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. 

False Churches - Focus on the Family Declares Itself a "Church"

FOTF founder and Trump BFF, James Dobson

I have long believed that all churches that are not putting the vast majority of their revenues toward true charitable purposes -e.g., feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, aiding the poor, etc. - should not be afforded tax-exempt status. Now, another glaring example of the manner in which taxpayers are being forced to indirectly financially underwrite non-charities is provided by Focus on the Family ("FOTF") which has annual revenues of over $89 million has declared itself a "church."   Where does FOTF spend its money?  One one, it is a leading purveyor of anti-gay lies and disinformation.  It also seeks to control elected officials who will push its Christian dominionist agenda.  And, of course, its leadership cadre laughs all the way to the bank. Very little of the moneys reach what most people would consider true charitable works.  Right Wing Watch looks at this latest abuse of the Internal Revenue Code and IRS rules.  Here are highlights:

Focus on the Family, the behemoth Religious Right organization founded by James Dobson, has declared itself to be a church, thereby avoiding a requirement that it file public tax documents, according to IRS records and a document available on the organization’s website.

Focus on the Family filed as a non-church 501(c)(3) nonprofit as recently as the 2014 fiscal year, submitting to the IRS a publicly available Form 990 as most tax-exempt nonprofits are required to do. But when the group posted a Form 990 for the 2015 fiscal year on its website—dated October 26, 2017, and reporting a massive budget of $89 million—it was emblazoned with the message “Not required to file and not filed with the IRS. Not for public inspection.”

On the part of the form on which it is required to identify the reason for its public charity status, the group indicates that it is a “church, convention of churches or association of churches.”

Focus on the Family declaring itself to be a church is puzzling. While the Colorado Springs-based organization has somewhat softened its image since it was led by the firebrand Dobson, it remains active in political debates and advocacy (even in a nominally nonpartisan way). A “social issues” section on the group’s website currently features information on a supposed threat to bathroom safety posed by transgender people thanks to LGBTQ activists fighting in politics, churches and popular culture, and contains an update on “cultural issues in the courts.” 

Gail Harmon, an attorney who has advised nonprofits on tax law for more than 30 years, said that she had never before seen a nonprofit organization declare itself a church. “I just found it shocking,” she said.

“There’s nothing about them that meets the traditional definition of what a church is,” she said. “They don’t have a congregation, they don’t have the rites of various parts of a person’s life. There’s a whole system for what a church is.”

The IRS lists a number of factors that it considers in determining whether an organization is a church, including whether it has a “definite and distinct ecclesiastical government,” “established places of worship” and “regular religious services,” but notes that an organization “need not have all of the characteristics” listed in order to be considered a church.

We have requested documents on the tax status change from Focus on the Family and from the IRS. Focus on the Family has not responded to our request for comment.

"Respectable" Evangelicals Distance Themselves from Trump Supporters

Like it or not, Trump supporting evangelical Christians are becoming the public face of Christianity in America.  The result of this phenomenon is not positive for those who want the faith to survive: one third of Millenials have walked away from religion (for those under 30, the figure is 36%), the number of so-called "Nones" now is the larges religious group, if you will, in the nation.  Meanwhile, all Christian denominations are losing membership overall.  And "liberal" denominations all too often fail and refuse to challenge the ugliness of the message of the Trump supporting evangelical Christians or, if they do, do it in an ineffectual manner. In sum, hatred of others, hypocrisy and dishonesty (think James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee) are increasing what many Americans associate with Christianity.  As a piece in Religion Dispatches notes, some "respectable" evangelicals are trying to distance themselves from their Trump supporting brethren.  Will the damage control effort work?  Probably not.  Here are article highlights:

The defenders of “respectable” evangelicalism were out in force in 2017. In newspapers, magazines, and National Public Radio programs, they delivered a consistent message. That group of Trump-loving, Roy-Moore-supporting evangelicals? “It’s not us.”

Respectable evangelicals have been defining away their embarrassing spiritual kin for a century, at least.

When working-class evangelicals began speaking in tongues in the 1900s, respectable evangelicals declared the movement a delusion of Satan. It’s not us, they insisted.

When the Scopes Monkey Trial made William Jennings Bryan a laughingstock, respectable evangelicals disclaimed leadership in the fundamentalist movement they helped create. It’s not us.

