White Evangelicals Sacrifice Religion And Morals For Politics

(Cartoon image is by Matt Wuerker at Politico.com.)

With their shoddy treatment of President Obama and their embracing of Donald Trump (a man with no morals or ethics), the White evangelical right has abandoned their religious and moral values. And they've done it for the most worldly (and crass) reason -- political power.

No one has expressed this fact more clearly and effectively than ministerial professional John Pavlovitz. Here, from his own blog, is his open letter to White evangelicals:

Dear White Evangelicals,

I need to tell you something: People have had it with you.

They’re done.

They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why:

They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.

For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.

They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.

And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was, 
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family, 
you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities, 
you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance, 
you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,
your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,
your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,
you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.

You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition.You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.

And yet today, you openly give a “mulligan” to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.

And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.

With him, you suddenly find religion.
With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.
With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.
With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart.
With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement.
With him, you see only Providence.

And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly.

They recognize the toxic source of your duality.

They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities. 
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.
They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.
They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.

And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.

Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.

You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.
You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation.
You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness.
You’ve lost the plot.
And most of all you’ve lost your soul.

I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.

But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.

Those In The Religious Right Have Trashed Their Moral Authority By Supporting Donald Trump

(The image above is from inthesetimes.com.)

The following article is a few months old, but still very relevant (especially considering the policies Trump is pushing). It was written by Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe. He writes:

IT WILL TAKE a long time to assess the full extent of the damage wrought by Donald Trump on the Republican Party and American conservatism. But this much is already clear: Buried under the post-election wreckage will be the moral credibility of the religious right.

Hypocrisy and politics have gone hand in hand since time immemorial. But the embrace of Trump by influential religious conservatives — who have always insisted that they, like Hebrew National, answer to a higher authority — is orders of magnitude worse than the customary flip-flopping and sail-trimming of a presidential campaign.

For decades, Christian (and some Jewish) conservative spokesmen portrayed their involvement in partisan battles as an aspect of their faith’s witness. Judeo-Christian ethics and the inculcation of moral standards in public life were not just talking points to the organized religious right; they were the reason the movement existed in the first place. Jerry Falwell, who launched the Moral Majority in 1979, explained that its purpose was “to turn back the flood tide of moral permissiveness, family breakdown, and general capitulation to evil” that he feared was inundating American life.

You didn’t have to sympathize with the Christian right’s political platform to understand why so many evangelical leaders were appalled by the sexual scandals that trailed Bill Clinton into the White House. It was no mystery, for example, why Ralph Reed, an early leader of the Christian Coalition, would insist vehemently, in 1998, as pressure was growing for Clinton’s impeachment, that “we care about the conduct of our leaders, and we will not rest until we have leaders of good moral character.” Or why the formidable televangelist Pat Robertson would blast Clinton as a “debauched, debased, and defamed” politician who turned the Oval Office into a “playpen for the sexual freedom of . . . the 1960s.”

That isn’t how they talk about Trump.

Far from leading the opposition to the GOP’s grotesque nominee, Reed chairs his religious advisory board. Nothing in Trump’s long record of lecherous and disreputable behavior has shaken Reed’s support — not even the video in which he boasts explicitly of groping women. “People of faith” have more important concerns, Reed told CNN on Monday. “I think a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of concerns.”

Robertson, who has said that Trump “inspire[s] us all,” isn’t backing away either. The Donald’s talk of grabbing women by the crotch, Robertson indulgently explained to his TV audience, was just his way of “trying to look like he’s macho.”

Falwell died in 2007, but his son — Jerry Falwell Jr., the current president of Liberty University — fulsomely endorsed Trump in January. “Donald Trump lives a life of loving and helping others as Jesus taught,” Falwell the Younger gushed. He, too, sees no reason to walk back his blessing.

“We’re all sinners, every one of us,” Falwell says now. “I don’t think the American people want this country to go down the toilet because Donald Trump made some dumb comments on a videotape 11 years ago.”

