Franklin Graham has called Trump’s policy of separating families at the border “disgraceful.” Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference opposes the policy. Most anti-Trump evangelicals, such as Russell Moore, oppose the policy, but with the exception of Graham and Rodriguez, the court evangelicals have still said nothing.
One court evangelical is even in the midst of a fight with the city of Dallas over a billboard advertising his sermon “America is a Christian Nation.” How oblivious can one get? There is a significant moral crisis happening on the Mexican-American border and Robert Jeffress is mad because a Dallas billboard company took down his sign announcing that America is a Christian nation. Christian nation?
If you think that this immigration mess is going to result in the court evangelicals breaking with Donald Trump, don’t hold your breath. Most court evangelicals do not place immigration very high on their “pro-life” and “family values” radar. Immigration policy is not a major theme in the political playbook they inherited from the Christian Right of the 1980s.
No matter what Trump decides to do about the border, the court evangelicals will stay with him.
I support Jeffress’s free speech to preach this sermon, but I also support the freedom of every historian–especially evangelical historians–to show that Jeffress’s political views, which he preaches from the pulpit of First Baptist–Dallas, are rooted in some really bad history.
Last week we wrote about the billboard in Dallas advertising Robert Jeffress’s upcoming sermon at First Baptist-Dallas: “America is a Christian Nation.” Read our post here.
The billboard company pulled the signs down.
Here is a taste of Tre Goins-Phillips’s piece at Independent Journal-Review:
Robert Jeffress, a Texas megachurch pastor and one of the Trump administration’s evangelical advisers, is facing criticism over billboards his church erected declaring America a “Christian nation.”
In fact, after a bit of online outrage, including an editorial from The Dallas Morning News, the billboard company contracting with the church, Outfront Media, decided to pull the signs down, describing the declaration — “America Is a Christian Nation” — as “anger provoking,” according to a statement from the church that was obtained by IJR.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, a Democrat, seemed to take issue with the billboards, too. In a statement to the newspaper, Rawlings said he doesn’t mind people “being proud of the Christian tradition in America” but added it’s important for the faith-based community to promote “a city of love versus a city of hate.”
And Metroplex Atheists, a branch of the national group American Atheists, is staging a protest at First Baptist Church to confront Jeffress’ patriotic message.
If a baker is allowed to deny services to same-sex couples, then I guess a billboard company can reject a message that they find offensive.
In my opinion, this billboard should come down because it makes a claim based on bad history. It is fake news. I wrote a book about this a few years ago and some of these themes will also appear in my latest book:
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.
Some don’t want to admit it, but President @realDonaldTrump is the Best thing for Minorities & people of color because he creates Opportunity and Access to Success.
— Pastor Mark Burns (@pastormarkburns) June 16, 2018
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) June 14, 2018
If you are a dad this Father’s Day, make sure you let your son or daughter know that you love them. It really does matter. Here are some more thoughts on Father’s Day.https://t.co/tHRO0Bh4rG
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?
A powerful thread runs through the history of First Baptist Dallas – the thread of reaching the lost in our city, nation, and world with the truth of God’s Word, no matter the circumstances. #FirstDallas | https://t.co/QtG9mxImRBpic.twitter.com/p1NEFgWhTm
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) June 13, 2018
I am sure much of what court evangelical Robert Jeffress has tweeted here is true. I rejoice with all those women and men who experienced redemption and changed lives through the ministry of First Baptist Church–Dallas. I know some of you.
But I am also a historian. It is my calling. It is what I do. So let me note that there are other “powerful threads” that run through the history of First Baptist Dallas. Let’s start with political scientist Tobin Grant‘s 2016 Religion News Service piece on longtime pastor W.A. Criswell. The piece draws on the research of Curtis Freeman and Joseph Davis.