In the 1940s and 50s, respectable evangelicals perfected the “not us” technique. Abandoning the fundamentalist label (though holding nearly identical beliefs), they created a “neo-evangelical” identity to distance themselves from the red-baiters and conspiratorialists. Ever since, the toxic byproducts of their movement have been shunted outside the evangelical camp. Whether tele-evangelist scandals, or hurricanes-are-God’s-judgment-jeremiads, or homophobic protests at military funerals: it’s not us.

In a recent Vox editorial, historian Thomas Kidd, a never-Trump evangelical, continues the refrain. The statistic that 80% of white evangelicals supported Trump is wrong, he argues, because it’s based on self-identification. They are evangelicals in name only; it’s not us.

Consider the definition at work. To be evangelical, we are told, is to believe in “conversion.” But is conversion a uniquely evangelical idea? It’s not even uniquely Christian; Muslims convert too. Rather, they are appealing to a particular experience of conversion. And how is an evangelical conversion measured? That’s the rub. It’s been the cause of evangelical consternation for two centuries.

But conversion’s unmeasurable quality is what makes it useful for insiders. It allows them to state (or strongly infer) that only unconverted, ‘nominal,’ evangelicals supported Trump. Apparently, a vote for Trump is evidence enough? Meanwhile, evangelical Trump voters declare that by withholding support, never-Trump evangelicals have demonstrated their faithlessness.

“Biblicism” functions similarly. Imagine a political scientist defining Republicans as “those who take the Constitution seriously.” Who would accept this transparently partisan statement? And yet many people today accept that evangelicals are “biblical,” while everyone else…isn’t? This is how former megachurch pastor Rob Bell and popular author Rachel Held Evans ceased to be evangelical: not because they quit the Bible, but because they came up with “wrong,” (thus “unbiblical”) answers about hell and being gay. “Biblicism” is evangelical gerrymandering.

[A] definition must function independent of public relations. If an abusive priest is still Catholic, then J. Dennis Hastert must remain an evangelical despite his sordid past.

Few conservative white evangelicals will question their overheated rhetoric about healthcare and wedding cakes and “religious liberty.” Few liberal white evangelicals will question how their cherished theological categories might contribute to the systemic racism and patriarchy they claim to oppose. Moore supporters will not consider whether there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed.

Because being evangelical means never having to say you’re sorry.  Being evangelical means “it’s not us.”

The "Christian" Right's Foul, Judgmental Men

"Family values" hate merchants

I have tracked the activities of the so-called religious right's "family values" groups since the 1990's - well be fore I came out and while I was active in the Republican Party.  From the beginning, my impression was that these groups' main focus was (i) denigrating others, including gays, blacks, other minorities, and independent minded women, (ii) gaining and then maintaining political power, (iii) inflicting their toxic religious beliefs on all of society through any means necessary, including lying incessantly and displaying stunning hypocrisy in the process, and (iv) supporting a Republican agenda that sought to harm the poor, the homeless, the sick and the hungry and anyone else they deemed as "other."   Typically, these groups are headed by chauvinistic men thirsting for power - James Dobson and Tony Perkins are two prime examples - who care nothing about basic morality.  Other than ranting against gays, abortion, rejecting responsible sex education, and restoring mandatory  school prayer, true morality is absent from their agenda.  Now, with society displaying revulsion toward sexual harassment as embodied by Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstien, and Donald Trump, these Pharisee like men are not only failing to call out sexual predators, but in many cases are actively supporting the perpetrators so long as they are not "liberals."  A column in the Washington Post by a former George W. Bush White House staffer calls out the moral bankruptcy of these toxic  men and their followers.  Indeed, if one believes in true morality, look for it anywhere except among the "godly folk."  Here are column excerpts:

Even in a political season of routine marvels, few developments are more spectacularly incongruous than this: The United States has seen a swift, dramatic shift in attitudes toward sexual harassment with Donald Trump as president.

It is sometimes assumed (including by me) that the presidency sets a moral tone for the nation, influencing what society considers normal and acceptable in a kind of trickle-down ethics. But the sexual harassment revolution emerged from society in spite of — or even in defiance of — a president who has boasted of exploiting women and who stands accused of harassing more than a dozen.

