Robert Jeffress

Robert Jeffress suggests that Tim Keller is a “wimpy Christian” who has “cloaked” his “cowardice in theology”

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Jeffress SWBTS

Listen to this recent conversation with Eric Metaxas and Robert Jeffress, two leading court evangelicals.

Jeffress is pushing his new book Courageous: 10 Strategies for Thriving in a Hostile World.  After listening to this interview, it is unclear whether Jeffress’s book is about showing courage in the midst of warfare against sin and evil or showing courage in the culture war against the Democratic Party and the opponents of Donald Trump. I have not read the book, but I don’t think Jeffress sees any difference between these two kinds of “courageous” spiritual warfare. Metaxas, however, uses the interview to push Jeffress in a culture war direction. The host chastises evangelical Christians who are “not bold in encounters with other people.” Metaxas wants a fight. Jeffress quickly enlists on his side.

It is in this spirit that Metaxas brings up Timothy Keller, founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and a leading evangelical thinker. (Keller has co-authored a forthcoming book with Washington University law professor John Inazu titled Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference. The book focuses on showing respect to those with whom we differ and cultivating a robust pluralism in our nation). Metaxas says, “I was sorry to read that my friend Tim Keller talked about how Christians shouldn’t get in bed with any political party as though the two political parties were equal.” I am assuming Metaxas is referring to this New York Times opinion piece.

Jeffress then offers his take on Keller and others (he does not mention Keller by name) who are not willing to engage in “courageous” culture war politics:

What [people like Keller] have done  is they have cloaked their cowardice in theology.  They have found a theology that will excuse their unwillingness to take a stand. They don’t want to take unpopular stands in their church. They can’t stand any kind of criticism. They are wimpy Christians. And I think it’s increasingly hard to be a wimpy Christian in this culture.  There’s no mushy middle. You’re either on the side of righteousness or unrighteousness.

Metaxas then asks Jeffress about his role as a surrogate for Donald Trump in the upcoming election. Jeffress responds:

I am a well-known supporter of president Trump…Because of my role as a Fox News contributor there are limits to what I am able to do in organized ways but I don’t intend to back off at all in my vocal support for the president.

This is not surprising.  But notice what Jeffress said.  The reason he doesn’t organize for Trump is because he is a Fox News contributor, not because he is a minister of the Gospel.

Jeffress then talks about his evangelical critics:

I think there is an attempt to shame evangelicals like you and me for our support of president Trump and they think if they can try to tie us to everything he’s ever said or done in his life maybe we will disassociate ourselves from the president and not support him any longer.

On one hand, Jeffress says that the church should be involved in politics. But he only wants the church involved in matters related to his political views, which he believes are the only political views based on the Bible.

But a truly engaged church should call out corruption and immorality in our leaders with the same kind of zeal that it praises particular politicians. When Trump acts in ways that are blatantly immoral, people like Jeffress and Metaxas say nothing. The silence is deafening.

On this point, Metaxas says that he doesn’t like everything Trump does, but he won’t say anything about it publicly because he does not want to join the “drumbeat” of criticism. Silence in the face of evil is not a Christian response. It is people like Jeffress and Metaxas who lack courage. They seem to be the evangelicals who have cloaked their “cowardice” in theology. The call of the church, to quote theologian N.T. Wright, is to “denounce what needs denouncing.”

What are the Court Evangelicals Saying About Trump’s Coronavirus Speech?

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Trump Jeffress

Last night Donald Trump delivered a nationally-televised address to the nation on the coronavirus. It was a disaster.  And he followed-up today with an equally bad press conference.

  • Following his speech, Trump’s administration had to clarify facts about his travel ban on multiple occasions.
  • Trump’s failure to calm fears, tell the truth, and get his facts straight last night resulted in the stock market’s free-fall today.
  • Today Anthony Fauci told Congress that the country is failing in its attempt to test for the virus.
  • Less than an hour later, Trump said that “testing has been going very smooth…if you go to the right area you get the test. We are very much ahead of everything.”  This, of course, is not true.
  • Also today, the president said that all Americans coming back to the country from Europe were being tested for the coronavirus.  That is not true.  Some of these travelers are getting screened, but they are not getting tested for the virus at the airport.

