Trump Evangelicals Have Sold Their Souls

Trump and the morally bankrupt Jerry Falwell, Jr.

I make no bones about the fact that I do not like evangelical Christians in general and those that voted for an continue to support Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer.  Part of this dislike may be an unconscious residue of my Catholic upbringing where Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals were viewed with suspicion, particularly their rejection of evolution and other matters science that the Catholic Church had found a way to accommodate.  This latent dislike/distrust became much more pronounced once I began studying evangelical "family values" organizations both in my days as a Republican activist and later after I "came out."  What I discovered was that there were few in society more willing to lie and disseminate deliberate falsehoods that the self-anointed who quickly condemn others and seem best defined by their hatred of others.  Fast forward to 2016 and evangelical responsibility for putting Donald Trump - a thoroughly foul and morally bankrupt individual - in the White House.  As Michael Gerson points out in two columns, one in the Washington Post and a far lengthier one in the Atlantic, Trump supporting evangelicals have sold their souls and, more tellingly for the future, have made the term evangelical synonymous with moral bankruptcy and a denigration of what is supposed to be the Gospel message.  Gerson was raised as an evangelical himself, but like me, he puts truth, honesty and morality above partisanship and a self-created martyrdom complex.  He believes that religion - especially Christianity - can be a positive good, while I dissent and view religion as a whole as a negative force in the world.  Trump supporting evangelicals reinforce my negative assessment.  First, these highlights from the Post column:

With their reactions to the Roy Moore candidacy and the Stormy Daniels scandal, the Trump evangelicals have scaled the heights of hypocrisy to the summit. Family-values conservatives who dismiss credible accusations of sexual abuse and wink at hush money for a porn star have ceased to represent family values in any meaningful sense. They have made a national joke of moral standards that were once, presumably, deeply held. At least when a Democrat violated them.

My friend Pete Wehner proposes a thought experiment: If a militant atheist were to design a trap with the goal of discrediting evangelical Christians, could they do better than Moore and Daniels? It would take some consideration.

But this barely scratches the surface of the moral compromises being made. The problem with Trumpism is not only the transparent excuses it offers (and requires others to accept) for shoddy and offensive behavior. As I argue in the Atlantic , the deeper issue is the distinctly non-Christian substance of President Trump’s values. His unapologetic materialism. His tribalism and hatred for “the other.”

The very thing that should repel evangelicals — Trump’s dehumanization of others — is what seems to fascinate and attract some conservative Christians. It is yet another example of discrediting hypocrisy.

Identifying evangelicalism with Trump’s ethno-populism may have some short-term benefits. But public influence eventually depends on the persuasiveness of public arguments. And close ties to Trump will eventually be disastrous to causes that evangelicals care about. Pro-life arguments are discredited by an association with misogyny. Arguments for religious liberty are discredited by association with anti-Muslim bias. Arguments for family values are discredited by nativist disdain for migrant families. Trump evangelicals are blessing the destruction of public norms on civility, decency and the importance of public character.  . . . . . And the ultimate harm is to the reputation of faith itself. 

The far longer piece in The Atlantic looks at the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of Trump supporting evangelicals in much more detail.  Here are excerpts:

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president [Trump] won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.
 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. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues. [T]he 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. 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.’ ” So it is little wonder that last year the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, an 87-year-old ministry, dropped the “E word” from its name, becoming the Princeton Christian Fellowship: Too many students had identified the term with conservative political ideology. I was raised in an evangelical home, went to an evangelical church and high school, and began following Christ as a teen. After attending Georgetown University for a year, I transferred to Wheaton College in Illinois—sometimes called “the Harvard of evangelical Protestantism”—where I studied theology. I worked at an evangelical nonprofit, Prison Fellowship, before becoming a staffer for Senator Dan Coats of Indiana (a fellow Wheaton alum). On Capitol Hill, I found many evangelical partners in trying to define a “compassionate conservatism.” And as a policy adviser and the chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush, I saw how evangelical leaders such as Rick and Kay Warren could be principled, tireless advocates in the global fight against aids. Those experiences make me hesitant to abandon the word evangelical. They also make seeing the defilement of that word all the more painful. The corruption of a political party is regrettable. The corruption of a religious tradition by politics is tragic, shaming those who participate in it. How did something so important and admirable become so disgraced? . . . . The answer extends back some 150 years, and involves cultural and political shifts that long pre-date Donald Trump. It is the story of how an influential and culturally confident religious movement became a marginalized and anxious minority seeking political protection under the wing of a man such as Trump, the least traditionally Christian figure—in temperament, behavior, and evident belief—to assume the presidency in living memory. In the years before the Civil War, a connection between moralism and a concern for social justice was generally assumed among Northern evangelicals. They variously militated for temperance, humane treatment of the mentally disabled, and prison reform. But mainly they militated for the end of slavery. . . . . 
 “I rest my opposition to slavery upon the one-bloodism of the New Testament. All men are equal, because they are of one equal blood.” In the mid-19th century, evangelicalism was the predominant religious tradition in America—a faith assured of its social position, confident in its divine calling, welcoming of progress, and hopeful about the future. Fifty years later, it was losing intellectual and social ground on every front. Twenty-five years beyond that, it had become a national joke.

