The Liberty University’s Falkirk Center, the center of Trump evangelicalism, thanked Donald Trump:
Thank you Pres. Trump for your incredible work on issues of life, family, & religious liberty during your term as President of the United States. Few Presidents compare in their ability to deliver meaningful results on issues of such vital significance.https://t.co/MofUNyHycPpic.twitter.com/AQz1UeN7oP
And then the Liberty’s Falkirk Center offered a backhanded offer of prayer to Joe Biden:
Pray for President Biden and the new executive branch administration. Pray that they might be reached for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that policies that benefit the general welfare, freedom and prosperity in the United States would succeed and that any policy… (2/3)
…that would destroy the sanctity of life, marginalize the freedom of speech and religious liberty, or would dismantle the institution of marriage and family would be thwarted. We pray for blessings within the boundaries that God has set & that no evil thing would prosper. (3/3)
Joe Biden is going to spend the first 100 days of his term fighting to tear down Trump’s border wall and restrict Second Amendment rights after being sworn in protected by walls, fences, and guns.
I love America more than I love politics or any party. I pray Joe Biden will do what is right for our country. I am skeptical & I can almost guarantee he won’t. But nevertheless I sincerely hope he does what's right for this, the greatest country on earth. Pray for our leaders.
God and country. Christian nationalism at its worst:
We cannot ask God to continue to bless America if we do not continue to follow Him. I will continue to follow Him, stand for truth, and encourage my fellow Americans to do the same, recognizing the founding principles that made this country great, asking Him to bless America. 🇺🇸
Ellis retweeted the aforementioned John MacArthur tweet about the kingdom of darkness.
I don’t have time tonight to process Lance Wallnau’s latest one hour reflection about whether the prophets got it right or wrong, but it is here if you want to see it.
Christian Broadcasting Network journalist David Brody liked Biden’s speech, to a point:
A GREAT speech by President Biden! Best line: “We must end this Uncivil War.” @POTUS is absolutely right. Now he needs to prove it by leading America into lowering the temperature on BOTH sides. Words sound great but olive branch actions MUST follow. #InaugurationDay
I don’t remember Richard Land praying to support Donald Trump “when we can do without violating our consciences”:
1/2 Mr. President, we will pray for you, support you when we can do so without violating our consciences, & we are united in the rejection of violence & in our commitment to peaceful redress of grievance & nonviolent protest. America needs moral conviction in our highest office.
I hope Land is right about this. As a never-Trumper, praying for Trump was hard. It’s not going to be easy for conservative evangelicals to pray for this president.
2/2 faith and confidence that “the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it withersoever he will” (Prov. 21:1). We will also importune our Heavenly Father to bless you with safety, health, and all spiritual blessings. https://t.co/PYMjbXL89T
On his Facebook page, Jack Hibbs concludes that Biden’s decision to change the U.S. Ambassador to Israel into the “U.S. Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza “insults the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Today was painful. To watch a nation take gigantic steps toward self destruction was overwhelming. The undoing of wonderful prolife policies (as one example) of President Trump by Biden is heartbreaking and will result in even more deaths. Then to watch some “evangelicals” and people from the “holiness movement” (not sure how much “holiness” has survived…and not sure if it is a “movement” anymore) falling all over themselves in delight, ushering in a man who is ….how do I say this respectfully? ….who is, at best, mentally challenged (I think he should be cared for medically & helped; do you REALLY believe this man can handle the world’s most difficult job??), it has been a challenging day. 74,000,000 of us love our country too much to see it end.
And here is Garlow reflecting on his court evangelicalism:
APPROXIMATELY NOON EASTERN TIME – JAN 20, 2021 – I will forever be grateful for the wonderful privilege of serving on (1) the Trump Faith Advisory Board during the 2016 election, (2) the White House Faith Leaders during much of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and (3) as a Stakeholder with Evangelicals for Trump during the 2020 election. It was one of the great honors of my life. The two pictures were sent to me on Election day, November 3, 2020, taken at the same moment – from opposite angles – by two different friends. I did not know these pictures existed until I received them two months ago.
Here is one of the aforementioned pictures of Garlow in the court:
Robert Jeffress had a word or two at Fox News:
Pastor @robertjeffress, who was with President Trump four years ago today, says on President Biden's Inauguration Day, remember these truths about God, politics and our presidents.
Ralph Reed is already spinning the pro-Trump legacy narrative:
Thank you, President Trump & his Admin:
3 SCOTUS Justices 200+ federal judges Pro-life actions U.S. embassy to Jerusalem Regulatory rollback Abraham Accords Religious freedom Major tax cut, $2K child tax credit Criminal justice reform USMC trade agreement Rebuilding military
Gary Bauer thanks Trump, says nothing about Biden:
Thank you President Trump for 4 yrs of putting America first. You fought for life, religious liberty, American families and defended our history and heroes! God Bless you and your family. #2020Election#DonaldTrump#GodBlessAmerica#KAG#USA
Tony Perkins give an unqualified call to pray for Biden:
We are praying together now for President Biden and his incoming administration at https://t.co/cslXdXufTE. Join us! We need God's protection over this nation and we need His wisdom to permeate and direct every decision our new leaders make in the days and weeks ahead. https://t.co/081e3IQXO0
Join me in praying for President @Joebiden, Vice President @KamalaHarris, their families and their entire administration. Pray for wisdom, health, protection, guidance and for God to heal our land. pic.twitter.com/Tz6kyQAcvO
Thank you Mr. President and First Lady Melania for these last four years and all that you have done for our nation. May God be with you and your family as you open a new chapter in your lives. pic.twitter.com/lmLT2GO6DK
Southern Baptist leader Richard Land once boasted that evangelicals had “unprecedented access” to the Donald Trump presidency. I hope he and the rest of the evangelicals enjoyed it.
The court evangelicals got their Supreme Court justices and some executive orders on religious liberty that will be quickly overturned by Joe Biden. They taught their followers to privilege a politics of fear over a politics of hope, a politics of power over a politics of humility, and a politics of nostalgia over a politics informed by good American history. In exchange, they will be forever connected to a president who demonized his enemies, lied incessantly, engaged in endless acts of narcissism, separated immigrant children from families, got impeached twice, enlisted foreign officials to help his re-election campaign, said there were good people on “both sides” during a white supremacy invasion of Charlottesville, refused to contribute to an orderly transition of power, incited an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, tried to end the Affordable Care Act, promoted conspiracy theories about election fraud and raised money on them, ignored racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s death, alienated our global allies and made us a laughingstock in the world, benefited financially from the office of president, failed to lead the country through the worst pandemic in American history, and pardoned criminals.
Far too many evangelicals became Trump’s useful idiots.
Just for the record, my lists of court evangelicals includes: Franklin Graham, James Robison, James Dobson, Jentezen Franklin, Jack Graham, Chris Hedges, Alveda King, Paula White, Greg Laurie, John Hagee, Tony “Mulligan” Perkins, Gary Bauer, Johnnie Moore, Ralph Reed, Robert Jeffress, Jack Hibbs, Eric Metaxas, Jim Garlow, Guillermo Maldano, Tom Mullins, Alberto Delgado, David Barton (honorary “historian”), Harry Jackson (deceased), Jay Strack, Luke Barnett, Richard Land, Samuel Rodriguez, David Brody (honorary court evangelical journalist), Charlie Kirk, Lance Wallnau, Jenna Ellis, and Jerry Falwell Jr., and Mike Evans. I am sure that there are more, but these are the men and women who I have been covering for the last four years.
So let’s see how the court evangelicals are finishing-up their term:
Yesterday, You Tube removed Eric Metaxas’s interview with Mike “My Pillow Guy” Lindell. Today he reminds his audience that Kohl’s and Bed, Bath and Beyond have removed Lindell’s products from their stores. Metaxas tells his listeners not to shop at these big box stores and is outraged that these companies are “canceling” Lindell, a man who is just “trying to do what is right.”
