Category: Christian America

When the Buck Stops

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As the leader of his powerful Western democracy, he had been elected on a sizeable margin. His governing style was described as flamboyant, opportunistic and populist. A thrice-married man and serial adulterer, he was a larger-than-life personality – a celebrity in his own right. Rules didn’t apply to him because when you’re a star, you can do whatever you please. He was a groper, and defended other sexual harassers loyal to him. He was a showman who could be humorous, entertaining or intimidating and bullying. His audacity to say whatever came into his mind was hailed as a sign of honesty and guts. His supporters praised his combativeness projecting the image of swift, decisive action.  His detractors accused him of lying, cronyism, bigotry, and amorality. He tore up international agreements negotiated in good faith. During COVID, his response to the pandemic “ranks among the worst public health failures in the country’s history” with many thousands of avoidable deaths. And yet, he flaunted lockdown restrictions.  He was by no means a religious person, but mouthed enough of the right words to win over the religious crowd. He led a charmed life, always coming out on top in fights that would doom another politician. Then came a day when he was out of office. Still, he tried to cling to power, and remained the center of political attention.

Lies? Yes, too many to count. But the core of the matter was “the abuse of power that preceded them.” He made crony appointments based on personal loyalty rather than suitability for the job. He was indifferent to allegations of sexual harassment in his staff, because his only concern was shoring up his own position. His administration had “no public interest, no moral principle or governing priority that could ever trump one man’s appetite for power and his personal vanity”. One article said his party “should hang its head in shame for foisting on us a man so wholly unfit for office that he had to be dragged from it kicking and screaming and threatening to burn everything to the ground.”

Who is this man, Donald Trump? Yes, but here I’ve referred to Boris Johnson. “The Tory party subordinated its history, its judgment and its political identity in service of one man’s monstrous ego,” The Guardian commented. Steve Benen of MSNBC put into the American perspective. British conservatives, confronted with a scandal-plagued leader, concluded they could no longer tolerate the constant stream of disgraces and indignities… [t]hey concluded that their leader’s record of dishonesty and misconduct was something they could no longer even try to defend.”

“They call him Britain Trump,” the former President ineloquently once said of his British peer. The knives are out now for BoJo. With the J6 Committee’s probing and forthcoming Justice Department referrals, we can only hope the comparison remains consistent. Except that BoJo’s downfall was being a clownish fluffer.  Trump’s downfall was in spite of him being a criminal blowhard. At least in his case, hopefully the buck will stop in jail…

I’m No Christian Nationalist (But I Play One On TV)

~ phroneticchristian ~ 4 Comments

That’s Robert Jeffress. He would have us believe he is simply a patriot. But his First Baptist of Dallas is a prime example of a Christian church using sacred space for the worship of the nation rather than God. Like its Freedom Sunday, where the whole service was a Pageant of Christian Nationalism, replete with military color guard and salute to our Armed Forces amidst a flag-waving congregation.

“The New York Times has libeled me by characterizing me as a Christian Nationalist”, complains Ralph Drollinger, who runs a ministry to Capitol Hill. If it looks like a duck… yet Jeffress refuses to come out of the closet. And Drollinger claims Christian Nationalism is a fallacy. But not all Christian Nationalists hide their true intent behind clerical robes. “So if Christian nationalism is something to be scared of, they’re lying to you,” declares Marjorie Taylor Greene. “Let’s demonize patriotism by calling it nationalism and associating that with Hitler. Ah, now let’s call it white nationalism,” sardonically said Rod Martin, one of the founders of the Conservative Baptist Network. “Then we’ll call it Christian nationalist so we’ll make it sound like you are the ayatollah. It is all designed to demonize you.” You see, the modern day Christian Taliban is a myth. If Christian Nationalism quacks like Hitler or the ayatollah…

“Listen long enough to any… left-wing group and you’ll believe [the secular] history of America…That version of history… ,” Jeffress preached, “is a complete myth!… America was founded predominantly… by Christians who wanted to build this foundation, this Christian nation, on the foundation of God’s will,” according to Jeffress. And so, the non-Christian Nationalist delivered a powerful rival liturgy to the Gospel story. The operative word is predominantly. There were fervent proto-evangelicals among the Founding Fathers, but there also were non-orthodox Deists and Unitarians, and a very large faction of non-religious influenced by the Enlightenment.