It is a sign of hope that moral and ethical standards can assert themselves largely unaided by political, entertainment and media leaders — except when they serve as cautionary tales of egregious behavior. We are seeing an example of how social change often (and increasingly) takes place. Advocates of a cause can push for a long time with little apparent effect. Then, in a historical blink, what seemed incredible becomes inevitable. Over a period of years, this is what happened with the same-sex marriage movement. A type of inclusion that initially appeared radical and frightening became an obvious form of fairness to a majority of Americans. Politicians, including President Barack Obama, were left catching up to the new social consensus.

Over a period of weeks, this is the story of the revolt against sexual harassment. What seemed for generations the prerogative of powerful men has been fully revealed as a pernicious form of dehumanization.  . . . An ethical light switch was flipped. Moral outrage — the appropriate response — now seems obvious.

On sexual harassment, our country is now in a much better ethical place. And how we got here is instructive. Conservatives have sometimes predicted that moral relativism would render Americans broadly incapable of moral judgment. But people, at some deep level, know that rules and norms are needed.

And where did this urgent assertion of moral principle come from? Not from the advocates of “family values.” On the contrary, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family (now under much better management), chose to side with GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama against his highly credible accusers. “I have been dismayed and troubled,” Dobson said, “about the way he and his wife Kayla have been personally attacked by the Washington establishment.”It is as if Dobson set out to justify every feminist critique of the religious right. Instead of standing against injustice and exploitation — as the Christian gospel demands — Dobson sided with patriarchal oppression in the cause of political power. This is beyond hypocrisy. It is the solidarity of scary, judgmental old men. It is the ideology of white male dominance dressed up as religion.

Conservatives need to be clear and honest in this circumstance. The strong, moral commitment to the dignity of women and children recently asserting itself in our common life has mainly come from feminism, not the “family values” movement. In this case, religious conservatives have largely been bystanders or obstacles. This indicates a group of people for whom the dignity of girls and women has become secondary to other political goals.

We are a nation with vast resources of moral renewal. It is a shame and a scandal that so many religious conservatives have made themselves irrelevant to that task.

If the nation is lucky, the larger society will learn that if one wants a truly moral society the last place it will come from is evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who are in most cases devoid of compassion, concern for others, and basic decency.  Hatred and condemnation of others and false piety are their true hallmarks. 

Why Trump’s Second 100 Days Will Be Even Worse For LGBT Equality

Trump with leading gay hating Christofascists who have his ear

As was noted in a post yesterday about the rally Der Trumpenführer held in Pennsylvania on Saturday, one of the motivating factors for the deporables in attendance was the desire/need to feel superior.  Superior over blacks, superior over Hispanics, superior over non-Christians, and of course, superior over LGBT individuals.  The latter is especially true for the morally bankrupt 81% of evangelicals who voted for Trump, a serial adulterer, sexual predator and pathological liar just to name a few of his less than Christian traits.  Adding to the mix is Trump's polling numbers that are in the toilet and GOP fears for the 2018 mid-term elections.  Thus, as Michelangelo Signorile predicts, the next 100 days of the Trump/Pence regime will likely bring more assaults of LGBT equality and, most frighteningly, a likely executive order that will legalize anti-LGBT discrimination nationwide and  override state and local non-discrimination ordinances.  Trump and the GOP simply will need to show the anti-modernity, anti-science, and largely uneducated evangelicals that they have delievered some small sliver of campaign promises.  Here are Michelangelo's post in HuffPost:

When I wrote a piece a few days after the election, “The Mike Pence (Donald Trump) Assault On LGBTQ Equality Is Already Underway,” I hoped against all hope that something might change to alter what was already happening during the Trump transition.

But in fact, much of what I reported has materialized in the first 100 days. And there’s reason to believe the second 100 days will be worse.

In the first 100 days Trump installed viciously anti-gay individuals in his cabinet and throughout the government departments, all of whom were brought forth from the Mike Pence-run transition team, from Ben Carson and Roger Severino to Tom Price and Jeff Sessions. Trump and Sessions, the attorney general, already rescinded guidance on fighting discrimination against transgender students across the country, and had the Justice Department halt litigation against North Carolina regarding HB2 and the equally discriminatory law that replaced it. The Trump administration decided there was “no need” to move forward with the Census Bureau’s planned data collection on LGBT Americans, thereby keeping LGBTQ people invisible. 

