOOK with passion--it VIBRATED with passion--
--as she described the horror of abortion. The fetus half shrinking from that dreadful machine that'll suck it up and get rid of it.
Sorry, but I do find that just a bit chilling.
Alive to the utter corruption and incompetence of Mr. Donald J. Trump? Absolutely. She wears no blinkers, that girl.
Alive to the cynicism of some time-serving Republican politicians (sorry, Mr. Wehner)? Absolutely. Let their precious base forswear all these convictions and hey! guess what?
THEY'LL forswear 'em too. Lickety split.
Very near to me. Very dear.
But we really cannot talk things out. My near and dear one doesn't live in a world of statistics. Facts and figures. Trends. Even--or especially--encouraging trends.
"Our hands are dripping with the blood of sixty million children. We're all complicit!"
We agreed to give politics a rest. There was nothing else to do.
Sad.
But there it is.
10
Yeah, for too many abortion is the only issue ever. I wish they spent half that energy trying to help the already born.
We should not be surprised that no mention was made here of the inexorable rise of science and rational thought, as distinct from what has become known as "magical thinking" espoused by the religious. And this is happening in the face of the stiff winds of anti-science and, more generally, anti-intellectual views and public policies that are so vociferously promoted in some segments of American society. Note that among younger generations, decreasing numbers of individuals are claiming that they adhere to any religious group or sect. That does not mean that they do not have vibrant spiritual lives, only that they decline to drink the Kool Aid of organized religions' dogmatism.
15
A fine studio photographer I called on when I had a wine ad to create became a work friend. One day he explained to me that he was writing a book about the "truth" he had found in Genesis.
I had previously found his attachment to evangelical fundamentalism a little squirrelly; his elementary school child was not allowed to go to Halloween parties or read those "satanic" Harry Potter books. But this hit a new low. He had learned in his studies that the world belonged to Satan: everything in it, no matter how good to begin with, was turned to evil by the fallen angel. My mind was blown. This was a fellow who took beautiful photographs and was proud of his work but now he was telling me he believed everything in life was always destined to be perverted by evil. There went my awe of the Grand Canyon, my astonishment at the beauty of a sunset, and the deeply psychological beauty of Mahler's music,...even Bach's magnificent—and very devotional—music. If I looked at two young people discovering mutual desire, the knowledge of their doomed, decomposing corpses mouldering away would certainly keep any smiling thoughts of young love, at bay.
Wow! Then, just to make the irony even more ridiculous, these same people want every possible baby brought to term into this worst of all possible worlds. A few even want to kill the possible parents for preventing it with contraception.
Somehow I just can't square this with all the "Prince of Peace" jazz.
19
If you believe that an almighty being is going to hand over the world to his evil competitor while saving only those few who swear fealty to a narrow sect of His religion, you are a member of a club that goes back millennia. In 999, they were sure that the year 1000 would bring on the apocalypse.
A thousand years later, it still hasn't happened.
We still might crash and burn. Overpopulation and over consumption could cause us to collapse the world's ecosystems. An asteroid could strike, or Mt. Toba or Yellowstone could blow gigatonnes of ash into the atmosphere. The Sun could pull a Maunder Minimum on steroids and we'd all freeze to death. But God isn't going to hand over His creation to the Devil and save a few lucky souls by delivering them to Heaven.
Meanwhile, society's morals adapt to a new reality. Honesty, integrity and kindness are still in, but sex strictly for procreation is out. Technology and overpopulation have shifted the mix towards pleasure and away from procreation. Science is unraveling many things that were mysterious, but there are still plenty left to work on.
Those who believe God will come and sort it all out are welcome to go somewhere and wait for it. The rest of us have lives to lead and work to do.
18
@mlbex
That's the problematic dilemma self fulfilling prophecies, that there is no Apocalypse to come but many Evangelical christians drives some type of huge SUV, live in oversized suburban houses where anti green square footage doesn't matter, votes for anti Climate Science candidates and is relatively ok with caging kids and attaching Muslim nations and many other things that will potentially end us.
Fulfilling the apocalypse one's self is not the same as a god fulfilling it.
Maybe they realize that it ain't coming and don't want egg on their face - so why not bring it on? Yikes.
1
Religionism is an ideology like any other. That's why Christian religionists support Trump. In contrast, those who know that their religion is their attempt to express their faith know that religions are merely human constructs. All the great religious leaders have known this.
Jesus opposed religionism, repeatedly and explicitly, in word and deed. The religionists of his day were deeply irritated by his habit of consorting with "sinners." He repeatedly turned the objections of the religionists back onto them.
Yet he was a deeply religious observant Jew. He summed up his faith by quoting Torah: "Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind; and your neighbour as yourself. On these two commands hang all the Law and the prophets." (See Matthew 22:38ff)
4
Conservative Christians are outraged that it is modernity and liberalism and not faith that are driving metrics that Christians should nominally care about (abortion, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, divorce) in the right direction. They might never admit it, but this is the crux of the issue. All of the data show this; well-educated irreligious are more “moral”, as measured by real data, than are Christians, with one notable exception (Mormons, who many Christians consider apostates.)
This brings to mind Mother Teresa, a figure who is fawned over but was ultimately deeply cynical. She found joy in suffering; hers was and is a cult of sacrifice for the sake of an eternal afterlife. She had little use for modern medicine, because she didn’t really want people to get better. She wouldn’t have been happy in a world without suffering. This is basically the same issue Christians have with modernity. They don’t actually want things to get better for people. They want people to behave in the ways they approve of, punish those who don’t, and minister to the “poor sinners”—making them feel better about themselves and the mythical afterlife in which they believe.
16
It is the very apocalyptic attitude and support for the most corrupt President in history that has driven so many Americans away from religion. I'm sure that's not in the calculation of the Fox News evangelicals. I do appreciate Wehner's essay, however.
9
The Christian way to fight amoral behavior is to follow the teaching of Jesus not the bibles old testament. Don't like abortion? Provide free birth control and family planning. Don't like gay rights? Learn to love your neighbor. Don't like no religion in our public schools? Push for federal legislation that requires World Religion and Philosophy be taught in our schools. Don't like government funded social welfare programs that give money to those in need? Push for government programs that teach self reliance values and offer retraining and relocation for people displaced by technology and other disruptions.
Want to stop the decline of our nation's democracy and values? Don't support an amoral self centered narcissist for President.
15
Last time I checked, Jesus was big on helping the poor.
Mr. Wehner,
Regarding your last two paragraphs. Your coreligionists do not need a different way to approach politics. They need:
1. To get their heads out of the sand. You quoted Reed, “There has never been anyone who has defended us and fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump. No one!”. Anyone, I mean anyone who hasn't drugged themselves on their own self-interest knows that Donald Trump doesn't care about anyone. That his personal interests happen to coincide with them may be good news to them, for the time being, but wait until he decides that his interests aren't theirs.
2. To stop confusing their racism with protecting their religious rights. It is fully apparent and unbecoming.
3. To stop trashing the Constitution (yes by enabling Trump they are co-conspirators in the destruction of our republic). In the browning of America, they sense their way of life disappearing. Full Stop! The one and only thing that can end their way of life is for the US to turn into an autocracy. As a soon to be minority they are going to need the protections the constitution provides them more than ever before. Enabling Trump to destroy it is the absolutely worst thing they can do to themselves.
4. To stop the 'my way or the highway' approach to politics. Their obstructionist approach both in the states and in Washington may be serving them now, but Democrats will not forget. So a little humility is in order lest we bury their party in the years to come.
6
Sex, sex, sex. Is that all evangelicals can think of? There are other problems in the country and the world that could use some consideration. Never mind health care, education, the environment, the economy, the integrity of our elections, poverty, jobs, gun violence, the drug crisis. It's always just sex with them. Men and women have sex. Sometimes they aren't married. Sometimes they're gay. Sometimes they get pregnant and don't want to be. Nothing new here. Move on.
16
Appreciate your point. We also need to call out the self righteous moral argument. It's always been true this is all about power over others - I want you to do what I want and I want you to pay me for it. Trump is simply the personification of the moral and ethical scam perpetrated by the evangelical movement for decades. I shake my head, there is absolutely nothing Christian about that movement.