“It’s not in the Constitution!” Charlie Kirk was spouting his own brand of bullshit, this time ranting that “we should have church and state mixed together. Our Founding Fathers believed in that.”  They also agreed on the Constitution’s wording, but somehow left out any reference to “God”.  Jefferson didn’t create “separation between church and state” out of thin air. It didn’t start in 1802 with Jefferson’s Danbury letter. Take for example, the 1797 Barbary Treaty of Peace and Friendship:  “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…” It goes back further, to the Constitution of Virginia of 1776, which stated that “all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.” As if to make the right more definite, the final draft was changed from the toleration of free exercise of religion to its entitlement. 

America was not founded as a Christian nation. It was a nation of many Christians of all stripes – including repressed Roman Catholics, with several states at the time of the Constitution requiring a Protestant religious test oath to take office. And yes, there was a sizeable Jewish population in America during the American Revolutionary War, with many communities of free-born men, having been settled as early as the 1650s. “The Founders of this nation explicitly included Islam in their vision of the future of the republic”, according to a Library of Congress official. She cites as evidence the words of William Lancaster, a delegate to the North Carolina Convention, who on July 30, 1788, makes the following declaration: “But let us remember that we form a government for millions not yet in existence…. In the course of four or five hundred years, I do not know how it will work. This is most certain, that Papists may occupy that chair, and Mahometans may take it. I see nothing against it.”

“The storming of the Capitol cannot be understood outside the heresy of Christian nationalism peddled by the likes of Josh Hawley, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, and the blasphemies of the Jericho March”, writes Christianity Today’s Tish Warren. We’re only beginning to see the repercussions of church-state domination that the Founding Fathers were determined to avoid. Even after 130 years, the Puritans, extreme Calvinists who wanted religious liberty for themselves – but not others (Arminians, Jesuits and Quakers in particular) – cast a long shadow of intolerance. Regardless of the nice, ambiguous words they say, evangelicals/Christian Nationalists are trying to coerce a religious dystopia onto modern society. It didn’t work then and was discredited. What makes any rational think it will work now? Especially when their Christian Nationalist lies are so transparent to a majority of Americas who don’t want their dreadful God being imposed on them.

“We must oppose the Christian Taliban. I say this as a Christian.”

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Given my brief account of America’s original theocracy, let’s move on to the present day, shall we?

The title of this post is U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s response to remarks made by his House colleague, Lauren Boebert. (Boebert recently won her primary election with 65% of the vote). “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk,” the would-be Constitutional expert/high school drop-out complained. “The church is supposed to direct the government”. “We are about to get a very brutal real-world lesson in what it’s like to live in a country that doesn’t have that separation”, writes a constitutional law professor.

“We are a Christian nation, founded by Christians, and YES- we should legislate our faith on you. If you don’t like it, get out,” notes Lauren Witzke, who has endorsed making Trump king for life. (My daughter in Vancouver just applied for Canadian citizenship. It’s tempting to emigrate under her sponsorship. For the time being, I remain, and invite the Witzke-ite Christian Taliban of America to leave if you can’t tolerate a multi-faith, multi-cultural America).

Desires for a new American Theocracy are growing. And they’re not limited to Christian extremists. It pervades government, like Governor DeSantis’ “real history”.  Florida’s civics curriculum borrows heavily from David (Mister- history-which-wasn’t) Barton that it is a “misconception” that “the Founders desired a strict separation of church and state”. We see it in the Supreme Court’s religiously-motivated injection of conservative Christianity into law and governance. We see it in school districts whitewashing chattel slavery by calling it “involuntary relocation”.  Frederick Clarkson observes, “when Christian Right leaders talk about religious liberty, they often really mean theocratic supremacism of their own religious beliefs inscribed in government,” Writing in 1910, Emma Goldman observed: “The almost limitless capacity of Puritanism for evil is due to its entrenchment behind the State and the law. Pretending to safeguard the people against ‘immorality,’ it has impregnated the machinery of government and added to its usurpation of moral guardianship the legal censorship of our views, feelings, and even of our conduct.” Despite so much myth-making for the City On A Hill, Christian nationalists excise these unwelcome truths in crafting a New Israel origin narrative to propel their Biblical destiny of theocratic dominion.