Though Trump made a little bit of a spectacle of not rescinding President Obama’s executive order banning anti-LGBT discrimination among federal contractors, his administration later quietly issued an order ending data collection among contractors about such discrimination – thus allowing for it. Similarly, the administration stopped collecting data on discrimination against elderly LGBTQ people. Trump removed Eric Fanning as Army Secretary, appointed by President Obama and the first openly gay Army Secretary in history, and has now nominated an anti-LGBTQ Tennessee legislator, Mark Green, to the job ― a man who sponsored a bill allowing discrimination against LGBTQ people and who has called transgender people “evil.”

And perhaps most consequentially, Trump placed on the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch, a constitutional originalist in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia ― by his own description ― and someone whose idea of “religious liberty” is a direct threat to LGBTQ rights. 

But here’s why the next 100 days ― and after that ― could be far worse: Trump is continuing to plummet in approval ratings and he needs his base to back him ― and to back the GOP ― more than ever if he has any hopes of re-election and of keeping Congress in the hands of the GOP in 2018 and beyond. He just barely made it in 2016, and any softening of any part of his base will spell doom. The anti-LGBTQ religious right turned out for Trump in numbers as great or bigger than every previous recent Republican presidential candidate. 

Christian right activists are already demanding much more. They were hoping a religious liberty executive order ― which would allow for widespread discrimination against LGBT people [and others] ― would have been issued already, and were disappointed when the Trump administration early on said a leaked draft of it wasn’t coming soon.

Last week USA Today reported that a group of 51 GOP legislators in the House sent a letter to the White House asking for the order to be signed.

They’re pressuring him to move ahead with the anti-LGBTQ agenda he promised. Though the media downplayed it, Trump courted these people at events and through their media during the campaign, promising everything from “protecting” religious liberty to getting the Obergefell marriage equality ruling overturned. 

The Christian right isn’t satisfied with what they see as the crumbs Trump has given them in the first 100 days. They’re demanding much, much more, and Trump, like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both of whom courted the Christian right and believed they needed evangelical voters for re-election, will feel compelled to deliver. 

That’s why the next 100 days and beyond are even more treacherous, and why we’ll have to pay great attention and fight back hard. 

All I can say to my "friends" who voted for Trump is this:  I will NOT forgive or forget your betrayal. You have proven yourselves to be false friends who I now know I simply cannot trust.  

The Moral Bankruptcy of Evangelical "Leaders"

This week saw the observance of "National Coming Out Day."  Ironically, it was in October, 2001, that I began my coming out journey, being clueless at the time on a host of LGBT issues, but struggling to deal with the Catholic religious brainwashing that I had been subjected to over my childhood and teen years. Thankfully, coming out is becoming easier for younger generations, although we are far from reaching the point where being gay is a non-issue. In my own case, the process was made easier by the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal that exploded in 2002 as recounted in the Academy Award winning movie Spotlight.  Suddenly, I realized that the bitter men at the Vatican and in bishoprics across the globe were not only hypocrites when it came to preaching about sexual morals, but were in many cases criminal conspirators who care absolutely nothing for children and youths.  

Now, in the age of Donald Trump, when even some Republican elected officials who generally show few limits to their willing to self-prostitute themselves for votes are stepping away from Trump, many of the so-called evangelical Christian "leaders" - most of who are stridently anti-LGBT - are holding fast to their support of Trump.  These individuals, mostly men, are now revealing themselves to be just as morally bankrupt as the Catholic Church hierarchy.  Instead of turning away from Trump as decent moral individuals should do, they are justifying their continued allegiance through various disingenuous statements, all of which ultimately come down to their lust for power and whatever deals Trump has promised to them at secret meetings shielded from public view.  Bob Felton has put together a short summary of these homophobic, modern day Pharisees.  Here are highlights:

Those of you wondering how evangelical leaders can rally to the support of Donald Trump after his latest remarks about women … The Pious are sick, deformed people with a corrupt concept of the ‘good,’ and we need to drive them out of our public life.

James Dobson:
And James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and now host of the show Family Talk, stood by his Trump endorsement on Monday.[ … ]“The comments Mr. Trump made 11 years ago were deplorable and I condemn them entirely,” he said. “I also find Hillary Clinton’s support of partial birth abortion criminal and her opinion of evangelicals to be bigoted. There really is only one difference between the two. Mr. Trump promises to support religious liberty and the dignity of the unborn. Mrs. Clinton promises she will not.”