Metaxas goes down swinging. He starts his show today by saying, “tomorrow morning people are getting prepared for the inauguration of someone that millions of Americans don’t think actually won the election.” He compares our current moment to the evils of communism in the former Soviet Union and Cuba and the horrors of the Holocaust. He suggests that Fox News is now parroting the “party line,” which he defines as both the Mitch McConnell “party line” and the Chinese communist “party line.” He implies that his beliefs about election fraud come from Independent Network Charismatic prophets such as Dutch Sheets.
Metaxas laments the fact that “old family friends” recently e-mailed him to tell him that they can no longer remain friends with him. He asks his listeners to pray for him so that God would protect him from the “wicked cancel culture” of the Democratic Party, which he compares to Hitler and the Nazis. In the process, he plugs his new memoir at least three times.
Metaxas then says that he punched a protester in Washington D.C. last summer “in self-defense.” And he claims that he was being metaphorical when he said he would fight the election results “until the last drop of blood.” From now on, Metaxas tells his audience, he “will be more careful about how he speaks” because people on the Left twist his words. Actually, Metaxas needs to be more careful about how he speaks because there are many Trump supporters who take him seriously and literally.
Tonight Metaxas is speaking at Liberty University. It is a Falkirk Center-sponsored event called Courageous Pastors. I do not see any masks in this picture:
For a little more than a year, the Falkirk Center at Liberty University, founded by the former Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr. and Trump wonder-boy Charlie Kirk, has become the center of pro-Trump evangelicalism. Apparently, they now have a magazine (booklet?) with short culture-war pieces written by Metaxas, Jenna Ellis, John MacArthur, and others Falkirk Center “fellows.” They are calling it a “journal.” In an article titled “Why I’m Proud to Keep My Business in America,” entrepreneur and Falkirk fellow Erika Frantzve writes:
God is sovereign, and even though things right now aren’t necessarily good, God will work all things together for good for “those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” As an entrepreneur, I know there is an opportunity to be found in the middle of adversity. The “Made in the USA” label is the new quality standard. It is not a compromise–it is an investment in our citizens, our freedoms, and our country’s future.
What?
And I am still trying to figure out this line from Falkirk Center fellow and Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis in a piece titled “Why is Truth?: Standing for Truth in a Relative Culture”:
Why is truth? Why does truth exist? Logically, truth is self-existent. Any other conclusion is self-defeating. If it can be said with absolute certainty that truth is relative, then such reasoning has logically defeated itself. Biblically, truth is self-existent because it is God’s nature and character.
Between November 3 and January 6 Jenna Ellis fought to disenfranchise millions of Black voters. Today she retweets Sarah Huckabee Sanders on racism:
Each of us is made in God’s image. Today we remember Martin Luther King Jr, an American hero who helped lead the fight against the evil of racism and answer God’s call to treat every person with dignity and respect. #MLKDay
Jack Hibbs is hosting Charlie Kirk at his church. Hibbs is also joining the boycott of Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Kohl’s after these big box stores dumped the My Pillow Guy.
Johnnie Moore got his embassy. I guess the court evangelicals are now one step closer to the Second Coming.
And if I am not mistaken, Moore removed the phrase “modern day Dietrich Bonheoffer” from his biography! Only regular readers of this series over the last four years will understand why I pointed this out. This blog is making an impact! 🙂
Gary “think of the children” Bauer believes the guardsmen in Washington D.C. are there to “shut down” free speech. Here is what he wrote today on Facebook:
The incursion into the Capitol Building two weeks ago was awful. It was wrong. The people responsible not only smeared all those who came to Washington to demonstrate peacefully, but they empowered the left to cast aspersions on all 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.But I also don’t like what I am seeing in the nation’s capital today. While every inauguration is a high security event, at least 25,000 troops have been deployed to Washington, D.C., with the explanation being the fear of violence. But what they have effectively done is to shut down free speech and the right of assembly. Washington, D.C., looks like an occupied war zone. Entire blocks of the capital have been locked down and closed off. Just two areas, limited to 100 people, have been designated as “First Amendment zones,” an Orwellian term if there ever was one.
Perkins is still talking about Russian collusion. He can’t stop fighting the culture war.
Wow! Couric complains about the garbage conservatives are being fed 24/7 on the internet that leads them to believe there was colusion in the last election. Would that be the same as the garbage Democrats were listening to from the media that led them to believe Russia colusion? https://t.co/x39eut7UA2
As the US inaugurates a new president, there are concerns that there could be violence in Washington DC & in state capitals. I encourage Christians to make tomorrow a day of prayer—for peace & calm, & praying for our new leaders President-elect @JoeBiden & VP-elect @KamalaHarris.
The days of the Trump court evangelicals are ending. Right now the big question is whether their king will make it to January 20. The House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump today. Ten members of Trump’s own party voted to impeach him, making this the most bipartisan impeachment in U.S. history. We are now waiting to see how the Senate will respond.
The court evangelicals do not usually respond to current events in real time, but there a few things to report.
The Twitter feed at the Falkirk Center at Liberty University is saying nothing about the impeachment or the insurrection. The feed is filled with tweets about free speech.
Jenna Ellis believes conservative principles are founded on God’s word. (I assume she believes “liberal” principles are not). The verses she quotes in tweet below are all about paying “evil” with “evil.” So apparently she believes that the impeachment of Donald Trump was a form of evil. Ellis wants you to think she is taking the high road here, but she is really manipulating scripture to take yet another shot at her enemies. I don’t expect to see tweets of love toward Joe Biden anytime soon.
Republicans (true conservatives) have an obligation to stay faithful to the Constitution and conservative principles, founded in the truth of God’s Word.
Christians have an obligation to be faithful to Him as He is faithful to us.
2/4 Unfortunately, there are a great number of political leaders that condoned the violence of Black Lives Matter and Antifa during the summer and early fall and only now condemn political violence when evidently done by “conservatives.”
Jim Garlow is still holding his “election integrity” prayer meetings:
https://t.co/7uKT5uNHXi – happening now. Join with thousands- praying for righteousness, holiness, Biblical justice, and truth. Join now – in progress.
Today on his Facebook page, Garlow wrote: “The House of Representatives vote. Despicable.”
Robert Jeffress is gearing-up for Sunday morning:
Join First Dallas this Sunday, January 17, in person or online at https://t.co/xvpkucVPll for my special election message, "How Should Christians Respond to President Biden?" pic.twitter.com/SC3Zvn83pF
Actually, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration begins with taking a hard look at the mistakes of the past:
Stop looking back at the mistakes of the past. God can forgive, redeem and restore when we bring our brokenness to Him. "Because of Christ and our faith in Him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence." Ephesians 3:12
.@VP Pence wrote, “The Bible says that ‘for everything there is a season…a time to heal…and a time to build up.’ That time is now. In the midst of a global pandemic, economic hardship…& the tragic events of January 6th, now is the time for us to come together…to heal.”
Eric Metaxas, radio host and fellow at Liberty University’s Falkirk Center, is encouraging everyone to trust God in midst of this intense period of persecution for the church. The persecution, he claims, is coming from Marxists who removed him from Twitter for twelve hours yesterday. He quotes Patrick Henry famous phrase, “give me liberty or give me death.” The difference between Henry and Metaxas is that Henry was responding to facts and Metaxas is responding to a conspiracy theory about the supposed stealing of the 2020 presidential election. He is still expecting God to perform a miracle that will allow Trump to stay in office and restore all social media accounts. Finally, Metaxas says not to “demonize” people. This is rich coming from a guy who has has used his platform to demonize Democrats for four years, even calling them Satanic. When he demonizes others he quickly says that he was “joking” about it. Watch:
One of Metaxas’s guests today was former Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. She was apparently in the U.S. Capitol as part of a “prayer force” when the insurrection took place on January 6, 2021. She was there to pray that Congress would not certify the 2020 Electoral College votes. Both Metaxas and Bachmann once again suggest that very few of the insurrections were part of the “happy” and “joyous” Trump supporters in Washington that day. Bachmann describes the entire riot as “identity theft.” The Left, by spreading this narrative of the violent Trump supporter, is stealing Trump’s identity as a great leader. What happened during the 2020 election, Bachmann believes, was a political coup–a takeover of a legitimate government. She is 100% sure that the Democrats stole the election. Metaxas and Bachmann are preparing for persecution.
