President Trump and Jerry Falwell Jr.
Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
Atticus Finch, the hero of the book and film To Kill a Mockingbird said:
“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
I think that most people like to believe that religion is a benign or positive influence in the world. As much as I want to believe the positive aspects I have to admit based on the historical and sociological evidence that this is not so, especially during unsettled times of great change.
We live in such an era and when it comes to identity, God is the ultimate trump card, or in the case of Jerry Falwell Jr., Donald Trump is the ultimate God card. Falwell exemplifies the ideal of Christian Nationalism in his idolatrous and uncritical support of the President.
When asked the question Is there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders? during an interview with the Washington Post, Falwell said: No.
The interviewer who had listened to a number of long winded and theologically unbelievable answers in which he attempted to tie his uncritical support of the President by linking it to Martin Luther’s teaching of the “Two Kingdoms” then noted, That’s the shortest answer we’ve had so far, to which Falwell using perfect circular logic responded:
Only because I know that he only wants what’s best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to be what’s best for this country, and I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country.
Truthfully whenI saw and then read the interview which you can see here:
Falwell’s arguments are very similar to Reichsbishof Müller and the Nazi supported German Christians, or Otto Dibelius, who before he became an anti-Nazi and General Superintendent of the Confessional Lutherans claimed:
“We have learned from Martin Luther that the Church cannot get in the way of State power when it does what it is called to do. Not even when [the state] becomes hard and ruthless…. When the state carries out its office against those who destroy the foundations of state order, above all against those who destroy honor with vituperative and cruel words that scorn faith and vilify death for the Fatherland, then [the state] is ruling in God’s name!”
Robert Jeffress, the Pastor of the mammoth First Baptist Church Of Dallas, Texas, is another who seems like Falwell Jr. for the Office of Reichsbishof of Trump’s MAGA State, said:
“You know, I was debating an evangelical professor on NPR, and this professor said, ‘Pastor, don’t you want a candidate who embodies the teaching of Jesus and would govern this country according to the principles found in the Sermon on the Mount?’” Jeffress said. “I said, ‘Heck no.’ I would run from that candidate as far as possible, because the Sermon on the Mount was not given as a governing principle for this nation.”
I wonder what some of Jeffress’s predecessors in that storied pulpit would think of his and Falwell’s unlimited support and blessing of the lawless President would say. Actually I don’t wonder a bit, I know what they would say. George Truett Who pastored First Dallas and served as the President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote:
“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”
So, if one wonders why the most fanatical individuals and groups on earth are tied to religions, it is because they honestly believe that they are acting in the Name Of God. Sadly,mit is the theology of Falwell and others like him that leads to genocide. In that as Pact, Christian history is often little different from the bloodthirsty if the non State actors of Islamic State: Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, or Hezbollah, although it is much closer to the State sponsored acts of the Christian Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks, and the Catholic versus Protestant wars of the Reformation. Likewise, some Ultra-Orthodox Orthodox Jews, radical Hindus, and Buddhists Of course all of these groups have different goals, and some are less violent than the others, but their overall thoughts and philosophy are quite similar: they desire to impose their religious authority on others using the means of the state or if they cannot gain control of government, through terror.
Robert Heinlein wrote:
“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
Heinlein, the author of the classic Starship Troopers was absolutely correct. Just look at any place in any time where any religion, sect or cult has gained control of a government. They are not loving, they are not forgiving and they use the police power of the state to persecute any individual or group that is judged to be in error, or even worse has the gall to question their authority. Samuel Huntington wrote in his book The Clash of Civilizations:
“Whatever universalist goals they may have, religions give people identity by positing a basic distinction between believers and non-believers, between a superior in-group and a different and inferior out-group.”
That distinction is on display all over the world and in our own country when conservative Christians write laws that allow them the right to discriminate against other people based solely on their religious beliefs and to secure themselves the preeminent position in society. Gary North, one of the most eloquent expositors of the Christian Dominionist movement and a long time adviser to Ron and Rand Paul and other conservative Christian politicians wrote:
“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.”
Huntington was right, you see the true believers, those who follow their religion without question and believe that it is superior to all others also believe that their religion entitles them to be atop the food chain, others who don’t believe like them be damned both in this life and the next. That is the certitude of the true believer, especially the religious one. Secular or atheistic fanatics could care less about the next life, for this life is all that they have. But the religious “true believers” are not only interested in destroying someone in this life, but ensuring that in the next that they suffer for eternity, unless they believe in the annihilation of the soul after death, which really spoils the whole Dante’s Inferno perspective of the damned in the afterlife.
The great American philosopher, Eric Hoffer wrote:
“The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish.”
That is why they, the religious true believers of any faith, men like Jerry Falwell Jr., are capable of such great evil, and why such people can bless the murder innocents in the most brutal manner simply because they do not believe correctly.
Under President Trump, conservative American Christians are getting their chance to do their worst, and will only get more militant and violent as the walls close in around the President and they form the last protective barrier around him, like a Praetorian Guard, unless they are fought at every turn. As Falwell and others including Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham, and hundreds of other conservative Christians leaders rally around him, Trump, knowing that their worship,is directed toward him will cleave to them ever more faithfully.
Based on the unwavering and increasing loyalty of men like Falwell, Jeffress, and their followers, Trump was right about his supporters when he claimed in 2015:
“You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible.”
It is incredible, and dangerous.
So until tomorrow,
Peace
Padre Steve
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 