Jerry Falwell, Jr.:
“We’re never going to have a perfect candidate unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot,” he said. “I’ve got a wife and a daughter, and nobody wants to hear their women talked about in that manner.”[. . . ]I don’t think the American people want this country to go down the toilet because Donald Trump made some dumb comments on a videotape 11 years ago.”

Robert Jeffress:
Well, let me be very clear about this. These statements were lewd, offensive, and indefensible, but they’re not enough to make me vote for Hillary Clinton. Last week, I was in Trump Tower. I moderated a meeting between Mr. Trump and religious leaders, and I said, with Trump seated to my left, I said, “look, I might not choose this man to be a Sunday school teacher in my church, but that’s not what this election is about.” It’s about choosing the best leader to reverse the downward spiral of the nation.

Franklin Graham:
 Evangelist Franklin Graham condemned Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for his 2005 remarks about women, but said the real estate magnate’s comments are as indefensible as “the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton” and that the Democratic candidate would prove to be more harmful for America’s future.

Ralph Reed:
Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a member of Trump’s religious advisory board, has also said he’s still with the Republican candidate.Reed told NPR in an interview Saturday, adding that Trump has apologized. “I think given the stakes in this election and those and other critical issues, I just don’t think an audiotape of an 11-year-old private conversation with an entertainment talk show host on a tour bus, for which the candidate has apologized profusely, is likely to rank high on the hierarchy of concerns of those faith-based voters.”

LGBT citizens continue to be openly condemned and stigmatized by these individuals even though every legitimate medical and mental health association in the nation (and most of the advanced world) holds that homosexuality is a normal phenomenon.  Yet these people continue to support a man who brags about his aggression against women and who has now been accused of sexual harassment by more and more women.  I sincerely hope young LGBT individuals and their parents and friends will ignore these "men of god" and that soon being a "evangelical Christian" will hold far more stigma than being LGBT.

The Christian Right Is Sleeping With the Enemy

As regular readers know, I view conservative Christians as some of the most selfish, self-centered and hypocrisy-filled people one will ever meet.  They are nothing less than modern day Pharisees.  But this is particularly true of what I call the "professional Christian" crowd that seeks power while fleecing the gullible and ignorant.  They make the money lenders in the Temple that Christ supposedly decried look ethical and upstanding.    Indeed, their embrace of Donald Trump puts a glaring spotlight on their hypocrisy and hunger for power.  I came across a column from some time back that takes aim at these dangerous hypocrites, including Jerry Falwell, Jr., James Dobson and Franklin Graham, all foul individuals in my estimation.  Here are some column highlights:

To paraphrase P.T. Barnum, “There’s a sucker born again every minute.”

This week, according to a roomful of dewy-eyed pastors and fawning televangelists who met behind closed doors with GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump, he has accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and is apparently now suitable for Christians and church leaders to fully and passionately support.

Never mind that Trump has made no such claims himself, nor given any indication by word or deed that would lead anyone to believe such outrageous proclamations. And disregard Trump’s growing legacy of ignorant rants against Muslims, Mexicans, women, immigrants, and almost any groups who aren’t wealthy or white—or both.

As a Christian and a pastor, it’s all been equally fascinating and infuriating watching supposed men and women (well, mostly men) of God engage in all sorts of embarrassing theological gymnastics to try and connect the most convoluted and disparate of dots in order to justify hitching their ministries to Trump’s toxic wagon.

This is a revelatory moment for we who claim Christianity, one that crystallizes how much Dobson and the rest of these folks have lost the plot and how faithfully they now serve only themselves.

It turns out, when it comes to power the Evangelical Right will go to bed with just about anybody. They’re that easy.

The truth is, Donald Trump is a fairly horrible human being if you’re going to use any measurement of morality. He’s neither done nor said anything that one could categorize as remotely resembling Jesus. Lots of smart people understand this. But this isn’t about him. He’s doing what most of us expect him to do: try and court a valuable and much-needed voting block without self-awareness, shame, or decency. This isn’t a surprise.

[T]his about supposed representatives of Jesus whoring themselves out just to have what they hope will be the next President’s ear and pretending it’s the work of God. It’s about discarding faith to keep power in their party. It’s about a Christianity that no longer has need or use for Jesus. They themselves are the bloated golden calf they’re bowing down to and Trump is just a means to this end—and it’s exactly what is killing the Church.