9
The irony is that it is this in part what is driving younger people away from this religion and religion generally.
9
Ralph Reed is a snake oil salesman and I’m betting a very wealthy one at that.
Appreciate the information in this column Mr. Wehner.
10
The thing that disturbs me most is that politicians are unduly influenced by delusional people believing in mythological gods and who cite a book of bronze aged myths as the source of their “morals”.
Even more disturbing are all the commenters on here who intelligently debate the merits of various religious arguments and “Jesus wouldn’t do this he would do xyz”. These are all arguments based on the same god existence delusion. I can’t for the life of me understand why so many intelligent educated people still cling to a belief in supernatural beings.
6
Il Diablo is inspirational to those who‘d cherish the hate. Those who’d hide contemptuous feeling towards the United States behind the veil of pseudo-warfare-inspired-Christianity outnumber sanity these days.
1
There are many truths to point out when it comes to the paranoia and panic of evangelical Christians, and one of them - I believe - is shared by many but not said. So here goes: Many of these panic-stricken believers are not that smart and can be easily led astray.
Another unmentioned reality is that these Evangelicals are mostly white. Christians of color are not buying to this nuttiness. So you can't delve into "Christian Doomsayers" without factoring in white supremacy.
10
@NYer Which is why Trump "Loves the uneducated".
1
The biggest threat to our democracy is the imposition of religious values on those who don't believe the same things.
Proselytizing religios are little more than lobbyists who can deliver votes. What they're doing is not religion but bald politics.
The astonishing thing is how few on the religious right recognize a charlatan when they see one.
The more attention Ralph Reed or Mark Labberton get, the higher their book sales. Making money off God is older than the money changers at the temple.
9
It's called demographics. There were more abortions and more divorces when the huge population cohort of Baby Boomers were in their 20s-40s.
3
Evangelicals might want to read their history. There are plenty of Christians and churches, including full seminary programs that required Arianism as a Christian theological concept, that actively supported the Nazis. Much of the anti-Jewish literature was stocked by centuries of Christian attacks on Jews, who dismissed them not as humans with a principled disagreement, but as a witness people to the death of Christ doomed to an existence of poverty and oppression as a consequence. There are also churches that did organize against Hitler, whose members were ruthlessly attacked by the Nazi regime and who very often found themselves murdered like other undesirables - driving most Christians into silence at the atrocities. Where is the Christian celebration of those few who did the right thing? Why does the right pretend it was fear of dirtying hands in politics rather than murder and torture that deterred effective resistance against the Nazis?
The entire thinking of the religious right is immorally dishonest in concept and practice. This is precisely why, as a Christian, I became a historian. Theologians would do very well to remember a commandment, thou shalt not bear false witness. That they do is appalling and very unChristian to anyone who has actually read the Bible ... or history.
7
It’s amazing how few people who call themselves Christian have even read the Bible, let alone follow it.
Of all the world's cheats, religious ones are the worst as we saw with the Houston mega pastor who lied his huge church was flooded and couldn't take in refugees from the storm. The evangelical zealots who display their piety with public prayer and flagellation that the end is near are the hypocrites Jesus mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount, many of whom pray the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is proof of their apocalyptic fear Armageddon is near. Evangelicals have succumbed to fear, leading to irrational and inhumane policies that were really aren't our brother's keeper. They want to impose a new creed that life begins at conception instead of first breath and see abortion as a political predicated on their narrow religious belief regardless of the harm to women, families, and children. World history is rife with religious zealots condemning millions to lives of misery as we saw during the Inquisition, Spanish missionaries who tried to convince California Indians communities to give up their children for mission life, to the modern religious wars we see today. Of all the world's cheats, religious ones are the worst regardless irrespective of creed, and Americans should never allow religious dogma to become law.
3
Nice try, but the GOP and right wing media are all in on fear mongering. It clearly works for them to keep the base in a state of agitation.
10
First off, I'm a humanist. Chistrianity is just another mythology.
this quote below is from the article....
"The view that Mr. Trump is all that stands between America and a moral cataclysm was encapsulated by Eric Metaxas, an influential evangelical author and radio talk-show host, who said in 2016, “The only time we faced an existential struggle like this was in the Civil War and in the Revolution when the nation began.” He added, “We are on the verge of losing it as we could have lost it in the Civil War.”"
The south did lose the war. is this guy saying "well we lost slavery but we saved jesus".
serious crackpots......
5
As a Christian pastor of an extraordinarily diverse, multicultural church I wholeheartedly agree with your perspectives- until your concluding sentence:”Jesus didn’t view the world primarily as a battle zone...” C’mon, Peter! You’re a student of the Bible! Warfare language abounds in the teaching and activity of Jesus, at least the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels.
41
@Rich Nathan I, too, am a Bible believing born again Christian who does not espouse conservatism. When you read the words of Jesus it is clear that he does see a "battle zone" but it is spiritual warfare he talks about. Spiritual warfare is fought mostly through prayer.
12
@Rich Nathan I can think of examples of Christ being angry (money lenders at the temple), of him driving out demons from people, and of him resisting Satan's temptation in the wilderness by referring him to scripture, but where does he teach and act in combat terms?
3
@Rich Nathan
YES, Jesus said he came bearing a sword that divides us with its Truth!
3
This time of year Christians focus on Christmas and all its mysteries. To Mary and the Shepherds the message was "Fear Not!" Christians are called to follow Jesus and that includes offering hope, consolation, and grace and not fear, judgement, and sanctimony. As far as expecting the apocalypse, the Church beginning in the 1st century believed in its imminence. In the year 1000, one group of Christians followed their prophet up a mountain to welcome the breaking in of the new world. When nothing new happened, they went down the mountain and threw their once prophet in the dungeon. Jesus taught in Luke that God's domain is not over the horizon, above the sky, but rather in our midst where there is peace, love, and justice.
2
Jesus was pro-choice. Offer unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God’s which is God’s. Don’t like abortion - don’t have one.
15
The obsession of the Christian right with abortion and homosexuality, the first of which is never mentioned in either testament, and the second of which is just part of one Old Testament story (which puts forward allowing someone to rape your own daughters as a better outcome), baffles me. My church spent most of its time on serving the poor and preaching love and compassion. You know, the stuff Jesus talked about.
10
Actually, abortion is mentioned in the Bible, specifically in Numbers 5:11-31, instructions for how to perform one if a man suspects that his wife cheated on him. It's a weird potion including dirt from a temple that supposedly only worked if she was unfaithful, but regardless it is definitely an undeniable refutation of the idea that the Bible is entirely anti-abortion.
1
The triumph of the evangelicals is directly the result of school desegregation in the South. Social issues became the mechanism for knowing who still believed in segregation, and who didn't. The rise of the anti-abortion movement was result of racial antagonism; immediately after Roe vs Wade, only the Catholic church went into high dudgeon, but by the end of the 70s, the evangelicals channeled all the racial hatred into anti-abortion, anti-gay causes, and whipped that hatred to a fever pitch. Hooray for our side!!!!
So, yes, they're correct: Trump is the answer to their dreams, a blatant race baiter. Who could have predicted so much so fast? And, certainly, any Democrat will oppose the racial agenda of the right.
Charles Blow wrote a column on this that I can't find. Someone help!!!
4
Just look at what kind of politicians the evangelicals support in different countries and you will see that the leaders of their churches are either criminals or promote a radical “ends justify the means” attitude.
In the US they support a liar, corrupt, sexist and racist president. In Brazil they overwhelmingly voted for a man who is racist, who said that he favors torture and summary executions, who is destroying the Amazon and who affirmed that the problem with the previous military dictatorship isnthat it did not kill enough people. In the Philippines the same. There is a pattern here.
3
"... he [Ahmari] has relegated civility to a secondary virtue while turning against modernity and classical liberalism."
That Sohrab Ahmari quote is incomplete. It begins with "This is demonic."*
As for Ahmari's alleged disregard for "civility", Ahmari doesn't attack anyone in the tweet, so it is a bad example.
* The tweet has been deleted from Twitter, but it can be found at archive dot org.
