"Christian Right" Resorts to Dangerous Rhetoric in Supporting Trump

As regular readers know, in my view, the "Christian Right" has sold its soul to Donald Trump in exchange for promises of special rights for Christofascists which would in essence exempt religious extremists from the laws that bind other citizens.  Now, these zealots, particularly those that I refer to as "professional Christians" who use religion as a guise for enriching themselves and seizing political power are engaging in dangerous rhetoric that could well prompt extremists and the mentally unstable to resort to violence against those being depicted as enemies in a religious war.   History is full of examples of the horrific consequences of fusing religion with a self-serving political agenda: the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris when thousands of Protestants were murdered by Catholics, the wars of religion in Tudor England, the Thirty Years War in 17th century Europe that claimed 8 million lives, the persecution of "Old Believers" in 17th century Russia, the years of religious based violence in Northern Ireland, and, of course the violence and murder done by Islamic fundamentalists and ISIS. Just as disturbing is the statements of U.S. Attorney General William Barr - a strident opponent of LGBT rights - that appear aimed at inciting religious extremists.  A piece in LGBT Nation looks at this dangerous development:  

Religious right leaders, struggling to maintain power and influence – even in the chaotic White House – have been avowing lately that anyone who opposes Donald Trump is in league with the devil—literally.

In a conversation with fellow evangelical Eric Metaxas, Franklin Graham said that resistance to Trump was “almost demonic,” to which Metaxas replied, “It’s not almost demonic. You know and I know, at the heart, it’s a spiritual battle.”

Graham and Metaxas are hardly alone. Lesser known, but just as dangerous figures like Stephen Strang and Frank Amedia are making the same claim.

It’s easy to brush these claims off as the usual hysterical claims from the religious right. But in fact they represent a new—and dangerous—escalation in rhetoric. Saying you’re waging a culture war is one thing; but to say we’re locked in a battle between the forces of heaven and hell sets the stakes at the highest possible level. It makes sense that the same people who have unequivocally worshipped Trump, are doing whatever it takes to keep his affection – even if that means mimicking his incendiary words.

Moreover, it’s not only religious right leaders who are making this argument. No less a figure than Attorney General William Barr is echoing the sentiment . . . Barr went on a tear about “militant secularists” who are destroying society by removing religion from the public square.

Even worse was a speech that he subsequently gave to the Federalist Society . . . After claiming that Trump’s opponents — which Barr calls the “Left” —are “waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of ‘Resistance’ against this Administration,” Barr accuses them of essentially worshipping a false god.

Barr then goes on to say that conservatives haven’t responded in kind, which puts them “at a disadvantage when facing progressive holy war.”

When the nation’s lead attorney says that the nation is engaged in a holy war and anyone opposed to the president is on the wrong side, we have entered into frightening territory – and just to be clear, Barr likens to cite LGBTQ progress as an example of secular assault.

Barr, Graham and the other would-be warriors are essentially using their increasing influential beliefs to suggest to conservatives that the political stakes are so high that only a nuclear, violent response will suffice.  

The logic of a holy war leads to the inevitable conclusion that any means are acceptable to stop the assault on God’s side. Trump’s violations of practical every political norm is not seen as a sin. It’s a virtue. He’s trying to save the Republic (or at least the Republicans) from the heathen barbarians who are fighting on Lucifer’s side.

This apocalyptic belief is going to be the main theme of the right’s leading into the 2020 election. Instead of trying to adjust to the Modern Age so that they can recruit new members, conservative evangelicals (and their Catholic counterparts, like Barr), prefer to circle the wagons and start shooting.

It’s a losing battle, because their numbers keep shrinking,which will only make them fight harder. After all, it’s a fight to the death.

As the exodus of younger generations - and even some older age groups - from religion accelerates, expect the vitriol of these modern day Pharisees and hate merchants to increase.  Sadly, sooner or later people will lose their lives or suffer serious harm because of  this rhetoric which is really about retaining political power and not furthering Christ's gospel message.

“Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power Over Christian Values.”

A new book by a writer and filmmaker with the title used for the heading of this post looks at the growing moral bankruptcy of evangelical Christians in the age of Trump.  The author argues that as long as evangelicals prioritize political power over true Christian behavior and persuasion by charitable actions, their pews will be continue to lose occupants and their national influence will dwindle in the long term. The author perhaps unrealistically argues given the lust for power of those like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Tony Perkins, that if evangelicals hope to avoid cultural irrelevance in the years to come, they will have to value humility over ego, and resist the seduction of political power, no matter the cost. Nowhere does the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of evangelicals reveal itself more than in their cheering support of the Trump/Pence regime's brutality towards children of undocumented immigrants.  

Frighteningly, I suspect that many evangelicals would look at the image of the crying child above and not feel any remorse for the simple reason that the child is not white. The further irony, of course, is that while these evangelicals want to "take back their country," those against whom they target their hate are the descendants of the the original indigenous populations of the Americas  and who had their lands stolen from them by white European conquest.  Here are highlights from a column in the Washington Post by the author of “Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power Over Christian Values”:

As the debate about how to handle applicants for refugee status at the U.S. southern border gained urgency in recent months, Pew Research Religion waded into the social-media fray on July 7 with a tweet about the results of a poll the organization conducted last year. Pew reported, and online commentators quickly noted, that white evangelical Protestants were the least likely group — amid results sorted by age, race, education and religion — to say that the United States “has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country.” 

Sixty-eight percent of white evangelical Protestants said the country has no responsibility for refugees. No other demographic group came within 10 points of that result.

[S]ome evangelical leaders had been taken aback when the Pew results were originally released in May 2018, and urged their flocks toward change. But back then, the main question about refugees concerned those fleeing the brutal civil war in Syria. “When faced with a potential conflict between prominent evangelicals’ biblical pro-refugee arguments and [President] Trump’s opposition,” Brian Newman of Pepperdine University noted in The Post, “the vast majority of white evangelicals choose Trump.”

A year later, with the focal point on refugees from Central America, in much greater numbers and more likely to be vilified by the president, evangelical leaders are largely as one with their congregations.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, ventured this observation on Twitter: “The reports of the conditions for migrant children at the border should shock all of our consciences. Those created in the image of God should be treated with dignity and compassion, especially those seeking refuge from violence back home. We can do better than this.”

Moore’s comments didn’t sit well with Jerry Falwell Jr., inheritor of his father’s Christian empire, president of Liberty University and a prominent evangelical figure.

Some were dismayed by Falwell’s response, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone paying attention the past few years who was surprised by it. 

