The Cost of the Evangelical Betrayal
White, conservative Christians who set aside the tenets of their faith to support Donald Trump are now left with little to show for it.
Peter Wehner



The closest thing social conservatives and evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump had to a conversation stopper, when pressed about their support for a president who is so manifestly corrupt, cruel, mendacious, and psychologically unwell, was a simple phrase: “But Gorsuch.”

Those two words were shorthand for their belief that their reverential devotion to Trump would result in great advances for their priorities and their policy agenda, and no priority was more important than the Supreme Court.

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Donald Trump may be a flawed character, they argued, but at least he appointed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

And then came Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.

That is the case decided in mid-June in which the majority opinion, written by Justice Gorsuch, protected gay and transgender individuals from workplace discrimination, handing the LGBTQ movement a historic victory.

“An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” Gorsuch wrote for the majority in the 6–3 ruling.

It was a crushing blow for the religious right, and it must have dawned on more than a few of Trump’s evangelical supporters that if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency, the outcome of the case would have been the same; the only difference is that the margin probably would have been 7–2.

The Bostock case was not the only major legal setback for social conservatives and evangelical Christians. By a 5–4 margin, the Court—in June Medical Services v. Russo—delivered a significant defeat to the pro-life movement, striking down as unconstitutional a Louisiana law that could have left the state with only a single abortion clinic. This dashed the hopes of those who were counting on Trump’s appointees to lead the Court in overturning Roe v. Wade. (Both of Trump’s Supreme Court choices were in the minority.)

Social conservatives can point to some important religious-liberty victories. But overall, this term was a judicial gut punch for the president’s evangelical supporters. The “but Gorsuch” argument has not been destroyed, but it has been substantially weakened.

“The GOP gives social conservatives little or nothing legislatively, and hasn’t for a very long time,” the conservative blogger Rod Dreher told Vox’s Jane Coaston. “True, they have blocked some bad things over the years. That’s not nothing. But I think we’ve always known that judges are the real deal here.”

“Every institution—the media, academia, corporations, and others—are against us on gay and transgender rights, and GOP lawmakers are gutless. The only hope we had was that federal judges would protect the status quo. Now that’s gone.”

Legislatively, Trump, compared with other presidents, has not achieved all that much for the pro-life cause and religious-liberties protection. For example, George W. Bush’s pro-life record is stronger and Bill Clinton achieved more in the area of religious liberties, signing into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. (Trump has done a fair amount administratively for the pro-life cause.) Trump has also achieved next to nothing in terms of enacting education reforms.

Elsewhere, Trump has engaged in a bromance with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the worst persecutor of Christians in the world, and established more intimate and admiring relationships with many of the world’s despots than with leaders of America’s traditional allies. And on issues that have traditionally concerned conservative evangelicals, such as fiscal responsibility and limited government, Trump has been awful: The deficit and the debt exploded under his watch, even pre-pandemic.

Based strictly on the standard of advancing causes that conservative evangelicals most care about, a fair-minded assessment of the Trump record is that ...

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numerous live links at source

Mike Huckabee’s Revisionist Christian History Course for Kids Comes with a Catch
BY HEMANT MEHTA

In 2018, former Governor Mike Huckabee announced that the company he co-founded, Learn Our History, had produced a DVD for children promoting a Christian version of U.S. history. “Great Again: Restoring Faith in America” was intended to teach kids how “God has always been the driving force of America’s greatness!”

Donald Trump, being sworn in by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, just as it happened in real life.

Over the past few weeks, Huckabee’s company has been pushing its full line of products on Facebook with a $1 promotion. But according to Jesselyn Cook at HuffPost, a lot of parents are furious at what they’re calling a bait-and-switch.

In short, there’s no $1 promotion at all. You’re actually signing up for a $20-a-month subscription. And they’re finding it all but impossible to cancel the plan.


Leave it to a Republican to dupe people with an awful product they can’t cancel.

In one case, a customer got prompt customer service responses when she was signing up for the promotion… but silence when she wanted to cancel. Just to be clear, the website doesn’t lie to customers about what they’re signing up for, but the details are hidden in the fine print. It’s as if the company knows damn well most people would never sign up for this garbage if they knew what it actually cost. The fact that people can’t bow out is just disgraceful.