Oh, geez. I totally thought it was the other way around: instead of seeing Trump as their savior, don't apocalyptic evangelicals think he's the Antichrist? Or at least his advance man?
I mean, just look at the record... Recognizing Jerusalem as the Jewish capitol, edging us towards the East, playing footsie with nuclear war... He certainly seems more like an agent of Armageddon than a member of the holy hosts.
Where's Terry Pratchett when you need him?
7
It's ironic that Evangelical Christians are the most destructive force in the country, and by extension the planet, while they run around thinking they need to save the country.
No, we need to save the country from YOU!
10
Wonderful thoughtful article.
FOX propaganda. If you tell lies long enough and loud enough they become truth.
5
Is it really possible for Americans to express such levels
of bigotry ?
In 2019 !
Bigot is a French word that came from the Gauls mocking the Britons for saying "By God " over and over .
2
He'll change his tune when a Dem gets elected.
1
What’s the difference between militancy in Islam & Christian Doomsayers when as people both love to live with messages of hatred towards others who believe in true humanity for peaceful coexistence with all with love & goodwills.
2
It's interesting to me that the moral crisis that so many conservative Christians see in our country is entirely focused on gender roles. Drag queens reading to children in libraries is a call to arms; black Americans dying at the hands of police are not. Gay marriage shocks the conscience and sensibilities of religious conservatives; human-caused climate change potentially causing millions to die of starvation does not. Transgendered individuals using their preferred pronouns and bathrooms is a sign that civilization is entering its end stages; tax policies that allow a select few to become unimaginably wealthy while everyone else is pushed further into poverty are not. People who support a policy that allows a pregnant woman to end her pregnancy are complicit in mass murder; those who support the ready availability of an AR-15 to anyone who wants one are not.
12
Mr. Wehner summarizes continued Christian support for Trump as:
"Mr. Trump may be unethical, unscrupulous and morally dissolute, but he is by far the lesser of two evils."
And what might this other evil be? The leading candidate, of course, is the Left, most often self-described as Progressives. We have seen this before.
Germany in the 1930s was 95% Christian (2/3 Protestant, 1/3 Catholic) with Jews at <1%. The evil that those Christian's responded to in supporting the far-right political party was the socialist threat that they saw Soviet Communism posing. And so while they understood and tolerated the evil of the far-right, they did so in the belief that what Communism threatened was even worse. Never mind that the far-right leader was an atheist who intended to eventually destroy Christianity because he believed that Christian principles were incompatible with his view of the superman.
Are we in now in a similar cycle to what Germany, and the world, experienced 90 years ago? If gauged by the impenetrability of many Christians to their belief in Trump regardless of what he does, then there is reason for concern.
9
Donald Trump is the antithesis of everything Jesus stands for, yet a sub-group of people calling themselves Christians (evangelicals) remain his staunchest supporters. Regarding this group, presidential historian John Meacham said:
“It’s the idolatry of power. They’ve been blinded, in Cal Thomas’s old phrase, “blinded by the might”. Cal co-wrote a book, probably 25 years ago, maybe more, worried that the religious right, as it became more influential, would lose its bearings and become a self-fulfilling movement as opposed to a gospel fulfilling movement. And I think that, for a host of reasons, having to do with tribalism, a sense of siege, and a self-importance, a very unbiblical sense that their mission is the most important, their judges are the most important, and they have, I believe, in many many cases, they have chosen temporal power over the implications of their more eternal message.”
6
Wise words, Mr. Wehner. Unfortunately, fear has ended up becoming the dominant underpinning of much of Western religiosity, and indeed the conservatism that often goes with it.
This trinity - fear, conservatism, and Christianity - have become closely intertwined. In a society like ours, which lacks introspection and reflection, it seems to me unlikely that we will ever unravel the three, and allow for underlying Christian principles based on love and kindness to return to a dominant position among conservatives.
2
Approx. 90% of abortions in the U.S. occur before or by the first 12-13 weeks of pregnancy. Less than 2% at 20 weeks or later, and those are essentially exclusively for medical conditions to mother or fetus. American women are not going to put up with so-called "evangelicals" or the male Catholic dominated Supreme Court majority telling them what to do with their bodies or anything else. There is no group more hypocritical in so many ways in the history of our country than these people who use the cross as both weapon and shield.
7
@Cowboy Marine
You are so right. Weapon against those who worship the "wrong religion" or no religion at all; shield for tax-dodging churches.
2
As always, an article focused on one sect and its complaints avoids the big question: what is our alternative religion for today? Humans have rushed to the shelter of superstition all through history. Christianity had much to commend it as a rule for living. But it has been so corrupted as to be anathema to many. People still need "something"--and unfortunate as that may be, it is the truth. People rush to find new spells and potions; they fill the game-show halls of televangelists. And many of those people are decent, caring humans. What do I or any other agnostic have to offer them? Can they survive freedom of thought? Mr. Wehner offers more of the failed same.
3
Interestingly, blue states have much lower rates of teen pregnancies than red states as seen on these charts and tables. (https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/reproductive-health-and-teen-pregnancy/teen-pregnancy-and-childbearing/trends/index.html).
But it is true that blue states have a higher percentages of aborted pregnancies.
4
Only because the governments in blue states haven’t tried to close down every clinic within their borders. That fact alone artificially distorts what the actual numbers would likely be if pregnancy termination were equally available in all states. It isn’t. I suspect that rates would be higher in red states if there weren’t so many obstacles hindering or outright preventing access.
6
@WesternMass Yes, you're right. The state-by-state abortion rates definitely correlate with the number of abortion facilities in each state as this chart indicates. https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/states/
I wonder how many of those abortions in blue states are people coming from red ones.
Forget about religion, if you want to hasten an improvement in crime, decrease abortion, enhance family values and intellectual growth just RAISE the minimum wage so that NO ONE working a 40 hr week needs to be on government assistance. If we really respect & honor a work ethic regardless of the work one does, the minimum wage should be that which guarantees one will NOT need government assistance to support an average family.
6
Mr Wehner, this is one of the best encapsulations of the current and baffling (to me anyhow) evangelical support of Donald Trump that I have read!
I never realized what an extremely apocalyptic worldview evangelicals in the US held about the current state of culture in the US.
Your most relevant point however comes towards the end where you plaintively ask who would join such a religion? That has been my feeling for a while as I have been exploring how all of this makes sense. They are declining in numbers and I’m not sure they realize that they are building an edifice to a self fulfilling prophecy of irrelevance and extinction.
The people I see interviewed from these groups seem extremely fearful, angry and completely without joy or hope for the future. A complete dystopian nightmare seems to be the basis of their existence.
What young person would want to sign on to this lifelong journey?
6
We live in an age when Christianity is infected with apocalyptic anxiety, which leads, of course, to wish fulfillment by producing a social crisis. This social crisis is extreme polarization between Christians who await the chaos of apocalyptic destruction (with longing) and those who live in a demythologized real world, (as does Mr. Wehner) of imperfect, but essentially useful and humane, people.
The Book of Revelation is the most troublesome and misunderstood canonical part of the Christian Testament.
It is seized upon in ages of anxiety, like ours, by undereducated Christians, who seldom understand the real history of Christianity as a militant faith that brought down one civilization and is threatening our own.
Those who believe in Trump are, in their own terms, embracing the Antichrist. In so doing, they are enacting a fantasy that supports the very turn toward fascism they project on the world's most important democracy, and thus
bringing about the very apocalypse they fear.
10
It is absolutely irrelevant what these people's (Wehner too) religious "beliefs" tell them. I am quite tired of the Times and others giving such space to analyze critical civic issues through a religious perspective. It is tacitly acknowledging that the religious view has standing.
Also, any analysis of the religious right's impact on electoral politics is incomplete or, better noted, completely inaccurate and disingenuous without acknowledging racism.
The so-called moral issue of abortion is trivial compared to the conservative support of white supremacism.
12
"We are facing an existential moral crisis..., the view of many Christians who have given their full-throated support to President Trump."
What is wrong with the picture that this quotation renders? Have we truly entered a moral and conceptual realm where we must struggle to prove that the world isn't flat or the the moon isn't a green cheese factory?