Here is a taste:
Whatever role pastors and other clergy had during the fight against slavery and Jim Crow, there is a specific history that Jeffrees is ignoring. Obviously, his own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, was not on the side of abolitionists. More notably, the pastor of First Baptist Dallas was a prominent segregationist who long saw the fight against integration as part of the gospel.
W.A. Criswell led the church from the 1940s to the 1990s. During this time, the church tripled in size to 22,000 members, including notable members such as Billy Graham. Criswell’s election to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 1968 marked the beginning “battle” of the conservative takeover of the denomination.
The election of Criswell was surprising. In the 1968 convention, the SBC voted to integrate its churches and welcome all races to membership. Criswell, however, was the most prominent segregationist in the SBC.
In 1956, Criswell spoke at the State Evangelism Conference in South Carolina. Against instructions to stay clear of segregation, Criswell gave a fiery sermon that linked the fight against integration with evangelism. All Southern Baptist pastors should, according to Criswell, speak out against those who were advocating integration.
Criswell did not mince words. He railed against both the National Council of Churches and the NAACP as those “two-by scathing, good-for-nothing fellows who are trying to upset all of the things that we love as good old Southern people and as good old Southern Baptists.”
He even used racist humor to make his points: “Why the NAACP has got those East Texans on the run so much that they dare not pronounce the word chigger any longer. It has to be cheegro.”
Criswell saw integration an attack on both state rights and democracy by carpetbaggers. Even more so, it was a blow to Southern Baptist religious liberty: Churches had the right and the responsibility to keep their congregations segregated.
Segregation was best for blacks and whites, Criswell said. Blacks, he argued, would never be able to excel, teach, or lead in a congregation of whites. Instead, they should stay in churches with other blacks. Segregation also limited miscegenation. And that, Criswell warned, was going to cause problems for everyone.
It’s that time of year again. Time for Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas and a prominent court evangelical, to hold his annual “Freedom Sunday.” This year’s celebration of God and country will take place on June 24. Last year’s celebration got a lot of attention.
Robert Wilonsky writes about the city of Dallas for the Dallas Morning News. He took the above picture while sitting in traffic. And then he wrote an article about Jeffress at the Morning News. Here is a taste:
The newly planted billboard touts a “Freedom Sunday” worship service June 24 at the downtown church and hosted by the man who serves as one of President Donald Trump’s main spiritual advisers — a job that appears to be part propagandist, part contortionist. According to a video Jeffress prepared for Freedom Sunday, there will be “inspiring patriotic worship” and “a salute to our armed forces,” followed by the Fox News’ commentator’s “special message” advertised on that billboard.
There will be indoor fireworks, too, which is not how they concluded the Last Supper. And first-time visitors to First Baptist will receive a copy of Jeffress’ book Twilight’s Last Gleaming: How America’s Last Days Can Be Your Best Days, a grim piece of work about “the coming collapse of our nation,” according to Mike Huckabee’s foreword.
Consider this your semi-regular reminder that Jeffress, Fox News’ go-to religious authority, is among this city’s most divisive voices. Nothing he says shocks me anymore. I mean, this is a preacher — a follower of Christ — who actually said, “America is not a church where everyone should be welcomed regardless of race and background.”
Which is the opposite of Hebrews 13:1. And, I think, the rest of the Bible.
Autumn Miles tells her #metoo story at Christianity Today. Writing in the context of recent remarks by Southwestern Baptist Seminary’s Paige Patterson, Miles credits Robert Jeffress and the late Jerry Falwell Sr. for helping deal with an abusive husband.
Here is a taste of her piece:
When I was in the midst of divorce, my father called our good family friend, Jerry Falwell Sr., founder of Liberty University, to ask his counsel on how to handle the situation. He told my father, “Tell your daughter to get away from that marriage and come to Liberty, where she can meet a young man who will treat her right.”
Years later, when my second husband (whom I did indeed meet at Liberty) and I were speaking with Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Dallas, I shared my story with him. He looked me in the eye and said, “What that church did to you was wrong.”