The criticism of Trump’s handling of the virus is coming from some unlikely places.

After a briefing with senators, conservative Republican Jim Lankford of Oklahoma said, “We couldn’t get a good, clear answer on when we are going to get commercial testing out there, labs that can get faster responses.” He said that the president’s claim that anyone who wants a test for the virus can get it is incorrect.

Here is Trump’s court journalist (at least among evangelicals) David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network:

Trump’s speech did not go well.  But that did not stop some of the court evangelicals from praising it:

Here is Robert Jeffress:

Dallas-area megachurch pastor Jack Graham was comforted by the speech.

And here is Trump’s boy wonder Charlie Kirk:

As I said in another recent piece, the court evangelicals will never criticize the president. He holds them and their public faith captive.

What Are the Court Evangelicals Saying About the Coronavirus?

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coronavirus_social-copy

According to Ruth Graham’s piece at Slate, they feel pretty calm about.  Here is a taste:

In the 2015 book Countdown to the Apocalypse: Why ISIS and Ebola Are Only the Beginning, Robert Jeffress described a world on the brink of chaos. “Never in my lifetime have I sensed so much unrest in the air,” the Dallas pastor wrote. “Will an Ebola epidemic or an outbreak of some other super virus spread across America?” But today, as an actual “super virus” advances across the United States, Jeffress seems to be feeling much more sanguine. “I do predict this will be under control in the not too distant future,” Jeffress told me on Thursday. “I would encourage any Christian to take sensible precautions without being overrun with anxiety.”

Jeffress, one of Donald Trump’s most full-throated evangelical supporters, plans to preach a sermon on the coronavirus this Sunday at his church, First Baptist Dallas. Its title is “Is the Coronavirus a Judgment From God?” Jeffress strongly suggested to me that the answer is no: “Many times illness is just a consequence of living in the fallen world.” In other words, the virus is nothing to fear nor anything to draw theological or political conclusions from.

Graham asked me to weigh-in:

Few other prominent pastors would speak from the pulpit in such blunt political terms. But that doesn’t mean their politics aren’t influencing their theology. “It’s hard not to think of this as a political story,” said historian John Fea, who has written about white evangelicals’ loyalty to the president. Fea suggested that some Trump-supporting pastors and prophets may be taking their cues from both the president and from Fox News, even if they don’t see it that way. The president himself has gone out of his way to minimize concerns about the virus. In an interview with Sean Hannity this week, Trump said he had a “hunch” that the coronavirus death rate is actually significantly lower than the WHO’s estimate of 3.4 percent. “Personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent,” the president said. At a Pennsylvania town hall on Fox News on Thursday night, he said that widespread travel cancellations might be good for the economy, since “people are now staying in the United States.”

Read the entire piece here.

Where is this “we have nothing to fear” and “trust God” mentality when it comes to the demographic and cultural changes that they think are undermining their Christian nation?

Why Robert Jeffress Needs Socialism

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This Fox News segment got some traction yesterday:

Comments:

1. Robert Jeffress claims that Democrats are on the wrong side of every major faith issue, especially abortion.  He always pivots to abortion because he believes it is the most important faith issue on the table.  Fair enough. But he also pivots to abortion because he wants to rally his Christian Right base to vote for Donald Trump. Jeffress is a surrogate for Trump and a spokesperson for the American political movement known as the Christian Right. He has credentials for serving in these roles because he is a minister of a Dallas megachurch.  Jeffress’s constant call to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s” is disingenuous. He pulls out this verse whenever he wants to dismiss an approach to Christian politics that does not fit comfortably within his Christian Right playbook. Jeffress can say that the Democrats are on the “wrong side” of “every major faith issue” in America because he believes that there are only three such issues: abortion, religious liberty, and support for Israel.

2. Jonathan Morris is correct. The Democratic Party is not going to attract evangelicals until it moderates some of its positions on social and moral issues. I made roughly the same case here.

3. Dee Dawkins-Haigler, a black pastor and politician, says that the black church is committed to acts of mercy and justice that today we might call “socialism.” While I appreciate Dawkins-Haigler’s counter to Jeffress, we need to be careful about pinning a modern political ideology on Jesus.  Jesus was not a socialist.  There was no such thing as socialism at the time Jesus lived.