But it was a series of momentous intellectual developments that most effectively drove a wedge between evangelicalism and elite culture. Higher criticism of the Bible—a scholarly movement out of Germany that picked apart the human sources and development of ancient texts—called into question the roots, accuracy, and historicity of the book that constituted the ultimate source of evangelical authority. At the same time, the theory of evolution advanced a new account of human origin. Advocates of evolution, as well as those who denied it most vigorously, took the theory as an alternative to religious accounts—and in many cases to Christian belief itself.

Religious progressives sought common ground between the Christian faith and the new science and higher criticism. Many combined their faith with the Social Gospel—a postmillennialism drained of the miraculous, with social reform taking the place of the Second Coming.

Religious conservatives, by contrast, rebelled against this strategy of accommodation in a series of firings and heresy trials designed to maintain control of seminaries. (Woodrow Wilson’s uncle James lost his job at Columbia Theological Seminary for accepting evolution as compatible with the Bible.) But these tactics generally backfired, and seminary after seminary, college after college, fell under the influence of modern scientific and cultural assumptions. To contest progressive ideas, the religiously orthodox published a series of books called The Fundamentals. Hence the term fundamentalism, conceived in a spirit of desperate reaction.

In reacting against higher criticism, it became simplistic and overliteral in its reading of scripture. In reacting against evolution, it became anti-scientific in its general orientation. In reacting against the Social Gospel, it came to regard the whole concept of social justice as a dangerous liberal idea. This last point constituted what some scholars have called the “Great Reversal,” which took place from about 1900 to 1930.

The banishment of fundamentalism from the cultural mainstream culminated dramatically in a Tennessee courthouse in 1925. William Jennings Bryan, the most prominent Christian politician of his time, was set against Clarence Darrow and the theory of evolution at the Scopes “monkey trial,” in which a Tennessee educator was tried for teaching the theory in high school. Bryan won the case but not the country.

[T]he 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. . . . This attitude was happily exploited by the modern GOP. Evangelicals who were alienated by the pro-choice secularism of Democratic presidential nominees were effectively courted to join the Reagan coalition.

[M]odern evangelicalism has an important intellectual piece missing. . . . . 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. . . . If you want to call yourself pro-life on abortion, then you have to oppose the dehumanization of migrants. If you criticize the devaluation of life by euthanasia, then you must criticize the devaluation of life by racism. If you want to be regarded as pro-family, then you have to support access to health care. And vice versa. The doctrinal whole requires a broad, consistent view of justice . . .

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. . . . . In this Christian political movement, Christian theology is emphatically not the primary motivating factor.

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.

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. . . . 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.

This was foolish and unnecessary. There is no meaningful theological difference between creation by divine intervention and creation by natural selection; both are consistent with belief in a purposeful universe, and with serious interpretation of biblical texts.

The consequences, especially for younger generations, are considerable. According to a recent survey by Barna, a Christian research firm, more than half of churchgoing Christian teens believe that “the church seems to reject much of what science tells us about the world.” This may be one reason that, in America, the youngest age cohorts are the least religiously affiliated, which will change the nation’s baseline of religiosity over time. 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.

[E]vangelicals would prove highly vulnerable to a message of resentful, declinist populism. Donald Trump could almost have been echoing the apocalyptic warnings of Metaxas and Graham when he declared, “Our country’s going to hell.” . . . . Given Trump’s general level of religious knowledge, he likely had no idea that he was adapting premillennialism to populism. But when the candidate talked of an America in decline and headed toward destruction, which could be returned to greatness only by recovering the certainties of the past, he was strumming resonant chords of evangelical conviction.
Trump consistently depicts evangelicals as they depict themselves: a mistreated minority, in need of a defender who plays by worldly rules.

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—winking at trashy behavior and encouraging the unraveling of social restraints. . . . Having given politics pride of place, these evangelical leaders have ceased to be moral leaders in any meaningful sense.

For a package of political benefits, 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?

The irony may well be that evangelicals will ultimately bear much of the responsibility for the death of Christianity as a majority phenomenon in America.  While the younger generations are fleeing Christianity and religion in general the most rapidly, older generations are beginning to shift away  as well. If this happens, it will be a case of divine justice, so to speak. 

Alabama Vote Will Define Republicans - and Christians

The Millennial generation which includes those born between 1982 and 2000 - now the largest generation numerically in America - is becoming increasingly anti-Republican and anti-Christianity. Indeed, if Millennials voted in numbers comparable to reactionary elderly voters, many Republicans at state and federal office levels would be swept from office (their increased voter turnout in Virginia last month made a large difference in the outcome).  While their voting turnout needs to improve, they are actively showing their disdain for Christianity and organized religion in general by simply walking away.  A piece in Living Lutheran, the official magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, looks at the exodus of Millennials from religious denominations and their attitudes towards Christianity.  The piece looks at data compiled by Pew Research Center, Barna Groupand others.  Here are the findings:

87% see Christians as judgmental

85% see Christians as hypocrites

91% see Christians as anti-LGBT

36% of those 27 and younger have completely walked away from religious denominations 

34% of those 35 and under have completely walked away from religious denominations 

20% align with evangelical Protestants versus 30% of the so-called silent generation

16% align with Catholicism versus 24% of the so-called silent generation

In this context, we have the Alabama special senatorial election on December 12, 2017, which in the minds of many will strongly impact how many see the Republican Party and self-professed "Christians."  A column in the Washington Post looks at how this election will have long lasting effects beyond those that fixate Mitch McConnell, Der Trumpenführer, and other equally foul and morally bankrupt Republicans.  Here are column excerpts:

Just how disordered have our politics become? And how off-the-rails is the Republican Party?