“It is never God’s will for a woman to endure physical abuse to keep a sick marriage alive,” he later told me. “God hates violence. In fact, the reason he gave in Genesis 6 for destroying the world was because of unbridled violence. To abuse another person is to abuse someone God created in his image; it is tantamount to abusing God himself.” (Jeffress has recently commented on the Patterson case.)
I had two Southern Baptist leaders affirm God’s love for me and his desire to use my story for his kingdom. Those two men gave me hope that someday, a change would come to the SBC. That day is today. As I track Patterson’s case and the larger conversation around it, I see the spirit of God working to bring freedom to the hearts of those who’ve been captured by domestic violence. Jesus came to set the captives free, and through these brave men and women, the bondage of domestic violence is being lifted.
Read the entire piece here. These are the acts of compassion and love that we should expect from our evangelical pastors.
On Monday, Robert Jeffress, the controversial pastor of the massive First Baptist Church in Dallas, offered the invocation at the dedication of Donald Trump’s new American embassy in Jerusalem.
When it was revealed that Jeffress would be praying at the event, the pundits pounced. Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP candidate for president, led the way. In a tweet he criticized Jeffress for claiming that “you can’t be saved by being a Jew” and “Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.”
If Romney had more than 280 characters to work with, he could have also noted Jeffress’s belief that Hindus “worship a false God” and Muslims are “evil.”
Indeed, Jeffress is a bombastic, loud-mouthed preacher who likes to peddle his brand of evangelicalism on Fox News and other politically conservative news outlets. He was one of the few evangelical leaders to support Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy during the GOP primaries when there were Christian Right candidates in the field—Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, to name three—who did not come with Trump’s immoral baggage.
On Monday evening, Jeffress appeared on Fox News to defend himself against charges of bigotry. Watch it here:
While Jeffress did not say anything negative about non-Christian religions during this appearance on Fox, he firmly re-asserted his belief that Christianity is an exclusive religion. This, he proclaimed, has been the teaching of the Christian church for more than two thousand years.
Do those statements really make Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a bigot? All he is doing is echoing an almost 1,800-year-old doctrine: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, there is no salvation outside the church. It can be traced to St. Cyprian of Carthage, who died in the year 258. The basic idea is that Jesus Christ came to save those who believe in him — and not those who don’t.
This view doesn’t reflect the latest in pluralism. The Catholic Church treated it as dogma for more than a millennium, but has backed away in recent decades. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still the theologian Joseph Ratzinger, expressed skepticism about the view in a 1964 sermon. “We are no longer ready and able,” he said, “to think that our neighbor, who is a decent and respectable man and in many ways better than we are, should be eternally damned simply because he is not a Catholic.”
But plenty of Christians of many different denominations still believe this teaching in one way or another.
Even Mormons have their version. “Jesus Christ taught that baptism is essential to the salvation of all who have lived on earth (see John 3:5),” as the official website for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints puts it. That’s one reason Mormons practice posthumous baptism of those who would otherwise be unsaved: so that good people who were not members of the LDS church can achieve salvation.
To be clear, I have no dog in the Christian theological fight about whether good people who aren’t Christians can be saved — much less which version of Christianity is necessary to achieve salvation. That’s because I’m not a Christian.
My point is rather that I can’t, and shouldn’t, feel offended by someone telling me that I won’t be saved because I don’t have the right religious beliefs.
Most religions in the monotheistic tradition think they are right and others are wrong. That’s normal. It isn’t a reason to consider those who hold other beliefs to be bigots.
In age in which the exclusive claims of the Christian gospel are scorned by a culture that celebrates tolerance as one of its highest virtues, Jesus’s claim in John 14:6 that he is “the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” seems like bigotry.