Falwell is one of several leaders in the modern evangelical movement who have helped solidify Christian principles as synonymous with the Republican agenda, and specifically with the [Trump’s] president’s agenda.  Trump, of course, welcomes this way of thinking.

Yet the idea that without Republicans, Christianity is lost, is not unique to the Trump era. The merging of evangelicalism and Republicanism has been underway for decades. It is simply more visible and pronounced under this president — primarily because evangelical support for Trump requires a much higher degree of cognitive dissonance.

That is, fighting for conservative Christian values by unquestioningly supporting someone who not only doesn’t share them but has lived most of his life actively, and unapologetically, in opposition to them. 

Stomaching Trump’s behavior and rhetoric — which could generously be described as not characteristic of a Christian — has been rewarded with much-improved prospects for stricter abortion laws and achieving other long-sought goals in what conservative Christians regard as a desperate and escalating culture war.

The evangelical embrace of Trump has been an electoral positive for the Republican Party, but for those who would evangelize, the new reality is tragic.

[True Christians are] meant to speak the truth in a way that invites strangers in, welcomes them, makes them feel loved.  To care for the least of these is a Christian value. Expressing and demonstrating it is spreading the Word.

That’s called evangelizing. A movement that based itself on the term but now embraces its antithesis is becoming difficult to recognize.

Yes, there are good Christians, but until they loudly and continually condemn evangelicals on a daily basis, they are allowing evangelicals to be the face of Christianity and the result is the exodus of people, especially among younger generations, from religion entirely.  Meanwhile, being a Trump supporter and a true Christian are mutually exclusive.

The Parallels Between Evangelicals and Pro-Nazi German Christians

While there are surely many good evangelical Christians in America, far too many are remaining silent and allowing themselves to be defined by the likes of Franklin Graham, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Jerry Falwell, Jr., who not only are all in for Donald Trump, but are embracing his racist policies with enthusiasm and, more dangerously, legitimizing human rights abuse in the eyes of their gullible and racist followers.  A piece in Sojourners looks at the dangerous rhetoric of James Dobson which disturbingly parallels that of German pastors and theologians in Hitler's Third Reich.  

The ultimate problem is that these supposed "leaders" are racists - especially Tony Perkins for Family Research Council, a certified hate group - and their anti-immigrant animus is ultimately due to one factor: the immigrants at America's southern border have brown, not white, skin. Evangelicals who remain silent and fail to condemn such rhetoric in the end become complicit in the horrors that it legitimizes.   They will become no better than their counterparts in Germany 80 years ago. Here are column highlights:

Growing up in conservative evangelical churches in North Carolina, the name of Dr. James Dobson and his organization, Focus on the Family, were regularly cited by my pastors as authorities on what they considered the most pressing social issues. Dobson remains influential and, although he has not led Focus on the Family for 15 years, his latest organization, Family Talk, focuses on “marriage, parenthood, evangelism, and the sanctity of human life and encouraging righteousness in the culture.” . . . which is why his rhetoric concerning immigrants in his July 2019 newsletter is so disturbing.

The characterization of the men, women, and children in the camps includes several troubling phrases. They are described as carriers of “lice, scabies, and other diseases”; they sit silently with “plaintive eyes;” they are from “the lowest rung of many societies.” The most alarming rhetoric occurs in the closing paragraph:

What I’ve told you is only a glimpse of what is occurring on the nation’s border. I don’t know what it will take to change the circumstances. I can only report that without an overhaul of the law and the allocation of resources, millions of illegal immigrants will continue flooding to this great land from around the world. Many of them have no marketable skills. They are illiterate and unhealthy. . . . Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation. . . . we have met a worldwide wave of poverty that will take us down if we don’t deal with it. And it won’t take long for the inevitable consequences to happen.

The closing phrase is ambiguous. It won’t take long for the inevitable consequences to happen. Is Dobson referring to consequences for the U.S. if the problem is not solved? Is he describing the inevitable consequences migrants face at the U.S.-Mexico border, where they are placed into camps by border patrol agents? Or, is he suggesting there are worse consequences to come for those who are crossing the border or in detention?

As a student of the history of biblical interpretation, the rhetoric employed by Dobson and other evangelical leaders is frighteningly similar to that of German pastors and theologians in the Third Reich. It appears that Christians have either forgotten or are ignoring the dark history of Christianity’s marriage to partisan politics and nationalist agendas.

Comparing current figures and events with Nazi Germany is fraught with difficulties, but the similarities in the language and dehumanization of a people group from a leader within Christianity are too obvious to ignore. I am not saying anyone is a Nazi; however, Dobson’s rhetoric of xenophobia and nationalism in combination with Christianity is not unlike Christian pastors who supported the Nazi Party.

The closing paragraph of Dobson’s newsletter reminds me of a 1933 book by the German theologian Gerhard Kittel. The problem of the Jews living in Germany was, according to Kittel, based on the fact that they are a people perpetually in a foreign land and thus, as foreigners, they have brought decadence to Germany. In an effort to solve this “problem” from a Christian theological perspective, Kittel offers four possible solutions: 1) Extermination (which he rejects on practical, rather than moral grounds); 2) Deportation (which he also considers impractical on political grounds); 3) Assimilation (an idea abhorrent to Kittel); or 4) Separation (the only possible solution).

By advocating for the separation of the Jews in order to protect the German way of life, Kittel and other Christians were able to support the cruel and inhumane policies of the Nazi Party. They considered it their Christian duty to preserve their German way of life. Kittel even warned of becoming soft toward the Jews. Assimilation was the worst possible solution, further infecting the German culture, and was to be avoided at all costs, even if the cost was the loss of empathy and humanity. There is simply no other place to ‘house’ them.

The rhetoric of evangelicals like Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jr. or [Franklin] Jack Graham, legitimizes the dehumanizing policies of the Trump administration at the border in the name of protecting their version of American “culture.” The characterization of migrants at the border as disease-carriers, criminals, swindlers, and uneducated provides further legitimization that these are the type of people that American culture must be protected from. Thus, the policy of family separation is no longer inhumane or immoral, but, according to Dobson, the only practical solution. Evangelical Christianity has sided with the oppressor, not the oppressed.

Dobson’s views on immigration are based on his militarized evangelical masculinity. White, American, evangelical men are to protect family values at all costs. Migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador are perceived as a threat to these “family values.” The violence committed against these people is justified because the men at the border are assumed to be “hardened criminals and drug runners,” or even terrorists.

During this period in American history, Christians do well to remember the history of the church during the Nazi era and avoid the mistakes they made. Vocal supporters of the Nazis from Christian thinkers like Kittel, Walter Grundmann, or Emmanual Hirsch, are condemned from all sides for their support of the brutal treatment of the Jews.

