Trump Cranks Religion to 11 As Impeachment Looms

No segment of American society has been more loyal to the morally bankrupt Donald Trump than evangelical Christians.  Having followed the so-called "Christian Right" - which is neither Christian nor right about anything - it's of little surprise.  Among evangelical leaders - I refer to them as "professional Christians" - it has never been about spreading the gospel message, especially how one is to care for the less fortunate, but rather all about self-enrichment and worldly power.  Their followers are similarly toxic inasmuch as their main motivations are based on animus to others rather than an embrace of Christ's message. In may ways, they and Donald Trump were made for each other: they, like Trump are frauds and their leaders little more than snake oil merchants and con-artists.  Trump seemingly saw these folks for what they are and has used promises of special rights and policies harmful to those they dislike to cement an unholy alliance.  Now, with the impeachment process intensifying, Trump has turned up his shameless courting of these morally deficit individuals.  A piece in Rewire looks at Trump's actions which are reminiscent of those of Richard Nixon when faced with the specter of impeachment.  Here are excerpts:

As Trump’s impeachment fears intensify and the House formalizes its impeachment process, the White House has cranked the religion up to eleven. On Tuesday, twenty-five evangelical megachurch leaders prayed for and with Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, in a grand spectacle. So much for Jesus’s condemnation of public prayer as hypocrisy in his Sermon on the Mount. 

Then, on Thursday night, the White House announced that one of those preachers, Paula White, a televangelist, is joining the White House staff on the Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Earlier in October, Mike Pompeo and Bill Barr delivered now infamous speeches tying the administration to Christian nationalism.

This religious revival is all about impeachment. The hour-long prayer session included a standing ovation and was widely covered by Fox News and other conservative outlets, who explicitly characterized the prayers as a pushback against impeachment.

Nixon turned to religion as the Watergate wave broke over his administration. His first address to the nation about “the Watergate affair” announced the resignations of three senior staffers and the firing of White House Counsel John Dean. It was the first time a president ended a speech with the phrase “God bless America.” The phrase was not merely an offhand religious remark, but part of an overt appeal to Chrisitans all over the nation, a reminder that Nixon was one of them: “I ask for your prayers to help me in everything that I do throughout the days of my presidency. God bless America and God bless each and every one of you.” Nixon also managed to mention “Christmas”—in April—and work in the phrase “God-given rights.”

Eleven months after the first Watergate/’God Bless America’ address, Nixon’s popularity plummeted and the noose of impeachment tightened, so he set off on a public relations tour to woo southern members of the House committee in charge of that impeachment. His first stop was the Grand Ole Opry, where he closed the evening by playing “God Bless America” on the piano so that the crowd would sing along.

Nixon used religion as a political tool throughout his career. Scholars credit him with bringing evangelicals into the GOP. He and Billy Graham used each other in a toxic relationship of religion, politics, and, as tapes later showed, anti-Semitism. Like Trump, Nixon invited evangelicals into the White House and the halls of power in ways previously unseen in a country that adopted the separation of state and church as a founding principle. However, even with that baseline piety, Nixon’s public displays of religion seemed to get more ostentatious as impeachment heated up.

But why? First, there’s a realpolitik element. Trump, like Nixon, is shoring up his base of evangelical support. “Don’t worry. Your leaders still support me. I even gave one a White House salary,” he seems to be saying. This is both un-American and irreligious. When religion is used as a political weapon, it becomes weakened and tainted

The separation of state and church is regularly used to keep religion out of government. But it’s also meant to allow religion to remain free of the taint of the day-to-day political power struggle. This is why Madison wrote that “religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.” Politicians taint religion by using it as a political tool. Indeed, Madison’s writing is a prescient warning about Donald Trump. 

The second reason Trump is cranking up the religion is, as I explain in The Founding Myth, to distract the masses and cloak a criminal in the mantle of religion. Religion can be simple shorthand for tribal allegiance, but it also has the power to distract from important issues that actually affect governance and to serve as a rhetorical substitute for genuine morality.

Nixon asked people to pray for him and ended with “God bless America” to remind the nation that he was religious and therefore moral, and thus either innocent or deserving of forgiveness. Trump is doing the same with his gaggle of evangelical bootlickers. The only difference is that with Trump, evangelicals seem content to concede that he is not moral, but an “imperfect vessel” doing their god’s will. We’ll have to wait and see, as Trump continues his campaign of religious pandering, whether he’s done enough to earn the “deserving of forgiveness” label. One thing is certain, more public piety is in our future.

Christian Activist Group Demands Criminal Probe of Jerry Falwell Jr.

This blog has previously noted stories concerning Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s possible use of Liberty University's assets to enrich himself, his family and friends - especially two young and very attractive young men - who have received sweetheart deals worth millions of dollars. Now, Falwell finds himself with a liberal Christian activist organization calling on the IRS - which polices non-profits spinning off wealth to corporate board members and officers - and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring to investigate Falwell and the potential misuse and misappropriation of Liberty University assets. In the process, the organization also accuses Falwell of un-Christian conduct and perverting the Christian message.  Frankly, Falwell business transactions involving Liberty assets would seem to deserve a thorough investigation. NBC News looks at the continuing scandal following Falwell.  Here are story excerpts:

An activist Christian group has launched a petition drive to get the Virginia Attorney General’s office and the IRS to open criminal investigations into Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.

So far Faithful America has collected 10,875 signatures and hopes to reach their goal of 15,000 by this weekend.

“The response has been great so far, more than we expected,” said Rev. Nathan Empsall, the organization’s Campaigns Director. “But that shouldn't come as a surprise given how fed up so many Christians are with the way Falwell and others have hijacked the Gospel to represent their hypocritical own self-interests rather than Christ's teachings of love and justice.”

The drive comes in the wake of exposés by Politico, The Miami Herald and other news outlets which have accused Falwell of, among other things, using the influential and ultra-conservative Christian college to enrich himself and his cronies.

Falwell is also alleged to have engaged in activities that run counter to the Christian college’s ethos like sharing photos of his wife, Becki, in French maid costume with employees, graphically describing their sex life, and drinking and dancing in Miami Beach nightspots.

Empsall, who is also a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of St. Paul & St. James in New Haven, Connecticut, said Faithful America has been critical of Falwell before “when he’s made, for example, anti-Islamic statements.”

“The difference is now we are calling for a criminal investigation because there has been this snowball of stories that point out that there is a potential pattern of criminal self-dealing at Liberty University,” he said. “We’ve always known this guy is an extremist and a hypocrite and he should face social consequences for that. This is the first time we’re calling for legal consequences.”

NBC News has reached out to Liberty University spokesman Scott Lamb and Liberty University Board of Trustees chairman Dr. Jerry Prevo for a response.

Faithful America is a left-of-center group that was founded in 2004 and affiliated with the National Council of Churches of Christ.

Previously, it launched a petition drive demanding the resignation of Franklin Graham from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for “preaching hatred and Trumpism” and another urging publisher HarperCollins to drop Focus on the Family founder James Dobson “for his discrimination against women, immigrants, and the LGBT community.”

Franklin Graham: Working to Spread the Christofascist Cancer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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