But why would we expect Jeffress, a Christian pastor, to believe that there is more than one way to God? I am sure that Mitt Romney, if pushed to explain his own religious beliefs, would say something similar about the exclusive nature of the Christian faith as understood through his Mormonism. Let’s face it, Christians are not going away anytime soon. Thomas Jefferson learned this lesson the hard way. The great man of the Enlightenment from Monticello predicted in 1822 that “there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.” Woops. So much for Enlightenment progress.
So rather than wishing evangelicals away, I think it is time for Americans to think seriously about how to live together amid what Washington University law professor John Inazu has described as our “seemingly irresolvable differences.” The practical application of Inazu’s vision will not be easy and people like Robert Jeffress will make it even more difficult.
I have been critical of Jeffress’s embrace of Donald Trump. Just scroll through the blog and you will see what I mean.
As an evangelical and a historian, I have been critical of the Dallas pastor’s attempt to fuse God and country in a desire to “restore” America to its supposedly Christian roots. It is a form idolatry and it is based on bad history.
As I told a writer who interviewed me today, Jeffress’s undying support of Trump and his Christian nationalism weakens the witness of the Christian Gospel–the “good news”–and alienates the very people who may be most in need of it.
Moreover, Jeffress’s extreme dispensationalism makes him insensitive to the sufferings of his fellow evangelicals in Palestine. He seems completely oblivious to the very real possibility that he and his fellow court evangelicals are being played by a man who may not survive his presidency without their support. As Thomas Friedman recently put it, the ceremony celebrating the opening of the new Jerusalem embassy was a “Republican mid-term pep rally disguised as a diplomatic event….This was meant to fire-up the far-right religious base of the Republican Party.”
When Jeffress does announce that salvation only lies in Jesus Christ, he may have the history of Christian doctrine on his side, but he makes such pronouncements with a culture warrior spirit that reflects the worst form of fundamentalism.
If secularists need to learn how to live with the millions of evangelicals who believe that salvation lies only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then evangelicals to need to learn how to engage those with whom they differ with “gentleness and reverence” that will cause them to wonder about the “hope that lies within.”
Here is a taste of Frank Rich‘s piece at New York Magazine. I don’t always see eye-to-eye with Rich, but he is right about this:
Yes, Trump was sending a message with the horror show he orchestrated in Jerusalem. But the message had nothing to do with his administration’s purported goal of seeking peace in the Middle East — a cause that has been set back indefinitely by his provocative relocation of the American embassy. Trump’s message, per usual, was for his own selfish political aims. It was targeted at his base, whose most loyal members are right-wing Evangelicals. And so the ceremony included not only a prayer from Jeffress, whose disdain for Jews is matched only by his loathing of Mormons and Muslims, but a benediction from John Hagee, an Evangelical crackpot notorious for telling NPR’s “Fresh Air” that God created Katrina to punish New Orleans for hosting “a homosexual parade.”
For this segment of Trump’s base, bigotry (including against Roman Catholics, in Hagee’s case) is a Godly virtue and anti-Semitism is not inconsistent with Zionism. Israel is the presumed site of the Second Coming, after which everyone who refuses to give themselves up to Christ will be subjected to another Holocaust. Some of this base is grateful for the previous Holocaust as well, which is why Hagee has said that Hitler was “part of God’s plan” for the Jews and for Israel. This is the theological brand of anti-Semitism whose secular expression could be found in Charlottesville where white-supremacist thugs among what Trump called “very fine people on both sides” could be found chanting “Jews will not replace us.”
Richard Mouw, the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, chides the evangelicals who are cheering the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem and ignoring the death toll in Gaza.
Here is a taste of his piece at Religion News Service:
God is not indiscriminate in handing out blessings to Israel. God wants the leaders to promote the cause of righteousness, which has to do with, among other things, how they treat “the stranger in the land.” The ancient Hebrew writers were consistent in emphasizing his point: “And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34).
If we want God to “bless” Israel we should keep calling the present Israeli government to treat the Palestinians as those who are “born among you.” We do Israel no favors by praying at its celebrations while ignoring the grave injustices taking place not far away.
