#dagen

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:

During Donald Trump’s first run for the White House, a number of prominent Christian conservatives didn’t hesitate to rally to his side even when it was obvious that he was a boor, a bully, and a gangster. One notable exception was conservative talk show host Erick Erickson. In a September 2016 column, he wrote that one big reason he wasn’t willing to support Trump was that he feared Trump could “poison the church from within.” He was particularly concerned with Trump’s refusal to repent or ask forgiveness—evidence that Trump hadn’t even begun to understand “Christianity 101.” Erickson reversed himself and supported Trump in 2020 and 2024, presumably while holding his nose. But anyone who has been paying attention would find it hard to disagree that he has been very prescient about the extent the church has gone to embrace Trump. No doubt when Erickson penned this that he was thinking about how Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, told the Dallas Observer in April 2016 that wanted a president who would be “the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find,” not a “Casper Milquetoast.” In hindsight, this take from Jeffress was a harbinger of how the nation’s moral guardians reacted to the Access Hollywood tapes. Rather than cast Trump aside as morally unfit, they circled the wagons around him. And they have continued to do so for the better part of a decade, even after it was amply established that Trump was not only a boor, a bully, and a gangster, but also a traitor.

If that wasn’t enough to prove Erickson was on to something, any doubt should have been put to rest in 2023, when Russell Moore, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, made a breathtaking revelation on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Moore said that a number of pastors had told him that whenever they quoted Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, they were accused of pushing “woke liberal nonsense.” Worse, when said pastor points out that he’s quoting Jesus, a frequent response is, “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.” Suddenly, it makes sense why Mark Galli, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, came under heavy fire when he called for Trump to be impeached and removed for trying to shake down Ukraine. It was to be expected that Trump would go into one of his trademark Twitter meltdowns. However, Galli was also sharply rebuked by a who’s-who of evangelical leaders who claimed his op-ed was an attack on “tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.”

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In hindsight, the explanation is stark—to borrow Erickson’s words, the people who clutched their pearls over this piece seem to need a refresher in “Christianity 101.” Fortunately, Christianity Today hasn’t bent the knee to Trump. It named Moore, one of the more vocal never-Trumpers in the evangelical world, as its editor-in-chief in 2022. But it says something about the state of American evangelicalism that there should even be a debate about whether Trump is worth supporting, even when there is no doubt who he really is. At least one major Christian publication outside this country has no such concerns. Namely, Dagen, a Christian newspaper based in Sweden. One of its editors, Erik Helmerson, watched Trump sit down with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, and spread the shibboleth that white South Africans were being targeted by genocide. Like most of us, Helmerson walked away shaking his head. But he stopped shaking his head long enough to tell his audience exactly what we saw—Trump was reverting to his old habit of loudly and shamelessly lying.

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Imagine something along the lines of Helmerson’s piece running in print or online here in the States. The odds of such a piece passing without howls of protest from pro-Trump evangelicals are slightly higher than finding a needle in a haystack. That’s a shame, because there is nothing even remotely controversial about “living as we teach.” Perhaps our counterparts across the Atlantic have a better understanding of “Christianity 101” than we do.

I was pointed to this article by Swedish Pentecostal evangelist and self-described “charismactivist” Micael Grenholm, an editor at Pentecostals and Charismatics for Peace and Justice, a collective of charismatics and Pentecostals who believe Holy Spirit fire and a social conscience aren’t mutually exclusive. When he shared this article on his Facebook feed, Grenholm noted, and rightly, that as Christians, we have “a special responsibility to counteract the culture of lies and manipulation.” Again I ask—how is that even remotely controversial? If we as Christians are to stand up for truth, part of our witness should be to call out lies, deceit, and alternative facting.

Unfortunately, a significant number of evangelicals here in this country seem willing to excuse Trump’s fast and loose relationship with the truth because he’s given them what they want and then some on their pet issues. For instance, a poll by Pew Research in late April found Trump’s overall approval rating deep underwater, at 40 percent approval to 59 percent disapproval. But even that low figure may have been inflated, since a whopping 72 percent of white evangelicals approved of how Trump was doing.

Vurmas soldiers: Yeah we saw the big boss over there teleport himself splat into a wall once.  Honestly, pretty funny.  Or at least at first.  We heard he was a snobby bastard but since we’ve been here he’s mostly just been twitchy and sad.  

Dagen, shaking his head sagely: Plenty of folks who come here get that way.  Those Mighty Nein, though?  Crazier than a bushel of boltin’ turnips.  Invited a bunch a’ yeti into this magic tower they carry around, fought an ancient white dragon that they’ve apparently met and pissed off before, got cozy with some mortal enemies o’ theirs, AND almost died without giving me the other half of my pay.  They were good for it in the end, though.  Lucky for them.