Every day people tell me that they’re finished with organized Christianity; that they’re walking away from the American Church for good, and it isn’t because of gays or cultural decay or materialism or lust or whatever these preachers like to lift while in the pulpit. These millions of honest, wise (and yes faithful) people are making their exodus because they see Dobson and Falwell and people like them and they realize the absolute absurdity of it all.

It’s a compete disconnect undermining the very bedrock of their core beliefs, and so they’re choosing to leave instead of being associated with such a blatant power lust move. They’ve run out of patience with a spirituality that’s for sale. They’re through with a Christianity that only needs to win.

One of the most startling ironies, is that these are the same self-professed “defenders of the faith”, who for the last eight years have ruthlessly persecuted a President who has not only repeatedly professed personal spirituality, but whose conduct, marriage, and family are everything they claim they’re for. This was never good enough for them to support or pray for him—or even call him a Christian.

Yet Donald Trump, in all his philandering, materialistic, racist, bigoted, misogynist glory is somehow worthy of reverence because somewhere deep down (in a way that only these leaders see), he loves Jesus. If you believe that I have some swamp land in Alabama for you.

If Trump’s version of Christianity is the hateful, politicized, bullying, opportunist variety these Right Evangelical extremists have been living for the past few decades—I’ll pass.

I continue to believe that it is the "godly folk" themselves who are accelerating the well-deserved death of Christianity.   Expect the exodus from organized religion to continue if not accelerate. 

The Fabricated Theology of Donald Trump

As long time readers of this blog surely know, among those I hold in the lowest regard of anyone are the "godly folk," the evangelical Christian crowd which is neither godly nor morally decent.  Lies, hypocrisy, and Pharisee like behavior are their hallmarks.  Ranking only a short way behind them are Republican politicians who claim to support "family values" and the nation's alleged Christian heritage even as they push a legislative agenda that is the antithesis of the Gospel message.  With the rise of Donald Trump to the position of presumptive GOP presidential nominee, we have had an opportunity to see evangelicals showing their true colors and the lengths to which they will go to debase and prostitute themselves to someone like Trump in their quest for their true love: power.  A column in the New York Times looks at this disgusting example of the moral bankruptcy of those who would seek to impose their feigned morality on all of society.  Here are excerpts:

SINCE Donald Trump assures us that the Bible is his favorite book, it’s worth asking: Just what is his theology?

After Mr. Trump met with hundreds of evangelical Christians a couple of weeks ago, James Dobson, who is among the most influential leaders in the evangelical world and serves on Mr. Trump’s evangelical executive advisory board, declared that “Trump appears to be tender to things of the Spirit,” by which Dr. Dobson meant the Holy Spirit.

Of all the descriptions of Mr. Trump we’ve heard this election season, this may be the most farcical. As described by St. Paul, the “fruit of the Spirit” includes forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, hardly qualities one associates with Mr. Trump. It shows you the lengths Mr. Trump’s supporters will go to in order to rationalize their enthusiastic support of him.

Dr. Dobson is not alone. Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, has praised Mr. Trump’s life as in many ways exemplary and said that he believes that “Donald Trump is God’s man to lead our nation.” Eric Metaxas, who has written popular biographies of William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, has rhapsodized about Mr. Trump and argued that Christians “must” vote for him because he is “the last best hope of keeping America from sliding into oblivion.”

And should your conscience tell you that Mr. Trump might not be the right choice, Robert Jeffress, the influential pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, explains that “any Christian who would sit at home and not vote for the Republican nominee” is “motivated by pride rather than principle.”

This fulsome embrace of Mr. Trump is rather problematic, since he embodies a worldview that is incompatible with Christianity. If you trace that worldview to its source, Christ would not be anywhere in the vicinity.

Time and again Mr. Trump has shown contempt for those he perceives as weak and vulnerable — “losers,” in his vernacular. They include P.O.W.s, people with disabilities, those he deems physically unattractive and those he considers politically powerless. He bullies and threatens people he believes are obstacles to his ambitions. He disdains compassion and empathy, to the point where his instinctive response to the largest mass shooting in American history was to congratulate himself: “Appreciate the congrats for being right.”

In his comments to that gathering of evangelicals, Mr. Trump said this: “And I say to you folks, because you have such power, such influence. Unfortunately the government has weeded it away from you pretty strongly. But you’re going to get it back. Remember this: If you ever add up, the men and women here are the most important, powerful lobbyists. You’re more powerful. Because you have men and women, you probably have something like 75, 80 percent of the country believing. But you don’t use your power. You don’t use your power.”