4. Jeffress, of course, is not going let Dawkins Haigler’s reference to socialism slide.  The very utterance of the word raises the hair on the back of his neck. Culture warriors and fundamentalists like Jeffress are incapable of taking nuanced approaches to these kind of issues. Instead of suggesting that socialist concerns about the plight of workers might have some overlap with Christian views of social justice, Jeffress claims that socialism is “absolutely antithetical to Christianity.” (Of course there are millions of Christians around the world and many in the United States who disagree with him here.  I guess they’re not real Christians).  Jeffress needs socialism.  It is vital to the survival of his fear-based approach to Christian politics.  Without the constant “threat” of socialism he loses his political brand. His statement equating socialism to “communism lite” reminds me of historian Richard Hofstadter‘s words about McCarthyism in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life:

The [McCarthyite] inquisitors were trying to give satisfaction against liberals, New Dealers, reformers, internationalists, intellectuals, and finally even against a Republican [Eisenhower] administration that failed to reverse liberal policies.  What was involved, above all, was a set of political hostilities in which the New Deal was linked to the welfare state, the welfare state to socialism, and socialism to Communism. 

For Hofstadter, McCarthy’s attack on communism was part of a deeper fear-based politics, something he would later call the “paranoid style“:

The deeper historical sources of the Great Inquisition are best revealed by the other enthusiasms of its devotees: hatred of Franklin D. Roosevelt, implacable opposition to New Deal reforms, desire to banish or destroy the United Nations, anti-Semitism, Negrophobia, isolationism, a passion for the repeal of the income tax, fear of poisoning by fluoridation of the water system, opposition to modernism in the churches.

A Court Evangelical Who Hosts a Patriotic “Freedom Sunday” Warns Christians About Accommodating to the Culture

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Here is court evangelical Robert Jeffress talking to Fox Business News host Lou Dobbs:

3 thoughts:

1. Jeffress should be careful about suggesting First Baptist Dallas, a bastion of segregation for most of its history, has never changed a message that he claims is built on “the eternal truth of God’s word.”  Those “six blocks” in Dallas were built on a mixed legacy.  It is a history and legacy that Jeffress and his congregation have yet to address.

2. Jeffress also better be careful when he says that it is only liberal churches that accommodate to American culture. Jeffress holds an annual Sunday morning 4th of July celebration in his church and has proven over and over again that the Republican Party holds him captive.

3. Jeffress suggests that the Bible teaches three things: opposition to abortion, religious liberty, and the support of Israel.  Jeffress knows it is politically expedient in the frenzy of a Fox News interview to boil public Christianity down to these three things.  Since Pete Buttigieg supports “none of these things,” Jeffress says, he should not be referencing the Bible in public.

Last night I picked-up my Bible, randomly turned to the first two chapters of the New Testament book of James, and started reading.  These chapters focus on a few central themes: growing in faith amid religious persecution, the guarding of the tongue, the condemnation of the rich, and the importance of good works as markers of a true Christian faith.  What if these things informed an evangelical public and political theology?

This is What Slouching Into Relativism Looks Like

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Watch this video of Jim Bakker and Robert Jeffress on Bakker’s television program (if you can’t see it, I have included a transcript below.

Bakker: “Donald Trump. You think evil of him because he says something you don’t understand. But you know what, the people who hate Trump swear worse than that in the streets every day all the time.

Jeffress: “Let’s get real, every president, with perhaps the exception of Jimmy Carter, every president we’ve had in recent history, Republican or Democrat, has used salty language.

Jeffress is right, but that is not the most revealing part of this exchange.

In this clip, we see two evangelical preachers excuse Trump’s language. One seems to be defending the president’s potty mouth by claiming that his opponents use worse language.  The other one invokes history–“every president has done it.”

This is what slouching into relativism looks like.