How does one argue, let alone persuade a critical mass of voters who believe to their ethical and rational cores the fever of fabulist brain activity that attributes to President Trumpthe moral salvation of humanity?
Giving up is not the answer but, Lord, it is so tempting.
6
The country was designed to separate church and state - one of the many wisdoms of the Constitution. Somewhere along the line campaigning politicians realized that undereducated voters could be played to via the “faith” angle, no matter how badly the candidate happened to be shredding the commandments offstage. The Republicans made this approach their clarion call; indeed, along with false promises of lower taxes it’s the only way they could get anyone to vote for them. But all presidents - with the possible exception of Carter - have been false in this way. Trump is just the worst example of it. In history.
10
These folks strangely look forward to what they refer to as the rapture while the rest of us prefer to look for what we can realistically do to recover from generations of careless practices. To actually afford humanity a chance to continue life on this planet. They literally look away as their chosen one imprisons children and the needy for no other reason than they don't look like us.
Reality is they seem to despise us who actually care about our planet and those in need even if they don't look like us. As I see it they have nothing on me simply because my ideals are genuine, rooted in reality and requires no obligation to an imagined entity.
I don't hold their beliefs against them but do find fault with them forcing non productive faith based fantasy down my throat. If they want my respect then choose to deal with the reality of the here and now.
8
The people who go to Trump rallies and are happy to see the 'laying on of hands' ceremonies performed by venal hypocrites in the Oval Office, who 'know' they are right and others are evil, just don't care.
They are whipped up by lies and hatred spewed by right wing media, and in quite a few cases, the people who stand in the pulpits at their mega churches.
They, and those who use them, do not follow the precepts of Christ when they deny the help he suggested/ordered in Mathew 25 35:46 (help the stranger, feed the hungry etc.). The cruel party they support specifically denies these instructions.
They won't read this or any other such analysis. If they did, they would perceive the whole thing as an attack, and feel more justified in their opposition and isolation.
It is all just getting worse.
5
After Trump, I never, ever, ever, want to hear an evangelical talking to me about "morality" again. That ship has sailed, forever.
Remember when Newt Gingrich was leading the impeachment effort against Clinton? He was also carrying on an affair with his soon to be third wife. Whom Trump appointed as ambassador to the Vatican.
Moral Majority, indeed. Just a bunch of angry hypocrites. Deplorable.
16
Peter Wehner was very nice to these evangelicals, when in response to those outside their sect they spew venom and hate. So many of them espouse that only their sects consist of people who have any saving grace. Like Trump, they want to hate. Is it not their fault that so many of them only imitate Trump. That they have a simplistic answer to every problem faced in living; the other side is the devil?
5
These so-called conservative Christians do not, in any way, exemplify the message of Jesus. Compassion and love is the core of his message. Supporting Donald Trump is anathema to His message.
What many Evangelicals are hiding behind their opposition to abortion, is a fear of white people losing power because of the changing demographics of America.
9
BINGO! That’s all it is. White fear. I don’t know why so many of my fellow white people are so afraid of becoming a minority.
I was brought up Catholic and what I learned about Christian values is inconsistent with the current administration's treatment of immigrants. It's hard to imagine Jesus advocating separating parents from their children and then putting them in cages. It's also hard to reconcile the reduction in SNAP assistance with Jesus advocating feeding the hungry. I guess I don't understand the gladiator mentality attributed to evangelicals in this article.
2
For many evangelicals, the word "belief" is synonymous with "want." They want to believe that crime is higher than ever. They want an apocalypse. This world apparently is not good enough for them, so they must "help" God destroy it. God seemingly can't quite do it on his own. These evangelicals claim to disapprove of some of Trump's actions, words and methods, but really Trump is the embodiment of all they represent. Any leader who met their requirements would have to be dishonest, cowardly, and despotic, because these qualities are inextricably entwined with their core "beliefs." Were their Jesus to appear on Earth, he would be very much like Trump.
4
Trump promotes pollution, war, suspicion, deceit, immorality. Opposes action to combat climate change, any positive step of any kind. He is expediting the “final days”, the apocalypse. So, for those impatiently awaiting the second coming, what’s not to like??
4
I recently had the unsettling experience of listening to a “Christian” radio program while driving through a rural part of our country. In that program, the minister declared that Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey are “demonic” forces due to their acquaintance with Marianne Williamson. She went on to say that these forces are trying to take over and that Trump is god’s choice in this “war” to lead “Christians” to victory. The minister’s vision was unhinged, paranoid, and violent in its rhetoric against non-“Christians.” And yet, the minister’s church/program, no doubt, has a tax exemption as a religious organization despite its rank partisanship.
9
Why don't the evangelicals post the portrait of Steven Miller on the face of those pamphlets the ushers pass out when you enter church on Sunday? After all he is the one doing trump's good "christian deeds"? Credit where credit is due.
4
The only way to support the Trump demon is to proclaim rule of law, freedoms, rights and the welfare of humanity as no longer important. His failed attempt at leadership and the unveiled look into his true worth as a human being will no doubt render him a lonely and lost person of no consequence. A failure at leadership who even the lowest of low will no longer recognize his presence once he is forced to live with the reality of who he is. A broke and affirmed fraudulent dispicable loser with nothing to offer the world beyond shame hatred and embarrassment. A nothing in the eyes of everyone but himself.
Is this really the person the religious right chooses to advocate for? Doing so requires extreme manipulation of conviction which renders their so called faith and heightened morality as dead on arrival.
3
"Jesus didn’t view the world primarily as a battle zone. Neither should we".
But he certainly fought well documented battles:
"Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and benches of those selling doves. "It is written," he said to them, "My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.' "
Matthew 21:12-13
Many Christians and non Christians alike believe that the money changers have been replaced with corrupt politicians empowered with an equally corrupt and enabling media. They also believe that the Temple of God has been replaced with a self aggrandizing Washington, DC.
Self described loving and "prayerful" Catholic Christians like Nancy Pelosi can castigate Donald Trump as the antithesis of many qualities embodied in Jesus yet support partial birth abortion right up to the delivery date. While she labels him evil, vile and corrupt she has parlayed her political career into a personnel fortune. Surely the ancient money changers would be jealous.
Jesus was relentlessly persecuted by agents of the moneychangers. He was ultimately crucified because they FEARED him. President Trump has been persecuted his entire presidency by the Washington elite for the same reason. For many Christians, the impeachment circus we are witnessing is no less than a metaphor for crucifixion. Unlike Peter, they will not abandon him.
1
Hmmm.. interesting you make a point of Nancy Pelosi’s personal fortune. Although I don’t know how you came to know how much she is worth, since she never mentions it. But you fail to address your dear leaders massive fortune, which he gratuitously promotes at every opportunity.
1
Wow....Trump is not being persecuted, HE is prosecuting innocent children (Catholic children and their families) at the border! Who are YOU to judge whether Mrs. Pelosi is prayerful or not?!
1
@tim k I pray that Jesus will set you free from your worship of Donald Trump so that you can learn to see and to follow Jesus again.
Just now rereading The Handmaid’s Tale. Reminds me of how things might become if the evangelicals get their way.
8
Simply put, evangelicals are not christians. They've made an idol out of christ. Constantly ignore his teachings while using old testament logic to justify their rules(christ was a literal response that the orthodoxy of the old testament interpretation was the wrong way to be a jew or a person in general). Conservatism and fundementalism are the antithesis of christ. I feel so sad for these lost souls, but we may need to deal with them as one would a rabid animal. There's no reasoning, no saving, and they are a massive danger to everyone they come in contact with
11
One can live a life of morality and charity without having to believe in a fairy tale that has been used to oppress the masses throughout history.
8
Amen to that. And I'm an atheist.
2
Thank you so much for this article. As a Christian, I appreciate you showing that not all of us feel the way of the far right. Jesus commanded, "He who is without sin cast the first stone". Since none of us, including the evangelicals are sinless, I don't understand how they can condemn so many people just because they are different from themselves. He preached love and inclusion not hate and fear of others. To embrace a man who is the antithesis of Christian beliefs and overlook all that he is because he gives you what you want is appalling. It appears to me that they do not believe that God will protect us and are taking things into their own hands working with an evil man to achieve their goals. This in NOT what the Bible teaches.