The good people of Alabama will help answer these questions in next Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate. The whole world will be watching them decide whether party and ideology top decency and moderation; whether there is simply no end to the extremism Republican voters are willing to tolerate in their ranks; and whether a majority in their state believe that being a credibly accused sexual predator is better than being a Democrat.  They will also be telling us what they think the word “Christian” means. 

The outcome is likely to be determined by the consciences of conservatives, and of a specific kind: those who see Mitt Romney and Republicans like him as far more reflective of their moral sense than is Judge Roy Moore, the GOP’s ethically defective nominee whose indifference to the law led him to be removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court twice.  . . .  The former Massachusetts governor tweeted this week that having Moore in the Senate “would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation.”

For good measure, Bannon not only accused Romney of avoiding service in Vietnam. He also trafficked in the anti-Mormon sentiments common among some evangelical Christians.

Thanks to Bannon, we now know that this is no longer just a race between Moore and Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney who, depending on the poll, is either slightly behind or slightly ahead. It is, in very large part, a decision by Republicans about who they are.

It is also an important choice for devoted Christians. Do they really want their faith defined by those who tried to justify Moore’s alleged relationships with young teenagers by invoking the Holy Family and saying that Joseph was older than Mary . . . . ? Or by arguing that an interest in young girls might be explained by a desire for “a large family,” as a professor at Ouachita Baptist University wrote?

Do those saying such things not realize that they are helping to discredit the very tradition they claim to be defending? No atheist could inflict this much damage to the faith.

Moore’s promoters, including Bannon, want to convince Alabama Republicans that since a Jones triumph will be taken as a rebuke to Trump, they have an obligation to fall into line. But the long-term harm to the GOP from a Moore victory will be far greater than from one lost Senate seat. Bannon is right to cast the election as being about “honor and integrity.” When it comes to these virtues, it is not a close call.

The Death of Christianity in the America

I have often made the argument that if Christianity dies in America it will be because of the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who are literally killing the Christian brand with many, but especially the younger generations.  They have made Christianity a message of hate and hypocrisy and their long success in conning the public into believing that they are nice and decent people seems to be coming to an end.  I was very surprised to see this argument made in a column in of all places Baptist News Global.  Here are highlights from the column which is spot on: 

Christianity has died in the hands of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism ceased being a religious faith tradition following Jesus’ teachings concerning justice for the betterment of humanity when it made a Faustian bargain for the sake of political influence. The beauty of the gospel message — of love, of peace and of fraternity — has been murdered by the ambitions of Trumpish flimflammers who have sold their souls for expediency. No greater proof is needed of the death of Christianity than the rush to defend a child molester in order to maintain a majority in the U.S. Senate.

Evangelicals have constructed an exclusive interpretation which fuses and confuses white supremacy with salvation. Only those from the dominant culture, along with their supposed inferiors who with colonized minds embrace assimilation, can be saved. But their salvation damns Jesus.

To save Jesus from those claiming to be his heirs, we must wrench him from the hands of those who use him as a façade from which to hide their phobias — their fear of blacks, their fear of the undocumented, their fear of Muslims, their fear of everything queer.

Evangelicalism has ceased to be a faith perspective rooted on Jesus the Christ and has become a political movement whose beliefs repudiate all Jesus advocated. A message of hate permeates their pronouncements, evident in sulphurous proclamations like the Nashville Statement, which elevates centuries of sexual dysfunctionalities since the days of Augustine by imposing them upon Holy Writ. They condemn as sin those who express love outside the evangelical anti-body straight jacket.

Christianity at a profit is an abomination before all that is Holy. From their gilded pedestals erected in white centers of wealth and power, they gaslight all to believe they are the ones being persecuted because of their faith.

Evangelicalism’s embrace of a new age of ignorance, blames homosexuality for Harvey’s rage rather than considering the scientific consequences climate change has on the number of increasing storms of greater and greater ferocity. To ignore the damage caused to God’s creation so the few can profit in raping Mother Earth causes celebrations in the fiery pits of Gehenna.

Evangelicalism forsakes holding a sexual predator, an adulterer, a liar and a racist accountable, instead serving as a shield against those who question POTUS’ immorality because of some warped reincarnation of Cyrus. Laying holy hands upon the incarnation of the very vices Jesus condemned to advance a political agenda — instead of rebuking and chastising in loving prayer — has prostituted the gospel in exchange for the victory of a Supreme Court pick.

Evangelicalism either remained silent or actually supported Charlottesville goose steppers because they protect their white privilege with the doublespeak of preserving heritage, leading them to equate opponents of fascist movements with the purveyors of hatred.

You might wonder if my condemnation is too harsh. It is not, for the Spirit of the Lord has convicted me to shout from the mountaintop how God’s precious children are being devoured by the hatred and bigotry of those who have positioned themselves as the voice of God in America.

Like many women and men of good will who still struggle to believe, but not in the evangelical political agenda, I too no longer want or wish to be associated with an ideology responsible for tearing humanity apart. But if you, dear reader, still cling to a hate-mongering ideology, may I humbly suggest you get saved.

Wow!  And, yes, the author is correct.