Christian conservatives had no patience for such rationalizations when they were invoked to defend Bill Clinton. William Bennett — a serious Catholic, public intellectual, and Reagan-era Cabinet secretary — published a book in 1998 debunking the arguments made then by Clinton’s supporters, and now by Trump’s.

In “The Death of Outrage,” Bennett showed the absurdity of tolerating grossly immoral behavior on the grounds that everyone sins. 

The Gospel’s injunction to “judge not, lest ye be judged” is a warning against hypocrisy and self-righteousness, he wrote. “It is not — it cannot be — a call to withhold all judgment or never to express a critical opinion of another.” After all, both Old and New Testaments repeatedly condemn immoral behavior. Christians are not called upon to overlook sin, Bennett pointed out, but to resist it. There is nothing admirable about refusing to “make reasonable judgments based on moral principles” — particularly in weighing the actions of democratic leaders.

Equally intolerable is the willingness to ignore a candidate’s brazen moral offenses because you like his stands on public policy. Such ends-justify-the-means arguments are “Nixonian,” said Bennett. “Moral precepts are real; they are not like warm candle wax, easily shaped to fit the ends of this or that president, or this or that cause.” When Trump backers downplay their candidate’s scandalous conduct on the grounds that Supreme Court appointments matter more, they are as bad as Clinton backers who downplayed the president’s Oval Office debauchery because they liked his position on abortion rights.

Yet Bennett now exemplifies the phenomenon he excoriated. When it came to Clinton’s depravity, Bennett was unsparing. Trump’s depravity he doesn’t mind so much. In August, Bennett accusedanti-Trump conservatives of “put[ting] their own vanity and taste above the interest of the country.” 

Not everyone on the religious right has sacrificed their principles for Trump’s sake. A coalition of Liberty University students issued an eloquent statement Wednesday rebuking Falwell for endorsing the GOP nominee. “Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him,” they wrote. Albert Mohler, a deeply respected Baptist theologian, remains as steadfast in opposing Trump as he was in opposing Bill Clinton. 

But they and other honorable exceptions will not undo the damage caused by the pro-Trump leaders of the evangelical right. What started as Christian witness ended in hypocritical partisanship. Religious conservatives shed their principles, and thereby dismantled their influence.

Religious Right Losing Its Battle Against Same-Sex Marriage

 (I found this image at Wonkette.com.)

The religious right has been complaining loudly about the legalization of same sex marriage lately, and offering up all kinds of dire consequences over that legalization. While their complaints and warnings are silly, I understand why they are doing it. They are beginning to understand that this is a battle they have lost -- and they just can't stand the thought of that.

These bigots would like us to believe they are just following their religion, but the truth is that they just can't stand the idea of everyone having the same rights that they enjoy. They tried the same argument when racial discrimination was outlawed in schools, public facilities, and housing. That didn't work, but it hasn't stopped them from trying the same old argument to discriminate against gays and lesbians. It won't work this time either, since most christians now support equal rights, but that won't stop their ridiculous claims of victimhood.

Fortunately, most other Americans have moved past that. They want equal rights to be afforded to all citizens, in both employment and marriage. In the last few days, I have brought you the results of national surveys done by the ABC News / Washington Post Poll and the NBC News / Wall Street Journal Poll. Both have shown a substantial majority of Americans now support the legalization of same-sex marriages.

Now there is a third national survey that verifies what those other two have shown -- the CBS News / New York Times Poll (done between April 26th and 30th of a random national sample of 1,027 adults, with a 3 point margin of error). The first chart below shows the growth of support since 2012 as represented in that survey. The second chart shows the results of all three of these polls.

Churches Losing Confidence Of Most In U.S.

(Image is from blogs.courant.com.)

There is no doubt that the United States is a predominantly religious country. The most recent survey by the Pew Research Center on religion in America showed that about 83.9% of Americans identify themselves with a religion (while only 16.1% do not). And the predominant religion in this country is christianity -- which 78.4% of the population say they identify with.