The atrocities committed against asylum seekers are well-known and new stories are being published daily documenting the horrors of life in the camps. A recent ProPublica story uncovered a Facebook group of Border Patrol agents and documented their vile jokes about Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria, who drowned in an attempt to cross the Rio Grande. Christians who see no alternatives to putting people into camps, not only lack political and theological imagination, they make these policies, behaviors, and language theologically permissible.

One can only hope decent Christians will rise up and oppose these policies and deliberate acts of cruelty. Meanwhile, one can also hope that Dobson and those like him will accelerate the extinction of evangelical Christianity in America. 

Hate is Alive and Well: 28 Year Old Gay Man Gunned Down Amidst Homophobic Slurs

Ronald Peters - murdered last week for being  gay.

Hate crimes are up sharply since Donald Trump's election in 2016 (226% the last time I looked).  Gays are among the favored targets of hate crimes given Trump's fanning of the lie that Christians are being persecuted and that gays are the oppressors.   Straight friends likely cannot comprehend the fear one experiences when one hears homophobic slurs directed at them along with threats of violence. I've had that experience and it is beyond disturbing.  (I also was forced from a law firm for being gay and suffered deliberate anti-gay harassment by Norfolk police officers a decade plus ago).  The murder this week of  old Ronald “Trey” Peters who was merely walking to work from a public transit station in Decatur, Georgia, underscores the reality that gays continue to be targets of homophobic violence and that one's social status does not guarantee safety (something lost on my gay Republican "friends"). The Advocate looks at Peter's senseless murder.  Here are excepts:

Atlanta police are investigating if the death of a 28-year-old who was fatally shot on Tuesday in an Atlanta suburb as attackers hurled homophobic slurs was motivated by him being gay. 

Ronald “Trey” Peters was walking to work from a public transit station in Decatur when two men in a car demanded he give them his backpack. One got out of the car and confronted him.

“When Trey jerked away from him and said, ‘It’s my bag, you’re not getting it,’ the driver got out with a louder voice yelling, ‘Give him the fucking bag, fag,” witness Kevin Pickering told Atlanta TV station WGCL. “The passenger walked back toward the vehicle and the driver got out and started firing.” The young man was reportedly shot twice.

Police have classified the shooting as hate-motivated, and no arrests have been made connected to the incident, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. However, Georgia has no hate-crimes laws that cover violence motivated by sexual orientation. 

“Unfortunately, this deadly attack is not a rare or isolated event. Rather, this is the latest in a long string of hate-motivated incidents,” Allison Padilla-Goodman, the Southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement.

Peters’s death comes in the wake of at least nine trans women being murdered so far this year alone, and just days after Detroit police announced that a recent triple homicide was motivated by anti-LGBTQ sentiment.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to cover the costs of Peters’s memorial.

“[Trey] was taken from this earth in act of violence, but we will not let hate win!” the page reads. “Trey was always giving so much to others, sharing his talents and energy with those around him. He always was willing to help people and had a huge heart. Now it is our turn to give back in honor of him.”

Ultimately, justification for murdering gays traces back to the Bible, a book that is responsible for unspeakable horrors over the centuries - all done in the name of god or justified by the myths handed down from ignorant Bronze Age herders.  Peters' murder is unspeakable, but so too is the fact that so many are clinging to ignorance and and hate based on carefully selected passages from a book with unknown authors who lacked even a shred of scientific and accurate medical knowledge. 

My condolences to Peters' partner, family and friends.  As for his killers and those who fan the flames of homophobia, I hope they burn in Hell.  And yes, that includes the likes of Franklin Graham who is living proof why one might want to leave Christianity. 

Franklin Graham Attacks Pete Buttigieg, Calls Melania Trump "Classiest First Lady"

Blogger friend Joe Jervis calls out Franklin Graham's hypocrisy for attacking Pete Buttigieg while calling Melania Trump "the classiest First Lady our country has ever had."  Even hysterically anti-gay (and closeted) Rick Santorum condemned Graham's hypocrisy for supporting Trump notwithstanding Trump's embodiment of everything a true Christian should eschew.  First, this from Joe's blog:

Earlier this week evangelist Franklin Graham declared that Pete Buttigieg will face eternal damnation if he doesn’t repent from his “flaunting homosexuality.”

Last year Graham shrugged off Donald Trump’s multiple adulterous affairs, telling the Associated Press, “This thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business.”

And now today Graham is wishing happy birthday to Melania Trump, “the classiest first lady our country has ever had.”

You can be very sure that if Michelle Obama had ever appeared nude in lesbian porn shoots, Graham would have been standing outside the White House day and night with a flaming pitchfork.

As for Santorum's surprising condemnation of Graham, LGBTQ Nation reports as follows:

Out presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has found an unlikely defender after evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on the candidate to “repent” of his homosexuality.

Rick Santorum, one of the most conservative religious politicians and a former Republican presidential candidate, found himself actually pointing out the hypocrisy of the religious right during an interview with CNN’s New Day.

After host John Berman asked Santorum about the dustup, Santorum first defended Graham’s right to say what he did.

After Berman pointed out the hypocrisy of Graham “calling on Pete Buttigieg to repent for being gay, yet [being] one of the most ardent supporters of the thrice-married President Trump,” Santorum shocked the host by agreeing. Graham has been on the biggest supporters of the decidedly un-Christian president.

“I would say that you have every right to call him out on that. Because if he’s gonna say that about Pete Buttigieg, then he needs to when Donald Trump’s accusations come up about marital infidelity and other things that is equally as sinful,” Santorum said. “He should be equal and vociferous in calling out a similar sin.” 

The British version of GQ has some of Melania's "classy" photos here.  Personally, give me Jackie Kennedy - a truly class act with no borderline porn in her past.

Mayor Pete Formally Announces His Candidacy; Draws Attacks from Christofascists

As I noted in a Facebook post today, I watched Pete Buttigieg's formal announcement of his campaign for the presidency.  I found Buttigieg's remarks to be very impressive.  Just as interestingly, among those speaking before Buttigieg spoke were mainline religious clergy who were sportive of his candidacy and showed a loving face of Christianity - a face of Christianity one rarely sees when the hate merchants of the "professional Christian" set and most evangelicals speak.  Not surprisingly, Buttigieg's references to his faith are drawing shrieks and attacks from the Christofascists, especially those have sold their souls and what little shred of morality they may have possessed to chase power through supporting Donald Trump, a living embodiment of the seven deadly sins.  The contrast could not be more stark and one can only presume that the Christofascist attacks are driven by fear that Buttigieg might prompt some of their lemming like followers to question allegiance to someone as morally foul as Trump.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the continued attacks on Buttigieg.  Here are excerpts:

The ease and openness with which Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg talks about his religious beliefs appears to be causing consternation among some conservative Christians. 