6
Does anyone really believe that Donal Trump's support of Christian fundamentalists is anything other than political? Do you really believe his favorite book is the bible? Do you really believe that he prays? As a contrast, Nancy Pelosi is a legitimate woman of faith, born and raised in the Catholic faith, raised 5 children in the Catholic faith and still attends mass regularly. And yet she's somehow perceived as evil and Trump as a savior? Trump would dump Christians in a second if he thought it was to his advantage.
13
Those who say "Trump is an existential threat" have also "lost it."
2
So it doesn’t bother you when a man that has had considerable cognitive decline is the one with the nuclear football following him around?
Tell that to the children Trump has incarcerated!
Look at The Family on Netflix. Also known as The Fellowship, it sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast. in its twisted view of Christianity, God’s chosen ones are those to whom He gives power and money. And the despicable acts of the powerful are part of God’s plan. Therefore, no matter how low Trump stoops, this group and their many powerful friends will do anything to keep him in power.
5
No decent person, religious or not, can support Trump the monstrosity. As for his pretend religiosity read the transcript of the April 3 2015 CNN interview. When asked if he ever asked God for forgiveness, he said no, never. He thinks making his communion is a "sort of asking God for forgiveness." Huh? NO, Donnie. You make your humble, devout and sincere confession FIRST otherwise you don't receive grace or partake of Christ. In fact if you don't it backfires on you and you take it to your condemnation as a sinner and hypocrite. I wish somebody would tell Evangelicals that their boy never asks God for forgiveness. Of course he would try to lie his way out of what he said.
4
Christian suppression by the media and left is driving the run to Trump... not because it’s Trump. Rightfully, the media and left support all freedoms - except those of Christians. Freedom for all means just that.
Having been raised a Catholic, as a child I was confused by the contradictions between what was preached and the actions of the faithful. Then I found the word for it....hypocrisy. Now I am again confounded by the support given to an amoral compassionless leader by the Christian right...but I already have a word for it.
5
Thank you for a lovely Advent message in last paragraphs. We all know the verse John 3:16 but forget the next one. John 3:17, KJV: "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."
1
I left the Catholic Church about 30 years ago when I had enough and was no longer willing to be abused by a Pope who declared I was “intrinsically evil,” or by a Church that spent big money supposedly for the poor but instead went to support a right wing political agenda.
About 7 or 8 years ago I volunteered with Sojourn Chaplaincy at San Francisco General Hospital. I learned it was founded in 1982 after the San Francisco Catholic Dioceses refused to provide chaplains for the gay men who were dying of AIDS.
Let’s not forget the lies and hysteria by the San Francisco bishop over same sex marriage and the huge sums of money raised by him with the Mormon Church to wage political warfare. Truly, they declared it would bring on the Apocalypse and religious people believed their leaders. That’s when Prop 8 passed, a campaign that tore families apart all over California.
These days conservative Christians are pushing for the right to exclude LGBTQ people from any services they provide, wedding cakes is only the beginning.
Aside from the attacks by right wing Christians on the civil rights of LGBTQ people and on civil rights of women which has gone on so long it’s no longer shocking, what was shocking was the support from evangelical Christians for Trump’s immigration policy that separated children from their parents and imprisoned them in detention facilities, cages really. That showed me and the world what kind of people they really are and Christ has nothing do with it.
10
We know and even expect Trumps displays and pronouncements of his moral depravity and bankrupt character. Yet 40 some % still promote his leadership skills, which he never in his past had bragging rights to.
Does he then not qualify, with those credentials, to play the role of antichrist?
To expect someone with no moral compass as guide through these times, beset on all sides by evil and various degradations, seems to many as wrong minded. At best misdirected.
We're going the wrong way!
2
Like many evangelicals, I believe God has chosen Trump to be President. We differ as to God’s motive. Trump has been sent as punishment.
8
@Victor James
I wish he'd quit punishing atheists for the selfishness of evangelicals.
Fear and superstition will always have its place with those who don't think for themself. Religious institutions don't want individualism - they want conformity of the masses.
1
How anyone who calls themselves a "Christian" can see this administration as the second coming is beyond me.
To quote from The Usual Suspects :..."the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. And like that...he is gone".
3
Political compromise in the face of "existential threat" is of course morally impossible, so Christians will stir the pot with zeal until End Times. They are being played like fiddles by the Republican Party in this, and Trump in particular, who never met a sucker he couldn't get to buy into his sham world of divisiveness.
I know of 0 liberals who want to ban religion; want kids to drink and drug; who set out to have lots of abortions. But if talk radio is a sign there are many conservatives who want to void LGBT; and take us back to the time when women were second class.
3
Oh America is most definitely on the edge of a moral abyss. And it is evangelical Christians whom are leading America into it.
3
Eric Metaxas - “The only time we faced an existential struggle like this was in the Civil War and ...Revolution...” He added, “We are on the verge of losing it as we could have lost it in the Civil War.”
So now his logic is to side with those who are still supporters of the Confederacy? The southerners, who want to protect the statues which glorify treason, enable racism, especially in the voting booth, and fly their rebel flags. Politics, indeed, makes strange bedfellows.
And yes, we are not in Nero’s Rome. But even as corrupt and evil as Ancient Rome was, Christians were never told to use political means to change the world. They were told to change the world by their outrageous love. They were so successful in those days their actions were even noticed by the emperor.
And there is no war on Christmas or Christians. No one is forcing any Christian to refrain from saying “Merry Christmas” or to get an abortion.
Jesus never condoned the use of power to further his cause. He told Pilate he could call down 10 legions of angels, even stronger than 9 Justices, to destroy him. But did not. Several of his disciples were zealots, which means they were for force to overthrow the Roman occupiers. Yet Jesus tempered that in their lives, not encouraged it.
Christians like Ralph Reed and the Huckabees who support Trump, Sarah being willing to lie for him, have let the thirst for power and money rule in their lives. Jesus and his teachings have been corrupted in them by that lust.
3
@JKile
"Jesus never condoned the use of power to further his cause."
Luke 22:35-38
And He said to them, “When I sent you without money bag, knapsack, and sandals, did you lack anything?” So they said, “Nothing.” Then He said to them, “But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. For I say to you that this which is written must still be accomplished in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’ For the things concerning Me have an end.” So they said, “Lord, look, here are two swords.” And He said to them, “It is enough.”
Apocalypticism is one of the earliest and most consistent traditions throughout Christian history, dating back all the way back to the first christian documents we have, letters of the Apostle Paul.
Jesus himself is considered by many critical scholars to have been an apocalyptic prophet, whose premonitions of God's "coming" kingdom are exactly what got him killed.
1st century Roman Palestine was awash with apocalyptic thought, from the Essene community at Qumran, to John the Baptist and a whole host of lesser known prophets in between.
It should not be entirely surprising that a religion founded by an apocalyptic prophet and influenced by a Jewish prophetic tradition that had itself become increasingly apocalyptic (Daniel, Enoch, Abraham) is one that has found itself unable to shake that tendency throughout the millennia's, regardless of environment or circumstances.
1
I’ve never understood why the “religious” support Trump when their evangelical man, Pence, is next in line. Get rid of Trump and Pence will carry on with their fundamentalist beliefs. Any normal Republican politician will continue to promote their anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, climate change denying, anti-immigration, anti-progress agenda. There is no need to hitch their wagon to Trump. All I can think of is they are so uneducated, ignorant, and live in a constant state of unnecessary fear. If the pearly gates exist, I wish I could be a fly on the wall as St. Peter denies them all entry through the gate.
5
I hope the end is nigh for hypocritical evangelical Christians. And Trump. The sooner they lose power, the better for all of us.
2
You closely examine the partnership between Christians and Trump but fail to examine your own bias toward Trump. You mention his “temperament” and “unethical, immoral” behavior. But so what? He defends Christians’ interests. How can Trump’s “temperament,” his personality, compete with what he does for Christians?
You pooh-pooh and seem to dismiss Democrats’ and progressive’s secularity and anti-Christian policy positions out of hand. Why don’t you realize that these are legitimate threats to Christians? Why wouldn’t they choose the warrior who defends them?