When the company finally responded to HuffPost, they only said they inform customers of everything when they review the terms and conditions. Which is a fancy way of saying There’s no way we’re telling them what they’re actually buying.

If they were honest — and there’s no such thing as an honest Huckabee — they would just tell people the true cost in the promotional material. Why hide it if it’s such a good deal? But Huckabee, like his daughter, isn’t interested in telling people the whole truth. He’s just trying to cash in before people figure out the con.

All for a course that wasn’t even worth it for $1.

SOURCE

"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away." ~ Tom Waits

Trump is Driving Some White Evangelical Women Away from Him and Their Churches
BY BETH STONEBURNER

There are some hints that Donald Trump is ever-so-slowly losing some of his white evangelical base. While at least one poll says he’ll retain their support, there’s reason to think that overwhelming support is fading a bit.


Perhaps Trump’s hypocrisies and troubling character traits were easier to overlook four years ago, when voting for him could be justified on behalf of all the anti-abortion court appointments he could make to the federal bench. But since then, the ease with which ...

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Primitive culture.

Texas GOP Lawmaker Roasted For Saying Aliens Will Need To Find 'Salvation Through Jesus'
John Sundholm

A Texas state lawmaker has been mercilessly roasted to a smoking crisp for a comment he made last week about aliens.

Texas State Representative Jonathan Strickland, a self-described "Christian Conservative Liberty-Loving Republican," publicly stated last Friday--earnestly and without irony--that aliens will need to become Christians if they want to avoid hell.

No, this is not a joke. Strickland apparently believes this so fervently, he hasn't even ...

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?

He's hardly the first. Ken Ham (he of the Ark Encounter) says that if aliens exist they're going to hell.

https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.co ... g-to-hell/

As an observation - whoever runs that website is an ass - quote more than a few lines and he'll have lawyers threatening everyone in sight.

But god is an alien. Reckon that explains a lot.

White Supremacy Shaped American Christianity, Researcher Says
Racist theology is deeply embedded in the DNA of white Christian churches, influencing even their theology on salvation, PRRI founder Robert Jones argues in a new book.
By Carol Kuruvilla

Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, comes from a line of white American Christians that stretches back before the Revolutionary War. His ancestors weren’t large plantation owners or Confederate generals, or ― as far as he knows ― active members of the Ku Klux Klan. For much of his life, Jones believed the “unremarkable” nature of his family’s background meant that white supremacy wasn’t a part of their history.

But he’s recently started to tell a different kind of story ― one that acknowledges that white privilege shaped his family’s sojourn on American soil.

His ancestors were wealthy enough to own slaves, Jones said. The family settled in Georgia on land the government seized from indigenous Creek and Cherokee people. They became Southern Baptists, part of a denomination founded in 1845 on the belief that it was perfectly moral for Christians to be slave owners.

Decades later, after ...

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There were no white American Christians before the Treasonous War.

How about "North American Christians"??

More like English, French and Spanish, I think.

They even turned Semitic Jesus into a Nordic, blond, blue-eyed devil.

Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That's no coincidence.
For most of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by white congregations demanded the preservation of inequality as part of the divine order.


By Robert P. Jones

Over the last several weeks, the United States has engaged in a long-overdue reckoning with the racist symbols of the past, tearing down monuments to figures complicit in slavery and removing Confederate flags from public displays. But little scrutiny has been given to the cultural institutions that legitimized the worldview behind these symbols: white Christian churches.


A close read of history reveals that we white Christians have not just been complacent or complicit; rather, as the nation's dominant cultural power, we have constructed and sustained a project of perpetuating white supremacy that has framed the entire American story. The legacy of this unholy union still lives in the DNA of white Christianity today — and not just among white evangelical Protestants in the South, but also among white mainline Protestants in the Midwest and white Catholics in the Northeast.

For more than two decades, I've studied the attitudes of religiously affiliated Americans across the country. And year over year, in question after question in public opinion polls, a clear pattern has emerged: White Christians are consistently ...

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Delusional.