Evangelical Christians have long seen themselves as the standard-bearers for faith and family values in American politics. Buttigieg, a gay Christian, is directly challenging that, driving some evangelical leaders to try to paint his faith as an inauthentic expression of Christianity.

Franklin Graham, son of the famed evangelist Billy Graham and a supporter of President Donald Trump, criticized the faith of the South Bend, Indiana, mayor ― and progressive Christianity as a whole ― on Twitter and Facebook Thursday. 

Graham was responding to Buttigieg’s criticism of Vice President Mike Pence, a former governor of Indiana, earlier this week. Buttigieg had said Sunday that “the Mike Pences of the world” should realize that “if you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”

Pence characterized Buttigieg’s comments as an attack on his faith. The vice president told CNN on Friday that he is a “Bible-believing Christian” who draws his truth “from God’s word.”

Buttigieg fired back by saying that he’s not critical of Pence’s faith but is concerned about his anti-LGBTQ policies.

“I don’t have a problem with religion. I’m religious, too,” Buttigieg said on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Friday. “I have a problem with religion being used as a justification to harm people.”

Conservative evangelical writer Erick Erickson . . . said that progressive Christianity is a “hypocritical farce.” He denigrated the Episcopal Church, the denomination that Buttigieg belongs to, claiming that it is “no longer a Christian institution.”

For years, the loudest and most politically influential Christian voices in the U.S. have come from the religious right. The Moral Majority movement of the 1980s cemented conservative Christians’ ties to the Republican Party. Today, Trump receives counseling and advice from an unofficial cadre of evangelical Christian leaders and has repeatedly pledged that he will prioritize those leaders’ political goals.

But more and more progressive, left-leaning Christian voices are now speaking up, too. These leaders, informally known as the religious left, see their movement as rooted in the abolitionist efforts of the 19th century and the civil rights movement of the 20th century. Progressive Christians have used the Bible as inspiration for activism that is intersectional, interfaith and protective of the rights of women, immigrants, the LGBTQ community and people of color.

And unlike the majority of white evangelical Protestants, these Christians have been highly critical of the Trump administration’s conservative agenda.

Jim Wallis, a progressive Christian and founder of the magazine Sojourners, told HuffPost that he believes the religious right is “terrified” of the conversations that Buttigieg’s comments are launching. 

“They are afraid the new conversation about faith and politics, sparked by Mayor Pete Buttigieg, will get people looking and talking about the things Jesus said and did, and called us to,” Wallis wrote in an email. 

Wallis said that for him, being a Christian means taking care of the poor, immigrants and other marginalized communities. He cited Matthew 25, a chapter of the Bible in which Jesus preaches about how those who care for the hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, sick and vulnerable will be welcomed into heaven. (Buttigieg has said that’s one of his favorite biblical passages.)

“That is a very dangerous conversation to let happen when you are a totally uncritical supporter of Donald Trump, a man whose life, behavior, morality, words, and policies are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ,” Wallis said. 

“The religious right and some on the secular left have one thing in common,” Wallis said. “They want Americans to believe that all religion in this country is right-wing politically.”  But it’s not, as the mayor from South Bend is reminding his fellow Americans.

The money quote of Buttigieg is this: “I have a problem with religion being used as a justification to harm people.”  Franklin Graham and his fellow hate merchants have good reason to fear the wake up call Buttigieg is sending.  It will expose their hypocrisy.

Franklin Graham Denies That Trump Lies

Trump, Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. - all morally bankrupt.

Donald Trump is likely the most morally bankrupt individual to every occupy the White House.  Besides being a serial adulterer who has illicit affairs and then pays hush money to his mistresses, he lies incessantly.  Indeed, the Washington Post has tallied 8,158 lies during Trump's first two years in office. It's to a point where I - and likely a majority of Americans - believe that if Trump's lips are moving, it's a near guarantee that he is lying (the same goes for press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of a habitual liar).  Yet, despite Trump's easily proven thousands of lies, evangelical Christian charlatans like Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr., continue to stand by an individual who is the antithesis of true Christian values and behavior.  Why? A thirst for political power and perhaps a last desperate hope of inflicting their Bronze Age myth based beliefs on the nation.  Meanwhile, 40% of the under 30 generations have left religion and more and more of older Americans are joining the so-called "Nones" and for good reason given the moral bankruptcy of, in my view, the vast majority of evangelicals.  A piece in Mediate looks at Franklin Graham's unbelievable batshitery as he continues to give Trump political fellatio.  Here are excerpts:

MSNBC’s Craig Melvin spoke with Evangelical leader Franklin Graham this morning and asked him about the number of false statements from President Donald Trump.

Melvin brought up a recent op-ed Graham wrote about the truth before noting that the most recent Washington Post tally of Trump’s false or misleading statements now stands at 8158. “How do you reconcile that?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know how to reconcile that, because I don’t know,” Graham said. “You have a fact checker for the president, but I don’t know if you have a fact checker for the media at the same time.”

Melvin jumped in to say, “Pastor Graham, you and I both know that this president has said things over and over that aren’t true.”

“No, I don’t know that,” Graham responded. “I don’t sit around and try to find every fault in the president every day, looking for everything that he might have misspoken or mis-said. I don’t do that.”

Melvin again pressed him to acknowledge that Trump says “things that aren’t true.” Graham said the President misspeaks but he’s not “sitting there behind the desk trying to make up lies.”

Clearly, Graham is as big of a liar as Trump. The only positive of it all is that Graham is hastening Christianity toward becoming a dead religion.  When Christianity dies, it will be Christofascists like Graham who ultimately killed it. 

Evangelical Mega-Donors Are Rethinking Who Deserves Their Money

Mega Donors Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.