14% of US Christians Left Their Churches After Trump's Election

Trump - a barometer for evangelical Christian moral bankruptcy

It would appear that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, is not only politically divisive but has also created division and an exodus of some evangelical Christians from their churches.  A Washington Post chartered survey found that 14% of church goers had left their churches since the November 2016 presidential election.  While the survey is not conclusive, the fact that 19% of evangelicals did not vote for the thrice married, serial adulterer, and pathological liar who embodies a number of the seven deadly sins suggests that some of those leaving their churches might be those fed up with their denomination's moral bankruptcy as evidenced by support of Der Trumpenführer.  A piece in The Independent looks at the survey findings.  Here are highlights:

The 2016 presidential contest highlighted just how deeply divided the United States is over both politics and religion. The vast majority of white evangelicals (81 percent) voted for Trump. A strong majority of religious “nones” — those who do not identify with any religious tradition — voted for Clinton (68 percent).

Of course, the divide does not stop at the vote. For example, between May 2016 and February 2017, almost every religious group came to oppose Trump’s proposed temporary ban on allowing Muslims into the US. The exception? White evangelical Protestants, who increased their level of support for the policy. The largest gap on this issue is the one between evangelicals and nones, which grew from 28 to 41 percentage points.

How did we get here? One answer is sorting. That is, people may reevaluate their religious membership when they sense political (or other) disagreement, leaving their houses of worship more homogeneous organisations. While this happens across the religious spectrum, here we highlight new evidence that disagreement over Trump’s candidacy actually led some evangelicals to leave their church.

Of those who said they had attended a house of worship in September, 14 percent reported that they had left that particular church by mid-November. . . . . This represents an enormous amount of churn in the religious economy.

But was that churn influenced by politics? To find out if they attended a “political church,” we asked respondents if their clergy addressed any of eight political topics. We also asked, more generally, if seeing evidence of politics reminded them of how divisive politics has become. About 15 percent of those who believe that American politics has become divisive left their political houses of worship. Of those who don’t think politics is inherently divisive, close to none left their political house of worship.

[T]hose who felt that they and their clergy disagreed over Trump in September were the most likely to report leaving that house of worship by November.

More specifically, for 20 years, liberal to moderate evangelicals have been leaving their churches because they disagree with the Christian right. This is important because it allows us to recognise that this sorting process is plural, local, and continual. It is not something owned by the left or right, but a regular and expected part of life in all religious organisations.

Are these patterns troubling? Observers’ opinions differ. Religious institutions have long been practice grounds for skills later turned toward politics. On the one hand, if people are leaving houses of worship because of political disagreements, they may not be learning the skills needed to talk across differences and participate in politics.

Personally, I hope that Trump and the evangelicals who showed their moral bankruptcy by supporting him ultimately hasten the demise of Christianity.  I look forward to the day when Christians are a minority in America and begin to experience the vile mistreatment they have dished out to others for centuries.  Karma could prove to be a major bitch.   

Trump and an Emboldened Christian Right

When he met with Christofascist leaders last summer in New York, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer, sold his soul - assuming he has one - in order to win the support of these foul theocrats and, more importantly, their networks that could be used to motivate their robotic followers to go to the polls and vote for Trump.  Trump has kept his promises to these hate merchants and, to date, his appointments have included a who's who of anti-LGBT zealots.  Therefore, it is no surprise that the Christofacists feel quite triumphal at the moment.  Long term, their willingness to support a Vladimir Putin backed candidate may come back to haunt them, just as happened to German denominations that rallied to Adolph Hitler. A piece in New York Magazine looks at the current moment and what I hope could be the longer term downfall of the Christofascists.  Here are excerpts:

Before the 2016 elections, amidst evidence of some stress in conservative evangelical leadership circles over the religious implications of the community’s strong support for Donald Trump, the possibility that this could represent the Last Hurrah of the Christian Right as we have known it was a pretty lively topic of discussion. Personally, after years of challenging the wishful-thinking premise of secular folk and religious progressives alike that the Christian Right was on the decline, I argued in October that the spiritual gymnastics associated with supporting Trump might stretch the alliance of religious and nonreligious conservatives to the breaking point.

The big question for those triumphant Trumpites of the Cloth will be whether and how quickly he delivers on his big promises to this particular constituency.

For conservative evangelical clergy, the shiny bauble held out by Trump that they most value is probably repeal of the Johnson Amendment that prevents outright ex officio electioneering by leaders of tax-exempt nonprofit organizations. That will require a statute. But the fact that this involves the Internal Revenue Service will probably be enough to justify nestling the provision into one of the budget reconciliation bills congressional Republicans will probably seek to pass next year, making it both relatively inconspicuous and filibuster-proof. If Republicans fail to do this, it will be noticed with dismay by its intended beneficiaries.

The bigger item probably most valued by politically active conservative evangelical laypeople is a reliable vote on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and if possible Obergefell v. Hodges (the decision that legalized same-sex marriage) — though the latter is probably a stretch —while also strengthening “religious liberty” protections for conservative Christians who don’t want to contaminate themselves with same-sex marriage rites or access to contraceptives by women. Thanks to the current vacancy on the Court, this is one promise Trump will be expected to keep almost immediately, and if he double-crosses the Christian Right with a nominee that is less than 100 percent certain on these issues, its Senate allies could credibly threaten to prevent confirmation.