Metaxas and Bachmann say that evangelicals who criticize them for their views on election fraud are “conforming” to the world. Neither of them present any evidence of election fraud. Metaxas just has a feeling about it based on the way Biden behaved in the weeks before the election.
Watch:
Bottom line: The Trump presidency may not make it to January 20. Metaxas and Bachmann are going down with it. Metaxas is positioning himself as the evangelical voice of Trump’s lost cause. Bachmann is doing the same thing from her new post at Pat Roberston’s Regent University.
The Falkirk Center at Liberty University is also talking about free speech. White evangelicals are in full victimization mode.
They’ll tell us it’s righteous to have your access to the online world stripped away.
First by leftist monopolies, then by authoritarian politicians.
Politics is downstream from culture, but if culture is already so authoritarian, our politics is about to be as well. pic.twitter.com/RVASK6odRG
Believe it or not, Falkirk Center (Liberty University) founder Charlie Kirk did not tweet today. Did he get banned?
Kirk is now calling for unity. Over the last four years Charlie Kirk has been one of the most divisive people in the United States. As David Blight taught me years ago through his book Race and Reunion, calls for unity often ignore the unjust things that happened in the immediate past. They tend to paper over injustice. Historians will hold Kirk and his rhetoric partly responsible for the first attack on the U.S. Capitol in American history. These commentators on Majority Report are absolutely correct:
Samuel Rodriguez says repentance begins with him:
The American nation will be healed when the American church repents. It begins with me. #2Chronicles714
On Sunday, Rodriguez called the evangelical church to repentance for making “the person who occupies the White House more important than the one who occupies our hearts.”
Court evangelical journalist David Brody says that the insurrectionists did not represent “#MAGA Nation”:
For those in the media and other places that need to hear this again, let’s be clear: the crazy fringe that violently stormed the capitol do not represent #MAGA Nation. They just don’t. Ask yourself this: does antifa represent Democrats? No. Sick Wackos on both sides.
A quick word about this tweet. As I argued earlier today, I don’t think those who stormed the U.S. Capitol represent American evangelicals (Brody’s primary audience). Nor do they represent all Trump voters. But they certainly represent the kind of people who attend rallies and scream “Make America Great Again.” I would like Brody to explain the difference between these people and the people he calls #MAGA Nation.”
I am still wondering what evangelicals did before Twitter and Facebook. At a time when they should be mourning the near collapse of American democracy and reflecting on how their view of Christian politics led to the enabling of Donald Trump, they are playing the victim. This is par for the course. Here is court evangelical Richard “unprecedented access” Land complaining about free speech.
5/6 When even the ACLU is concerned, we have a real and direct threat to the freedom of speech of every American. If they can silence the President, they can silence you.
Jack Hibbs, in an apparent act of protest, has left Twitter. He is fleeing persecution by retreating to his personal web page.
(2/2) willfully chosen to delete my Twitter account within the next 24 hrs and move elsewhere. To stay in touch with ministry and updates I encourage you to go to: https://t.co/QxqWDJkQnM
Robert Jeffress has no clue that he empowered this twice-impeached president. History, however, will remember.
Great talks today with President @realDonaldTrump and @VP@Mike_Pence. When reporter asked if I regretted my support I said “Absolutely not! Most pro-life and religious liberty President and VP in history!”
You can’t make this stuff up. Franklin Graham asks “Where does this hate come from?”
I don’t think I have ever seen the level of hatred we are seeing around us today. It’s chilling. Where does this hate come from? It comes from the human heart.
We are learning more and more about the mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. They were Trump-supporters, extreme Christian nationalists, QAnon believers, militia groups, and other assorted thugs. Mo Brooks, a Republican representative from Alabama, still believes that Antifa was behind the insurrection:
4. Evidence, much public, surfacing that many Capitol assaulters were fascist ANTIFAs, not Trump supporters.
Again, time will reveal truth. Don’t rush to judgment. Don’t be fooled by #FakeNewsMedia whose political judgment drives their reporting.
On Wednesday, Trump spoke to his followers. He said that he loved them and called them “special.” Watch:
Last night, Trump read another statement:
This is Trump conceding the election without officially conceding the election.
It is worth mentioning again that Trump cannot give a speech without lying. He did not “immediately employ the national guard.” In fact, he initially resisted the idea. There is nothing in this speech about the fact that Trump created this mob or that he is ultimately responsible for what happened. On Wednesday, he was sending his love to the insurrectionists and calling them “special.” Last night he wanted to throw them in jail.
Does anyone believe anything Trump said in this video? Does he really care about national healing and reconciliation? He released this second video because he is scared. His advisers and cabinet members are resigning. The House and Senate are calling for either the 25th Amendment or another impeachment. And what did he mean when he said “our incredible journey is only just beginning?” Maybe it has yet something to do with this:
Eric Metaxas had self-professed prophet Lance Wallnau on his radio program. He starts the conversation by asking Wallnau if “the prophets got it wrong.” I listened several times to Wallnau answer this question and I have no idea what he is talking about. I think he is just making it all up. Wallnau, speaking with apparent prophetic authority, says that the insurrectionists were Antifa members. Metaxas agrees. He calls the insurrection a “Marxist coup. Metaxas also floats the idea that Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington D.C., was behind the rioting. Finally, Wallnau says that he and Metaxas are part of a Christian populist movement led by Donald Trump. Trump, he says, “is not finished.” He describes this “movement” as “righteous.”
Metaxas also talked to Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Liberty University’s Falkirk Center. Kirk admits that Biden will be the next president. He says that a “lot of people were misled” to believe that Trump was actually going to win. Metaxas admits that he was one of those people, but Kirk lets him off the hook. Then they start talking about the possibility of a God-sized miracle that will get Trump into office.
Kirk, “constitutional scholar” that he is, criticizes Mike Pence for doing his constitutional duty on Wednesday night. He said that Pence did not act with “courage or clarity” when he agreed to certify the votes of the Electoral College.
Watch:
Court evangelical journalist David Brody on “smart analysis”:
It’s pretty rich to see the national media talk about how Trump incited violence with his rhetoric. The liberal media has been stoking division with their lies, sky is falling, fear-inducing, anti-Trump coverage throughout his presidency. Look in the mirror. @realDonaldTrump
Good news! I’ve lost 500 followers today on Twitter because I asked people not to follow me if they thought the people storming the capital were patriots.
Richard Land rejects the violence at the U.S. capitol, but he says nothing about his role in empowering Trump and, by extension, those who stormed Congress. Remember, it was Land who bragged about having “unprecedented access” to the White House during Trump’s presidency.
Jack Hibbs is talking with fellow court evangelical Tony Perkins about the “spiritual battle” for the U.S. capitol. Perkins says that when Trump was elected in 2016 he felt a demonic presence in Washington D.C. trying to stop the inauguration. The women’s march, according to Perkins, was part of this evil presence.
Ralph Reed praises Mike Pence:
Thank you, @VP Pence, for the dignity, grace, and courage with which you carried out your duties and responsibilities on a very difficult day. I am grateful for your service to our nation. https://t.co/5V5mD0paew
Trump has two weeks. I think it’s a little late for advice:
Trump is presented with two leadership problems: how to be successful as a conservative political leader late in the Reagan era and how to be successful as a moral leader in an age that no longer recognizes the “laws of nature and nature’s God.”
Franklin Graham–yes Franklin Graham–wants us to stop the finger-pointing:
Pray that everyone will stop the finger-pointing and realize that both parties bear responsibility for the problems we face today. Pray that they will come together and work together for the good of all of the American people.
My entire family, both sides, has been destroyed over the last 4 years. Some of them are actually related to you. You gave a religious shield to white supremacist nationalism by supporting a mad man who spoke with violent rhetoric and whose policies were corrupt.