As regular readers know, I generally view evangelical Christianity - at least in its present form - to be a cancer on American society and, indeed the world.  Hate, exclusion and division are  its principal hallmarks combined with a shocking level of hypocrisy.  The results of this reality are many, including the flight of 40% of Millennials from organized religion as a whole, a growing exodus of young evangelicals from their churches, and per a piece in The Atlantic wealthy evangelicals who are beginning to shift their donations away from "Christian" organizations obsessed with abandoning the Gospel message while waging a culture war in the quest for political power and self-enrichment (e.g., think Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham, and Jerry Falwell, Jr.).  Whether or not these shifts will save Christianity from the death spiral evangelicals have set it on.  Here are highlights from The Atlantic on the shifting largess of wealthy evangelicals:

In 2005, Time magazine crowned Howard and Roberta Ahmanson the most powerful evangelical financiers in America. As an heir to the assets of Home Savings and Loan, a mortgage and insurance empire, Howard Ahmanson became an influential philanthropist, backing projects in Bible translation, art, and—perhaps most notably—politics. The Ahmansons poured millions of dollars into ballot initiatives and Republican campaigns in California; in 2008, they gave more than $1 million to support Proposition 8, which successfully banned same-sex marriage in the state. The couple back the Discovery Institute, a think tank that promotes intelligent design, and the Claremont Institute, which promotes limited government.

This history makes Howard Ahmanson’s recent transformation all the more remarkable: One of the most stalwart backers of religious-right causes has become disenchanted with the GOP and many of its associated institutions.

“The Republican Party is a white-ethnic party. And I don’t want to be identified with that,” Ahmanson told me recently. He dislikes that white evangelicals are largely supportive of Donald Trump—“Whatever this is, it’s not the Gospel,” he said—and has stopped giving to groups such as the Family Research Council, . . . . “God is using this time, and Donald Trump, to purge the church,” he told me. “Are you about Christ and the Gospel first, or is your church just a Sunday extension of your political team?”

To say the least, Howard Ahmanson is not representative of American Christian philanthropists of any generation. His religious journey has been distinctive, and he has eclectic taste in causes. Moreover, several of the influential evangelicals who were Ahmanson’s peers on Time’s 2005 power-player list have redoubled their pursuit of national political influence: Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of the late Billy Graham, spent his summer on a political speaking tour across California, and Jay Sekulow, who runs the American Center for Law and Justice, is one of Trump’s lawyers. Evangelical influence reaches all the way to the White House: Vice President Mike Pence has been a fixture at Christian-right events over the past two years, and political operatives such as Tony Perkins and Ralph Reed are enjoying greater influence under Trump than they’ve had in years.

Yet the question Ahmanson posed—about the right way for Christians to live out their faith in public, and how to put money behind that vision—is something that a number of people in evangelical philanthropy circles seem to be asking. In large part, Trump’s presidency is not the context for this question. Evangelicalism, writ large, is going through intense cultural and structural shifts that are also shaping how wealthy Christians use their money. The rise of the so-called religious right “was driven by a lot of anxiety, and a sense of urgency: If we don’t act, the country will be taken away from us,” he explained. While a lot of money poured into this movement, from both wealthy backers and grassroots supporters, “it was always a smaller proportion of evangelical charitable dollars than you might think,” Crouch said.

In the late 1980s and into the ’90s, a new organization, the Gathering, was established to help guide wealthy individuals and families who wanted to give to Christian causes—the vast majority of them in nonpolitical ways.

One of the clearest shifts among Christian mega-donors is demographic. Gen Xers and early Millennials are just starting to take the reins of legacy family foundations or come into their giving potential, and their sensibilities differ from their parents’. “For a long time, especially with Baby Boomers, there was so much wealth created so quickly,” Bruce said. “People just started giving where it was comfortable, which was usually local, with causes … they become familiar with … through their local church or network.” By contrast, her generation wants giving away money to be part of who they are, she said: The causes they support, whether it’s developing health clinics in Africa or mentoring kids in Houston, are central to their sense of identity. This overlaps with another trend in the evangelical-donor class: Over time, it may become more diverse.

Kwan described a community of second- and third-generation Asian American Christians in Silicon Valley who “aren’t necessarily beholden to the culture wars of the past,” he said. The causes that have come to be associated with evangelicalism—issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and religious liberty—don’t necessarily resonate outside a specific, white-evangelical milieu.All of these trends have shaped the way Christian dollars are spent. In a 2018 study, Giving USA and Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found a sharp decrease in religious giving over the past four decades, declining from well over half of all giving in the late ’70s through the early ’90s to roughly a third as recently as 2017. This does not necessarily mean evangelicals are giving away less money, said David King, the director of the university’s Lake Institute on Faith and Giving.

Instead, they may be donating to organizations and causes that aren’t explicitly associated with church and parachurch organizations.“If you look at the current perception of the American church now, compared to historic witness of the church, there is a gap,” said Joshua Crossman, one of the board members of the Pinetops Foundation, a relatively small, new family foundation. He pointed to data from the Pew Research Center showing a sharp decline in the percentage of Americans who believe houses of worship contribute a “great deal” to solving social problems. In 2016, only 38 percent of religiously unaffiliated people said that was the case. “It would behoove all Christians to think about that gap and to figure out what we can do to best be a witness for Christ in our communities,” he said.

While Trump has rocked evangelical politics, this era of American evangelical history had already taken shape before he came on the scene: “The church may be moving toward a time of the church in exile rather than the church as the dominant cultural institution,” as Kwan put it.

In previous years, evangelicals responded to a sense of declining cultural power with anxiety—that is what yielded the age of “ferment” that Crouch described. But at least among this subset of next-generation evangelical mega-donors, there doesn’t seem to be much of a desire to fight the culture. Their hope, instead, is that they will be known by their fruits.

Evangelical Leaders Want Senate to Ignore Kavanaugh Assault Charges

A triumvirate of moral bankruptcy. 

Remember when holier than thou evangelicals claimed that "character matters" and railed that Bill Clinton was unfit for office due to his affair with Monica Lewinsky?  Based on their support for Brett Kavanaugh despite credible allegations of attempted molestation, we now know that such claims were just plain lies motivated by a political agenda rather than any shred of a moral compass. It seems that with each passing day evangelicals and the so-called leaders become increasingly reprehensible and despicable. It is they, not those they malign who are morally bankrupt.  Thankfully, younger generations increasingly see them for what they truly are and are walking away from religion.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the push to confirm Kavanaugh without a pause to hear Christine Blasey Ford's testimony.  Here are excerpts:

We are at a sensitive point in the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh where he has been charged with (and by no means cleared of) the sort of crime that should horrify conservative religious folk: the attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl. You’d think the Evangelical leaders who style themselves as spiritual counselors of Donald Trump and the Republican Party would be urging their allies to prayerfully consider the evidence and act as conscious moral agents before providing a lifetime appointment to the nation’s top court.

But as the New York Times reports, that’s not how they roll:

“One of the political costs of failing to confirm Brett Kavanaugh is likely the loss of the United States Senate,” said Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition who is in frequent contact with the White House.