“Do not fear theocracy,” Eric Metaxas assures. If “maniacal Christians took control of this country, they would make it safe for everybody else to be a part of this country.” The Christian re-monopolization of American spiritual and political power is happening today, and it doesn’t look anything as benign as Metaxas describes. Following Dobbs, Justice Thomas aimed his intrusive sights at contraception, same-sex marriage and other constitutional rights. Like David Barton with his historical eisegesis, Thomas runs roughshod over decades of stare decisis, claiming his predecessors were wrong. (Conveniently, they’re all dead now and unable to defend their rulings). We’ve seen enough to know there is plenty to fear from a Theocracy. We’re at the tip of the iceberg of cruelties.  Like a state’s draconian laws which deny an abortion to a 10 year-old who was raped, just waiting around until the fifth grader to die in childbirth. Because the “Biblical worldview” has decreed births through rape and incest are the “will of God”. The godly society this maniacal judge envisions will be helped along by his revanchism. No Metaxsas, theocracy would not make it safe for everybody else to be a part of this country.

“Insofar as there’s one God, and he has one son, and there is one way to salvation, and one way to the truth,” Nick (Nazi-Nick) Fuentes declared, “then that’s the way that the people running our society and writing the laws need to be and no other way” “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must,” according to pardoned felon Mike Flynn, “we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” The question then arises, whose Christianity should it be? Evangelicals would propose their brand. But whatever faith constitutes evangelicalism is a question with no definitive answer. Does it mean premillennialism, prosperity gospel, a seven day Creation, Sabbath-keeping, or even abstinence from alcohol? Unlike the Puritans who together fit their doctrine under one post-Anglican Calvinist umbrella, evangelicals comprise a constellation of orthodoxies loosely gathered under the rubric known as Bebbington. A framework so vague that many Catholics, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses could qualify as evangelicals. Evangelical sub-tribes are like groups looking at the sky from different planets. Same stars, disagreeing viewpoints. It is fruitless to frame a specifically “true” American identity if founded on the shifting sands of one “true” evangelical Christian identity.

What sort of church do they see imposed? Perhaps we should take a cue from Founding Father, James Madison, who wrote: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” Whose church? Who’s in charge? Maybe the Southern Baptists with 6 million members. Maybe the Roman Catholics with 60 million – and all reporting to one Holy Father.

“That there would be as many (or more) Roman Catholics in America than Protestants but they [Founding Fathers] did not set up this nation to prevent it. They intended the nation to be religiously pluralist.” These disparate and rival religious groups have managed a kumbaya work-around in the Christian Right, driven by a unifying political ideology rather than Christian orthodoxy or praxis that proclaims “My Kingdom is not of this world”.

Like the Puritans, the Christian Right began by espousing piety to God and wound up being the monster they preach against. Everyone sees this dangerous game of hypocrisy will end in common disaster, except they themselves. Theocracy is a chimera; look to the Puritans to see how a Utopia consumes others, and then itself. Perhaps we should all revisit Martin Niemoeller’s prophetic words:

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionis

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

The Perils of American Christian Theocracy: Then and Now.

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During last week, I read the bulletin for the upcoming holiday weekend, and decided to skip church. It reeked of patriotic religion, starting out with “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee”. Don’t get me wrong; I am a patriotic veteran, but Christian Nationalism has overtaken America– and the church is no exception.

If St. Paul could boast, “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees”, then I am an American of Americans. My direct ancestors escaped religious persecution in England during the Puritan Great Migration. Within their Puritan circles, they lived the “City On A Hill”. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded as a Christ-optia, essentially a theocracy. The Puritans pursued policies of rigidly policed morality to enforce a spiritually-correct society, guarding the purity of the ordinances of God against “tolerations of divers religions, or of one religion in segregant shapes”.  Religious intolerance made the Puritans the original Christian Taliban.