The evangelicals who send angry messages quoting the biblical passage about blessings and curses are right to insist that God both blesses and curses nations for what they do. And the time is long past for us as evangelicals to talk seriously together about God’s concern for justice in the Middle East. And while we are at it we can also talk, as evangelicals, about God’s concern for “the stranger” who is within and at our own American borders. It is always important to attend to these things. They are matters for which divine blessings and divine curses are at stake.
Because of Trump’s actions, dispensationalists believe the blessing of God will come upon America. The Jerusalem decision reinforces the idea that America is a Christian nation. This decision makes America great in the eyes of God. It also makes Trump great in the eyes of those American evangelicals who visit the White House regularly to consult with the president, the flatterers and sycophants whom I have called the “court evangelicals.”
Jeffress, Evans and other court evangelicals claim that they were influential in Trump’s decision to move the Israel embassy. If this is true, we can say with certainty that United States policy in the Middle East is now heavily influenced by dispensational theology.
I know I have spent a lot of time today (probably too much time) writing about Robert Jeffress, but I could not pass-up Ruth Graham’s piece at Slate: “Salt and Light.” This is one of the best journalistic overviews of Jeffress’s career and ministry that I have seen. (And I am not just saying that because I am quoted in it! 🙂 ). Here is a taste:
Over the course of two weeks in December and January, I attended three Sunday morning church services at First Baptist. (There are three services every Sunday.) I was drawn by Jeffress’ skyrocketing national profile but also by his unique cultural position as a pastor. Few of the most prominent Christians who support Trump—Fea calls them “court evangelicals”—are pastors of their own churches. Jerry Falwell Jr. is the president of a college founded by his own father. Franklin Graham, who also borrows credibility from his father, runs an international aid organization. (Billy Graham, a longtime member of First Baptist Dallas, was only briefly a pastor of a church; neither were many of the previous generation of religious right leaders, including Trump supporter James Dobson.) Of the pastors on Trump’s evangelical advisory board, few have both the high profile and institutional standing that Jeffress does. Paula White, for example, heads an independent nondenominational congregation with few outside institutional ties.
Jeffress is different. He is the head of 13,000-member church, one of the oldest and most prominent congregations in the country’s largest Protestant denominations. First Baptist Dallas will celebrate its 150th anniversary this year. Jeffress’ job there is to preach the Gospel every week, to guide the spiritual lives of his flock, and represent Christianity to the wider world. The church’s official materials call Jeffress “a bold leader in a decaying culture.” But what exactly does it mean, I wondered, to be a full-time pro-Trump pundit and a full-time pastor at the same time?
Robert Jeffress preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2015
Robert Jeffress just prayed at the opening of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Today he is also on record supporting Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist Seminary who has been in some trouble lately. If you are not familiar with Patterson’s problems, get up to speed here.
Here is a taste of Bill Bumpas’s reporting at One News Now:
On Thursday, SWBTS president Paige Patterson again offered an apology, “especially to women,” for past comments he has made about females and domestic abuse. In that statement, Patterson explained – as he had before, when audio clips of interviews and sermons began circulating on social media – that he rejects any form of abuse.
Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist-Dallas, explains there is no tolerance toward physical abuse anywhere in the Bible, adding that God never asked a wife to endure physical abuse to keep a sick marriage alive. That being said, he offers: “I think this is unfair what is being leveled against Paige Patterson – and I’m going to predict he’s going to survive it.”
It’s ridiculous, says Jeffress, to take sound bites from Patterson’s past and accuse him of condoning physical abuse, especially since the seminary president has clarified that he does not condone abuse of women and children. The Dallas pastor contends that those hoping Patterson will be removed as seminary president are misdirected.
“I know trustees at Southwestern Seminary,” he tells OneNewsNow, “and I sense there’s a great level of support for Dr. Patterson – and also the realization that this is really, in many ways, a witch hunt.”