The evangelist Franklin Graham, one of Mr. Trump’s most unwavering defenders, told the Christian Broadcasting Network this week, “I hope the Senate is smarter than this, and they’re not going to let this stop the process from moving forward and confirming this man.”

It’s no secret, of course, that Christian right leaders like Reed and Graham want a Supreme Court majority that will overturn Roe v. Wade and establish a “religious liberty” constitutional privilege to discriminate against ungodly LGBTQ people. Indeed, that is the basis of their highly transactional relationship with Donald J. Trump. They aren’t going to let a little thing like rape allegations stand in the way of cashing in.

[T]his attitude represents a strange moral myopia in which the determination to destroy or limit reproductive rights for women or gay rights generally justifies ignoring the grossest sins. It’s the same point of stunted view that enabled conservative Evangelicals to back Judge Roy Moore to the hilt in his 2017 Senate race despite credible evidence that he had a bad habit of hitting on teenage girls.Graham and his colleagues want their SCOTUS majority right now.

And at one of their favorite venues, the Values Voters Summit in Washington this weekend, Mitch McConnell is assuring them they’ll get their wish:  “Judge Kavanaugh "will be on the United States Supreme Court" despite what you're seeing with the ongoing fight over his confirmation”

At the same confab, another Christian right warhorse, Gary Bauer, said he is praying for Christine Blasey Ford. But he doesn’t favor doing anything to offer her justice. That’s for great men like future Justice Kavanaugh.

Indicted Russian Spy Was Also Working to Infiltrate Religious Right

Franklin Graham with Putin.

One of the tactics that Vladimir Putin has used to maintain power has been to bend over backwards to endear himself to the reactionary Russian Orthodox Church which has a centuries long history of supporting autocrats over democracy.  Not surprisingly, Putin's U.S. asset, Donald Trump, followed a similar course and met with a who's who of right wing Christian extremists all the way back in June of 2016 where Trump promised these elements the moon - ending abortion, rescinding gay rights, ending political campaign restrictions on churches, and license to discriminate laws cloaked under the smoke screen of "religious liberty."  Like their Russia counterparts, the Christofascists have closed their eyes to Trumps utter immorality and seemingly will support any foul thing he does. Now, it has come out that Putin wasn't content with Trump's efforts to win Christofascist and evangelical Christian support (the two are often synonymous).  He also had indicted Russian spy, Maria Butina working on direct influence on leading Christian extremist groups.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this development.  Here are excerpts:

The more we learn about freshly indicted Russian spy suspect Maria Butina, the stranger the 29-year-old Siberian woman’s story becomes. As Eric Levitz explained earlier this week, Butina has had some extracurricular activities that are unusual for a grad student, which is supposedly why she was in the United States to begin with: Previous reporting has suggested that this woman, 29-year-old American University graduate student Maria Butina, tried to broker two separate secret meetings between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign.

Her apparent associate (or perhaps dupe) in her intelligence operations was U.S. “political operative” Paul Erickson, who was 30 years older than Butina but reportedly lived with her. He’s had his own colorful pre-espionage career, which included Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign and a stint as “media advisor” to John Wayne Bobbitt, the man whose wife Lorena famously dis-membered him. In any event, Erickson had lots of useful contacts among U.S. gun activists that Butina, who led a gun-rights group back in Russia, was able to exploit very successfully. Her apparent boss, Russian pol (and Putin ally) Alexander Torshin, attended multiple NRA conventions, and Erickson reportedly hooked him up with Donald Trump Jr. at the 2016 event. He also sought to set up a meeting for Torshin with the mogul himself around that same time. Butina also took advantage of Erickson’s links with the Christian right, as Slate’s Ruth Graham reports, though Torshin had his own relationships in that universe, having attended multiple National Prayer Breakfasts.  In 2016, according to a timeline compiled by the Washington Post, Butina emailed a Prayer Breakfast organizer to suggest that Putin might attend the following year. That didn’t happen, but she and Torshin attended.

Earlier, in 2015, Butina and Erickson also appeared on the radio show of conservative evangelical superstar (and big-time Trump promoter) Eric Metaxas to discuss gun rights and religious freedom — topics that are strangely congruent in the conservative Christian circles in which all these birds flew.

The affection with which many Christian right figures hold Russia and specifically the gay-bashing Putin is hardly a secret, as I noted in 2016: [Putin’s evangelical fan club] includes some pretty big names, like conservative Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, National Organization for Marriage leader Brian Brown, and American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer. In almost every case it has been his distinctive combination of homophobia and Islamophobia that has made Putin one of the Christian right’s favorite international figures.

So there is a U.S. religious constituency that very self-consciously supports Trump’s apparent interest in forming a new world order based on a Washington-Moscow axis, outflanking the decadent, secular, tolerant globalists of Western Europe.

One of the latest tidbits about the rather unusual relationship of Butina and Erickson emerged today in a memorandum from prosecutors asking that she be held without bail, as NBC News reports: In arguing that Butina is a flight risk, prosecutors said her only tie to the U.S. is a “personal relationship” with an unidentified man — which is branded “duplicitous,” suggesting she was using him for her own means. According to The Washington Post, the man’s description matches that of Republican operative Paul Erickson.

“Butina appears to treat it as simply a necessary aspect of her activities,” the memo says. . . . . in papers seized by the FBI, Butina complained about living with U.S. Person 1 and expressed disdain for continuing to cohabitate with U.S. Person 1.”

Yikes. Erickson’s continued freedom may depend on him playing the role of a deceived and spurned lover rather than a collaborator of a foreign spy.

Franklin Graham: Working to Spread the Christofascist Cancer

Other than Donald Trump, one of the most hideous and malignant forces in American politics is the Christofascist theocratic movement and the parasitic "professional Christians" who preach a message of hate while lining their own pockets and living lavishly.  Few represent this cancer on American society more than Franklin Graham, a steadfast supporter of Trump all too willing to overlook Trump's moral bankruptcy if  it aids his insatiable thirst for power (and, of course, more money in his own pocket in the process -  in 2014, Graham pocketed $622,252.00 from his "charity", Samaritan's Purse, alone).  Now Graham with his right wing extremist allies are focused on stirring up evangelical haters in California to rescue threatened Republican Congressional seats.  Among the bogeymen that Graham will peddle is the "threat" of same sex marriage and the myths of Christian persecution.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Graham's toxic mission.  Here are excerpts:

Franklin Graham stood in a packed locker room at the Rose Bowl, surrounded by fellow evangelists, pastors, and his top Los Angeles donors. It was two weeks before the California primary, and Mr. Graham was urging them to take a stand against their state’s “blue wall.”