The waning days of the Trump presidency are upon us. It seems like more and more of Trump’s supporters are accepting this reality, but the president has not. Over the weekend Trump met with Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Sidney Powell and Peter Navarro to talk about how to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Meanwhile, outgoing Attorney General William Barr said, once again, that there was no election fraud.
Russia is attacking the United States. But Trump, who rarely reads intelligence briefs, thinks it is China. Barr believes it is Russia. So does Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. So does just about every other else.
More and more people are getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Trump could take credit for this vaccine and thus end his presidency with what Mitt Romney recently described as a “victory lap.” But why would Trump do this when he can get the old gang back together (Bannon, Flynn, Giuliani) and try to overturn the 2020 presidential election?
COVID-19 is at an all-time high right now. Mike Pence got the vaccine. But Trump is retweeting anti-maskers.
The Liberty University Falkirk Center is fighting to the end. Jerry Falwell Jr. might be out at the Christian university, but his legacy at Liberty University lives on through the Twitter feeds of Charlie Kirk, Jenna Ellis, Eric Metaxas, Sebastian Gorka, and others.
Critical thinking?:
The culture today does not understand the importance of critical thinking; of asking tough questions. We merely follow the popular narrative and buckle to societal pressure. Be a critical thinker!@RHelfenbeinpic.twitter.com/TSiMjbzx4L
We don’t ask the government for permission to celebrate the birth of our Savior. Spend Christmas with your family and ignore anyone who tries to tell you to do otherwise. It’s that simple.@MattWalshBlogpic.twitter.com/XsdUqRYNlR
Earlier today, I posted about Charlie Kirk’s election fraud claims. Either Kirk knows nothing about basic civics or he is deliberately lying in order to deceive his followers.
Eric Metaxas is running a video of a Los Angeles pastor interviewing Mike “My Pillow Guy” Lindell about election fraud. Lindell is a conspiracy theorist on steroids.
And in other court evangelical news:
Lance Wallnau is also pushing the “Trump won more counties than Biden” narrative.
In this video, Wallnau worries that evangelicals are assimilating to the fake news about the Biden victory.
Richard Land is “thinking intensely”:
2/2 controversial action of Attorney General William Barr in withholding the information concerning Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim (Joe Biden’s brother), and possibly others being the subjects of a criminal probe by the FBI, the IRS and at least one U.S. attorney.
Alt-right Trump adviser Steve Bannon joined Jim Garlow’s prayer meeting for election integrity:
TODAY – SUNDAY – HEAR STEVE BANNON. The GLOBAL PRAYER CALL Updating us on this call will be STEVE BANNON. Today, Dec 20, 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern with 4,000 -7,000 persons as we pray for election integrity/against election fraudhttps://t.co/0dfBTreiWc
Since the 2016 election, @POTUS@realDonaldTrump has been falsely accused, maligned, and attacked. He told us his campaign was spied on. He was right. He told us there was no collusion. He was proven right. When he says this election was rigged or stolen, I tend to believe him.
Many court evangelicals are upset that Fox News host Neil Cavuto cut away from Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she made claims, with no proof, that the Democratic Party rigged the election. Here is Lance Wallnau:
Niel and the rest don’t really perceive reality independent from the spirit dominating them. This is what I mean by 7 Mts and mind molders. Higher you go the more the powers of the air shape perception. Only people grounded in the spirit of truth or covered in prayer can resist. https://t.co/XZTyTRvVNp
70 million Americans just got awakened. The left has the legacy media megaphone, and mobilized militants but they are a much smaller number than we think. They can only win by theft. Now we know what they do. They’ve accidentally provoked a powerful counter movement. https://t.co/txHho0XNap
Here is Wallnau on his Facebook page today: “Thank you to Mitch McConnell for standing up for President Trump and pushing to count every legal vote. Where are all the other Republicans?”
Yesterday on his Facebook page, Metaxas posted a letter from “one of the heroic leaders of the underground church in China. There is a lot we could say about this letter, but I was struck by this writer’s claim that God has a special purpose for the United States that is directly related to the protection of Israel.
Subject: America under God’s grace
Dear beloved prayer partners:
As the fierce spiritual battle continues in our nation, I am certain that many of you are intensely praying for our nation and the world. After going through an intense spiritual battle in my spirit for several days, I finally regained the sense of freedom in my spirit. I am prompted to share the utterance in my spirit with you. As Apostle Paul instructed us, I want you to carefully examine and discern what I am sharing, and pray with me if your spirit agrees with my words.
1. Righteousness and justice will soon prevail in America.
2. Satan’s hidden agenda to destroy America will be soon exposed, and God’s people will be released from the bondage of his lies.
3. From the beginning of this year, one resounding voice in my spirit has been noticeably clear, “God will swiftly change everything.”
4. God will heal our nation and unite His remnants for His plan for the world.
5. At the return of our Lord, we will be united with the Lord Jesus Christ and rule with him. The Lord is training us now to be a fair and righteous judge for the time that we will rule with Him. In court, a good judge will not get emotionally involved with the case, but carefully and fairly examine all the facts from the testimonies of both contestants before drawing a final verdict.
Satan, in his cunning wisdom, is manipulating the current political situation in America to divide the nation and the church. The love and hate over one man have even divided His church. This situation is just as people are pushed into a football match. But I believe the Lord does not want us to be a player in this match; Rather, He wants us to be a fair and righteous judge to analyze the situation for the wise verdict by drawing wisdom from heaven. He is training us.
6. When God had established America for the divine purpose in 1776, He already had a plan how He would end this nation. I believe God will protect and preserve America with the founding principles till the very end. America has been serving God’s purpose to preserve all prophecies in the Old Testament and the Revelation. From the revolutionary war to Civil War to Industrial War to World War I and II to Korean War to Vietnam War to Fall of Berlin Wall to the War against Globalization, in every critical turning point, God has divinely led this nation into victory. I pray, even in the end time, that America will not go under the control of world governance under the Antichrist but remain strong to protect Israel until the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
7. I pray for 100,000,000 American souls to repent and run into the Lord Jesus Christ. And the church must be ready for the coming mighty move of God by tearing down the demonic barriers between denominations, organizations, and even local churches in every community; Furthermore, the church will need to restore the Apostolic and Prophetic ministries, which are accountable to the local churches, in every city church level.
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE AND FORWARD TO ANYONE IN YOUR NETWORK.
We have prayed for the Seven Sins of America during our recent 21 Days Prayer for America. I would like to urge you to pray continuously for these prayer subjects.
Metaxas believes the evidence of election fraud is “coming out” and he is telling his audience that Michigan and Wisconsin might “flip” to Trump. He is certain that Trump will win and he warns his listeners to expect riots once Trump is declared the next president.
He also had Michelle Bachmann on the program from Plymouth, Massachusetts. The former congresswoman is speaking at an event to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower Compact. I don’t have the time to debunk all of the claims in this video, but I would encourage you to look at my book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction.
Plimoth Patuxet, the living history museum that tells the story of the Plymouth Colony, is not supporting Bachmann’s event. The Leyden Preservation Group, an organization that promotes a “providential view of history,” is behind it. We also learn that Metaxas has a movie in the works based on his seriously flawed bookIf You Can Keep It.
Bachman is also “all-in” on the election fraud narrative
This one is particularly rich. Court evangelical journalist David Brody talks with Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany about how Biden’s celebrations were not held in accordance with Center for Disease Control guidelines. Seriously? Have you seen a Trump rally? It is also worth noting that Brody’s show is called “Just the News.”
Asked why God would allow Trump to lose, Southern Evangelical Seminary president Richard Land says "it could be that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are a judgment of God on the United States." pic.twitter.com/2Tvdz6zIhS
2/2 As we sift through the mountain range of statistics generated by this uniquely #2020election, the biggest loser appears to be “identity politics,” driven by Marxist generated "#CriticalRaceTheory” and its vile traveling companion, “#Intersectionality.”