Aside from repeal of the Johnson Amendment, fully defunding Planned Parenthood will be a must-pass budget item for the Christian Right. And they will be very avid for Trump to back Education secretary Betsy DeVos (assuming she is confirmed) to the hilt as she tries to convert federal education funding into a lever for convincing states to move public-school dollars into private-school vouchers.

All in all, 2017 looks like it will be a happy, fulfilling year for the culture warriors of the Christian Right, but there are some potential stumbling blocks in the path of a renewed “marriage of convenience” with the GOP.

Evangelical leaders are divided over immigration policy, which is likely to be a hot-button issue after the inauguration, as it was during the campaign. And any fresh incidents of Trumpian crudeness and overt hostility to Christian values could serve as an irritant as well. You can expect Mike Pence to serve as a soothing ambassador to this constituency if the Boss gets all heathenish again.

But the long-term tensions between the religious and political interests of conservative evangelicals, and their tendency to conflate those interests, have hardly been dispelled by an election victory.

If in the next few years the Christian Right turns out to be “losers,” as Trump would put it — either losing in elections and policy fights, or by losing their own professed convictions — the crisis people like Moore sensed when the Trump candidacy slouched towards Bethlehem to be born could return in a big-league way.

Of course, the Christofascist ignore the reality that their homophobia, racism, and general misogyny are repulsive to the younger generations and that to the extent they "win" with Trump, they in reality only accelerate the flight of people from religion and Christianity in particular.  I continue to believe that the Christofascists will ultimately kill Christianity - which overall will be a good thing. 

Is Back Trump the Religious Right's Last Gasp?

Trump surrounded by evangelical Christian "leaders"

As regular readers know, I view the erroneously named "Christian Right" - the Christofascists', if you will - to be one of the cancers that is causing huge harm to America.  This group of hate-filled, ignorance embracing individuals claim to uphold "family values" yet stigmatize others who look different, believe differently, or had the provenance of being born outside of America.  Now, these people who claim to want to protect the "sanctity of marriage" are backing a thrice married, serial adulterer, who many would argue epitomizes what one should never want to be.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at how the 2016 presidential election might be the last gasp of a thankfully dying demographic.  Here are highlights:

I don’t need to tell you about the latest revelation of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s views and behavior toward women. I won’t tell you these comments, because they’re not appropriate for any ages.

But I will tell you that the American evangelical movement and Religious Right won’t be the same after the 2016 presidential election.

I asked him [Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention] what percentage of Southern Baptists he thinks will vote for Trump. He answered 80 percent. Yet Moore has become the most vocal evangelical critic of Trump. What gives?

Moore explained that he knows many Southern Baptists older than 50 who oppose Trump — and nearly all of them are women. Among Southern Baptists younger than 40, Moore says, almost all of them he knows are appalled by Trump. That means, then, that most white Southern Baptist men older than 50 back Trump, at least given the alternative of Hillary Clinton from the Democratic Party.

Some older evangelical leaders argue that Trump is a “morally good” choice and that he “lives a life of loving and helping others as Jesus taught in the great commandment.” Closer examination, though, continues to reveal the New York businessman as beholden to the unholy trinity of money, sex and power.

Younger evangelicals and former evangelicals have taken note. An aspiring president of the United States can brag about sexually assaulting women and still claim the backing of many if not most of the older stalwarts in the Religious Right.

Trump can maintain nearly all his evangelical support in the voting booth despite unrepentant lying and cheating. But these same leaders still insist on a traditional, biblical ethic when it comes to views on same-sex marriage in evangelical ministries.

The latest evidence of Trump’s depravity hits at the same time one of the leading evangelical para church ministries, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship,has come under scrutiny for requiring staff to believe that God intends sex to be enjoyed only in the context of marriage between one man and one woman. 

To the older evangelicals planning to vote for Trump: You can try to explain the difference in electing a president and hiring a 23-year-old college graduate to evangelize students. You can say we’re electing a commander in chief and not a Sunday school teacher. You can say that God often raises up pagan leaders to deliver his people from their enemies. But no one is fooled by your arguments.

They can see you will apparently excuse anything in a Republican nominee . . . . And they will conclude that they don’t really need to listen to you when it comes to “traditional, biblical ethics.”

The 2016 presidential election will be remembered as the last spasm of energy from the Religious Right before its overdue death.

I for one hope that the author's prediction proves true.  Religion, especially fundamentalist religion, both Christian and Muslim, is a toxic cancer.  The sooner it dies, the better off America and the world will be.

Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship USA to Purge Gay-Friendly Staff

We hear the Christofascists constantly rail against Islam and, of course, ISIS.  Yet, but for the level of violence they employ, these same "godly Christians"are just as intolerant and driven by contempt of those who believe differently as are Islamic extremists.  Hatred of others and discrimination against "non-believers" are a common theme and characteristic.  A case in point is Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship USA which has announced that it will purge all staff who do not adhere to the organization's virulent opposition to gay rights and, same sex marriage in particular. Since the organization has chapters on some 667 college campuses, one can only hope that its discriminatory views will lead to loss of university funding and/or qualification for use of college/university facilities.  Time magazine looks at the new jihad against those who support same sex CIVIL marriage.  Here are highlights:

One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on Nov. 11.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA says that it will start a process for “involuntary terminations” for any staffer who comes forward to disagree with its positions on human sexuality, which holds that any sexual activity outside of a husband and wife is immoral.

“We internally categorize these as involuntary terminations due to misalignment with InterVarsity ministry principles, which is a category we use for people who leave for theological and philosophy of ministry disagreements,” Greg Jao, an InterVarsity vice president and director of campus engagement, told TIME in an email.