The blue wall of California, Mr. Graham told the gathering, represents secular values that have taken root on the country’s west coast.

“Progressive?” he went on, “That’s just another word for godless.” Now is the time for churches to “suck it up” and vote.

Mr. Graham is leading a three-bus caravan up the middle of the state, one of the biggest political battlegrounds this year, to urge evangelicals to vote and to win California for Jesus. The two week tour ends on the day of the primary, June 5. . . . the parallel political message is just as resounding: Support candidates who will advance the socially conservative causes dear to many evangelicals — especially opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage — and get to the polls and vote for them. Three of his stops are in or bordering critical House districts in the Central Valley, and others hug the line between red and blue up the state.

Don’t be afraid to preach about it, Mr. Graham told the pastors. “Lose your tax exempt status; the progressives want to take it away anyway,” he said.

Though the state has one of the highest percentages of religiously unaffiliated adults, the fast growing religious group in the country, that largely blue sea is dotted with evangelical islands that are largely red. One in five adults in the state are evangelical Christians, according to the Pew Research Center, and there are more megachurches in California than in any other state.

And while 26 percent of national voters in 2016 were white born-again Christians, according to exit polls, just 13 percent of California voters were . . .

Finances play a role, too. After Mr. Graham’s home state of North Carolina, California is the second largest donor base for Samaritan’s Purse and his other organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Last Sunday, the day Mr. Graham began his bus trip, a large Los Angeles church on the border of an open House seat ended its services early and directed its 3,000 congregants to write letters protesting a state assembly bill that would prohibit conversion therapy, intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, as a form of consumer fraud. In 2012, California passed a law restricting the practice on minors.

Even Republican political strategists and party officials doubt that Republicans could win top statewide offices like governor or senator in California this fall. . . . . As the Republican base in California shrinks, religious conservatives become an even more important part of the party’s coalition, said Dan Schnur, a longtime Republican consultant in California who is now an independent. . . . “It is going to be impossible for them to save those House seats without significant religious conservative turnout,” he said.

In 2016, Mr. Graham held rallies in all 50 state capitals to urge Christians to vote. Donald J. Trump won the White House that year, defying all predictions, in large part thanks to a groundswell of white evangelical turnout.

In California, one clear goal is to change the makeup of school boards. “Can you imagine if your school boards were controlled by evangelical Christians?” he asked the pastors in Pasadena, a not so subtle reference to conservative religious protests of California’s new sex education curriculum, which includes lessons on LGBTQ sexuality.

But other evangelicals are not comfortable with the political direction Mr. Graham is taking their faith. When a Graham organizer asked Daniel Balcombe, the pastor of Living Way Church near Escondido, to promote Mr. Graham’s rally, he said no. “He’s too politically toxic,” Mr. Balcombe, a registered Republican, said in an interview. “I told the organizer this, and he made excuses and insisted that he would not be political in his crusade. Still, I told him no thanks.”

It is a reminder that evangelicalism, and the culture that goes with it, is changing. Sergio De La Mora, pastor of a large Latino-led church with five main campuses, called Cornerstone Church of San Diego, says the future of California Christianity is neither red nor blue, especially because of the growing Hispanic church whose political priorities do not fit an expected mold.

While Mr. De La Mora voted for Mr. Trump, citing his family work ethic, he says he is most passionate about issues like green energy, women’s rights and immigration. “Don’t look at us as this lost, liberal state,” he said. “Look at us as this emerging new America that says, we can coexist.” 

 Graham's toxic agenda needs to be defeated and Christofascists need to be cast into the political wilderness as if they were radioactive.  They are all about hate and division despite disingenuous bleats about Jesus and "faith."  

Evangelicals: The Last Temptation

Trump and evangelical "Christian" leaders.

Easter was yesterday and few days of the year could better highlight the how evangelicals no longer are witnesses for the Gospel message and instead have embraced everything the Christ advocated for if one believes the New Testament.  Indeed, the hypocrisy and meanness of the Pharisees depicted in the New Testament pale compared to what now is on display virtually on a daily basis.  Protesting abortion, maligning and denigrating gays, seeking to force their ugly beliefs on all of society,  and now idolatry towards Donald Trump, are all that defines today's evangelicals.  Loving others, doing to others as you would have unto you, caring for the poor, homeless and hungry, welcoming the stranger or foreigner  are all utterly absent from the evangelical Christian agenda, especially as evidenced by their allegiance to Donald Trump who might be better compared to the Anti-Christ than a messiah for Christians as depicted in the New Testament.  In The Atlantic in an expanded version of a much shorter column, former Bush White House operative, Michael Gerson rightly calls out evangelicals who have embraced Trump and hate, racism, and fear of anyone different in the process.  Here are highlights:  

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers.

The problem is the distinctly non-Christian substance of his values. Trump’s unapologetic materialism—his equation of financial and social success with human achievement and worth—is a negation of Christian teaching. His tribalism and hatred for “the other” stand in direct opposition to Jesus’s radical ethic of neighbor love. Trump’s strength-worship and contempt for “losers” smack more of Nietzsche than of Christ.

And yet, a credible case can be made that evangelical votes were a decisive factor in Trump’s improbable victory. Trump himself certainly acts as if he believes they were. Many individuals, causes, and groups that Trump pledged to champion have been swiftly sidelined or sacrificed during Trump’s brief presidency. The administration’s outreach to white evangelicals, however, has been utterly consistent.

Loyalty to Trump has involved progressively more difficult, self-abasing demands. And there appears to be no limit to what some evangelical leaders will endure. Figures such as Falwell and Franklin Graham followed Trump’s lead in supporting Judge Roy Moore in the December Senate election in Alabama. These are religious leaders who have spent their entire adult lives bemoaning cultural and moral decay. Yet they publicly backed a candidate who was repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct, including with a 14-year-old girl.

The moral convictions of many evangelical leaders have become a function of their partisan identification. This is not mere gullibility; it is utter corruption. Blinded by political tribalism and hatred for their political opponents, these leaders can’t see how they are undermining the causes to which they once dedicated their lives. Little remains of a distinctly Christian public witness.

Evangelical’ used to denote people who claimed the high moral ground; now, in popular usage, the word is nearly synonymous with ‘hypocrite.’ . . . . The corruption of a political party is regrettable. The corruption of a religious tradition by politics is tragic, shaming those who participate in it.

[T]the primary evangelical political narrative is adversarial, an angry tale about the aggression of evangelicalism’s cultural rivals. In a remarkably free country, many evangelicals view their rights as fragile, their institutions as threatened, and their dignity as assailed. The single largest religious demographic in the United States—representing about half the Republican political coalition—sees itself as a besieged and disrespected minority. In this way, evangelicals have become simultaneously more engaged and more alienated.