Addressing the motives behind this movement against Patterson, Jeffress acknowledges there are real legitimate claims of abuse that have been hidden and are coming to the surface in both the secular and religious worlds.
“I think some of the motivation is pure in trying to put an end to this awful practice,” he explains, “but I do think others perhaps are using this to further their own political or theological agendas, and I think that is a shame because it trivializes the very real problem of violence against women.”
Jeffress says “there is a battle going on right now for the soul of the Southern Baptist Convention,” but that the good news is that the denomination is built on the autonomy of the local church – and in this “post-denominational age,” he says, what a denomination does has very little impact on local churches and believers.
The piece also mentions Southwestern Baptist Seminary professor Candi Finch, a defender of Patterson. Finch teaches theology in Southwestern’s “Women’s Studies” department and is the “Executive Assistant” to Paige Patterson’s wife.
As we noted yesterday, Robert Jeffress is in Jerusalem today preparing to the deliver a prayer at the opening of the new American embassy. This means that he did not preach today at First Baptist Church–Dallas.
According to my sources, Jeffress chose Southern Baptist evangelist Bailey Smith to preach in his absence. Bailey’s website boasts that “as a pastor, he has led more people to Christ than any other Southern Baptist pastor in an equal period of time in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention.” He was a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Outside of Southern Baptist circles, Smith is probably best known for saying that “God doesn’t hear the prayers of a Jew.” Oh, the irony! You can’t make this stuff up!
This morning court evangelical Robert Jeffress appeared on Fox and Friends to talk about Monday’s opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem. Jeffress will say a public prayer at the event.
I watched Jeffress’s appearance on Fox and Friends and it led me to embark on a small Twitter rant. Here it is:
1/Let’s be clear here. Jeffress is touting what is commonly referred to as dispenational theology. Dispensationalists believe that God’s plan for Israel and the church are different. https://t.co/doUN4gTgdO
2/ Unlike other biblical theologians, dispensationalists DO NOT believe that God’s Old Testament promises to Israel now apply solely to the church. They reject the idea that church (not any nation, whether it be Israel or the U.S.) is now God’s new “chosen” people.
3/Dispensationalists thus see Israel in apocalyptic terms–part of biblical prophecy. God will restore the nation of Israel (this is why 1948 was so important) and Jerusalem will be the site where Jesus will return to usher in his 1000 year millennial reign. #JerusalemEmbassy
4/In January, #courtevangelical@JohnnieM told BBC that evangelical support of Israel had nothing to do with theology. He said “I’ve never heard it [“end-times” theology] come up once.” This doesn’t jive with Jeffress’ remarks on @foxandfriendshttps://t.co/nxVqhVh0vN
5/Jeffress sees U.S. recognition of Israel as a way of grafting the United States, which he believes to be a Christian nation, into God’s divine plan. This is why he call the move to the embassy “historic.” #JerusalemEmbassy
6/Jeffress quotes Genesis 12:1-3 and offers the classic dispensationalist interpretation of this verse. Why are some OT verses relevant for U.S. foreign policy today and others not? #JerusalemEmbassy
7/In addition to his policies on abortion, religious liberty, etc., some #courtevangelicals believe Trump is a new King Cyrus because he is being used by God in God’s divine plan for Israel. #JerusalemEmbassy
8/On the King Cyrus stuff check out Xtian Zionist and lesser-known #courtevangelical Mike Evans This is a slightly different angle on Cyrus than the idea Trump is Cyrus because he is releasing American Christians from the “captivity” of the Obama era : https://t.co/nxVqhVh0vN
9/Jeffress was schooled in this kind of dispensationalist theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, THE major center of 20th century dispensational theology. #JerusalemEmbassy
10/Hal Lindsey of *The Late Great Planet Earth Fame* popularized dispensational theology, but others-Lewis Sperry Chafer, John Walvoord, Charles Ryrie, and J. Dwight Pentecost spent their careers defending dispensationalism. #JerusalemEmbassy
11/How do I know all this? I went to a dispensational college founded by C.I. Scofield of “Scofield Bible” fame. I’ve studied this stuff as both an insider and an outsider. #JerusalemEmbassy
12/I had a Bible professor who used to scream in class at the top of his lungs: ISRAEL IS NOT THE CHURCH! ISRAEL IS NOT THE CHURCH! GOD IS NOT DONE YET WITH ISRAEL!