InterVarsity has also said that staffers should only share views publicly that are consistent with its positions, though it’s unclear if that means someone could be fired for posting on Facebook, for example. Outlined in an internal 20-page paper, the positions include injunctions against divorce and sex before marriage, though critics say the biggest effect will be among younger staffers who support gay marriage—in essence, making it something of a theological purge.

Bianca Louie, 26, led the InterVarsity campus fellowship at Mills College, a women’s liberal arts school in Oakland and her alma mater. When it became clear several months ago that the policy would go into effect, Louie realized she had to leave, after four years of working with the group. She is not sure what will happen to the outreach she and others worked to create at Mills. “I don’t know how InterVarsity can do ministry on campus with integrity anymore,” she says. “Mills is a women’s college with inclusive trans policies, and higher ed is overall making more efforts to be inclusive and safe for LGBTQ students. … I could see us getting kicked off campus because of this.”

Louie and about ten other InterVarsity staff formed an anonymous Queer Collective earlier this year to organize on behalf of staff, students, and alumni who felt unsafe under the new policy.

InterVarsity has more than 1,000 chapters on 667 college campuses around the country. More than 41,000 students and faculty were actively involved in organization in the last school year, and donations topped $80 million last fiscal year.

In its description of sexual attraction, identity, and behavior, the paper states, “Scripture is very clear that God’s intention for sexual expression is to be between a husband and wife in marriage. Every other sexual practice is outside of God’s plan and therefore is a distortion of God’s loving design for humanity.”

The position paper also outlined theological positions against divorce, sex before marriage, pornography, cohabitation and sexual abuse, but the practical application of the study focused on implications for the LGBTQ community. The July letter states: “We expect that all staff will ‘believe and behave in a manner consonant with our “Theological Summary of Human Sexuality” paper,’ as described by the Code of Conduct.

InterVarsity’s decision reaches beyond just its campus ministry. InterVarsity Press, a division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, is a prominent evangelical publisher that has published bestsellers like J.I. Packer’s Knowing God, John Stott’s Basic Christianity, and many theological commentaries and biblical reference books used at evangelical colleges. “InterVarsity employment policies are for all employees, including employees of InterVarsity Press,” . . .

Evangelicals are increasingly divided over gay marriage, and support is rising, especially in the younger generations. One in four white evangelicals support gay marriage, according to the Pew Research Center, more than double the support from ten years ago, and nearly half of millennial evangelicals favor or strongly favor gay marriage.

The move is also another sign of a trend in evangelical circles for stricter orthodoxy.

For Ginny Prince, 32, the consequences of the new policy are very difficult to discuss. Until last week, she was an assistant area director near Oakland, and had worked for InterVarsity for seven years. She is an LGBTQ ally—and she has a transgender child. Already, she says, her husband has walked away from the faith largely because of how the church has dealt with the LGBTQ community. She knew she had to tell her supervisor she did not support the new policy. “This was very painful for everybody,” Prince says. “I got fired … I sent an email and said, I cannot align, and I think that this policy is discriminatory, and I cannot align. That was it. We cried, we cried really hard my last day.”

As noted, I hope the organization finds itself kicked off of many campuses.  The other irony is that among the under 30 generations, young adults are leaving religion in droves with anti-LGBT bigotry being a commonly cited reason for walking away from Christianity.  This bigoted move will likely accelerate this trend an, with luck, will hasten the death of conservative Christianity in America. 

Why Americans are Leaving Religion - and Not Coming Back

A new PRRI report should make the professional Christian crowd worry about their future ability to continue live well by fleecing the ignorant and gullible. Now, 25% of Americans claim no religious affiliation.  Among those under 30 years of age, 39% have left religion.  Some denominations need to worry more than others, one being the Roman Catholic Church which suffers the highest rate of member defections.  Not only are more and more Americans walking away from religion, but they are also unlikely to ever come back according to the report findings. The reasons are many, but one strong thread is disgust with Christofascist and Catholic Church homophobia and attacks on LGBT citizens.   The report ought to also send a message to the Republican Party that its continued self-prostitution to Christofascists will be a losing proposition if the share of the "Nones" continues to grow as a percentage of the population.  Here are some report findings:

The American religious landscape has undergone substantial changes in recent years. However, one of the most consequential shifts in American religion has been the rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans. This trend emerged in the early 1990s. In 1991, only six percent of Americans identified their religious affiliation as “none,” and that number had not moved much since the early 1970s. By the end of the 1990s, 14% of the public claimed no religious affiliation. The rate of religious change accelerated further during the late 2000s and early 2010s, reaching 20% by 2012. Today, one-quarter (25%) of Americans claim no formal religious identity, making this group the single largest “religious group” in the U.S.

Today, nearly four in ten (39%) young adults (ages 18-29) are religiously unaffiliated—three times the unaffiliated rate (13%) among seniors (ages 65 and older). While previous generations were also more likely to be religiously unaffiliated in their twenties, young adults today are nearly four times as likely as young adults a generation ago to identify as religiously unaffiliated.

Among young adults, the religiously unaffiliated dwarf the percentages of other religious identifications: Catholic (15%), white evangelical Protestant (9%), white mainline Protestant (8%), black Protestant (7%), other non-white Protestants (11%), and affiliation with a non-Christian religion (7%).