After shamefully sitting out (or even opposing) the civil-rights movement, white evangelicals became activated on a limited range of issues. They defended Christian schools against regulation during Jimmy Carter’s administration. They fought against Supreme Court decisions that put tight restrictions on school prayer and removed many state limits on abortion. The sociologist Nathan Glazer describes such efforts as a “defensive offensive”—a kind of morally indignant pushback against a modern world that, in evangelicals’ view, had grown hostile and oppressive. This attitude was happily exploited by the modern GOP.

[M]odern evangelicalism has an important intellectual piece missing. It lacks a model or ideal of political engagement—an organizing theory of social action. Over the same century from Blanchard to Falwell, Catholics developed a coherent, comprehensive tradition of social and political reflection. . . . . Catholic social thought includes a commitment to solidarity, whereby justice in a society is measured by the treatment of its weakest and most vulnerable members. . . . American Catholics routinely ignore Catholic social thought. But at least they have it. Evangelicals lack a similar tradition of their own to disregard.

Lacking an equivalent to Catholic social thought, many evangelicals seem to find their theory merely by following the contours of the political movement that is currently defending, and exploiting, them. The voter guides of religious conservatives have often been suspiciously similar to the political priorities of movement conservatism. Fox News and talk radio are vastly greater influences on evangelicals’ political identity than formal statements by religious denominations or from the National Association of Evangelicals. In this Christian political movement, Christian theology is emphatically not the primary motivating factor.

Individual Christians and evangelical ministries fight preventable disease, resettle refugees, treat addiction, run homeless shelters, and care for foster children. But such concerns find limited collective political expression.

Part of the reason such matters are not higher on the evangelical agenda is surely the relative ethnic and racial insularity of many white evangelicals. Plenty of African Americans hold evangelical theological views, of course, along with a growing number of Latinos. Yet evangelical churches, like other churches and houses of worship, tend to be segregated on Sunday. Nearly all denominations with large numbers of evangelicals are less racially diverse than the country overall.

Evangelicals also have a consistent problem with their public voice, which can be off-puttingly apocalyptic. “We are on the verge of losing” America, proclaims the evangelical writer and radio host Eric Metaxas, “as we could have lost it in the Civil War.” . . . . the attribution of depravity and decline to America also reflects a consistent and (so far) disappointed belief that the Second Coming may be just around history’s corner.

The difficulty with this approach to public life—other than its insanely pessimistic depiction of our flawed but wonderful country—is that it trivializes and undercuts the entire political enterprise. Politics in a democracy is essentially anti-apocalyptic, premised on the idea that an active citizenry is capable of improving the nation.

Moreover, in making their case on cultural decay and decline, evangelicals have, in some highly visible cases, chosen the wrong nightmares. Most notable, they made a crucial error in picking evolution as a main point of contention with modernity. “The contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death,” William Jennings Bryan argued. “If evolution wins … Christianity goes—not suddenly, of course, but gradually, for the two cannot stand together.” Many people of his background believed this. But their resistance was futile, for one incontrovertible reason: Evolution is a fact. It is objectively true based on overwhelming evidence. By denying this, evangelicals made their entire view of reality suspect. They were insisting, in effect, that the Christian faith requires a flight from reason. . . . . Evangelicals have placed an entirely superfluous stumbling block before their neighbors and children, encouraging every young person who loves science to reject Christianity.

The consequences, especially for younger generations, are considerable. . . . More than a third of Millennials say they are unaffiliated with any faith, up 10 points since 2007. Count this as an ironic achievement of religious conservatives: an overall decline in identification with religion itself.

Trump consistently depicts evangelicals as they depict themselves: a mistreated minority, in need of a defender who plays by worldly rules. Christianity is “under siege,” Trump told a Liberty University audience. “Relish the opportunity to be an outsider,” he added at a later date: “Embrace the label.” Protecting Christianity, Trump essentially argues, is a job for a bully. . . . evangelicals regarding themselves, hysterically and with self-pity, as an oppressed minority that requires a strongman to rescue it. This is how Trump has invited evangelicals to view themselves. He has treated evangelicalism as an interest group in need of protection and preferences.

A prominent company of evangelical leaders—including Dobson, Falwell, Graham, Jeffress, Metaxas, Perkins, and Ralph Reed—has embraced this self-conception. Their justification is often bluntly utilitarian: All of Trump’s flaws are worth his conservative judicial appointments and more-favorable treatment of Christians by the government.

It is remarkable to hear religious leaders defend profanity, ridicule, and cruelty as hallmarks of authenticity and dismiss decency as a dead language. Whatever Trump’s policy legacy ends up being, his presidency has been a disaster in the realm of norms. It has coarsened our culture, given permission for bullying, complicated the moral formation of children, undermined standards of public integrity, and encouraged cynicism about the political enterprise. Falwell, Graham, and others are providing religious cover for moral squalor . . . Having given politics pride of place, these evangelical leaders have ceased to be moral leaders in any meaningful sense.

For some of Trump’s political allies, racist language and arguments are part of his appeal. For evangelical leaders, they should be sources of anguish. . . . Perpetuating racism indicted many white Christians in the South and elsewhere as hypocrites. Americans who are wrong on this issue do not understand the nature of their country. Christians who are wrong on this issue do not understand the most-basic requirements of their faith.

[E]very strong Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the president of the United States. And that is something more than a political compromise. It is a revelation of moral priorities. . . . . these evangelical leaders have associated the Christian faith with racism and nativism. They have associated the Christian faith with misogyny and the mocking of the disabled. They have associated the Christian faith with lawlessness, corruption, and routine deception. They have associated the Christian faith with moral confusion about the surpassing evils of white supremacy and neo-Nazism. The world is full of tragic choices and compromises. But for this man? For this cause?

Those leaders represent a clear majority of the movement, which remains the most loyal element of the Trump coalition. Evangelicals are broadly eager to act as Trump’s shield and sword. They are his army of enablers.

Democracy is not merely a set of procedures. It has a moral structure. The values we celebrate or stigmatize eventually influence the character of our people and polity. Democracy does not insist on perfect virtue from its leaders. But there is a set of values that lends authority to power: empathy, honesty, integrity, and self-restraint. And the legitimating of cruelty, prejudice, falsehood, and corruption is the kind of thing, one would think, that religious people were born to oppose, not bless.

Christianity is love of neighbor, or it has lost its way. And this sets an urgent task for evangelicals: to rescue their faith from its worst leaders.