Call me old-fashioned, but it would seem that a minister of the Gospel should ALWAYS speak-out against this unholy language when it arises as a topic of discussion in a public forum of this kind.  Perhaps such a minister might reference Colossians 3:8, Ephesians 4:29, or Ephesians 5:4.  Or maybe such a minister would quote James 1:26: “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.” (Perhaps they did reference these verses or similar ones and Right Wing Watch did not include them in the clip. This is certainly possible).  At the very least, one would think Bakker and Jeffress might shake their heads in disgust when the topic of Trump’s profanity is raised.  Nope–not the court evangelicals.

I am also struck by the fact that Jeffress and Bakker would appear together. These two pastors have many theological differences.  Twenty years ago we probably would not see a dispensationalist (Jeffress) and a prosperity preacher (Bakker) chatting-it-up on the same program.  But Trump-love has a strange way of bringing people together and forming bonds of fellowship within the conservative evangelical church.  Somehow I don’t think this was the source of Christian unity that Jesus had in mind in John 17.

Former Trump Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders Will Speak at Court Evangelical Robert Jeffress’s Church

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Sanders

Here is Matt Young at the Dallas Observer:

“Dr. Robert Jeffress will be interviewing former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders live about her life in Washington, D.C., as a career woman, wife, mother and believer in Christ on Sunday, March 1 at 9:15 and 10:50 a.m. in the Worship Center,” First Baptist Dallas’ press release reads. “An early supporter of President Trump, Sarah joined the Trump campaign as a senior adviser in February 2016 during the Republican primary, and continued in that role through the President’s defeat of Hillary Clinton, one of the greatest and most unexpected victories in American history.”

There’s no way the twin interviews, both held smack in the middle of Sunday worship, are pushing a political agenda. No way at all. No chance Sanders is doing this event ahead of a run for governor in Arkansas, either. The whole thing’s just a big Baptist coincidence.

Sarah Sanders claims to be an evangelical Christian.  She has also told endless lies on behalf of Donald Trump. Somehow I doubt she is going to First Baptist to make a public confession.

Court Evangelical Robert Jeffress Backs Trump’s National Prayer Meeting Debacle

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jeffress

In case you haven’t heard what Donald Trump did at the National Prayer Breakfast, I tried to summarize it here.

It was only a matter of time before Trump’s ardent evangelical supporters–the court evangelicals–defended the president’s remarks.  First Baptist Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress recently told Associated Press writer David Crary that Trump’s speech was “completely right.”  Here is a taste:

One of Trump’s leading allies in the conservative Christian evangelical community, the Rev. Robert Jeffress of the Southern Baptist megachurch First Baptist Dallas, embraced the president’s remarks.

“I think the president was completely right in what he said,” Jeffress said. “It’s not politically correct, but he didn’t get to be president by being politically correct.”

Jeffress, who said he dined with Trump and Prayer Breakfast organizers at the White House on Wednesday, said the criticism of Pelosi was justified.

“When you have been under nonstop attack for the last three years from people who want to destroy you and your family, it’s a little hard to hear them say, ‘I want to pray for you,’ ” he said. “It’s hypocritical.”

As for Romney, Jeffress contended that the senator’s decision to vote for Trump’s removal “seems more based on self-promotion than religious beliefs.”

Read the entire piece here.

Watch Alan Dershowitz and Robert Jeffress Revel in Trump’s Support for Mike Pompeo’s Treatment of an NPR Reporter

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Here is the video from today’s roll-out of Trump’s Middle East peace plan:

If you are unfamiliar with Pompeo’s treatment of NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly get up to speed here and here.

At about the 0:25 mark of the video Trump says to Pompeo, “that reporter couldn’t have done too good a job on you yesterday, right?”  After the crowd laughs in approval, Trump says, “I think you did a good job on her actually.”

At the moment Trump praises Pompeo for his treatment of the reporter, a man pats Pompeo on the back in obvious support.  The man is Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who gave a speech last night on behalf of the president’s impeachment defense.

Seated two chairs to Dershowitz’s right is court evangelical Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. You can see him in the top right-hand corner of the screen.  He did not pat Pompeo on the back, but he joins the rest of those present who are laughing about Trump’s support of Pompeo’s treatment of the reporter.  (This evening CNN showed a similar video with a better of view of Jeffress).

This is what happens when you spend too much time at the court.  You lose your moral focus.

ADDENDUM (January 29, 2020 at 8:41am)

What Can Evangelicals Learn from Adam Schiff?