The Puritans tried, but soon failed, to be a monolithic religious body. Their Guiding Lights held a monopoly on spiritual and political power. The Puritans had a unitary vision: “one godly ruler, one godly church, and one godly path to heaven, with puritan ministers writing the guidebooks.” But they were a fissiparous crowd who disputed who had the correct Biblical world view. It wasn’t long before theocrats saw flaws in the theocracy of others. “It turns out that even puritans were not always sure who was puritan. They were much better at figuring out who was not, but even that could be difficult”.

Doctrinal disagreement soon broke up the godly elect into factions who deemed the others less godly. Amidst the ideological purgings, a great exodus ensued. Rev. John Davenport removed his church to New Haven Colony. Rev. Roger Williams was banished for “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions”, and took his congregation to Rhode Island. Rev. Thomas Hooker led his parish (including my 7th great grandfather) away to Hartford, Connecticut. Longstanding arguments over the “evidences” of conversion eventually split the Massachusetts Puritans in 1662, by way of the Half-Way Covenant. “All sides saw themselves as besieged by satanically inspired enemies, and Massachusetts nearly fell apart.”

“Intolerance was the way in which Puritan magistrates and ministers governed the colony.” My forebears sat at the heresy trial of Anne Hutchinson. Believing that God spoke to her by “an immediate voice”, Hutchinson is possibly the first recorded Charismatic in America. My ancestors presided over the death sentences at the Salem Witch trials. (Including my 2nd cousin 8 times removed, minister of Salem from 1680 to 1683 – the only clergyman executed for witchcraft.)  Coerced virtue led to punishments greater and lesser, including criticizing a minister, Sabbath-breaking, or talking during a dry hour-and-a-half sermon.  Repeat pew-sleepers were sentenced to be severely whipped. Worse were in store for “cursed sects of Christian heretics” like Quakers or Baptists who threatened to contaminate the purity of the colony. Intolerance of religious outsiders led them to be arrested, fined, imprisoned, branded, whipped, sold into slavery, or hanged. And from 1633 on, the Puritans bought, sold, and held enslaved Africans. They engaged in a terror campaign against the indigenous Pequot tribe. In one assault they killed 500 Pequot men, women, and children. A remorseless Puritan John Underhill quoted Old Testament verses to justify the slaughter, declaring that “sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents”.

The Puritans left England, persecuted by a state church intertwined with the government – and proceeded to repeat systematic religious intolerance in America. State-established religion and religious persecution go hand-in-hand. Theirs was a “Sweet Land of Liberty” – perhaps for them, but no others. The steady drumbeat of Puritan hyper-Calvinism left many in continuing doubt about their salvation, questioning whether their “works” were of God or the devil. What began as ascetic piety evolved into hypocrisy and appearance of righteousness.

The Puritan theocratic experience offers many forewarnings of what an America would resemble if Christian Rightists were to succeed in enforcing society’s conformance to divine rule. Whether a top-down capture of the 7 Mountains à la Dominionists, or over-stuffing institutions with Christian chiefs via Rushdoony/North Reconstructionism, the likelihood is that Trump or one of his fervent acolytes will take office in 2024. Intolerant Christian Rightists are on a victory roll. The survival of democracy in the near future makes the question urgently problematic. The next post will discuss this modern day Christian Taliban.

Praying and Singing Hymns to God

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You’d think by the title that this refers to Acts 16, where Paul and Silas were jailed in Philippi. But it’s about a 27 year-old named Tyler Dinsmoor. “He is in a concrete box, but is holding strong. He has his bible, and is singing Psalms!”

Dinsmoor had regularly been posting anti-LGBTQ+ death threats. “All homosexuals are child-rapists in wait, and all (every single one) should be put to death immediately”. What caught the authorities’ attention was his plan to attend a Pride Parade on the following day, “with the implication that he’s going to do something violent unless someone stops him”.

He was charged with felony civil rights malicious harassment with a hate crimes enhancement. Essentially, crimes motivated by bigotry which threaten reasonable fear of harm. (It so happens that he emblazoned the words “Bible Bigot” on his truck). Dinsmoor, who owns “a small Bible Christian family tannery”, remains in jail under a $1 million bail.

