Some White Evangelicals are Difficult to Recognize as Christians

Despite its many problems and failings, Catholicism continues to push for a social gospel that attempts to mitigate the sufferings of the poor, the homeless and refugees. Such cannot be said for many of today's white evangelicals in the United States who feign piety, express shock at Donald Trump's foul language, yet totally betray the social message demanded by the Gospels by virtue of the policies they support.  In a column in the Washington Post, former Republican Michael Gerson who was raised as an evangelical lets loose on the modern day Pharisees who comprise perhaps the vast majority of white evangelicals. I often say that one cannot be a decent moral person and be a member.supporter of today's Republican Party.  Gerson more or less states that one cannot be a Trump supporter and be a Christian.  Here are column excerpts:

After a recent speech by President Trump, Hardesty — who is a conservative, pro-Trump Democrat — received phone calls from Christians complaining of the president’s use of the term “goddamn.” In a letter to Trump, Hardesty pronounced himself “appalled by the fact that you chose to use the Lord’s name in vain on two separate occasions.”

This is hardly a national groundswell for decorum. But I don’t want to be dismissive of people revolted by the steaming, stinking cesspool of Trump’s public rhetoric. The problem is one of proportion.

Hardesty admitted that evangelicals Christians had been willing to overlook many of the president’s character flaws, but he ventured that on the matter of blasphemy, Trump’s “evangelical base might be far less forgiving.”

Consider this statement in the light of some recent developments:

*The Trump administration seems intent on sending to Congress a more than $4 billion package of budget cuts focused on diplomacy and foreign-assistance spending. These proposed reductions would likely affect efforts to fight the spread of Ebola, programs to encourage food security and nutrition across Africa, aid to countries taking the brunt of the refugee crisis, and democracy support in Venezuela, Ukraine and Tibet.

*[Trump] The president continues to vilify refugees as national security threats without the slightest bit of evidence. This year, the Trump administration capped the number of refugees who can resettle in the United States at 30,000 . . . . And the administration is now considering cutting that number to nearly zero next year.

*Along the southern border, the Trump administration has tightened the rules on asylum, making it more difficult for applicants to seek protection when family members face threats, and barring migrants seeking asylum if they passed through a third country while making their trek. The administration’s policy of family separation, its abusive treatment of migrants, its policy confusion and its general incompetence have contributed to a humanitarian crisis on both sides of the border.

There is an obvious response to Hardesty and other offended evangelical Christians.

Massive budget cuts to hunger-relief programs in Africa, refusing to take in desperate Syrian refugees and separating crying children from their parents at the border are tolerable, but using the Lord’s name in vain is a bridge too far? Pathological lying, spreading conspiracy theories, misogyny, making racist comments and dehumanizing others are permissible, but swearing somehow crosses the line?

This kind of Pharisaical preference for rules over humans reveals a large gap of spiritual education. In a poll conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, only 25 percent of white evangelical Christians said the United States has a responsibility to accept refugees, while 65 percent of those not affiliated with a religion affirmed that duty. . . . this reveals cruelty, corruption and hypocrisy at the heart of the Christian faith.

The problem does not lie in Christianity but in the moral formation of Christians. Are they getting their view of refugees from Christian sources? Or are they taking their view from Fox News, talk radio and Trump? I suspect the latter. And the worship of political idols is ultimately a spiritual problem — a different kind of blasphemy.

Many white evangelical Christians hold a faith that appeals to the comfortable rather than siding with the afflicted. They have allied themselves with bigots and nativists, risking the reputation of the gospel itself. And, in some very public ways, they are difficult to recognize as Christians at all.

Unfortunately, nothing seems likely to change evangelicals.  Thus, all one can do is hope that the flight from religion accelerates and that in time evangelicals shrink as a percentage of the population and that their toxic influence wanes. When that day comes, they best hope that they don't receive the kind of treatment that have inflicted on others.

Catholics Are Paying the Price For Selling Their Souls to Evangelicals

In addition to being a former Republican I am also a former Catholic.  My departure from Catholicism was prompted by several things, including the horrific sex abuse scandal that continues to reverberate across the globe with few if any bishops and cardinals having received punishment for aiding and abetting sexual predators.  Other reasons include the Church's continued embrace of 12th Century beliefs on sexuality and the lie that one can "pray away the gay," something I tried for decades with zero success, but much self-hate and self-loathing along the way.   Add to this the Church's continued anti-gay jihad.  Only a sick masochist  would remain Catholic if they are gay.  Despite these criticisms of the Church, I always respected the Church's social gospel teachings, something that seemingly is devoid among the majority of evangelical Christians.  As some Catholics have aligned themselves with evangelicals and embraced today's Republican Party, they have rejected the Church social gospel and, in my view, embraced moral bankruptcy.  Paul Ryan perhaps best personifies this, but there are many others.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the moral price ties to evangelicals has taken on Catholics and, I believe, Catholicism.  Here are excerpts:

In 1994, 39 church leaders and scholars — some Catholics, some evangelical Protestants — published a statement of reconciliation. . . . . These were the leaders and the elites: the pastors and priests, professors and bishops, notables and worthies from each side of the great schism. Together, and for what they saw as the greater good, they would overcome the old hostilities dividing rank-and-file pew-sitters.

They had a reason for dramatic measures. For decades, evangelicals and Catholics had struggled to work together even on political issues both groups took seriously, such as abortion and prayer in schools. Old animosities divided them, and mistrust poisoned attempts at cooperation. 