While abortions have decreased, the author of this piece totally misses the deep-seated concern among Christians over religious freedom (forced, for example, to bake for a gay wedding), transgenderism (which is hardly on the decline), eradication of Christian symbols from the public square (try putting up a Nativity in a park), and the rise, at least in terms of publicity, of the Church of Satan.
My most fervent prayer:
"Lord, protect me from your followers."
9
Mr. Wehner your description of Trump as a mobster is spot on. I'm sure he admired John Gotti, the mobster who paraded around NYC in his fine clothes and was always in the press. Gotti could be seen as a faux Catholic like so many mobsters. Well Trump is a faux Christian and those Christians who believe so fervently in him are making a pact with the Devil.
3
The religious right has replaced Jesus with Trump. Trump, in all of his unrepentant moral, ethical and sexual depravity, is their new deity.
Those "Christians" deserve no respect for their beliefs. None. It's about time the rest of us admitted this.
2
Jesus also didn’t regard religion as a fund raising opportunity, which is what it is now in America
5
Imagine if Christians could just mind their own business and treat everyone with kindness and compassion like Jesus told them to.
Problem solved!
6
My thoughts exactly!
Jesus tells us how He will Judge is in Matthew 25: when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give shelter and visit prisons, we do so for Him. That is not hard to grasp. But my right-wing “Christian” relatives get angry when I point out that Mr. Trump has rejected the teaching of Jesus throughout his life and to this very day. Rather he worships two gods: the god of mammon and himself. But these same people reject evolution, climate change and their minds live in a mystical world. Religion is based on lies that satisfy, while science is based on facts that horrify.
Side note: about 10 years ago, former MS Governor Barber was bragging about the low abortion rate in MS. Indeed, the rate had declined to an asymptote of about 2,300 per year. But an NIH health survey had not shown a similar decline in the number reporting having had an abortion. I sent a query to the Guttmacher Institute as to whether they collect data on non-clinical abortions. They do not. How many women now use a DIY method with misoprostil, alprostadil or cocaine? Nobody knows.
1
Really, what these 'Christians' worry about is the increasing foreign nature of America, specifically the ascendance of the non-white, non-Christian component of the population. Cheer up, Christians, according to the historian Philip Jenkins, even if your religion is in retreat in North America and Europe, Christianity is having a rebirth in the non-white part of the world. Ask yourselves, by the way, why these two counter-trends are happening.
1
The ironic truth is immigrants, especially Latino ones, are far more religious than the general population. So it is not the loss of people of faith, it’s the color of their skin and the accent in their speech they don’t like.
Trump hates all the people Evangelicals hate (Blacks, immigrants, the LGBT community, etc). That's good enough for them.
9
Some well known quotes;
Voltaire:"Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool".
George Beranrd Shaw:"Among the pious I'm a scoffer. Among the musical I am religious"
Marx( Karl):"Religion is the opiate of the masses"
Marx( Groucho) paraphrasing...Any club that would have Trump,Pompeo, Barr, & Guiliani, as members, I don't wanna' belong to.
1
"Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him." Proverbs
Christian and Conservative are contradictions in term!
3
Evangelical Christianity is heavily invested in Prosperity Gospel. It requires a devil to exist in order to panic the faithful into contributing money---in fact indulgences--- to prop up the network of greedy TV preachers.
3
It warms the Cockles to see a merging of doomsday, apocalypse and prosperity preachers aligning around trump. This packaging allows a “sell something for any occasion” to paper the airwaves.
Those traveling wagons of yore hawking patented elixirs for what ails you come to mind. Elmer Gantry, Father Coughlin silver voices of yesteryear singing the trump tune sound off key today.
Let us rejoice, in the knowledge that shams, scams and sinners are the trifecta in todays televangelist flea-market. To be met with a healthy dose of skepticism and a lock on your cashbox.
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Jesus tells us how He will Judge is in Matthew 25: when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give shelter and visit prisons, we do so for Him. That is not hard to grasp. But my right-wing “Christian” relatives get angry when I point out that Mr. Trump has rejected the teaching of Jesus throughout his life and to this very day. Rather he worships two gods: the god of mammon and himself. But these same people reject evolution, climate change and their minds live in a mystical world. Religion is based on lies that satisfy, while science is based on facts that horrify.
Side note: about 10 years ago, former MS Governor Barber was bragging about the low abortion rate in MS. Indeed, the rate had declined to an asymptote of about 2,300 per year. But an NIH health survey had not shown a similar decline in the number reporting having had an abortion. I sent a query to the Guttmacher Institute as to whether they collect data on non-clinical abortions. They do not. How many women now use a DIY method with misoprostil, alprostadil or cocaine? Nobody knows.
Two days ago, I was sitting at Lighthouse Coffee in Santa Barbara and struck up a conversation with a lovely couple, Kristine and Peter, from Deagon, Australia.
We avoid talking about the Republican Elephant in the room until the end of a 30-minute conversation. Basically, they were anxious to find out whether voters would reelection Trump.
Kristine said what America decides will impact the world.
Then, she leaned close to my ear and dropped a nugget: white evangelicals believe that Trump was the anti-Christ who is going to ignite a cataclysmic war and set the stage from the Second Coming of Jesus.
What? Really? Nooo.
Kristine shook her head.
I didn't ask any more questions, dismissing this as an Alex Jones-sponsored rumor or it was spawned from a fringe, right-wing, white Christians who equate the Brown hoards on the south border to the locust that invaded ancient Egypt.
Then, I read Peter Wehner's column. Kristine was right. Loons with Bibles have adopted a con man who gives the devil competition in lying and has the scruples of a goat, as their political messiah.
Then, I recalled that Trump said TWO Corinthians is a favorite Bible verse.
Well, turns out that this Bible chapter has an interesting verse: 'And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." 2 Corinthians 11:14.
And, Trumpster has the nuclear launch codes in his pocket.
Kristine and Peter aren't happy with Donald but said they talk in whispers about him in some states, mostly southern.
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Whatever happened to “Blessed are the peacemakers” Mr. Wehner? Under Donald Trump, who your fellow Christians voted into office and whom they regard as a hero, it’s “Blessed are the rich, the powerful, and the bullies who can destroy our enemies.” You political Christians are a disgrace to your own religion. Read the Gospels! I always thought since the days of Falwell and the Moral Majority that, if AntiChrist ran for president , politically minded evangelical Christians would be first in line to vote him into the White House and adore him. Now they even say Trump is equal to or better than Lincoln. Way to go Christians!
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“Fear not”...” accept good news where we find it.”
Solid advice for liberal Democrats in 2020 when centrist Americans return conservative Republican hegemony to the Presidency and Congress.
The story of the apocalypse says that Jesus Christ will come to escort the chosen ones straight to heaven. Jesus would call this type of Christian Pharisees, claiming faith in words and appearance, but not acting upon his message of love and tolerance. If the story comes to pass, they may be very surprised.
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Oh come on. He IS the Apocalypse, or at least adjacent.
Seriously.
. . . encapsulated by Eric Metaxas, an influential evangelical author and radio talk-show host, who said in 2016, “The only time we faced an existential struggle like this was in the Civil War and in the Revolution when the nation began.” He added, “We are on the verge of losing it as we could have lost it in the Civil War.”
Perhaps evangelist propagandist Eric Metaxas remains unaware that his side lost the Civil War.
Boy are they rooting for the wrong team...
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I just wonder how the people Mr. Wehner describes can call themselves Christians when so many of their beliefs fly in the face of Jesus's teachings.
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They are deeply confused. In the Christian "end times" myth the Antichrist must be in power before Christ can return, and nobody fills that role better than Trump.
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There is some irony involved with the following quote that deserves an essay that I am unable to write because my brain is mush; "Eric Metaxas, an influential evangelical author and radio talk-show host, who said in 2016, “The only time we faced an existential struggle like this was in the Civil War and in the Revolution when the nation began.” He added, “We are on the verge of losing it as we could have lost it in the Civil War.”"
He does know who won the Civll War?
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And to think Evangelicals still can’t figure out why “None” is the fastest growing religion in America.
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How to start an Autocracy 101!
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A great leader makes himself equal to the people or lower, not the greatest man in the world, the only one who can save you, which is a sham and a shameful way to present yourself.