Garlow is also bringing Jesus into it. He posted this today on his Facebook page:
Tony Perkins is still holding out hope:
There are a number of steps—under the Constitution, federal, and state law—that still need to occur in the presidential election process.https://t.co/2hcZtw3j4j
In December 29, 2019 Napp Nazworth, the politics editor of The Christian Post,resigned after The Post denounced Mark Galli’s Christianity Todayeditorial calling for the removal of Donald Trump as President of the United States.
Now Napp Nazworth is telling his story in a long form piece at Arc Digital.
Nazworth shows how court evangelicals tried to use The Christian Post as a propaganda tool for Donald Trump. But it also reveals how these evangelical leaders crave public attention, promote themselves through public relations firms, and seek political power.
Here are some highlights:
On court evangelical Richard Land, the Executive Editor of The Christian Post:
Executive Editor Richard Land led the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission when CP first hired him, then later became president of Southern Evangelical Seminary. He was often relied upon for his theological insights and his deep knowledge of Washington politics and the SBC.
It was wise of CP to bring Grano and Land on board. All the upper management were young, in their 20s and 30s, which meant they needed people with experience they could turn to for advice.
Land is nothing like Trump on issues of race and immigration. He was one of the primary figures leading the SBC to grapple with its racist past. The ERLC also joined the pro-immigration Evangelical Immigration Table under his leadership.
Land is also nothing like his public image. He has a great sense of humor. Since his public interviews discuss serious topics, those who don’t know him don’t get to see this other side. If the multiverse is real, there’s another Richard Land somewhere doing stand-up right now. Sharp-witted, his humor often worked on many levels. One of my favorites was when he joked that Matt Drudge, founder of The Drudge Report, is what he would be like if he had never become a Christian.
Jeffress is a celebrity hound. It wasn’t uncommon for Jeffress to personally email me or our reporters to show us one of his many TV interviews in the hopes we would report on it. We often obliged. Land liked to tell a joke he heard in Southern Baptist circles that the most dangerous place in Texas to stand is between Jeffress and a television camera.
There is also a really interesting section on how court evangelicals Johnnie Moore and Paula White tried to manipulate The Christian Post to publish a White puff piece in the hopes that Donald Trump would read it.
And this:
While most of my time at CP I could write on the topics I wanted, I recall two separate occasions when I was told I couldn’t criticize prominent evangelical leaders Franklin Graham and Eric Metaxas. This made sense from a business perspective. Graham and Metaxas each have a huge and influential media presence and their audiences closely overlap with CP’s audience. All they would need to do is tell their followers to not read CP and CP would take a big financial hit. This is why it was easy at CP to be sharply critical of liberal leaders — their audiences didn’t overlap with ours, but criticizing prominent conservatives was problematic.
And more on Johnnie Moore, the self-proclaimed “modern day Dietrich Bonhoeffer”:
In 2017, Johnnie Moore was being mentioned as a candidate for the position of Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He asked CP for help in advertising his credentials for the position, while also claiming he didn’t want the position. It was an odd email. If he didn’t want the position, why should we publish articles promoting him for the position? We published two articles after Johnnie Moore’s request, “Meet the 3 Leading Candidates for Trump Religious Freedom Post,” and an op-ed by Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and also a CP advisor, titled, “President Trump Should Appoint Johnnie Moore to Top Religious Freedom Post.” Trump selected Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback for the position.
We heard from Johnnie Moore often by email and occasionally on an editors’ chat. While he was supposed to provide advice to CP, when Johnnie Moore spoke, we couldn’t tell if he was really thinking about the best interests of CP or the interests his clients and Trump. This problem was understood and discussed by both editors and reporters. We appreciated that he was well connected and sometimes helped us get interviews with his clients. But sometimes he would ignore our emails and requests for weeks, then suddenly we would hear from him again when we published a story he didn’t like. Those stories were about his clients or Trump. He wanted to help us, but only to the extent we could help his clients. When it came to Trump, he expected us to behave like state media. Kwon became increasingly frustrated with this side of Johnnie Moore.
In one editor chat, we asked Johnnie Moore for help in getting interviews with Trump administration officials. He remarked that our previous “Donald Trump is a Scam” editorial was a stumbling block. Was he fishing for a quid-pro-quo? Positive coverage in exchange for an interview? I’m still not sure. After that call, I asked Grano if Johnnie Moore was speaking for the administration or himself. Grano answered that he wasn’t sure.
CP editors all understood then that our relationship with Johnnie Moore had to be kept at arm’s length. He was on Team Trump, and would always want us to spin the news in his team’s favor.
Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel-Chino Hills doesn’t like masks:
THEY DONT WORK.
Anyone who’s been tested knows about how insane it is that they have to stick the Covid-19 Wuhan Chinese swab so far back in your nasal cavity that it’s terrible. If C-19 is spread so easily then why couldn’t we’ve just coughed on a napkin and not probed. pic.twitter.com/ORGWmOzYH5
On his FB page, Jim Garlow is pushing Hydroxychloroquine and his love for Brazilian president Boldonaro:
Brazilian President Bolsonaro is healing from Covid-19 with Hydroxychloroquine. We spent time with him in Brazil in Dec 2018. He is an exceptional leader. (IMPORTANT: Dr. Vladimir Zelenko has treated 2,400 Covid-positive patients in New York City, and has only lost one – with a protocol of Hydroxychloroquine with over-the-counter Zinc, and Azithromycin if…if…if begun in the first five days. After that, it does not help.)
At least Tony Perkins admits it is an “angry fringe.” From FB:
If we want our leaders to stop giving in to the angry fringe that wants to erase our history and destroy our freedom, we need to stop being complacent. The church has to pray, as the disciples did, for the courage and boldness to face the cancel culture of our day and proclaim the gospel truth. The future of our country depends on it.
Robert Jeffress is still mad at CNN’s Don Lemon. (I wrote about this yesterday). The court evangelicals are getting a lot of mileage out of this one:
Richard Land, the leader of an evangelical theological seminary, tweets about “civil religion” as if it is a good thing for the church:
1/6 Whether President Trump is your “flavor of the month” or not, President Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore on the Friday of July 4th weekend itself was a powerful narrative both of America’s uniqueness and its ongoing promise. As Rich Lowry of National Review Online
2/6 described the president’s speech, “It would be difficult to get a more textbook expression of the American civic religion than the speech at Rushmore . . . or a more affirming account of the greatness of America and its meaning to the world.” The President’s speech at
Jerry Falwell Jr. supports an effort to rename the town of Lynchburg, Virginia. No word yet whether or not he wants to rename it “Liberty.” 🙂
He claims that the reason his father changed the name of “Lynchburg Baptist College” to “Liberty Baptist College” in 1976 was because the name of the town was an “embarrassment” because the word “lynch” was in the name.
This all sounds like Falwell Jr.’s effort to do damage control after Black faculty and student athletes left Liberty University after his blackface tweet.
By the way, according to Jerry Falwell Jr.’s mother Macel Falwell in her book Jerry Falwell: His Life and Legacy, the name was changed because Jerry Falwell was concerned that a large monetary gift for his college was inadvertently sent to Lynchburg College, the liberal arts college down the road. Althought I am also pretty sure the Bicentennial (1976) had something to do with the name change. When the name was changed before the 1975-76 school year, Liberty changed its school colors from green and gold to red, white and blue.
John Hagee invited Fox News commentator, conspiracy theorist, disgraced Christian college president, and convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza to speak at the Sunday evening service at his Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. Watch:
D’Souza tells the audience that American exceptionalism is ordained by God and it is under attack. He then moves into his usual critique of socialism. This then devolves into a rejection of systemic racism. If the camera shots of the audience members nodding their heads and cheering is any indication, D’Souza seems to be getting through to them. This is what pro-Trump megachurches have become. It’s pure fearmongering.
The Supreme Court made an important religious liberty decision today, but some court evangelicals and other Trump evangelicals are still fighting. They continue to stoke fear about threats to religious liberty.
Why it’s paramount to never allow a Democrat activist in the White House. American liberty and our rights depend on it. Elections have consequences. https://t.co/Opm7oqWnYA
“Christian” politico Ralph Reed turns a SCOTUS victory into a chance to get revenge against his enemy.