You read the words “Bible Christian” correctly. Dinsmoor is a fervent Christian, attending a church where the pastor preaches that homosexuals should be shot in the back of the head. If he had been able to carry out his fantasies, it would have received “the encouragement of those who share his religious and political views”.  Like the Christian Right-dominated Texas GOP, which just declared that President Biden was not legitimately elected, and that homosexuality is “abnormal”. Closer to home, a Give-Send-Go defense fund was started, claiming his only crime was hurting the feelings of a homosexual. Donations are now up to $27,000, with many Christians expressing sympathy with this God-fearing political prisoner.

Juxtapose this hero-worship – à la the martyred Ashley Babbitt – with the resentment directed towards the enemies of Christian Nationalism. Like at a Michigan local right-to-life organization, where someone busted glass windows and defaced the building with pink spray paint. “That “people that would do such a thing … what a sad state of affairs that groups like this ….can resort to terrorism and hate crimes,” the angry Director stated. I’m not condoning law-breaking, but can’t help noticing how Charisma News and other fishwrap are full of these White Christian victimization pieces.

A few months back, I blogged that evangelical churches have increasingly become nurseries of sedition – not simply against an Administration they hate, but more importantly, against the Jesus of the Gospels. This home-grown surge of Christian extremism is largely fomented by religious leaders – there are thousands and they are interwoven with extremists of all types. These pastors, teacher and “apostles” have long practiced stochastic terrorism from the pulpit are seeing their seeds of incitement come to fruition as real world violence. “We’re a mighty army. They’ve gotta listen. They can’t ignore us,” says Pastor Greg Locke – who was at the Capitol while it was being stormed. Inflammatory speech just hasn’t been enough – it seems the time has come to make people listen to God from a gun barrel. It reminds me of Harry Chapin’s ballad, “Sniper”:

The first words he spoke took the town by surprise.

One got Mrs. Gibbons above her right eye.

It blew her through the window wedged her against the door.

Reality poured from her face, staining the floor.

And evangelicals of all persuasions are praying and singing praise to God

Clear as White and Black

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A young black man was on his daily commute one morning recently, when a Miami patrolman pulled him over. Coming to the window, the (white) policeman took his keys away. He informed the motorist that his seatbelt hadn’t been fastened. “This is how you guys get killed out here”, Officer Friendly helpfully pointed out. The story doesn’t include whether the driver left a brown stain on his seat. But it shows how mightily scared he was. In a classic case of driving while black, he had every suspicion to suppose his drive to work would be taking a detour to eternity. Funny how traffic stops for minor violations have resulted in some 600 deaths in the past 5 years – with black victims disproportionately represented.

“We got a guy walking around with a gun that he could hurt a lot of people with, but he’s not breaking the law,” an Oklahoma sheriff remarked. A scruffy young white male had been reported meandering around a strip mall, armed with a loaded AR-15 and a revolver. He walked into an AT&T store, scaring employees and customers, who dialed 911 while running for their lives. The courthouse had already locked its doors when he tried to get in. Local police advised concerned citizens that its perfectly legal in Oklahoma to scare the shit out of normal people. In most places, it is legal provided the gun-nut doesn’t start shooting. He did have a set of brass knuckles and .50 caliber pistol. (Doesn’t everyone?) and those are illegal so he was arrested for that. “Terrified people called 911 again and again on the scary looking dude carrying a small arsenal, but it was all legal until cops found the brass knuckles and the .50 caliber handgun.”

Before you answer the following, think it over carefully:

Would the result be the same if their races were reversed?