The Ralph Reeds of the world are so reminiscent of the Pharisees of the New Testament. They sold out to the Roman emperors to maintain their power in the synagogues and thus power among the Jews. As a result Jesus had to cleanse the Temple. Trump is in power and evangelicals have sold out their ethics, too, with this false theology of financial success among other things. It’s time for voters to cleanse the temple (White House) of the money changer.
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Jesus told us to be wary of those who would come in his name. So I am wary.
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How is the philosophy of your book “Wealth & Justice” keeping up with modern conservatism? It’s not lost on us that the most corrupt and disgusting person to ever serve as Commander In Chief OWNS THE SOUL of virtually every Republican elected officials....and it is threatening the very stability of our nation. Nice work!
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Some Christian fundamentalists claim that Trump is chosen by God. More likely, chosen by the Devil.
They discredit not only Christianity, but organized religion in general.
Why don't they just abandon the pretense of Christianity and admit they have formed a new cult of Trump worship?
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To paraphrase Gandhi.
Christ was cool. But his followers - not so much. Many terrible things have been done in Christ’s name. Following trump is just one more thing on that list.
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As a non-adherent, I can only tell you what this all looks like from the outside: It's as if a sizeable minority of Americans had claimed that their interpretation of "The Velveteen Rabbit" entitled them to start unnecessary wars, torture people, and do everything in their power to belittle anyone who isn't white and straight. Now, mind you, at least the author of "Rabbit" knew that he was writing fiction and that his readers wouldn't use his words to make non-velveteen rabbits' lives miserable.
It's the same old story: Christians claiming victimhood when they no longer can impose their religious judgment and sanctions on those who fail to toe the line. I'm shocked when people don't see the parallels between religious and fascist governments since both rely on the subservience of personality to the glory of the host.
The saddest part about all this is that these people, who would just be called nuts if they didn't invoke the magic "J" word, are given equal credit to those who actually base their beliefs on the reality of life on Earth. So, Christian climate deniers must be taken seriously because, you know, "J."
And then there are the fellow travelers like you, Peter, who give cover and rationalize the insanity in the name of our Lord.
Wouldn't it be nice if private beliefs were really kept private? Too much to ask for, I guess.
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i seem to recall a verse in the bible warning us to beware of false prophets, idols and sheep in wolf clothing. trump has become the apocalypse we all should fear.
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If Pres. Trump is truly the Chosen One, then the Bible-inspired view of the impeachment would advise full submission to it. For whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth. And the Chosen One is also the Suffering Servant, in prophetic writings. So let the divine will be fulfilled.
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and the donations still roll in from trailer parks outside the abandoned coal mine in Nowheresville Kentucky
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Evangelical Christians are not representative of all Christians. The evangelicals believe that they are the pinnacle of human evolution and are meant to be the driving force of all that happens here in the United States which seems eerily similar to the president's mindset.
To me it feels more like it is the self-recognized decline of this sect of Christians. And that they are trying their hardest to stay relevant and a force to be dealt with.
But human evolution will continue to move forward and will move right over those who would still want woman in the kitchen and having babies; obey always the man because what he says comes from god; and that there is a Caucasian god with a flowing white beard in flowing white robes sitting on a throne of clouds
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The number of abortions in clinics has declined, but are the stats taking into account the number of abortions performed by medications? ( Cytotec, RU 468)???
Evangelicals have sold their souls to the devil in hopes that they can restrict abortions for poor people. The wealthy will just go to someplace where abortion is legal and safe.
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How dare those immoral radicals argue against the ignorance we cherish?
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Organized religion - any religion - always does more harm than good. Feeding the hungry and housing the homeless are important and worthwhile activities, but they don't overcome the slaughter, slavery, rape, and destruction caused by all the wars fought over religion. Yet, we cannot escape it. Religion is part of the human experience and always will be. The best we can do is keep it out of government.
I have no tolerance left for the "religious right" who pretend to be "good Christians" or whatever they want to call themselves while at the same time supporting the most inept president in our history who goes to the toilet on our Constitution, destroys immigrant families, treats women like property, stokes racism and hatred, and on and on and on. Keep your religion to yourselves. There is a special place for all these folks, and it ain't heaven.
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Christians should also let drag queens be drag queens. If they want to read children's books in a public space, who are you to stop them? I've never heard a drag queen making fun of priests for wearing cassocks. I can't recall any priests reading children's books at the public library. Show a little mutual respect. You'd be surprised how many lives were positively influenced by Tim Curry's role in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Some stories are just better told in drag.
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Jesus did see the world as a war zone, that’s the point.
Some of them support Trump precisely because they think that Trump is the Antichrist, who, according to Christian "End Times" mythology, must be in power before Christ can return.
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This thoughtful piece leads to the question whether Trump, who is leading God’s children astray into deceit and corruption, has the role as the Anti-Christ.
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Amazing how this sums u the conversations I have been having e conservative christians since they migrated from anti trump to subservient trumpests. Best description our current times.
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To those Christians who believe Donald J. Trump to be their ardent advocate I ask you to read Mark 8:36 "What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, but forfeit their soul?" And then remember John 4:18 "perfect love casts out fear." You are being led by your fears. Fear compels us to destroy, but love compels us to accept, forgive, heal and minister. Do you truly wish to be a follower of Christ? Or, do you wish to be on "Team Jesus!" The two are as disparate as day and night.
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Religion is the opiate of the people...if there was no religion, we'd be more progressed, happier and of course freer...but here we sit in a discussion of religious freedom and no one is doing anything to stop it. Do the world and yourself a favor...look at what religion actually is...complete nonsense drummed up thousands of years ago.
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What a pathetic bunch of hypocrites.
In what world order is it okay to put up with the immoral and indecent behavior of a person as long as he gives you what you want. Show me in the Bible where that is okay?
I am sickened by these people. America was founded on the two principles of freedom FROM religion and freedom OF religion. The first amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
It is no accident that the first principle stated is freedom from religion being imposed upon the people by the government. This the founders felt was the most important aspect of a free democratic nation. The separation of church and state.
Yet forcing extreme christian values upon the people of this nation is exactly what the Evangelicals and Christian right wing are trying to do. People who do not follow their faith are inconsequential. They will not rest until America is an Extreme Christian nation. Dare I make a comparison to the extreme laws of the Muslim nations?
And Trump, abuser of women, twice divorced, philanderer with porn stars, morally bankrupt, is the Anti Christ giving them exactly what they want.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
But I guess now I know the outrage they feel. Keep your values to yourself and let me live my life as I see fit.
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Those (so-called Christian) Doomsayers have it backwards: Trump is the anti-Christ and the apocalypse has begun.
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Maybe we are seeing a different version of “Christianity”, one that endorses greed and the pursuit of money and worldly power, the degradation of women, and the destruction of the environment over what Jesus actually taught. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. I can’t see any of that in these so-called Christians.
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"You shall know them by their fruits." The truth is that the fruits of any radical religious group, be it Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Eco-Spirit, whatever...is fueled by fear and anger. What is the "fruit" of loving kindness, patience, freedom, sincerity?
Radical religious thought has brought about only misery. The inquisition, burning of witches, mass murder of "infidels", the list goes on. What we do in the name of God!
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There are stories - starting with the temptation of Christ in the desert, but also the story of Faustus - is that all you need to do to get everything you ever wanted was sell your soul.
Evangelical Christians have sold their soul. They have been granted all they ever wanted; all they have to do is accept graft, corruption, cruelty, greed, the destruction of the planet and the diminishing of human rights to get it. That is a Faustian bargain.
Machiavellian thinking that the end justifies the means has never been a Christian philosophy or principle.
Machiavelli or Faust? How about they give a shot at remembering a better example? Christ, himself, of course.
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The writer states that violent crime has decreased since the early 1990s. Do the math: Abortion was legalized in 1973. Most violent crimes are perpetrated by males in the age group of 18-30 years old. 1973+20 years=1993. Unwanted babies have great social impact.