Tremendous victory for religious freedom in #SCOTUS decision in favor of Little Sisters of the Poor. It was Joe Biden & Obama who persecuted these nuns and threatened to fine them millions. Trump stood with them.
Johnnie Moore, the self-professed “modern day Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” responds to the SCOTUS decision in a way Bonhoeffer would not have recognized as Christian. Perhaps Johnnie needs to read The Cost of Discipleship.
The lines are so clear…@JoeBiden supported the government REQUIRING NUNS! to provide contraception against their conscience.@realDonaldTrump‘s @WhiteHouse refused to enforce it, & sued to protect #ReligiousFreedom.
When you think David French is an “irrational woke liberal” and mock someone’s military service it speaks volumes about you and the institution you work for. In Jenna Ellis’s case it is Liberty University. Remember, not all Christian colleges are the same.
David French’s transformation into an irrational woke liberal is complete.
Military service doesn’t mean that every idea one offers is inherently correct simply because of their service. Duckworth’s facts are wrong and political ideas anti-American. https://t.co/Uej2mSAQLZ
Jenna Ellis was on the Eric Metaxas Show today talking about Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech. Metaxas, who is also a spokesperson at the Falkirk Center, says anyone who criticized the speech is “loony.” He mocks the Sioux leaders who pointed out that Mount Rushmore was on Lakota land: “They have benefited from this country.” Ellis thinks that Trump gave the nation an “honest history lesson” during the speech. Again, this should be offensive to any serious classroom teacher who is working to give American young people honest history lessons. In one of the more comical moments of the interview, Ellis praises Trump for his love of the nuclear family and commitment to the institution of marriage.
Wait a minute, I thought Biden was working with Black Lives Matter to undermine America?:
1/4 At Mount Rushmore, President Trump eloquently articulated American exceptionalism, noting that “our Founders” launched not only “a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity… It was all made possible by… the
2/4 Declaration of Independence,” which “enshrined a divine truth… ‘all men are created equal’.” As President Trump observed, these “immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom.” President Trump also noted that our rights were given to us “by our Creator in
3/4 heaven.” This is the fundamental difference between the enduring success of the American Revolution as opposed to the collapse and savage bloodshed of the French Revolution, which came along only thirteen years later. The French Revolution asserted “liberty, equality, & fra-
4/4 -ternity” based on the mere human assertion of these rights, which proved to be a woefully inadequate foundation, compared to their being divinely conferred. When our forefathers declared their independence from Great Britain they did not declare their independence from God. pic.twitter.com/iGSmbgimyN
Make no mistake about it, the same anarchism that wants to erase American history and heritage will be coming after Biblical history next. Next up after the founding fathers will be Jesus and the apostles.
Graham’s words remind me what I wrote in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump about the Election of 1800 and the evangelical response to the threat of the Deep State Illuminati in the early republic.
Jentezen is worried about the radical left controlling churches:
California’s Governor just banned singing/chanting at church. Catholics can’t recite mass; Evangelicals can’t worship out loud. The very definition of discrimination is to allow thousands to march and scream without masks while telling churches 100 or less that you cannot sing.
Jack Graham is asking people to wear their military uniforms to church on Sunday. Why do white evangelicals always appeal to the Armed Forces, and only the Armed Forces, on July 4th?
We’re looking forward to our annual Patriotic Service this weekend honoring all those who have bravely served or are currently serving our country in the Armed Forces. Please invite any of these heroes you know to join us so that we may honor them. pic.twitter.com/nEAN61wN79
I am really confused by both Paula White’s retweet and Samuel Rodriguez’s original tweet:
Rev. Rodriquez is correct! What the virus has revealed is how willing the radical left is to discriminate against religion. Treating comminunities of faith unequally is unconstitutional. It is illegal. https://t.co/ndWR9phkIn
James Robison makes it sound like “profanity, pornography, and exploitation” are new things in America:
If the ideas set forth by the purveyors of profanity, pornography and exploitation become the prevalent mind-set in America, the foundations of our freedom will have cracked. Ultimately, our nation will deteriorate and true freedom will be lost.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” – Matthew 28:19 pic.twitter.com/YOUKx6FGjH
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) July 3, 2020
I’ve always wondered why so many Christian Right preachers stop after Matthew 28:19. Don’t they realize that the Great Commission continues into verse 20: “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
If the Great Commission means we should be observing all Jesus commanded us, Christians should rejoice when persecuted (Mt.5:11-12), be agents of reconciliation (Mt. 5:23-25), tell the truth (Mt. 5:37), turn the other cheek (Mt. 5:38-42), love their enemies (Mt. 5:44-46), stop practicing their righteousness before men (Mt. 6:1), judge not (Mt. 7:1-3), not cast their pearls before pigs (Mt. 7:6), practice the Golden Rule (Mt. 7:12), follow the 81% narrow way (Mt. 7:13-14), beware of false prophets (Mt. 7:15-16), pray for laborers (Mt. 9:37-38), fear not (Mt. 10:28), defend their rights deny themselves (Lk 9:23-25), celebrate the poor (Luke 14:12-14), and welcome strangers (Mt. 25:35).
Jeffress is also mad about the California prohibition against singing in church. It looks like he got the news from the alt-Right, white nationalist website Breitbart:
The “science” that allows for protests but prohibits singing in church is “fake science” that must be rejected. If being outside makes protests safe, then why are beaches being shut down? https://t.co/ofa12FBij8
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) July 3, 2020
Pastor Mark Burns thanks Trump for protecting Confederate monuments:
Thank you for standing strong and protecting American History. The Left sounds like Nazi Germany, when they begin to burn books and historical artifacts. Good or Bad, American History is American History and needs to be remembered.
— Pastor Mark Burns (@pastormarkburns) June 26, 2020
The Falkirk Center at Liberty University is using Edmund Burke to defend Confederate monuments and the white supremacy they represent.
So called “progressives” have failed to realize that by erasing history and spitting on the graves of their predecessors, they are digressing rather than progressing. We cannot improve as a society if we do not recognize the good, the bad, and the ugly of the past. pic.twitter.com/RmKThENVki
I have many questions about this tweet, but here are two:
Would the Falkirk Center feel the same way about George III, Parliament and British tyranny? Would they tear down monuments?
Would the Falkirk Center like this “good, bad, and ugly” approach to American history to be applied to public school American history textbooks?
It looks like Trump will be “telling the truth” tonight in South Dakota. Here is what Falkirk Center spokesperson Jenna Ellis retweeted earlier today:
🚨 To celebrate Independence Day, @realDonaldTrump is going to tell the TRUTH about American history—and the truth about the people tearing down our statues/history. At the foot of Mount Rushmore tonight, our @POTUS will defend and celebrate America’s founding. TUNE IN! 🇺🇸
I am watching the crowd assembling at this event right now. No social distancing. No masks. The president’s job is to protect the people. This rally is immoral.
Newt Gingrich is on the Eric Metaxas Show today talking about his new book Trump and the American Future. Gingrich says that 2020 will be the most consequential election since 1860. Gingrich has been using this line (or something similar) for a long time. He probably does not remember that he said the exact same thing about the 2016 election (go to the 1:55 mark of this video). And before that he said the exact same thing about the 2012 election. In 2008, he said the outcome of the election “will change the entire rest of our lives.” In 1994, he said that the midterm elections “were the most consequential nonpresidential election of the 20th century.” Every election is consequential. How long are we going to listen to Gingirch before we call this what it is: fear-mongering. Metaxas, an evangelical Christian, is facilitating this.
Midway through the interview, Metaxas’s binary thinking kicks-in. He continues to see everything through a culture-war rhetoric. In his Manichean world view, there are only two options: “Marxism” or something he calls “a Judeo-Christian American Western ethic.” Either Metaxas is incapable of nuance or else he is catering to the black-and-white thinking of his audience. I would put my money on the later.
Let’s remember that Western Civilization brought the idea of human rights and freedom to the world. Western Civilization birthed the ideals that ended slavery in much of the world. It also failed to provide human rights and liberty to people of color. We are still living with the results of these failures. It is called systemic racism. Two things can be true at the same time, but as Metaxas and the folks at Salem Radio know well, complexity does not lead to good ratings.