OMG! I've followed AronRa for years on talk.origins religiously in the early 90s. One of the top debaters there besides some of the actual scientists.

From a year ago - that's not how debates work

David Barton: I’ll Only Debate Atheists If I Get to Speak 97% of the Time
BY HEMANT MEHTA

Christian pseudo-historian David Barton said in a video released this week that he was once invited to debate an atheist, but he refused to do it unless American Atheists met one specific condition:

He wanted to speak 97% of the time. Because Christians make up 97% of the country.

vid at source


David Barton understands math and debate as much as he understands history…

The whole point of a debate is that both sides get to make their case and may the best arguments win, yet Barton believes that he should get a huge head start because most people already agree with him. That’s not a debate tactic; that’s a way to make sure no one ever debates you so that you can claim victory through forfeit.

Even then, Barton’s still wrong. Christians now make up about 71% of the country when you lump them all together. The non-religious are nearly a quarter of the population. He’s pulling the 97% number out of his ass, which is probably where all of his other math mistakes come from.


Two other things to point out: I’ve asked American Atheists if they ever invited Barton to do this kind of debate. They told me they have no record of it. It’s unclear if Barton just has the wrong group or if the entire anecdote is fictional.
Also, he’s told this story before. But when he told it in 2016, he said he wanted 92% of the speaking time.

So even when he’s telling a lie, he finds a way to tell more lies.

***Update***: American Atheists has released this statement in response to Barton:


(via Right Wing Watch. Large portions of this article were published earlier, because Barton’s told this lie before.)

SOURCE

live links at source

BTW - best estimates have 26% of Americans as atheists and then there are those who follow other religions

Christian Mom to School Board: 6-Feet and Masks Are “Pagan Rituals” of Satanists
BY HEMANT MEHTA

The Elmbrook School District in Wisconsin plans to open up school, five days a week, for in-person learning. It’s a horrible decision by the school board and one that I fear will come back to hurt them, just as it’s hurt other schools which have had to shut down immediately after the virus began spreading. (In Elmbrook, parents will also have the option of all-virtual learning for their kids.)

Even though students who attend school will be required to wear masks — which doesn’t negate the inevitable lack of social distancing — it’s truly disturbing what parents said to persuade the board to make the worst possible decision.

Like this insane Christian parent:


Health and safety are apparently of the devil…

That comment above was actually paraphrased in news reports. Her actual comment was even crazier. (She actually said the bulk of it after her public comment time was up, but because she’s Christian, she seemed to think the rules didn’t apply to her.)


160,000 people have died. Older people — including teachers and administrators — have been more susceptible to it. So low morbidity isn’t a useful metric here.

Why six feet apart? Because that’s the scientifically proven distance that doctors say helps “prevent the spread of infectious respiratory diseases between themselves and their patients in a health care setting.”

Why the Lord’s Prayer? Who knows. It’s a school board meeting, not a church.

What’s really troubling is the insinuation that this woman goes to a church where there’s no distancing, and no masks, and no one telling them to change their ways. How many people in this family are asymptomatic carriers? How many people have to die because of her idiotic beliefs and the school board’s negligence?

We’ll unfortunately find out soon enough.

SOURCE

Trump Admits He Moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem “For the Evangelicals”
BY BETH STONEBURNER

When Donald Trump declared Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv, it was supposed to be a gregarious symbol of pro-Jewish sentiment. Trump himself called it a “huge victory” for Israelis.

Jews, of course, knew better and saw the move for what it was: Another attempt at brown-nosing his evangelical base, which has long wanted that move in order to supposedly hasten the Second Coming of Christ. Whether or not he cared about the theology, Trump was more than willing to do whatever those evangelicals wanted, while saying publicly that ...

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I shouldn't laugh but ....

Christian Network TBN Cancels Scamvangelist Kenneth Copeland’s TV Show
BY HEMANT MEHTA

Here’s an interesting development I missed earlier this month: Televangelist Kenneth Copeland is getting the boot from Trinity Broadcasting Network, one of the (if not the) largest Christian television stations in the world.

While the announcement on the website is dated August 3, Copeland didn’t announce it on Facebook until ...

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