Pulitzer prize-winning author and historian Francis Fitzgerald’s classic The Evangelicals:: The Struggle to Shape America offers penetrating insight into the what I almost called ‘marriage’ (except that there is nothing honorable in this racist-powered, hell conceived, merger of political convenience …. the more Biblical term is ‘fornication’, as aptly demonstrated by one of its chief architects Jerry Fallwell Jr ) …between the Evangelicals and the Donald Trump presidency.
Fitzgerald tracks the Union between White evangelicals and the Republican Party from the days of the first Make-America-great-again President Ronald Reagan and does a terrific job analyzing its shaping factors coming to full bloom in the Trump years. She begins by defining the group from an outsider perspective, the term having morphed in usage sufficiently over time – a thing obvious enough to me in that I have heard so many ‘evangelicals’ use the term in the third person – a useful thing in avoiding accountability. Even Pat Robertson I have heard refer to ‘the evangelicals’ as if he is somehow excluded from the group. It might be useful to find someone who can speak about ‘us’ rather than ‘them’ in arriving at a solution.
There are several books that uncover the bedsheets of deception that mask the unholy alliance parading as a patriotic and moral collaboration of strange bedfellows, (most notably among them Sarah Posner’s Unholy: Why white evangelicals worship at the altar of Donald Trump and key longtime Republican strategist and consultant to the Lincoln Project, Stuart Stevens’ scathing exposé It was all a lie; though none of these are likely to be read by what one Christian leader called the ‘deceived elect’, who have been inoculated from truth by the most powerful of vaccines; – I refer to the Hank Hunnemans, Dutch Sheets, Chuck Pierces and Mario Murillos et al of the Evangelical White Right, who have become intellectual ostriches for the sake of Trumpdom); but exactly how once widely respected characters like Eric Metaxas, who having publicly pledged his life to Dear Leader Trump with the evangelical fervor once only reserved for Jesus himself have became so radicalized as to publicly advocate coded sedition against the United States, deserves not just to be understood (and without the complications of the highfalutin spiritual phenomena and rhetorical hocus pocus which preachers and prophets of all stripes and colors employ, within the context of their particular religious *BS to mesmerize their sheeple / followers) but addressed and corrected for the sake of the Name of Christ.
*those who follow my blog know the meaning of the acronym B.S. which stands for Belief System, although I admit that the unfounded assumptions sometimes fit the context.
Herein lies the problem Fitzgerald unconsciously and indirectly pointed out. Whereas Catholicism still in structure adheres to apostolic succession, although in practice, more often, rather than strengthening accountability, it has engendered the imperialist arrogance typified in the very unbiblical and anti-christian doctrine of Papal infallibility historically responsible for the violation and extermination of indigenous populations, the carving up of Africa – the seeds from which modern day racism has sprung; the religious laissez-faire typified in fractious (not just autonomous) Protestantism equally represents the religious Babylon mentioned in the book of Revelations that allows for the pollution and desecration of the Holy Faith that once lit the torch of Justice, Truth and Redemption in the earth with the advent of Christianity. When such powerful ideas are made to commit fornication with worldly powers, hell rules in the Name of God.
The sociologist can describe but not fix the problem. The church needs to be realigned with its foundations in Christ. Where are the men of apostolic stature that can rein in lawless prophets, haul the prodigal daughter out of the bed of whoredom and send her home, and definitively settle church matters of principle and praxis, decisively demonstrating in our time, in all wisdom, power, moral and functional excellence the kingdom of God? Though all things are possible with God, I cannot see a single white American being useful to heaven in this regard.
(Although the view could be taken that this article makes certain politically partisan stances. It does not. Christians may feel conscience bound to back any party, and hard choices often call for one to ‘hold their noses’ and vote. Evangelical Trumpian Triumphalism does not pass the smell test. It is odious, obnoxious, evangelical harlotry.
YeKengalé 