But a new generation of rightward activists, intellectuals and politicians mobilized during the culture wars, attracting Catholics and evangelicals to their ranks. Eventually, thanks to the work of groups like ECT and the pressure of ongoing polarization, relations between Catholics and evangelicals grew so warm that it now seems hard to recall these struggles. But the political pact between evangelicals and Catholics also came with significant hazards. It has, especially recently, become a source of anxiety for the Catholic leaders who helped convene the alliance in the first place. For all their success building a new coalition on the right, evangelical and Catholic doctrines are still distinct. Working together meant that one party would have to make concessions to the other. And so far, Catholic teaching has given the most ground.
 Today, working with evangelicals, a group that identifies overwhelmingly with the Republican Party , means that Catholics must operate within the political agenda of the GOP.

The close quarters produced a new breed of politically evangelicalized Catholic candidates and officeholders who have little use for the church’s social teaching (which includes support for organized labor , immigrants and the poor) but adhere vehemently to its teaching on issues related to sexuality. 
 Among these new Catholics, seemingly custom-made for the GOP, are House Speaker Paul Ryan, a onetime fan of the intensely anti-religious, free-market thinker Ayn Rand; former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who radically shrank his state’s nutritional assistance program and rebuffed Louisiana bishops’ attempt to halt an execution scheduled for Ash Wednesday ; and Rep. Dave Brat, a Virginian who describes himself, dizzyingly, as Catholic, Calvinist and libertarian . This brand of Catholic, a perfect fit with America’s conservative movement, would supposedly “remake” the GOP.

But instead of carrying Catholicism’s compassionate approach to social programs into the party, the Catholics who’ve joined the Republican ranks seem to have adjusted their faith to the party’s interests, at least where economic matters are concerned. Church authorities have taken notice. Though Ryan has enjoyed some support from more conservative church leaders, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has repeatedly issued letters of correction to Ryan’s austere budget proposals, urging Congress in a 2012 letter to remember that “a just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons.” 

Similar statements have increasingly come from Republican politicians seeking to distance themselves from Pope Francis’s teachings in order to remain closer to GOP orthodoxy. During the 2016 presidential primaries, disavowing the pope became a kind of ritual for Catholic candidates.
It’s one thing to insist, as Kennedy did, that church and state are simply separate; it’s another to add that the church is in fact wrong and the state right.
 In July, the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a close confidant of Pope Francis and a top Vatican official, indicted such evangelical-Catholic collaboration in an article published with a Protestant co-author in La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal reviewed by the Vatican before publication. . . . His article was widely read to mean that the church hierarchy had become disillusioned with the 24-year-old political cooperation pact, and Vatican-watchers saw the hand of the pope.

Pope Francis And The Right-Wing Bubble

While Pope Francis has yet to do anything to change the Roman Catholic Church's anti-gay, anti-women, and sex obsessed dogma - much of which traces back to the 13th century - it is nonetheless most entertaining to see him making pin pricks to the GOP bubble that is (i) tethered from objective reality, and (ii) mostly in direct contradiction to the Gospel message.  A piece in  Salon looks at the phenomenon. Here are excerpts:

Despite all the talk that Pope Francis’ address to Congress wouldn’t be political or partisan, it turns out it was both. And, as I predicted here in Salon, it definitely leaned to one side of the aisle. In fact, if you were a conservative Republican, Thursday morning in the Congress was not your finest moment, as Pope Francis laid bare all the ways that the Republican agenda counters Catholic social teaching, from its harsh treatment of immigrants to its fossil fuel-burning disdain for the natural world.

And Francis’ call for politicians to work for the common good was an implicit rebuke to the do-nothing, obstructionist GOP agenda that’s in service to their corporatist, Chamber of Commerce overlords.
Here are the five key moments in Francis’ speech that made conservatives squirm more than any others:

The shout-out to Dorothy Day. Francis commended four Americans in particular, whom he held up as examples of pursuing the common good: Abraham Lincoln, for his pursuit of liberty; Martin Luther King Jr., for his commitment to nonviolence and pluralism; Trappist monk Thomas Merton, for his commitment to dialogue and peace; and Dorothy Day, for her “social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed.” . . . None of them are exactly conservative, but Day in particular is noted as a radical social activist. . . . Day was outspoken in her support of pacifism and labor rights.

 The abortion switcheroo. In defiance of the specific guidance not to try to score political points by clapping at partisan applause lines in Francis’ speech, congressional conservatives leapt to their feet the moment Francis delivered the Vatican’s standard coded language about abortion, mentioning “our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.” Imagine their shock when he immediately followed that with, “This conviction had led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty.” Psych.

Calling arms deals “money drenched in blood.” Speaking of death, what about all those arms deals the Republicans are so fond of? Francis wanted to know who is selling the bad guys all these weapons and why: “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” The answer, according to the pontiff, is “money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.” I’m sure the GOP and all the defense contractors who give them money will get right on that.

Reminding the GOP we’re all foreigners. As in his speech at the White House on Tuesday, Francis felt the need to once again remind those who are making intolerance toward immigrants their political stock-in-trade that they, like him, are likely the descendants of immigrant families.
In one of the most moving passages of his speech, Francis said, “Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves. In a word, if we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities.”

Confronting the climate naysayers. Francis made it clear that combating climate change, development and technology can coexist. He explicitly rebuked many conservative critics of his climate change encyclical “Laudato si,” who claim that he is anti-commerce and wants to stifle development or reduce the world to subsistence-level farming to stop climate change. “The right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable,” he said, adding, “In this regard, I am confident that America’s outstanding academic and research institutions can make a vital contribution in the years ahead.”

On the plus for conservatives side, Francis did talk about the need for “the voice of faith to continue to be heard,” but in the case of this particular voice, conservatives probably wish he would just be quiet.