Donald Trump assumes the legacy of Jack Hyles

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This post is about Jack Hyles, and it isn’t. It’s about all us within evangelical Christianity. I think it makes more sense to present the story in reverse order:

Jack Schaap just got out of Federal prison, where he did nine years of hard time for sexually abusing an underage girl. Schapp was lead pastor in one of America’s biggest churches. I went to Hammond, Indiana to his 15,000-member church in a Scooby Doo van with a bunch of laid-back Wheaton grad students just to observe an evening service. At the time, I didn’t know much about IFB (Independent Fundamentalist Baptist) churches, but learned all I needed from that evening. It was still when his father-in-law and predecessor Jack Hyles was pastor. We were advised to dress well – and although we left our tattered jeans at home, we stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the suits and ties, and ankle-length dresses. We were seated right in front of the “Preacher Boys”, apparently their version of spiritual apprenticeship. We learned later that the favored pet among them was Dave Hyles – the pastor kid. Brother Hyles harangued the congregation for half an hour or so, occasionally alluding to the Bible – and calling out people by name he reckoned weren’t paying close enough attention. Then came time for the “appeal” and mass baptism. One after another entered the alligator pit – but only after long-haired hippie types were shorn of their locks. It was surreal. Hyles died in 2001, rebuking sinners till the end while refusing to confess his own.

Schaap repeatedly used his authority as pastor and personal “counselor” to groom the minor – repeatedly initiating sex in his office, during a church youth conference, and at a secluded cabin. The court denied his two attempts to reduce his sentence, noting that he demonstrated little remorse in “trying to cover up and eradicate evidence”.  Neither did it go over well when his attorneys maintained the 16 year-old victim was just a slut. The church joined in shredding her reputation, submitting over one hundred letters asking for clemency – effusive in praise of their pastor-felon, yet not a word of compassion for the young girl. “You hurt my entire family,” she wrote. “We all trusted you. We went to church for our entire lives. Now, I am in counseling to deal with the constant anger, sadness, guilt, and shame that I feel.” So Jack did his time, albeit losing some good conduct reduction when reportedly caught with his hand fondling a woman’s crotch. His plans following release are not known. But with many still willing to “lift him up back on his feet”, I assume he will be restored to a pulpit somewhere.

A corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. It didn’t start with Schaap. The senior Hyles was a long-time adulterer until his death. Hyles the junior – still living and ministering faithfully within the IFB bubble – was an alleged serial rapist, reportedly being hustled off by his influential father to from one church to another in the wake of recurring scandals.  In 2020, reports emerged of screenshots a woman in her 20’s took purporting to show the 67 year-old – balding and pudgy – man bragging about his penis and wanting to masturbate online with her. “I’m the boss; I can do whatever I want”, he allegedly wrote. IFB churches may be conducive to this depravity, but they are not unique to it. As one victim stated, the experience made her “understand that these people exist everywhere,”

Like his father-in-law who demanded “100% Hyles” obedience and issued denials while rumors were swirling around him, Schaap exercised command control over his congregation. They absolved themselves from accountability to anyone but God. It’s not a rare occurrence among many within the evangelical cult. All of us nurture our own gardens of rotten fruit, and I point these out not to heap scorn, but to emphasize a truism of evangelicalism, with which Trumpism shares many cultic elements:

  • A strong authoritarian Leader unaccountable to anyone.
    • Invincibility of the Leader as “anointed”, who is never wrong..
    • Leader espouses morality, but does not live it inwardly.
    • Belief in the Leader’s word, regardless of reality.
    • Unquestioned loyalty to the authoritarian Spiritual Father.
    • A strong us-versus-them mentality.

Once during a sermon, Jack Hyles held up a cup embossed with skull and cross-bones, and clearly marked “Poison”. He called over a deacon and asked him to drink it. He gulped it down without hesitation. “People keep wondering why the evangelical church has been one of the staunchest supporters of Donald Trump”, asks Karen Spears Zacharias . She answers her own question: “Why not? Donald Trump is the legacy of Jack Hyles’s life and ministry.”

Why not? Because they are all personality cults. And dangerous. Because they gladly get drunk on kool-aid brought forth from an evil tree.

Pissing Into The Wind

~ phroneticchristian ~ 5 Comments
Train up a child in the way he should go:
Advert featuring Proverbs 22, used by the Uvalde massacre gun manufacturer

“The time to stop the next shooting is right now”. This past week, I’ve noticed a prophet in the biblical tradition speaking out against American gun idolatry. Beto O’Rourke confronted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at his press conference after Uvalde. . “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed,” he said. Amidst jeering and shouts for O’Rourke to shut up, Dan Patrick – Texas Lt. Governor, Southern Baptist, outspoken Christian, and politician with an  “A+” rating from the NRA–  stood up to tell O’Rourke, “You’re out of line and an embarrassment.”  Super-Christian and gun-lover Ted Cruz shamed Beto’s behavior as crass, embarrassing; “it was disgusting”, accusing him of a political stunt. O’Rourke was not dissuaded: “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday.”

