The Gospel vs Evangelicals – Why This Fight?
No matter how much we would like to, we can’t ignore this fight.
From: Jack Hammond Jr, MBA from Fighting the Red Tide…. The Paradox <[email protected]>
God and Country Trailer – An important watch.
The separation of Church and State would be clear in a perfect world. Belief and worship would be personal. Buddha said, “Work out your own salvation with diligence.” Philippians says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling…” This is Faith, redemption, and salvation as it should be. Personal. Faith and belief affect each person in the voting booth, but an effort to transform religious beliefs into laws should not and would not exist. Instead, we all know legislating beliefs into laws has become fundamental in today’s America. Changing the laws that govern our Nation to reflect the extreme ideas and beliefs of evangelicals, the radical right, and white nationalists is their obvious and stated goal, and they are emboldened by millions of Americans’ acceptance of their vile language and actions.
Over the past 70 posts here, I’ve spoken multiple times about the calculated blasphemy of Biblical inerrancy. And calculated is, without doubt, the correct word. Nothing will ever convince me that the authors of the 1978 Chicago statement advocating inerrancy were anything but an evil power grab by white men. I’ve called the word Christian and the Cross nothing more than camouflage for their repugnant theology and actions. They knew and still know that the word Christian and the Cross give them immense protection. On a national scale, we know the names of too many charlatans and con men hiding inside a profane and perverted version of little c christianity. Even more challenging is knowing that in nearly every denomination, in every city and town across America, are pastors and congregations that masquerade as Christian but are, in reality, the opposite, un-Christian in both belief and action.
With good reason, the Founding Fathers wrote the Separation of Church and State into our foundational documents. If we knew our history, we would understand the need. The Founding Fathers were close enough to the colonial period of our Nation to remember days when Church and State were not only intertwined, but they were also the same. In American fiction, we have Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—Reverend Dimmesdale’s un-Christian behavior and hypocrisy pale beside too many of today’s pastors. Too many of us don’t know that church and court records from the colonial period are replete with judgments that have no connection to true Christian theology. The power of the Church then and is now an obstacle to American democracy.
I wish saving our Nation from the evangelical right could be accomplished without the fight to save the Christian Faith. Still, the power of the evangelical Christian nationalists is impossible to ignore. We have to live in reality, and the reality is that most white Christians vote and vote Republican. We know what that means in 2024. We can see the possibility, maybe even the reality, of a Trump win and an ultra-right control of both houses of Congress. This has always been possible, but the demonstration of power and intent revealed by the election of Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House is a five-alarm fire in the Capitol. We have no choice but to engage in the fight inside the Faith. It is easy, maybe even too easy, to see the truth. We only need to view the behavior, words, and actions of the evangelical right through the lens of the New Testament teachings of Jesus to see the distance between them. In that distance, one finds thoughts, words, and actions that are un-Christian and blasphemous.
In conversation, a friend said, I don’t understand the God of the Old Testament. I don’t either. The God of the Old Testament had a “chosen people.” Doesn’t that sound familiar? Those “chosen people” of the Old Testament fought, killed, and even massacred others and seized their land. That God is the convenient one, the one who allows a “chosen,” allows just wars and killing, allows revenge and retribution. That is the God of Biblical inerrancy and the evangelical right. The fight for the Faith and our Nation is the same. In a land of “chosen people,” there is no room for anyone at the top except the “chosen.” There is no room for the poor or the middle classes, no room for people of color, no room for immigrants, no room for the LGBTQ, and no room for the inalienable rights of all people except for those allowed by the “chosen.”
Fighting the Red Tide…. The Paradox is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Fighting the Red Tide…. The Paradox that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.