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They can learn something about moral clarity. They can learn something about doing the right thing.  They can learn something about patriotism.

“If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

Here is what Fox News had to offer in the wake of Schiff’s speech.

There is nothing here on the content or the merits of the House defense.  They are talking about television ratings and CNN.  They are making vague references to our “Constitution.”  Is this all the Fox News crowd has to offer–gotcha lines and sarcastic jokes?  I am guessing we will see more of this on Saturday when Trump’s defense lawyers take the stage.  Will Cipollone and Sekulow be able to present a counter-narrative to the one presented by the House Managers over the last several days?  Will they even try? Is there a fact-based alternative narrative?

It is only a matter of time before Robert Jeffress gets on Fox News with Lou Dobbs to trumpet the court evangelical defense of Trump.  Expect multiple appeals to Trump’s visit to the March for Life.  They are already weighing in:

The Court Evangelicals Take a Photo

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Most of them were there on Friday night:

COurt Evangelicals

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.

I wonder if Trump can identify them all.

Many of these people feature prominently in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.

Thoughts on the “Evangelicals for Trump” Rally

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Court evangelical prayer in Miami

Earlier this evening Donald Trump launched his “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign with a speech at a Miami megachurch.

The King Jesus International Ministry Church, a Hispanic megachurch, was filled with court evangelicals.  Prior to Trump’s speech, some of them laid their hands on the president and prayed for him.  This group included Paula White, Jack Graham, Michael Tait (of the Christian rap group DC Talk), Jentezen Franklin, Cissie Graham (Franklin’s daughter), and Alveda King.  “Apostle” Guillermo Maldonado, the pastor of King Jesus Church, prayed that Trump would fulfill his role as a new King Cyrus.  Paula White prayed against the demonic forces trying to undermine Trump’s presidency.  Later Trump acknowledged James Dobson, Robert Jeffress, Charlie Kirk, and other court “eeeeevangelicals” in attendance.

As Trump took the lectern, the evangelicals in attendance, many wearing pro-Trump clothing and MAGA hats, began chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.”  It was clear from the outset that this event would be no different than any other Trump rally.  The applause lines were the same.  Trump degraded his opponents by name.  Nothing new here.  “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” Trump’s theme song, blared over the church loudspeaker when he was done with his speech.

Once the crowd stopped their patriotic chanting, Trump started bragging about the crowd size, adding that there were “1000s of people” outside “trying to get in.”  He called the “Evangelicals for Trump” movement the “greatest grass roots movement in American history.”  He reminded everyone how he killed Qassem Soleimani.

Trump generally stuck to the teleprompter, but he did go off script every now and then.  He painted himself as a president who was protecting American evangelicals from the those on the “Left” who want to “punish” people of faith and “destroy religion in America.” During this part of the speech one of the evangelical Christians in the audience screamed “Pocohontas,” a reference to Massachusetts Senator and Democratic president candidate Elizabeth Warren.  Trump was visibly pleased.  Indeed, Trump the strongman was on display.  Like autocratic leaders before him, he stirred fear among his people and offered them safety under his regime.  (This, I should add, is why evangelicals prefer Trump to Mike Pence, the Vice President who sees eye-to-eye with conservative evangelicals on every social and moral issue they care about.  Trump is a fighter and protector. Pence is not.)

Trump spent the entire speech reiterating the talking points that have defined his rhetoric when speaking to evangelicals.  He falsely claimed, once again, that he ended the Johnson Amendment.  He continued to claim, falsely, that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam wants to kill babies after they are born.  He said that he was going to return prayer to public schools when, in reality, prayer never left. He bragged about his commitment to global religious freedom, but failed to mention how he threw Syrian Christians under the bus.  He compared the crowd size of his Lincoln Memorial July 4, 2019 speech to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

At one point in his speech, Trump rattled off the names of the Fox News personalities who carry his water on cable television.  The crowd cheered as Trump read this laundry list of conservative media pundits.  It was all very appropriate for such an occasion because Fox News, more than anything else, including the Bible and the spiritual disciplines, has formed and shaped the values of most of the people in the room.  Trump’s staff knows this.  Why else would they put such a roll call in the speech? It was like Trump was reading the court evangelical heroes of the faith (Heb. 11), but instead of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, David, and Samuel, we got Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson, and the hosts of Fox and Friends.  (It is also worth noting that Trump never quoted from or referenced the Bible in his speech).