With impressive statistics like that, it's easy to see why the religious fundamentalists think they should be able to force their religion on everyone in this country. But the picture is a lot more complicated than that. For one thing, the evangelicals do not make up anywhere near half of the American population (and still fall short even when the Catholics, who have been siding with them more and more, are added in). Second, their indulgence in politics and hate are turning many religious people off (and driving them out of the churches).

This turning away from organized religion has been going on for many years now, and each generation from the "Greatest generation" to the "Millenials" has shown greater percentages turning away. And it's not just the Pew surveys that show this. The Gallup Poll has been polling Americans on religion since about 1973 -- and back then about 66% to 68% of Americans said they had a great deal of confidence in churches/organized religion. But it is not that way anymore.

The most recent Gallup Poll that asked Americans if they had a lot of confidence in churches/ organized religion show a record low percentage saying yes -- only 44%, or significantly less than half of the population. This doesn't mean the other 56% of the public no longer consider themselves to be religious. In fact, most of them are religious (remember only about 16% of the total population have no religious affiliation at all). They have not necessarily abandoned their religion -- only the organized aspects of it, like the churches.

As an atheist, I naturally would like to think that these people have lost their faith, but the truth is that most are just turned off by the churches and other religious organizations involving themselves in politics (as though their god had decided that one U.S. political party was preferable over all the others). This is especially true of the churches that seem to have abandoned the christian message of love for a political message of hate.

The religious right may actually think they are doing god's work by involving their churches in political causes, but what they are really doing is driving away many of their own members -- people who want to remain christian, but can no longer stomach the hate-filled politics of their organized church.

Would A Giuliani Candidacy Help Democrats ?

It has become obvious in recent months that the religious right has lost much of its momentum. In the last few years, a candidate could not get the nomination of the Republican Party to run for president unless he had the approval of the evangelical movement. That is no longer true.

None of the major candidates running for the Republican nomination have the credentials expected of a candidate of the religious right. Although he is now parroting the beliefs of evangelicals, Romney has a history of liberal beliefs and actions. It is doubtful that he could gain the trust of most fundamentalists. McCain has never been trusted by the right-wing fundamentalists.

Thompson has been touted as the darling of the religious right, but with his trophy wife, his admission that he doesn't go to church regularly, and his refusal to support a constitutional ban on gay marriage, he has already raised opposition from some leaders of the religious right, such as James Dobson.

In fact, the candidate most likely to receive the nomination is also the most liberal of the Republican candidates -- Giuliani. Until recently, I thought his candidacy might pose the most problems for Democrats. That may not be true.

The fundamentalists are still united in their opposition to abortion, but beyond that issue many are starting to pay attention to many other issues -- issues such as racism, peace, fighting HIV, helping the poor and the environment. Some believe that if the abortion issue were nullified, it would open the campaign to these other issues that are championed mainly by the Democrats. Giuliani is pro-choice, and his nomination would nullify the abortion issue.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, says, "Most evangelicals have been voting Republican because they were given a bright-line choice between a pro-life candidate and a pro-choice candidate. If that issue were taken off the table, then other issues get oxygen, issues where evangelicals are not nearly as certain that Republicans offer the best answer. Issues like economic justice, racial reconciliation, the environment. If the Republicans are foolish enough to nominate a pro-choice candidate, they give the Democrats a license to go hunting evangelical votes".

I still expect most evangelical votes to go to the Republicans, but it is an exciting prospect to think that Democrats could make inroads with this demographic group. After all, this is the "base" that Republicans have counted on for the last few years. Given the moral problems experienced by the Republican Party recently, and it's even easier to believe some evangelical votes could go to Democrats.

So while Giuliani might appeal to a few independents (although not many, considering his support of the war), he might actually free many evangelicals to vote for the Democratic candidate.