In eight sentences Mr. Trump mentioned some variation of power six times, to a group of individuals who have professed their love and loyalty to Jesus, who in his most famous sermon declared, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are the meek,” . . . 

To better understand Mr. Trump’s approach to life, ethics and politics, we should not look to Christ but to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was repulsed by Christianity and Christ. . . . Whether or not he has read a word of Nietzsche (I’m guessing not), Mr. Trump embodies a Nietzschean morality rather than a Christian one. It is characterized by indifference to objective truth (there are no facts, only interpretations), the repudiation of Christian concern for the poor and the weak, and disdain for the powerless.

Mr. Trump’s entire approach to politics rests on dehumanization. If you disagree with him or oppose him, you are not merely wrong. You are worthless, stripped of dignity, the object of derision. This attitude is central to who Mr. Trump is and explains why it pervades and guides his campaign. If he is elected president, that might-makes-right perspective would infect his entire administration.

All of this is important because of what it says about Mr. Trump as a prospective president. But it is also revealing for what it says about Christians who now testify on his behalf (there are plenty who don’t). . . . . Evangelical Christians who are enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump are signaling, even if unintentionally, that this calling has no place in politics and that Christians bring nothing distinctive to it — that their past moral proclamations were all for show and that power is the name of the game.

The French philosopher and theologian Jacques Ellul wrote: “Politics is the church’s worst problem. It is her constant temptation, the occasion of her greatest disasters, the trap continually set for her by the prince of this world.” In rallying round Mr. Trump, evangelicals have walked into the trap. The rest of the world sees it. Why don’t they?

Donald Trump and the Self-Prostitution of Evangelical Leaders

I had noted in a recent post how James Dobson had made the ludicrous statement that Donald Trump is a the equivalent of a "baby Christian" as part of the rationale for his decision - along with other evangelical extremists - to support Trump in the 2016 presidential election.  Once one stops either vomiting or laughing at the concept of Trump being even remotely a  Bible believe Christian, Dobson remarks reveal just how morally bankrupt the Christofascists have become and just how willing they are to prostitute themselves to someone like Trump in their never ending quest for power.  A piece in Salon looks at the moral sell out of Dobson, et al, and their true lover affair with access and power. Here are article highlights:

I’ve written quite a bit about Donald Trump’s unexpectedly successful wooing of the religious right in this presidential campaign. After all, we’ve been told for more than three decades now that conservative Christians require that America’s political leaders have the highest personal moral standards and adhere to a strict commitment to traditional values so he wasn’t expected to do well with them. Recall the stirring words of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson back in 1998 during the impeachment scandal:

As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world! Nevertheless, our people continue to say that the President is doing a good job even if they don’t respect him personally. Those two positions are fundamentally incompatible 

We are facing a profound moral crisis — not only because one man has disgraced us — but because our people no longer recognize the nature of evil. And when a nation reaches that state of depravity — judgment is a certainty.

There was Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition and current leader of the Faith and Family: 

”Character matters, and the American people are hungry for that message. We care about the conduct of our leaders, and we will not rest until we have leaders of good moral character.”

It’s fair to say that Donald Trump misses the mark on these requirements by a thousand miles.  With his three marriages, his history of public bragging about his sexual exploits and the size of his penis in the national media, and his obvious lack of even rudimentary knowledge of the Bible or any religious teachings, Christian or otherwise, he would seem to be the last person that people of strong faith would find acceptable.

But in the primaries, it became clear that he was drawing many of the voters Ted Cruz had counted on being in his corner. It’s not that Cruz didn’t get evangelical voters, it’s that he was only getting the ones who actually attended church.  . . . . it turns out that for a lot of people “evangelical” is itself just another cultural signifier like those boots and those pork rinds, a tribal designation rather than a serious adherence to Christian teachings.

That’s not to say that this particular group of self-identified evangelicals don’t believe in anything. They undoubtedly go to church from time to time and think of themselves as Christians. It’s just that they don’t actually live their lives in accordance to the Bible as Christian Right leaders have spent years indoctrinating the public to believe. They’re conservatives the way Donald Trump is conservative — authoritarian, intolerant and often cruel. 

A Christianity constantly looking for political answers to moral and spiritual problems gives believers an excuse to blame other people when they should be looking in the mirror.

But then the Christian Right has long been a political operation rather than a religious movement, hasn’t it?
 