It is the prophet’s duty to proclaim a message from God. It doesn’t always involve fore-telling; but forth-telling. The present is the kairotic moment of the prophet’s message. It is this day, and also for this today, that we are to listen, not to hang on predictions concerning tomorrow. There is an immediacy; an urgency in the prophetic word to respond by retracing our steps towards the Jesus waiting for us in the Gospels. Today, we need more people who speak honestly about our own blind spots – prophets to tweak the conscience of evangelicals and recapture the prophetic mission of the church. “The task of the prophetic imagination,” writes Walter Brueggemann, “is to cut through the royal numbness, to penetrate the self-deception so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.” [i] That’s exactly the prophet’s calling! It’s not a choice; it’s a divine obligation.

“Then they put their hands over their ears and began shouting.” Unlike St. Stephen in Acts 7, Beto wasn’t stoned, but he was escorted out with the mayor screaming he was “a sick son of a bitch”. Likewise, a quick review of biblical prophets discloses that their prophetic utterances did little more than piss off those mired in persistent disobedience. “Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him—you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.” (Acts 7:52-3)  Jesus suffered and died on the cross, having exposed the moral hypocrisy of the religious elite – the Pharisees – who appeared on the outside “to people as righteous but on the inside are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (Matt. 23-28).

A quick glimpse through Google for “white evangelical prophets” returns the glaringly obvious. Most of this soothsaying issues forth from the religious flotsam sitting at Donald Trump’s feet. False witnesses aside, I’ve known a few prophetic voices among evangelicals – most of which were scorned, vilified or cast out of the camp. Jim Wallis. Beth Moore. Shane Claiborne. Tony Campolo. And many others who spoke against guns through the centripetal urgings of the Holy Spirit. Divine Truth was entrusted to human truth-bearers. Like the late Sen. Mark Hatfield, who used his National Prayer Breakfast speech to condemn President Nixon for prolonging the Vietnam War. (And managing to piss off Nixon’s golf buddy, Billy Graham in the process). These modern day evangelical prophets gave voice because God spoke first. The words they spoke were of Someone Else. Confrontation was not something they set out to do, but something they had to do.

I place Beto O’Rourke squarely in that prophetic tradition. Beto spoke truth to power; to those who would rather cradle their AR-15 babies than elementary school children. “Stay cool. Run out the clock.. But don’t worry: this moment will be over soon”, was the advice Republican advisors were giving the wake of Uvalde mass shooting. Now here’s a fresh thought: let’s reduce mass shootings by getting more guns! In other words, do nothing in the shadow of death; then do more of the same. Like the Pharisees, evangelical moral perfectionists persist in their sanctimonious refusal to listen – or act in the slightest against gun idolatry. They are too busy Making America Great Again to bother about making childhood childhood again. And the waiting list of children to be blood-sacrificed on the evangelical altar to Moloch grows each day. Nothing stands in the way of AR-15 bullets– except those moved of the Spirit to speak truth to power. Pray that God raises up more prophets to expose the moral depravity of the religious elite! Bold prophets – who aren’t afraid to “spit” into the wind and proclaim “the time to stop the next shooting is right now”!.

[i] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001, p. 45.

The WOW factor…

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Hey Mom and Dad!

Tired of buying gifts that your kid just tosses aside as boring? Here’s a fun sensation that’s gonna grab your son’s attention like a bang!  Introducing the all-new Junior AR-15 assault rifle.

Don’t let this fool you – it might be kid-sized, but like its bigger brother, it packs one helluva whollop!  It shoots real bullets – just like Mommy and Daddy’s guns!  Ideal for graduations, birthdays, first communions – or those occasions when he seems a bit down and just needs a mommy hug and something to cheer him up.