At one point Trump had to rebuke one of the evangelicals in the crowd.  As the president praised himself for appointing conservative federal court justices, someone apparently yelled something about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent health problems. The implication was that Ginsburg would soon die (was this guy praying for it?) and then Trump could appoint another conservative Supreme Court justice. Trump had to tell this person that he did not wish any harm on Ginsburg.  Think about this for a moment.  Trump was in a room full of evangelicals and he, at least in this case, took the moral high road.

In one of the most human moments of the rally, Trump introduced two members of the Fresno State University pro-life club.  These women told a story about a professor who tried to stop them from sharing pro-life messages on campus.  They sued the professor and won in court.  Good for them. What was this professor thinking? He denied these young women free speech, but he also gave the court evangelicals more fodder for their victimization campaign–a campaign that was on full display in Miami tonight.

Trump also focused on non-religious issues.  He took credit for the strong economy.  He said he would make sure the evangelicals in attendance would not lose their Second Amendment rights.  And, despite the fact that there were probably undocumented evangelical immigrants in the room, extolled the virtues of his border wall.

By now I am used to this kind of thing from Trump.  But tonight I witnessed evangelical Christians–those who identify with the “good news” of Jesus Christ–raising their hands in a posture of worship as Trump talked about socialism and gun rights. I watched them rising to their feet and fist-pumping when Trump said he would win in 2020.

I usually get angry about evangelicals worshiping at the feet of Trump.   But tonight I just felt sad.

What to Expect at the “Evangelicals for Trump” Rally. (Or the People are Always Right).

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God's megachurch

Trump will be at a Hispanic Pentecostal megachurch in Miami tomorrow afternoon for an “Evangelicals for Trump” rally.  There has not been a whole lot of details released about who will be present at the event or what Trump will say, but I think we can expect a lot of contractual language.  In other words, Trump will remind evangelicals about his Supreme Court nominations, his pro-life views on abortion, his defense of religious liberty, and his support for Israel and then he will ask evangelicals to vote for him in 2020.  I am expecting that there will be some digs at the Democratic candidates and Christianity Today magazine.

I will be on NBC News Now (live stream) with Alison Morris around 3:15pm tomorrow (January 3rd) to talk about the event.  Trump is scheduled to speak in Miami at 5:00pm.

Court evangelical Robert Jeffress will be in Miami for the event.  He talked about his appearance earlier today on the Todd Starnes Radio Show.  Jeffress makes no bones about the fact that the “Evangelicals for Trump” event is a response to Mark Galli’s Christianity Today editorial calling for Trump’s removal from office.

Starnes mentions “a couple of professors from Oklahoma Baptist University who have been bashing President Trump and his supporters.” (I am guessing that this is a reference Matt Arbo and Alan Noble).  Starnes also references Wayne Grudem’s response to Christianity Today and calls is “terrific.”  He also brings up Beth Moore’s criticism of Trump.  Here is Jeffress’s response: “[Sarcastic laugh] These people are losing such credibility and its very obvious one motivating reason as to why they are against Trump is that they were wrong about Trump and their pride won’t allow them to admit that.”  Jeffress goes on: “It’s those ivory tower elites that just don’t get it….”

I am continually amazed at how this has now turned into a class-based war on “elites.” The assumption is that what “the people” want is always morally correct.  There is some truth to this idea.  This is why many of our founding fathers feared the growth of democracy.  After all, in a democracy 51% becomes the highest moral good.

Let’s remember that the opponents of slavery were “out of touch” with the majority of people of the South in the 1850s.  Martin Luther King was also “out of touch” with the majority of people living in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.  And Andrew Jackson was “in touch” with the people (white males Democratic voters who wanted to settle on Indian lands) when he sent the Cherokee on the “Trail of Tears.”

This morning I was reading Alexander Hamilton’s June 1787 speech at the Constitutional Convention as recorded by Robert Yates.  A taste:

The voice of the people has been said to  be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact.  The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.  Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government.  They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.  Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily  to pursue the public good?   Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.  Their turbulent  and uncontrouling disposition requires checks.