13/There are evangelical Xtians in the Palestinian West Bank who are not dispensationalists & have been fighting against this form of extreme Zionism for a long time. Why don’t Jeffress and court evangelicals seek solidarity with them? https://t.co/5HWsqEmoLz#JerusalemEmbassy
14/If Jeffress and the #courtevangelicals convinced Trump to move the embassy to Jerusalem (and Jeffress claims that they did), then we can say with certainty that part of the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is now guided by dispensationalist theology.
It doesn’t take long to realize that this “ministry platform” is mostly Jeffress’s appearances on Fox News defending Donald Trump. Since when did defending a political candidate on a television “news” show count as “ministry?”
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.”
The Dallas Morning News has a short piece on the march. This is the only piece I have found that interviews people, other than Jeffress, who participated in the march. Here is a taste:
Students at the march agreed that spiritual matters are the most important of their concerns, but were content with the church’s scope of authority.
Skyline High School sophomore Sergio Daniel Ramirez and his family joined First Baptist Dallas four months ago. He says the church has transformed his personal spiritual life as well as his views on gun legislation and religion in schools. He’d support stricter age limits on gun ownership, raised prices for bullets, and more support programs for victims and their families.
More spiritual opportunities in school would also be helpful, he says, but that the school should not promote any one belief. For that, he has his church.
Sergio Daniel Ramirez does not sound anything like Robert Jeffress.
A member of President Trump‘s evangelical advisory board is proposing teaching students the Ten Commandments to help stop gun violence.
Pastor Robert Jeffress — the head of megachurch First Baptist Dallas — during an interview on Fox News criticized a “crusade by secularists to remove any acknowledgment” of God from the public square and the country’s schools.
He said people have put forth the idea “that we can be good without God.”
“Well, that’s been a dismal failure,” Jeffress added.
“I’d remind our viewers that for the first 150 years of our nation’s history, our schoolchildren prayed, they read Scripture in school, they even memorized the Ten Commandments, including the commandment ‘Thou shall not kill.'”
Jeffress said he thinks the country needs to return to teaching the Ten Commandments.“Teaching people, starting with our children, that there is a God to whom they’re accountable is not the only thing we need to do to end gun violence, but it’s the first thing we need to do,” he said.
Yes, there are generational differences in American evangelicalism.
When I was a kid, the 7 p.m. hour on Sunday night was reserved for either “Mutual Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” or “The Wonderful World of Disney.”
Last night we all gathered around our television sets to watch a porn star talk about an adulterous affair she had with a man who would soon become the president of the United States. Times have changed.
Not since the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998 has the sex life of a president been on display in such a public manner. On Sunday it was Stormy Daniels. Last week it was former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal telling the nation, among other things, that she had unprotected sex with Donald Trump.
Walt Disney and Marlin Perkins would have blushed. Trump’s evangelical supports give him a “mulligan.”
When the country learned that Clinton had sex in the West Wing, evangelical Christian leaders responded with heavy doses of moral condemnation. In a letter to his followers, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson argued that Clinton’s escapades with Lewinsky made him unfit for office. But he also told his readers that they should have seen this coming:
“How did our beloved nation find itself in this sorry mess? I believe it began not with the Lewinsky affair, but many years earlier. There was plenty of evidence during the first Presidential election that Bill Clinton had a moral problem. His affair with Gennifer Flowers, which he now admits to having lied about, was rationalized by the American people.”