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Trump's bizarre behavior during the Primaries criticizing people from all walks of life including women, the handicapped,a Gold Star Family as well as a former POW was not only UnPresidential but obviously UnChristian. Just because he has called himself a Christian and promotes that he will work to pass laws promoting Christian ideals does not make him a Christian. Being a Doer of the Word and Not a Hearer only lest you be deceived.. is just one Biblical reference applicable to this divisive Presidency. Another might be that Satan can appear as an angel of light. Rather than endorsing such a dysfunctional and chaotic President in order to hope for his help in remedying social ills...it would be better if Christians were to pray in sufficient numbers and intensity and persistence that God would do the work and not man. If Jesus and Moses had to pray for 40 days and nights ...and there are many other examples of Christians with profound ministries who did so as well..how can we expect to be any different? Perhaps we will all find out .some of us sooner and some of us later...that God wanted to do more in the Earth than he was allowed. Why??... because...those who were called Christians didn't pray sufficiently and persistently enough for Him to work on our behalf. God does the heavy work not man. Only asking for His help will work.Man will never succeed at solving his own problems. God's made it so we can't succeed without his help! Without Faith it's Impossible to please Him
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When the author says “Evangelical Christians,” read “White Evangelical Christians.” This is about race. They like Trump’s racism. It isn’t because he’s Christ-like.
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The deity they've manufactured happens to, coincidentally, hate all the same people they do. Amazing!
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For the last 40 years, so-called evangelicalism has been a pox on America.
Maybe some are getting a clue.
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Plenty are already showing symptoms of the pox, which means they’re contagious.
The Christian right repels more people than it attracts. The fastest growing religion in America is "none." Many of the "nones" are people who have been turned off by the hysterics of right wing religions.
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There was a fundamentalist church nearby where I live. On December 31,1999 they put up a huge sign stating that the end of time had arrived. They all huddled in that church all night long. And nothing happened. They were all still huddled in their church on January 1, 2000. It was very quiet and a rumor began that they had all killed themselves as midnight approached. That didn’t happen either. A few days later a smaller sign went up saying “mind your own business”. Apparently they were embarrassed over the misunderstanding with their god. Oops. Now with Trump in office they have a real shot at the end of days. A megalomaniac with the nuclear football who’s party thinks that he’s “the chosen one”. Well maybe he was chosen by the Russians. He certainly is unfit to be president. I realize there is no chance the Senate will remove him so we the old fashioned way. Beat him at the polls and then bring him up on charges of treason.
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What these panicky proselytizers are seeking is a white nationalist theocracy that will repress anyone who does not subscribe to their fundamentalist dogma. That, as much as trumpism, is the death knell to a free society.
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Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question." S. Freud
Essentially.. they are following and supporting a false prophet. Something their stated "savior" would condem directly to their face, as he did in the Temple.
And Trump, et al, even had Rick Perry recently diefy him as the "chosen one".... a clear red flag for any true "end times Christian". Beware false prophets..and all that.
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As a Jew, the idea that Christians think their religion is under assault makes me laugh out loud.
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@ROK
They don't count so why bother?
You obviously have a great disposition and a strong stomach.
Each and every candidate today upholds Christian values far more than Trump, and that includes Buttegieg.
But Christians who support Trump don't read The NY Times.
Please Christians reading this post, reach out to your community and fight against this dangerous nonsense.
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Stay away from all appearance of evil is what I was taught.
To sell out for the money that “Christian” organizations are receiving is the main reason that they support Trump .
Then abortion maybe next , but Money blinds them . Compromising all other Reasoning .
Boy are they gonna be surprised.
"The basis of all religion is fear." -- Bertrand Russell.
There is no such thing a a god-loving man, only a god-fearing one.
Religion is a disaster for the human race, and it will take another 1000 years for Christianity to be wiped out, if we don't wipe each other out with nukes before that, which if it happens, will most likely be triggered by a god-fearing man.
I am in fear from these people.
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Immorality: Separating children from their parents.
Immorality: destroying a planet in search of profits for a few.
Immorality: A White House that employs white nationalists.
Immorality seems to be a matter of opinion.
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The “ nones” (those claiming no religious affiliation) continue to increase as thoughtful people weigh the hypocrisy of a Catholic Church that buried the fact of world-wide pedophilia scattered among its priests; or the Methodist- led Anti-Saloon League that imposed Prohibition upon the citizenry; or most of the major denominations that encouraged or defended slavery in the antebellum era; or today’s Evangelicals who will defend the actions of their exalted President who separates parents from children at the southern border and denigrates people of color; and on, and on, and on. It’s the hypocrisy that is so shameful.
I’ve been a churchgoer all my life, and still believe in the salutary message of Jesus. But through the the years, religious zealots have so damaged His message through their Pharasitic zeal to impose their particular brand of morality that they have poisoned the Christian well. It is a great religion, filled with people committed to love and compassion and concern for their fellow Man. That includes people of color, the poor, and immigrants seeking a better life. You know, all the people that the “Trump Christians” hate. Christ didn’t tolerate these hypocrites when He was alive, nor should we.
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I was raised a Lutheran, but when Christianty was highjacked into a far right-wing political movement, I stopped calling myself a Christian. How many people who now fall into the "none" category occupy the same position as I do? Christian tolerance, love and caring have fallen by the wayside, subsumed by their opposites.
The irony here is, the more christians cling to an obviously unethical president, the more young people will religion as being contradictory, and this will undermine religion and the republican party
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If the “many Christians who have given their full-throated support to” Donald Trump are willing to accept a President who is “unethical, unscrupulous and morally dissolute” because that is the better alternative, then we are all in big trouble!
However, perhaps there is another explanation. I would suggest those same Christians are not really troubled with Donald Trump’s morality at all. What they are troubled with is an America that is no longer white and Christian; an America where they see so many blacks, Latinos, Jews and Muslims. And they are troubled because far too many women are no longer at home being good and obedient housewives. That, after all, is what “Make America Great Again” means. And in Donald Trump, they realize that for the first time they have a President who thinks as they think; who would like, as much as they would like, to undo all the progress that has been made against racism, intolerance, misogyny and xenophobia.
And they will do whatever it takes and make whatever Faustian bargains are necessary to achieve their ends.
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I'm getting a little tired of Christians - and Muslims. And even Buddhists (Myanmar) and Jews (Netanyahu et al) are beginning to wear on the nerves. Even Dawkins, a fellow atheist (though I think I'm more of a non- secular pagan) and fellow biologist is also beginning to irritate. We'd better all wake up because 'The End is Nigh' may well be true for the lot of us. Though I still think that may not be a good thing - but just barely.
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Trump's magnetism with Evangelicals is that they see in Trump a prosperity gospel preacher who has hit the jackpot via God's anointing.
Evangelicals see a man anointed by God because Trump's wealth and his election as President constitute the very proof to them that God has chosen Trump, and therefore, Trump is the representation of God's will. Evangelicals do not seen an un-godly man in Trump. Quite the opposite, they see Trump as God's chosen one. Even Trump has referred to branded himself the Chosen One, and the Evangelicals just love this.
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What confounds me is that Christians profess to care deeply about the roughly 600,000 aborted children in the U.S. per year (many of which are aborted for reasons of medical necessity and to avoid defects, although I concede a majority of abortions are due to a woman making this choice for herself) but these same people DO NOT care about the extinction of millions of species due to climate change and human greed in the name of almighty capitalism, our biblical charge of careful dominion over the Earth and its creatures, the BILLIONS of human beings who are and will be displaced and suffer due to climate change, the children who will grow sicker in this country due to relaxed water and air pollution regulations and the suffering that will come if we cannot provide families with a livable wage. We need to provide healthcare to all. Just this week the Trump administration (with agricultural secretary Perdue) announced changes to the SNAP program which will likely eliminate 400,000 people off their paltry food allowance of $120 per month. Imagine what will they tell God when they meet their maker? How can they answer for these sins? Seems to me that the so-called Christians of today don't look out for their fellow man the way Jesus' teaching would suggest. I am agnostic, but I think Jesus and God would be Democrats.
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And all the while a climate apocalypse is coming and the Christian Right cares not.
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2 words: koo koo !!!
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't?
The theocrats who want to impose a nominally Christian version of the Islamic State on our country do everything possible to whip their duped followers into a frenzy about... nothing.
Dan Kravitz
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