[W]hile younger adults are more likely to report growing up without a religious identity than seniors (13% vs. 4%, respectively), the vast majority of unaffiliated Americans formerly identified with a particular religion.

While non-white Protestants and non-Christian religious groups have remained fairly stable, white Protestants and Catholics have all experienced declines, with Catholics suffering the largest decline among major religious groups: a 10-percentage point loss overall. Nearly one-third (31%) of Americans report being raised in a Catholic household, but only about one in five (21%) Americans identify as Catholic currently. Thirteen percent of Americans report being former Catholics. . . .

The reasons Americans leave their childhood religion are varied, but a lack of belief in teaching of religion was the most commonly cited reason for disaffiliation. Among the reasons Americans identified as important motivations in leaving their childhood religion are: they stopped believing in the religion’s teachings (60%), their family was never that religious when they were growing up (32%), and their experience of negative religious teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people (29%).

Among those who left their childhood religion, women are twice as likely as men to say negative religious teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian individuals was a major reason they chose to leave their religion (40% vs. 20%, respectively). Women are also about twice as likely as men to cite the clergy sexual-abuse scandal as an important reason they left their childhood faith (26% vs. 13%, respectively).

Young adults (age 18 to 29) who left their childhood religion are about three times more likely than seniors (age 65 and older) to say negative religious teachings about and treatment of the gay and lesbian community was a primary reason for leaving their childhood faith (39% vs 12%, respectively).

Notably, those who were raised Catholic are more likely than those raised in any other religion to cite negative religious treatment of gay and lesbian people (39% vs. 29%, respectively) and the clergy sexual-abuse scandal (32% vs. 19%, respectively) as primary reasons they left the Church.

Overall, religiously unaffiliated and affiliated Americans hold significantly different views about the merits of organized religion, both for themselves and for society as a whole. About two-thirds (66%) of unaffiliated Americans agree “religion causes more problems in society than it solves.”

Americans who are unaffiliated also reject the notion that religion plays a crucial role in providing a moral foundation for children. Approximately two-thirds (66%) of unaffiliated Americans believe it is not important for children to be brought up in a religion so they can learn good values.

[R]elatively few unaffiliated Americans report they regularly devote much time to thinking about God or religion. More than seven in ten (72%) unaffiliated Americans say that in their day-to-day life, they do not spend much time thinking about God or religion.Religiously unaffiliated Americans are also less likely than religious Americans to link belief in God to moral behavior. Only about one in five (21%) unaffiliated Americans say it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values. More than three-quarters (77%) reject this idea, including 61% who strongly reject it.

Rejectionists, who account for the majority (58%) of all unaffiliated Americans, say religion is not personally important in their lives and believe religion as a whole does more harm than good in society.

The political preferences of religiously unaffiliated Americans depart notably from those of most other religious groups. A plurality (48%) of religiously unaffiliated Americans are politically independent. One-third of the unaffiliated (33%) are Democrats and only 12% identify as Republican. Although the religiously unaffiliated are more likely to identify as independent than Democratic, they are about twice as likely to be politically liberal (41%) as they are to be conservative (21%). Three in ten (30%) are politically moderate.

Clinton and Trump’s voting coalitions differ considerably in terms of each candidate’s proportion of support from white Christians, non-white Christians, and the religiously unaffiliated. Among Hillary Clinton’s supporters, seven percent are white evangelical Protestant, 12% are white mainline Protestant, 11% are white Catholic, 30% are religiously unaffiliated, and 15% are black Protestant. In contrast, among Donald Trump’s supporters, 33% are white evangelical Protestant, 19% are white mainline Protestant, 18% are white Catholic, 13% are religiously unaffiliated, and just one percent are black Protestant.

Personally, I agree with the Nones who view religion as a net evil.  I most certainly disagree with the religious who claim that religion is needed to learn moral values, especially in light of the lies and hatred of others that are pillars of organized Christianity.  Overall, the more people who identify as "Nones" the better off the nation will be.

Texas Baptist Pastor Prays for injured Orlando Survivors to Die

Pastor Donnie Romero - the face of hate

I know that I am beating a dead horse, but if one wants to know how the Republican Party became such a foul organization, I say again, look no farther than the rise of the Christofascists in the party. The decline of the GOP directly correlates with the rise of the self-congratulatory, self-centered, hate-filled "godly folk" in the party.  To get an idea of just how foul the Christofascists are in fact, Pastor Donnie Romero of Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth gave us an up close glimpse this past weekend as he celebrated the deaths of 49 LGBT individuals and their allies in Orlando.  But he did not stop there.  He prayed that the other survivors struggling to recover in Orlando hospitals would also die.  

Yes, I know that Christian apologist will bristle and say, but real Christians don't speak that way.  But where are they in condemning this hideous mindset and demanding to make statements of condemnation on news cameras and elsewhere. The "good Germans" allowed Hitler to destroy Germany.  Nowadays, we see the "good Christians" allowing horrible monsters destroy Christianity. For myself, I care nothing about the survival of Christianity - over all I see it as a net evil in the world and its death cannot come soon enough.  But for those who still claim to be Christians and oppose hatred, their time for acting and stopping hate mongering in the name of God and Christ is running out.   Roughly a third of the under 30 generations have walked away from religion.  Rantings like that of Romero will accelerate the exodus.  With Romero, Tony Perkins, hate-filled Catholic bishops who protect sexual predators are becoming the face of Christianity.  If the "good Christians" not stir themselves and get off their self-satisfied asses, sooner or later they will find themselves members of a nearly dead religion and deservedly so.