Come and get this super-soaker guaranteed to cool his summer down.. This is one stress-reliever that keeps the WOW factor with the kids. Buy now and we’ll include “Why Everyone Needs an AR-15: A Guide for Kids” for free. This helpful AR-15 guide walks you through how awesome the Second Amendment is.

Take it from Sarah Palin: “an AR-15 makes a great gift – what more says ‘I love you’”?

Jesus and Dead Children

~ phroneticchristian ~ 3 Comments

Image yourself in Sunday School singing, “Jesus kills the little children”. Yet again, I return to a national crisis we should know the answer to. There will be a next time. Because there always is. And Christians do nothing but empty-hearted hand-wringing. “Such a heartbreaking tragedy. 14 students & a teacher were killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, TX, today,” tweeted Franklin Graham as the story broke.

God’s little sheep keep getting hurt. It’s the natural outcome of our demonically-twisted faith in God AND guns. “You’re supposed to have an AR-15. It’s biblical. So if you don’t have one, go get one,” an evangelical activist implores. “You can’t be a Christian if you don’t own a gun,” a parachurch honcho preached to an enthusiastic Texas church. The same God-fearing Texas where gun laws are the loosest in the country. And where a teenager in Uvalde, Texas got two semiautomatic rifles on his birthday and promptly emptied them into grade schoolers’ bodies. Twenty of the 26 victims were between the ages of five and six. A 15 year-old boy in Michigan was gifted a handgun for Christmas. He killed four students wounded seven. The Sandy Hook mass murderer fired 154 rounds in less than five minutes, claiming 26 lives – most of which were ages six and seven.

A school shooting survivor was asking, “do 2nd, 3rd, & 4th graders not have the right to feel safe at school?”  After Uvalde, President Biden likewise asked, “as a nation, we have to ask: when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? These are phrased rhetorically – meaning the question prompts its own answer. Jesus frequently uncovered the truth by answering a question with another – as in Matthew 12, where he showed “that the logical consequences of an extreme adherence to the law lead to the absurdity of a sheep being hurt or dying simply because it is the Sabbath day. His rhetorical question is the message; it exposes the wrongness it addresses. That the Pharisees knew this truth becomes evident as they grew indignant and tried ways to evade Jesus’ underlying message.  Because the real question is not literally the one posed, but rather a deeper question of ethical and spiritual ultimacy implicated by the first, which all understand as the real one to be answered. Pres. Biden comes to the point: When, in God’s name, will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” Like the Pharisees who think they know all the correct answers, evangelicals know the true answer to the marriage of their guns and religion, and evade it.

Über-preacher James MacArthur exclaims, “there is a war on children! This generation of leaders, the immoral people that are engaged in this massive assault on children are going to have to answer to God.” (And this from a pastor whose church harbored a child molester on staff.) Evangelicals claim these tragedies occur because the wicked and evil have removed God from public schools. And while evangelicals like Franklin Graham decry the “sin-sickened” state of America, they are busy lobbying to make it easier for the same morally unfit people to use these super-soaker weapons.

“Across the country, parents are putting their children to bed, reading stories, singing lullabies— and in the back of their minds, they’re worried about what might happen tomorrow after they drop their kids off at school”, wrote President Obama in the wake of Uvalde. I can hear the echo of the Pharisees in Tucker Carlson’s cynical response: Obama was desecrating the memory of recently murdered children with tired talking points of the Democratic Party.

Obama prophetically defines the real war on school children, which has the answer already in it. Meanwhile, their lifeless bodies keep piling up. It’s spiritually incomprehensible to be both so-called “pro-life” and pro-gun. Evangelicals don’t have a gun problem. They are modern day Pharisees who have a Jesus problem.

“There was a time when we might have thought that the mass shooting of an elementary school would have been the final straw. Targeting tiny children in their classrooms, randomly gunning them down in front of their friends who had to witness the carnage, the horror endured by the families of the victims would seem to be the sort of thing that would shock the collective conscience.””

Not anymore; not with evangelicals. Evangelicals are all about helping ‘protect families,’ no matter how many kids have to die. And they just don’t give a shit.