This brings us to Trump’s most recent “outreach” to the religious right which took place last week in New York when Trump met with a large group of Christian leaders to set their minds at ease about his candidacy. . . . . he also sold himself as someone who would protect “religious liberty”—  the latest social conservative buzzword — with his Supreme Court picks which seemed to thrill the assembled church leaders.  

At the end of the meeting, Trump released a long list of religious right leaders as his “Evangelical advisory committee” including Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, a man who has been scathing in his criticism of Trump. (He torturously explained that he would agree to serve Hillary Clinton too because that’s what Jesus would do.)

Not everyone is buying it. This evangelical scholar suggests that the real believing evangelicals are being played:

What happened on Tuesday in New York was the theo-political equivalent of money laundering.  Dobson and his gang are making Trump clean so that he is worthy of evangelical votes.

So, all those white working class types who identify as evangelical but don’t go to church are being seduced by Trump’s crude nationalism and nativism, largely as result of religious leaders politicizing religion and turning it into a vehicle for their own secular power.  Now, after years of lectures about morality and personal rectitude in public life, they’ve sunk so low that they’re actually trying to convince the truly devout weekly church goers that this depraved demagogue is someone they should support.

 These people are making the spineless establishment Republicans look like saints by comparison.

When I look at Christian Right figures like James Dobson and Ralph Reed -  I met Reed years ago and he struck me as a conflicted closeted gay  and made my gaydar alarm go off the charts - it reinforces my desire to no longer call myself a Christian.  These foul people have become the face of Christianity and the so-called "good Christians" remain sitting on their hands doing little or noting to silence these hate merchants thus becoming by default complicit in the horrors they do and the harm they cause to so many. 

James Dobson Does Contortions to Support Donald Trump

I've never viewed George Will as inherently evil and his departure from the Republican Party indicates that he retains some level of morality and decency.  In sharp contrast is James Dobson, a man who has been marketing anti-LGBT hatred for decades and who truly makes the Pharisees of the New Testament look like pillars of honesty and decency.  As Will has made the moral decision to leave the GOP, Dobson has engaged in mental and opportunist contortions to find a way to endorse Donald Trump who met with Dobson and other hate group leaders this past week. The full degree of Dobson's hypocrisy and disingenuousness is his pronouncement that Trump "recently accepted a relationship with Christ."  Pardon me momentarily as I run to the bathroom to vomit!!!  The only positive aspect of Dobson's backing of Trump is that it makes it all the more difficult for those who still want to stick their heads in the sand to ignore the fact that there are few more un-Christian and dishonest than those of the professional Christian class.  The nastiest whores and prostitutes have more integrity than James Dobson and his fellow Christofascists.  A piece in Politico looks at Dobson's willing self-prostitution to Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump: Born-again Christian? The presumptive Republican nominee captured a significant number of evangelical voters during the Republican primary, and that may be due to recently accepting “a relationship with Christ,” according to evangelical leader James Dobson.

Trump met with hundreds of evangelical leaders in New York earlier this week, and while some well-known figures — such as Liberty University president, Jerry Falwell Jr. — have endorsed the candidate, others are more hesitant to do so.
 However, Dobson, a Christian psychologist and founder of the Focus on the Family group, said he knows “the person who led [Trump] to Christ. And that’s fairly recent.” “I don’t know when it was, but it has not been long,” Dobson said in an interview with Pennsylvania megachurch pastor Michael Anthony following that meeting in New York. ”I believe he really made a commitment, but he’s a baby Christian.” Of the meeting, Dobson — who was previously critical of Trump — said, "I certainly liked what I saw today," POLITICO previously reported.

“I’ve been a Christian, and I love Christianity and the evangelicals have been so incredibly supportive,” Trump said in the private session with evangelicals this week, according to audio obtained by POLITICO. “Don’t forget, when I ran, and all of a sudden I went to states that were highly evangelical, like as an example, South Carolina, and they said, ‘Well, Trump won’t win this state because it’s evangelical’ … not only did I win, I won in a landslide.”

Dobson and Trump deserve each other.  Both are narcissists - although Trump takes it to a far higher level - and utterly dishonest.  Over the years there has been no lie to big or too file for Dobson to pass up if it furthers his agenda of turning America into a Christian theocracy - a theocracy in which, of course, Dobson will play a leading role.  Both Trump and Dobson are despicable human beings.