But back to Romero.  The Raw Story looks at his ugly sermon which is all too representative of what is the norm in fundamentalist churches and denominations.   Here are highlights:

In the wake of the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida last week, many right-wing Christian religious leaders have celebrated the shooter’s actions, but a Texas pastor is taking that to a whole new level.

Pastor Donnie Romero of Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth told his flock he agrees “100 percent” with Baptist Pastor Roger Jimenez, who made news with his sermon advocating that the government should use a firing squad to “blow their brains out.”

“These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now,” Romero said in the Sunday sermon. “And I’ll take it a step further, because I heard on the news today, that there are still several dozen of these queers in ICU and intensive care. And I will pray to God like I did this morning, I will do it tonight, I’ll pray that God will finish the job that that man started, and he will end their life, and by tomorrow morning they will all be burning in hell, just like the rest of them, so that they don’t get any more opportunity to go out and hurt little children.”

Romero went on to cite Sodom and Gomorrah, which he called the first ever “queer mass murder” and called out mega churches, whom he believes are too soft on preaching anti-gay sermons. Biblical scholars believe the “sin” in the story had nothing to do with homosexuality, rather it was about inhospitality.

In a twist, Romero was ordained by Pastor Steve Anderson, who also made the list of anti-LGBT religious leaders standing with the actions of the shooter. 

As several friends have noted, one can only wonder how long it will be before we see Romero's name in a list of convicted pastors - either for embezzlement of funds or sexual abuse of minors.  I did get a complimentary copy of Free Thought Today published by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and was amazed to see two full pages of arrests and convictions of crimes by the clergy under the "Black collar Crime Blotter" - something that is published in each issue.  And, yes,  a large percentage of the crimes involved sexual abuse of children and conservative, anti-gay denominations were involved in a majority of the cases.  

US Catholic Bishops Are Ignoring Pope Francis' Message

The Republican Party is not the only group that is denying reality and changing attitudes towards LGBT individuals.  In lock step you will find U.S. Catholic bishops continuing to double down on anti-gay bigotry - as well as discrimination against divorced Catholics in the case of the despicable Bishop of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia.  This despite the message that Pope Francis has seemingly tried to send that business as usual is not going to cut it, especially as the Catholic Church suffers membership loses across the globe except in backward, uneducated regions of Africa (ignorance and lack of education being a prerequisite to embracing the Christian narrative).   A piece in the National Catholic Reporter looks at the U.S. Bishops' subversion of Pope Francis' message.  Here are excerpts:

There have been a number of recent firings of gay or lesbian employees within the Catholic church in the United States. Principals, teachers and a variety of parish ministers are among those who have been fired. Gay priests and women religious have been dismissed from significant positions of influence. Fr. Warren Hall, a gay priest and chaplain at Seton Hall University, was removed from his position by the archbishop of Newark, N.J.

Hall has written a letter to Pope Francis requesting a meeting with the LGBT community within the church when Pope Francis visits the United States in September. In his letter, Hall writes, "Good teachers are being fired, pastoral and compassionate priests and religious women are being silenced ... and good, faith-filled people are leaving the Church as they witness all of this happening."

It is clear that bishops have the power to make these decisions and to hire and fire for any reason or for no reason. Having the power to do something, however, is not the same thing as it being the right thing to do. It is interesting to note that the bishop, not the school, made the decision regarding Hall.
Schools, hospitals, universities, etc. have often been pleased or satisfied with their own employees, yet bishops have seen fit to intervene. There is also the issue of firing people who are doing a good job, as Hall himself notes.

[T]he bishops appear to be ignoring the words of Pope Francis. Pope Francis has made no attempt to change any church doctrine, and there is no indication he has any plans to. Conservatives should be happy about this. However, Pope Francis has also made clear that there does need to be a dramatic change in the way the church does business. Gone are the days of wholesale condemnation. Instead, we need to live in the world and embrace God's creatures and creation as good. A new openness is needed . . .

Why are the bishops not hearing or responding to this message? Do they simply not get it? Do they just not agree with the pope and are choosing to defy or ignore the Francis message? Do they believe that Francis won't be around that long and they will just wait it out until a pope more to their liking comes along?

What they need to understand is that this is not just about Francis. This is about coming to grips with the world around them. Bishops need to recognize that today's culture has moved to a different place on a number of issues. They can choose to stand on the sidelines and become more and more irrelevant. In doing so, they will find that fewer and fewer members even of the faithful will bother to listen to what they have to say.

The alternative is to be more welcoming to the world around them. Bishops need to stop the knee-jerk reaction of forcefully condemning every statement that they don't understand or disagree with. . . . How refreshing it would be if the bishops were to choose to be a part of the world rather than isolating themselves and ensuring that their utterances are not seen as constructive or helpful to the wider world around them. Ultimately, the bishops need to shed their attachment to power and learn to serve as did the Lord Jesus.

Will the bishops get the message?  Probably not.  The majority are likely self-loathing closet cases who cannot stand the fact that some gays have come to terms with their sexuality.  They are bitter, nasty men who have no concept of the real world and who surround themselves with sycophants  and pandering ass kissers. It is they, along with other Christofascists who are slowly but surely killing Christianity.