The discussion moves again to monuments. As I said yesterday, when people tear down monuments indiscriminately it only provides fodder for the paranoid style we see in this Metaxas-Gingrich interview. Metaxas once again says that the tearing down of statues is part of a spiritual assault against God. At one point, he applies this thinking to “all monuments.” Gingrich connects the tearing down of monuments to the decline of Western Civilization. Gingrich has been saying the same thing for over thirty years.
In other court evangelical news, Richard Land needs to stop pontificating about early American history. This “New England writ-large” way of thinking about colonial America not only fails to recognize the intolerance and racism of Puritan society, but it also reads Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” speech through the lens of Ronald Reagan’s 1989 farewell address to the nation. Here is Land:
1/3 These revolutionaries — and that’s what they are — want to delegitimize America’s heritage and culture. They are defaming America as an illegitimate concept and project from the beginning, fatally compromised by slavery and racism rather than being the Puritans’
2/3 “city on a hill” and a revolution that declared and asserted the belief that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And while we are still
Fox’s Laura Ingraham is quoting from Tom Paine’s The Crisis. I am not sure Paine, who was a revolutionary who championed women’s rights, anti-slavery and the working class, would appreciate being invoked by a Fox News host. Let’s remember that John Adams thought Paine’s Common Sense was so radical that he called it “a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass.” In an 1805 letter, Adams wrote:
I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants of affairs than Thomas Paine. There can be no severer satire on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begot by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind to run through a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine….
Court evangelical Ralph Reed retweeted Ingraham today:
Paula White is talking about idolatry (she doesn’t mention nationalism as an idol) and some pretty strange theology:
2 Chronicles 7:14 (NIV), “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”#WednesdayMotivation#WednesdayWisdompic.twitter.com/UCgx7LFqyR
James Robison somehow managed to turn an encouraging word to his followers suffering from COVID-19 into a screed in defense of Confederate monuments, Donald Trump, and Christian nationalism. Satan, in the form of “the Left,” needs to be removed from the United States! Watch it here.
The CDC and Tony Fauci are warning against July 4 gatherings. But Liberty University’s Falkirk Center is not:
How are you celebrating Independence Day this year? We recommend wearing lots of 🔴⚪️🔵, having an American BBQ, & watching fireworks to celebrate America & freedom from tyrannical government! Share your Independence Day photos with us this weekend and use #PatriotMonth 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/W7DxQ5TGbg
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when court evangelicals talk about “truth.” This is from the Falkirk Center’s Facebook page:
Much of the modern day church has fallen victim to the woke mob’s revised Christianity- where “compassion” has replaced truth as the more important moral aim. While we are called to speak the truth in love, we are not called to entertain lies simply because it may make someone feel better. Too many Christians have compromised on this in order to be culturally relevant and to be seen as favorable and kind. We must weed out this self-glorifying corruption in the Church and speak boldly for what we know to be true.
Here is the Falkirk Center’s Jenna Ellis:
This is a common straw man argument. No one is saying being an American is synonymous with being a Christian.
But it’s not inconsistent to be BOTH Christian AND American. America is founded on Christian principles.
The conversation occurred on WBUR-Boston. Listen here.
Some of you may recall that Richard Land was behind the editorial that led to the resignation of its political editor Napp Nazworth.
A few takeaways:
Galli says he had been planning the Christianity Today editorial for “five or ten minutes” before he wrote it.
Galli has a history of trying to get evangelicals on the Left and Right to talk to one another. But this editorial was different. He said “we crossed the rubicon.” He needed to speak out against Trump
Galli responds to his evangelical critics: “They pass this off, when they do respond … many pass it off, and say, ‘Well, he’s fighting for the causes we care about. And if he has a few rough edges, we can live with that.’ And they don’t seem to recognize that a man who calls his political enemies crazy, and lying, and disgraced, and losers, and crooked, and phony and fake — and does this day in and day out, often many times a day — they don’t seem to recognize that he is exacerbating the culture of contempt, which was already well under way before he became president. I mean, Hillary Clinton called many Americans a basket of deplorables. But it’s no question that President Trump has taken that to a new level. And the fact that they don’t connect that with the biblical verses about holding one’s tongue — and how dangerous the tongue can be, and how powerful words are, and how we have to be guarded in our speaking — they seem to have completely made a disconnect between those things. And to call that type of language ‘rough edges’ is to miss the gravity of what’s going on.”
Galli does not believe that pro-Trumpers are fearful. Meghna Chakrabarti pushes back. Galli responds by saying that the left is also fearful. This sounds a lot likeJohn Wilson, Galli’s former colleague.
Does evangelical support of Trump hurt their Christian witness? Galli says that there is a LOT of anecdotal evidence to suggest that it is. He references the many letters he has received in response to his editorial.
Galli says that the word “evangelical” is now just a political world. It has become useless.
Galli responds to Franklin Graham’s claim that he has “lost his mind.” He defends the idea that Christianity Today is still following Billy Graham’s founding vision.
Land enters the conversation and criticizes Galli for his “elitism.” He praises Donald Trump’s policies on abortion and religious liberty. Land believes that the best way to reduce the number of abortion is to elect the right president. I am not sure this is true.
Galli explains what he means by “elitism.” He didn’t use the term in previous writings for the purpose of looking down his nose at evangelical Trump voters. He was just stating a fact. Indeed, Galli is correct here. Most of Trump’s evangelical support does come from the working class.
Land says that most Southern Baptists were not voting for Donald Trump in 2016. They were voting against Hillary Clinton. Land then turns the conversation again to abortion.
Galli says that pro-Trump evangelicals fail to “hold Trump’s feet to the fire” when he advances a “culture of contempt” with his rhetoric. Such a culture, Galli says, is detrimental to the nation and the church. Land responds. Says that the “culture of contempt” did not start with Trump. He refers to rhetoric by Obama and Hillary Clinton. This, of course, is a logical fallacy. Barack Obama is no longer President. Hillary Clinton is not president. Galli is not writing about Obama and Hillary. He is writing about Trump.
An evangelical caller and mother is upset that evangelical Christians are not coming out and supporting Trump’s “bullying.” Land responds by saying Obama and Hillary were also bullies. He seems to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between Trump and Obama/Hillary on this issue.
I don’t recognize everyone, but I see Alveda King, Jack Graham, Jenetzen Franklin, James Dobson, Shirley Dobson, James Robison, Michael Tait, Greg Laurie, Michelle Bachmann, Eric Metaxas, Tony Suarez, Robert Jeffress, Ralph Reed, Johnnie Moore, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, Richard Land, Cissie Graham, Tim Clinton, Harry Jackson, and Jim Garlow, Paula White, and Guillermo Maldonado.
Announcement: Today, rather abruptly, I was forced to make the difficult choice to leave The Christian Post. They decided to publish an editorial that positions them on Team Trump. I can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice. …
I’m saddened by what happened for many reasons. I’ve been with CP for over 8.5 years, made many friendships, and had lots of exciting opportunities along the way. …
As long as I was with the company, they strived to be a place that represented the diversity of evangelicalism in the US. I even wrote about this diversity in the last published article I wrote on Sunday. …
When the editors had disagreements, we would work through them, letting those discussions and debates inform and improve our coverage. Now, CP has chosen to go in a different direction. Like so many other media companies, they’ve chosen to silo themselves. …
… it’s bad for Democracy, and bad for the Gospel. It means there will be one more place where readers can go for bias confirmation, but one less place where readers can go to exercise their brains on diversity of thought. {end}
You may think Trump is a narcissistic, morally challenged, belligerent cad who has no business being president — except for the pesky constitutional fact that over 60 million American voters elected him to it. You may see Trump as a modern day Cyrus, the Persian king who did God’s bidding in assisting in the restoration of Jerusalem. You may think Trump is a Samson-like hero called to realign the Supreme Court, to redirect the economy toward the American worker, and/or to tear down the pillars of Deep State corruption in modern Washington. But whatever you think — and however you vote — America will certainly survive and is, in significant ways, thriving under a Trump presidency — even if it lasts another four years.
However, our religious and other freedoms will not long survive a government of elites so convinced of their superiority that they are willing to compromise constitutional due process, after illegally manipulating the nation’s national security and law enforcement apparatus behind the scenes, to depose a duly-elected sitting president — all the while declaring arrogantly to the American people that it is for their own good.
These are the fellow travelers that Christianity Today is clearly aligning itself with at this critical juncture in our nation’s history. CT’s op-ed does not represent evangelical Christianity today, yesterday or in the future. After all, a majority of Trump’s evangelical support has been triggered by his opponents’ advocating policies that make him appear to be, at the very least, the lesser of two evils in a binary contest.
CT’s disdainful, dismissive, elitist posture toward their fellow Christians may well do far more long-term damage to American Christianity and its witness than any current prudential support for President Trump will ever cause.
I am saddened that Napp Nazworth has become a victim of this. I have never met him, but over the years he has republished a lot of my writing at The Christian Post. I respect him for his courage. If only more evangelicals and GOP members of Congress had the same courage.
In June 2017, I warned that Donald Trump would change the landscape of American Christianity. It is happening.
Former Fox News radio host Todd Starnes often referred to court evangelical Robert Jeffress as the official chaplain of his Right-Wing radio program. Just recently, Jeffress appeared on Starnes’s program and said that Democrats worship the Old Testament god “Moloch, who talks about child sacrifice.” Starnes responded by saying “I believe that.” Read all about Jeffress’s appearance here.
Starnes was fired today. Apparently these comments were even too much for Fox News, although an article at The Wrap suggests that the firing was in the works well before the Moloch incident. It will be interesting to see how Jeffress will respond. How can he blame the liberal mainstream media for firing Starnes?
And here is an even more interesting question: Will Jeffress, another employee of Fox News, be next?
But before we leave this story, let’s reflect on some of the memorable Todd Starnes-Robert Jeffress-court evangelical moments that we have covered here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home:
Jeffress supports Donald Trump’s view that no good Jew can vote for a Democratic candidate.
Starnes defends Jerry Falwell Jr.’s tweet telling McLean Bible Church pastor David Platt to “grow a pair.”
Richard Land tells Starnes that Trump was the “lesser of two evils” in 2016 and adds that Hillary Clinton will always be the “greater evil” in any election in which she runs “unless she is running against Lucifer.”
Paige Patterson, who was ousted at Southwestern Theological Seminary for dismissing women’s concerns about domestic abuse and rape (see our coverage here), is teaching an ethics course at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.
But it gets better. Patterson is co-teaching the class with Southern Evangelical Seminary president and court evangelical Richard Land. In 2013, Land retired early from his post at the Southern Baptist Church’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission because he made racially insensitive remarks in the context of the death of Trayvon Martin. (Russell Moore replaced him in the post).
Here is Adelle Banks’s piece at Religion News Service:
Patterson plans to co-teach a mid-October weeklong class on “Christian Ethics: The Bible and Moral Issues” with Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, a school that is not affiliated with the SBC.
“Dr. Patterson’s one of the most significant figures in evangelicalism in the last 20 years, at least, of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century,” Land told Religion News Service, “and we believe that there are a lot of people who would like to hear from him about living the Christian life in America. I believe he’s an asset to evangelicalism and we’re looking forward to it.”
The Trump administration is separating children from parents at the Mexican border. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says that Romans 13 justifies the policy, but court evangelical Franklin Graham calls the policy “disgraceful.” Another court evangelical, Samuel Rodriguez, also opposes the policy. Learn more from this piece at CBN news.
I am now waiting for the following evangelical leaders to stand-up to Donald Trump’s immigration policy:
Robert Jeffress has said nothing. Yet he has wished Trump a Happy Birthday and thanked him for being such a great POTUS:
Happy Birthday, President @realDonaldTrump! What you have accomplished for our country after 500 days in office is unprecedented. Tens of millions of Americans are praying for you and thanking God you are our president.
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) June 14, 2018
Jerry Falwell Jr. has said nothing. If he tweeted something today I can’t see it. He blocked me a long time ago.
Paula White has said nothing. But she is tweeting:
Lord, uproot every seed of doubt the enemy planted to discourage your children!! In the name of Jesus!
— Pastor Mark Burns (@pastormarkburns) June 14, 2018
James Dobson, the champion of “family values” has an interesting tweet today:
Dear God, no matter what our family circumstances, let us never waver from our charge as parents. Help us to be worthy of Your trust in us to lead and love our kids. Amen.
Tony Perkins, another champion of family values, has said nothing about the fact that Trump is ripping families apart at the border. Do “family values” only apply to white families? Middle-class families?
CBN News is reporting that some of the court evangelicals are not particularly happy that evangelicals leaders who do not frequent the court of Donald Trump met at Wheaton College this week.
Here is a taste of Jenna Browder’s piece:
Those at the meeting held at Wheaton College indicated they wanted to make sure political allegiances to Trump don’t get in the way of the gospel message but it didn’t sit well with some evangelicals who support Trump’s policy initiatives.
Johnnie Moore, an unofficial spokesman for the Faith Advisory Council, was among the many pro-Trump evangelicals not invited.
“We don’t take it personally; we just pray for them,” Moore said in a statement to CBN News. “I’ve said it many, many times, but I’ll say it again: we have been honored to fight to protect religious liberty that even extends to protecting the rights of those who disagree with us on religious grounds, even when they are unkind.”
“Any definition of ‘thought leaders’ and any definition of evangelicalism that excludes the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Franklin Graham is a pale imitation – anemic and incomplete,” said Land.
Other members of Trump’s Faith Advisory Council spoke to CBN News off the record, one voicing his concern over what he sees as this group of evangelicals trying to steal the microphone from those who support Trump. He pointed to the fact that many invited to participate are part of the anti-Trump movement and hold more progressive views on public policy than traditional evangelical Christian voters who supported Trump in 2016.
“It’s a meeting that will have very little impact on evangelicalism as a whole,” Jeffress told CBN News. “Many of them are sincere but they are having a hard time understanding that they have little impact on evangelicalism.”
Read the entire piece here. The response of the court evangelicals speaks volumes. They seem legitimately bothered that this other meeting has taken place.
As I wrote in The Washington Post on July 17, 2017: “The court evangelicals are changing the religious landscape in the United States. The Trump presidency is only six months old, but it is already beginning to alter long-standing spiritual alignments.”
Richard Land, the controversial Southern Baptist leader who recently boasted that the court evangelicals have “unprecedented access” to the White House, told Bruce Henderson of the Charlotte Observer that he has no intention of resigning from his position as an evangelical adviser to Donald Trump.
A Charlotte-area evangelical leader said he won’t resign from a Trump administration advisory council despite discomfort with President Donald Trump’s comments on the Aug. 12 violence in Charlottesville, Va., that left a woman dead.
Trump came under fire for blaming “many sides” for the clash between white nationalists and counter-protesters. Two days later, the president explicitly condemned racism and the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Matthews, said in a statement Thursday that Trump’s initial comments were “inartful and begged to be misconstrued and misunderstood in ways that are very hurtful to people.”
But Land said he’ll continue to serve on the president’s Evangelical Faith Advisory Council, saying “Jesus did not turn away from those who may have seemed brash with their words or behavior.”
“A leader presented with the challenges that President Trump is facing needs counsel and prayer from Bible-believing servants now more than ever,” the statement said. “Now is not the time to quit or retreat, but just the opposite – to lean in closer.”
“Lean in closer.” I understand the logic and I might even agree with Land if I thought that the court evangelicals were there to rebuke Trump in the way that the Old Testament court prophet Nathan rebuked King David. But so far, apart from a Supreme Court order and a useless executive order on religious liberty, the court evangelicals have had little influence on this reckless POTUS. In fact, after his recent Arizona speech this week one could argue that he is getting worse.