Sometimes I wonder if Hamilton may have been right.

What the Court Evangelicals (and some others) are Saying About Mark Galli’s *Christianity Today* Editorial

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Trump Beleive me

Out in paperback on January 7, 2020

Here is Robert Jeffress:

Franklin Graham here.

Ralph Reed:

Ralph Reed also really likes Franklin Graham’s comments:

Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Falkirk Center‘s at Liberty University retweeted Trump.

A spokesperson for the Falkirk Center is upset at Jim Acosta of CNN:

Here is one of the so-called “Falkirk Fellows”:

A former leader of the Assemblies of God is not happy with Mark Galli:

Jack Graham thinks, Christianity Today is out of touch with American evangelicalism, as if public morality is some kind of popularity contest.  This makes me wonder who is on the narrow road and who is on the broad road.(Matthew 7:13-14).

It’s always good for the court evangelicals when alt-Right website Breitbart is on your side:

Laura Ingraham of Fox News:

Jerry Falwell Jr. blocked me a long time ago, but this morning he tweeted: “Less than 20% of evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 but now CT Magazine has removed any doubt that they are part of the same 17% or so of liberal evangelcials who have preached social gospel for decades! CT unmasked!”

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council trashes Christianity Today:

David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network shows how crazy this is getting and how Trump is not driving the white conservative evangelical narrative.  He  thinks that Christianity Today is now somehow the magazine of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

Eric Metaxas is apparently engaging on Twitter, but I can’t read his tweets because he blocked me.

 

The “*Christianity Today* Crowd” and the Evangelical Landscape in America

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Trump-Bachmann-Pence-religious-right

I want to pick up on something I wrote at the end of an earlier post on Christianity Today‘s call for the removal of Donald Trump.  I referred to a Washington Post piece I published on July 17, 2017 titled “Trump threatens to change the course of American Christianity.”  In that piece I wrote:

Historians will write about this moment in terms of both continuity and change. On one hand, court evangelicals are part of a familiar story. For nearly half a century, evangelicals have sought to influence the direction of the country and its laws through politics. But Trump has forced them to embrace a pragmatism that could damage the gospel around the world, and force many Christians to rethink their religious identities and affiliations.

And this:

Not all evangelicals are on board, of course. Most black evangelicals are horrified by Trump’s failure to understand their history and his willingness to serve as a hero of the alt-right movement.

The 20 percent of white evangelicals who did not vote for Trump — many of whom are conservative politically and theologically — now seem to have a lot more in common with mainline Protestants. Some in my own circles have expressed a desire to leave their evangelical churches in search of a more authentic form of Christianity.

Other evangelicals are experiencing a crisis of faith as they look around in their white congregations on Sunday morning and realize that so many fellow Christians were willing to turn a blind eye to all that Trump represents.

If the court evangelicals were students of history, they have learned the wrong lesson from evangelical political engagement of the 1970s and 1980s. Trump’s presidency — with its tweets and promises of power — requires evangelical leaders to speak truth to power, not to be seduced by it.

Only time will tell how the landscape of evangelicalism will change as a result of Trump’s presidency.  But Mark Galli’s editorial today at Christianity Today has brought to light divisions in American evangelicalism that have existed since Trump got elected, but have been hidden since the 81% story hit the news.  Not all evangelicals are court evangelicals or Trump evangelicals.

As I argued earlier tonight, I still think the majority of evangelicals will vote for Trump, but Galli’s editorial will let the general public know more about the 19% of evangelical Christians to whom I dedicated Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump in June 2018.

Galli has given voice to what court evangelical Robert Jeffress once called the “Christianity Today crowd.”

Robert Jeffress is an Embarrassment to Evangelical Christianity

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Watch how he:

  1.  mocks Nancy Pelosi’s faith with his self-righteous culture warrior sneer.  Jeffress’s approach to Christianity and public life can be summarized on one word: “abortion.”
  2.  says that Trump has brought Christmas “back to the forefront” of our country.  So true. I remember before Trump was elected everyone had to work on Christmas or face fine/imprisonment. When I read Luke 2 to my family on Christmas morning I did so out of constant fear of a Gestapo-like police force storming my house and whisking me away to a prison-camp.  There were no Christmas specials on television.  I remember when Obama, the godless socialist, was president my town made me take down my Christmas lights and tried to close all the Christmas tree lots.  And all Christmas Eve church services were forbidden.   Whew!  I am glad Trump changed all this.  😉

If you can’t see the video, click on the twitter link: pic.twitter.com/3u2yLj0NmH

What It’s Like to Talk With Pro-Trump Evangelical Family Members

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Court

A gathering of court evangelicals

Check out Alex Morris’s Rolling Stone essay “False Idol–Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump.”  Morris talked to a lot of the right people, including commentators Greg Thornbury, Randall Balmer, Peter Montgomery, Charles Marsh, and Diana Butler Bass and court evangelicals Robert Jeffress and Eric Metaxas.

The most telling part of her piece is her description of a conversation with her pro-Trump evangelical mother.  Here is a taste:

In a dimly lit room, with a bottle of red wine, my mom, my aunt, and I pull our chairs close. I explain that I’m taping our conversation, that I love and respect them, and that I want to discuss why my Christianity has led me away from Trump and theirs has led them to him.

For a while, we just hit the typical talking points. There’s some discussion of Trump being a baby Christian, some assertions that the lewd behavior of his past is behind him, that in office he would never actually conduct himself as Bill Clinton had. But when I really double down, my mom and aunt will admit that there are flaws in his character. Though not that those flaws should be disqualifying.

“I don’t think he’s godly, Alex,” my aunt tells me. “I just think he stands up for Christians. Trump’s a fighter. He’s done more for the Christian right than Reagan or Bush. I’m just so thankful we’ve got somebody that’s saying Christians have rights too.”

But what about the rights and needs of others, I wonder. “Do you understand why someone could be called by their faith to vote against a party that separates families?”

“That’s a big sounding board, but I don’t think that is the issue,” says my mom.

“But it’s happening, and I’m not OK with it.”

My mom shakes her head. “No one’s OK with it.”

“If that’s your heart, then vote your heart,” says my aunt. “But with the abortion issue and the gay-rights issue, Trump’s on biblical ground with his views. I appreciate that about him.”

“As Christians, do you feel like you’re under attack in this country?” I ask.

“Yes,” my mom says adamantly.

“When did you start feeling that way?”

“The day that Obama put the rainbow colors in the White House was a sad day for America,” my aunt replies. “That was a slap in God’s face. Abortion was a slap in his face, and here we’ve killed 60 million babies since 1973. I believe we’re going to be judged. I believe we are being judged.”

Read the entire piece here.  Morris’s conversation with her family is almost identical to some of my conversations with Trump supporters over the past several years.

For the Court Evangelicals, Impeachment is a Spiritual Battle

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Trump Jeffress

Over the past couple of weeks several reporters have asked me if I think impeachment will draw conservative evangelicals away from Donald Trump. At this point, I can’t imagine such a thing happening. As I recently told The Huffington Post, impeachment will only rally parts of the evangelical base.

Here, for example, is court evangelical Robert Jeffress:

No Bob Jefffress–the attempt to impeach Trump has nothing to do with the “traditional faith values of millions of Americans.”

Jeffress and other court evangelicals are incapable of believing Trump did anything wrong. Sure, they will admit he is a sinner. But God uses sinners to fulfill his purpose. Trump is God’s anointed. He was elected to restore America to its Christian roots and, like King Cyrus of old, lead evangelicals out of the captivity of the Obama era. How could the attempt to impeach him be any thing other than a demonic attempt to thwart God’s plan for America?

What’s Wrong With This Picture? If You are a Court Evangelical, Absolutely Nothing.

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Trump iN Dallas

Here is Trump at his rally tonight in Dallas talking about Turkey and the Kurds.  Yeah, sometimes you just got let them kill each other for a few days. Let the Turks have their way with Syrian Christians.  No big deal.  We’ll throw $50 million at the problem–that should appease the evangelical base.

What did the Dallas court evangelicals think about Trump’s blatant disregard for human life?  Apparently they loved it: