Don’t share your cookies!

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I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit.  – Tony Campolo

Sometimes, when I’m really bored, I’ll click on the Christian Post for a helping of warmed-over evangelical propaganda. They specialize in gripe features, when they’re not fretting about losing white Christian control over everything.

This CP article over the Christmas holidays really helped explain what the Evangelical Tribe is all about. It involves a church in densely populated urban Seattle that is experiencing a major problem. (It’s a Greek Orthodox church, but the CP commenters piling on here were assumedly evangelicals). The particular area is known as one of Seattle’s most popular nightlife and entertainment districts, and home to a historic gay village. It’s going through the throes of gentrification, where the birthplace of grunge is scaling up to a more expensive grunge. Trip experts rave about loads to do, but warn not to stray from the main drag.

Seattle has become a magnet for the homeless. They are hanging out on street corners and camped out in public parks. Tourists complain the area is overrun with pan-handling drug addicts. The local church in question has the same issue, and parishioners are afraid to attend. They blame the police for doing nothing. “We need help”, the church pleads.

The question is, would WE invite these dead-enders and abused losers to worship with us? No. These folks just wouldn’t fit in with our kind, especially at the pleasant après-worship featuring coffee and sweets. Instead, we’d be dialing 911 and sending them to jail. Like a Baptist church in California, where a homeless man who entered the church looking for assistance was arrested. He had stolen some $2 worth of cookies!  Who is the “we” who really needs help?

Last month, most of us in America endured one of the most frigid, pipe-busting Decembers on record. While the polar vortex winds blew, how many of us driving to our comfy Christmas Eve services, gave any thought to detour past a Wal-Mart or other big box store?. After dark, on any given night, any number of dingy cars and vans are parked in the dark corners of the lot. People live in them. We call them “homeless” people, but they are not. They are un-homed, discarded, hungry and unloved. Go ahead and check for yourself.

Like the church in question, many Christians imagine the world’s problems might be solved if needy people outside our churchly comfort zone would just magically disappear. Commenters to the article tried to paint the church as victim:

  • “Police are so kind to homeless people. Seize their property and then roust them 9 times out of 10.”
  • “If you don’t like rampant crime and homelessness, then don’t vote Democrat.” 
  • “These are not poor……….These are addicted to drugs”
  • “Want to get rid of them?  Go out and start preaching to them all day every day.”
  • “Put these people in prison, and, whilst they are in prison, get them dried out, teach them life skills, and, with any luck, make them productive citizens.”

Can you hear what they’re really saying? Funny, how few of these armchair “experts” saw this as a spiritual problem the American church has disowned. “Are there no prisons?” “Are there no workhouses?” Each year, a Texas church boasting 49,000 members puts on a Christmas extravaganza bigger and better than Broadway. A $60 ticket to see the 1,000 member performance buys angels flying across the ceiling, a choir and live orchestra, a cast of on-stage animals, along with a first act featuring Santa. Duas tantum res anxius optat: Panem et circences. And we don’t have resources to help those in need??? Or is it because we don’t give a shit? When Christians turn our backs to the visibly invisible in our neighborhood, it should shame us to be the truly homeless ones, having souls with “no room at the inn”.

“The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared? – Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Ukraine: The Humanitarian and Spiritual Crisis

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While Russia claims it targets only military installations using precision-guided weapons, the ground truth appears much different. Of course, in the fog of war, very little information can be verified. But pictures and accounts of casualties in schools, hospitals and apartment blocks tell a grim story of ordinary people being caught in the crossfire.

The Ukraine invasion has already created an internal humanitarian crisis, especially in urban areas where communal services and utilities have been cut, leaving residents without heat, light – and the most crucial infrastructure for survival – sanitary water. Countless windows blown in by detonations, exposing living quarters to the Ukrainian cold. The less fortunate “de-housed”, missiles or artillery having left them homeless. Panic buying and hospitals filling, leaving food and medicine scarce. Cemeteries filling up. Internment camps. I know; I saw the same human miseries in Sarajevo.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) reports that, as of today, some 368,000 Ukrainians have already fled west, mostly to neighboring Poland, Moldova, Romania and Hungary. According to an ABC report, Poland is prepared to take upwards of a million refugees. The numbers of displaced Ukrainians may exceed that, give the “strong likelihood that this war will produce substantial refugee crisis.” A list of trustworthy U.S.-based charities addressing these needs can be found here. John Fea has collected evangelical sites as well.

The evangelical church in Ukraine is a strong one. Ukraine is the main missionary-sending country for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Already, churches are mobilizing to support refugees. They are appealing for Ukrainian language Bibles – people are desperate and the Ukrainian Bible Society can’t keep up with requests. A future under Russian rule looks ominous – if the persecution of evangelicals in Donbass and Luhansk is any indication. Looking forward, the strength of Ukrainian believers will be sorely tested.

“Do not imagine for a moment prayer doesn’t matter. Pray for Ukraine… Pray for the presence of Jesus to permeate households & hiding places & be a shield & comfort to them. Pray a Psalm – maybe 27 or 31 – as intercession. Let’s pray.” She’s among countless evangelicals coming together – despite differences – to petition God on behalf of those afflicted.  “It is an actual war, and our prayers matter, your prayers matter, one”, an émigré at one Florida church pleaded.

“They are desperate for our prayers.”

Know Jesus, No Peace.

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[NOTE: Follow-on to Ukraine: The Unholy Holy War.]The evangelical thought leaders I’ve described have focused on Ukraine as a binary conflict between two superpowers – domination systems – as Walter Wink described them. Empires are hegemonic conquest states. Like a hammer always looking for the next nail, empires like America or Russia exert acquisitive geo-political power. Overlooking our misadventure in Afghanistan (where my son was wounded by an IED) we need only look to Trump’s grandiose scheme to buy Greenland, or China’s menacing of Taiwan.

Military Darwinism determines that the stronger prevail, and we have tried our best to insure we are the fittest. Part and parcel of U.S. support to Ukraine and the “New Europe” is NATO military hardware. Like $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine or a pending $6 billion tank deal to Poland. It raises Russian suspicions that the “West is primarily interested in moving its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders, and not in spreading democracy and liberal values”. Decisions are based on what military power permits us to do, rather than morally what we should not. Regardless of Russia’s claim, relying on a NATO counterweight results in a spiral of violence. “The last thing Ukraine really needs is arms.” What Ukraine does need is the shalom of a stable internal and external environment. The country would be much better off if unimpeded to develop its economy and improve people’s livelihoods.

Two all-important questions are noticeably absent in this tale of super-world death match: Ukraine itself, and Jesus. Whether Russia or the Western powers prevail in the war likely to come, it is Ukraine that will be despoiled, left in ruins and human despair. Ukrainians would rather live in peace, coerced by neither military bloc, and allowed to engage in mutually beneficial diplomacy with both East and West.  “Diplomats and political leaders appear in danger of talking over the heads of Ukrainian people, while much commentary has ignored the likely consequences of proposals on the lives of ordinary Ukrainians.”

Violence can never be justified in the name of Jesus. But we see evangelicals like Dr. Land urging superpower America to go in guns a blazin’. They are accountable, according to William Stringfellow, for “naming each escalation and reescalation of war a way to quicken peace”.  On the other hand, we have Putin-flattering Franklin Graham, giving passive assent interspersed with the lazy sanctimony of “hearts and prayers”.  Leading evangelicals having the gravitas to shape policies and perceptions are either too compromised or too disinterested to act as go-betweens. The absence of evangelicals of stature as credible peace-makers prompted Russell Moore to suggest instead that Pope Francis should work with the region’s spiritual leaders to seek a lasting peace.

Is it that God cannot find an evangelical statesman for this calling?

Ukraine: The Unholy Holy War

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Ever since Cain sulked off to form his city, humans have found refuge in building empires. Like hammers always looking for the next nail, empires thrive on exerting power over others. Walter Brueggemann notes that empires have insatiable appetites, intrinsically unable to restrain themselves. The United States is such a totalizing empire. So also is Russia. Translated, Ukraine means “borderland”. And that barbed wire frontier is where these antagonistic empires have squared off.

Most American Christians do not know much about Ukraine, other than it is somewhere between Washington and Moscow..  Estimates indicate some 190,000 combat troops – 50% of Russia’s offensive capability – is poised at Ukraine’s border. The U.S. government believes invasion is imminent. Facing fierce resistance, it would be a bloody and difficult war, creating an enormous surge of refugees, with devastating socio-economic shock across the European continent and beyond. Those who could not leave Ukraine would face a puppet government imposing harsh conditions, mass arrests and reprisals – not to mention an open sore of mass hunger and displacement. Even a “successful” war wouldn’t cease evil; peace at the barrel of a gun just changes the form evil takes.

How Russia acts – and how the West then reacts – remains an open question: one of the pitfalls of recording contemporary history. Facts constantly evolve; with Russia now annexing Donbass and Luhansk regardless of Ukrainian sovereignty. A number of political observers have insisted that “we need to be clearly on the side of the West.” But how should American evangelicals react?

One avenue – taken by Richard Land – is military deterrence. Land construes the Bible Americanly, believing in a strong U.S. military as a central article of evangelical faith. America is militarily strong and morally right; there are no limits to reordering the world that our God-ordained greatness could not bring about. A neo-con hawk, Land advocates “to arm the frontline states from the Baltic to the Black Sea to make it very painful and costly for the Russians to use military force.” This militaristic view is shared by those many evangelicals who, in the words of Walter Brueggemann, “read the Bible with the United States cast in the role of God’s chosen people and carrier of God’s will for freedom in the world.” “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are,” George H.W. Bush once declared. The U.S. in this view, convinced of its own righteousness, is like a church where its foreign missionaries carry guns.

A contrary position held by many evangelicals is, simply put, to leave Russia to its own devices. “Russia did not and does not want to be part of the decadent liberal system”, one evangelical writer declares. He maintains that Post-Christian America is in no position to be the moral judge of the world by imposing “the ‘universal values’ of democracy, human rights, and liberty” upon nations like Greater Russia that don’t want them. In this thinking, Ukraine shouldn’t exist, because Biden’s “woke” America is so corrupted that it is no longer worthy of respect. Another goes so far as to say that if Russia conquered Europe, it would be an improvement. It’s a dystopian view that implies some conflict thousands of miles away is irrelevant to the U.S., which by now should have learned its lessons about policing the world. Yet more than that; it feeds into Dominionist ideologues who proclaim “we’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Doubtless the most visible adherent of this latter view is Trump-admiring Franklin Graham, who sees the rapid decline in American Christianity primarily caused by the ‘progressives’ repudiating God as the source of moral guidance. Putin believes Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”, saved through the Russian Orthodox Church. The Church under Kirill – a convenient spiritual ally for the Kremlin – has accused the West of imposing secular values on Russia. Graham has made several “non-political” trips to Moscow, meeting both with Putin and Orthodox prelates, and came away asserting that “many Americans wished that someone like Putin could be their president.”

“Putin,” writes David Brooks, “has redefined global conservatism and made himself its global leader.” But by far Putin’s biggest admirer is Donald Trump, who “cannot stop praising him”. “This is genius,‘ Trump declared after Putin helped himself to more of Ukraine. Together, they are “new breed of autocrats… people who aren’t interested in treaties and documents, people who only respect hard power.” Like President Trump’s Putin envy, evangelical culture is all about the pursuit of temporal power, awash with alpha males wielding supremacy over their mini-hierarchies. For evangelical diplomats, Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State under Trump (and likely GOP candidate to take Trump’s old job in 2024) is the genuine article. He offered his admiration for Putin’s savvy in tearing off another piece of Ukraine. “He knows how to use power.”

Again, we should ask, is this how American evangelicals should react? This blog will be exploring that question in the posts to follow.

Raise a Toast to Thanksgiving

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Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. – 1 Thessalonians 5

We lived in the village of Ellicottville, New York for a number of years,  tucked away in a small corner upstate which is famous for snow accumulations. This week, a ginormous blizzard “of long duration” is destined to hit, leaving some 4 feet of fresh snow.  We’re used to that beginning around Thanksgiving, being snuggled away with a cozy wood fire blazing, watching out the windows as big flakes poured forth from the sky. It was the best time for that holiday, or at least the best time to be home for it. Sadly, some years, we celebrated by ourselves – the roads were impassable for traveling family. But thankful for their presence whenever they could make the snowy trek.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday for the year. It expresses my gratefulness to God for all his many good gifts. Even in the years snow blocked us from the rest of civilization, we gave thanks “in all circumstances”.  Thanksgiving is a bittersweet time for me. I love the family-oriented togetherness that culminates at a well-appointed common table. A time of renewal; a time we express love and receive it. But it’s distressing to see the creeping commercialization of Christmas overtake it. Even as the turkey dishes are being cleared, the god of Mammon is seducing us back into the malls, as if Thanksgiving were some annoying interruption to the all-important “ca-ching”. And Americans are more than eager to resume their acquiring, having paused a whole day out of the year to be thankful.

For me, every single day is one for which I feel grateful – and indebted – to a loving God full of grace. For my loving, caring family. For physical well-being. For the protection of a warm house, and food on the table. Its also a day I give back to those not as fortunate in those regards. Like our former housekeeper, Maria. We have committed to “pay forward” many of our blessings onto her struggling family.

For me, commercialization has hollowed-out much of the true joy of Christmas and turned it into a frenzied credit card free-for-all. I look forward to the season of Advent and the Nativity with mixed emotions, seeing so much having been captured by secular culture. There’s not much buying and selling involved in Thanksgiving – a turkey dinner, some seasonal decorations, maybe a vase of flowers. It’s not sexy for marketers. Stores are already fully stocked with Christmas wares. Materialists don’t know how to molest Thanksgiving. They keep pecking away at it, reminding us in football commercials that Black Friday is really the holiday you should pay attention to.

But there is one special day I can raise a toast to the Giver of the feast with my wonderful family to say “I am truly grateful to God for the blessings he’s bestowed”. And for that, I am truly thankful.

Credo… Credimus

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But if we walk in the light, as he also is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.  1 John 1:7

 “I believe… We believe…” Modern English language is densely rich, but one shortcoming rests in addressing a whole bunch of people.  We have no linguistic way of differentiating singular and plural “you”.  It wasn’t always this way. In English at the time of the King James Bible, “ye” was the second person plural pronoun (i.e.- not the performer previously known as Kanye West). As in, “prepare ye the way of the Lord”. To make that distinction today, English speakers need to resort to awkward work-rounds like “y’all” or “you guys”.

I’m not trying to inflict a grammar lesson; this linguistic deficit affects how we interpret the Bible and our approach to faith.  The majority of St. Paul’s epistles, for example, were addressed to congregations, to be communally received. We can easily misread passages where Koiné Greek expresses the collective you. Especially given our hyper-individualized evangelicalism, which embeds the assumption that the Apostle’s instructions were addressed to “Me”, “Mine”, or “I” rather than as pluralized instruction to a community.

The collapse of American community has been recounted in Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”.  The disconnectedness of our society influences how evangelicals relate to one another. Or, to be more precise, how they don’t. The message of the gospel becomes a message “for me” personally. This branding of the idealized modern American Christian begins as the sale is closed, typified by the “I have decided to follow Jesus” style of proselytizing popularized by Billy Graham in his mass crusades. My religion is exclusively between me personally and Jesus.

Asking Jesus into your heart – just say the magic words, and now you’re totally free in Christ. What more is needed after that? The problem with retail grace is that Jesus did not say go and make Christians, but disciples who were to be baptized and taught. The magic words spoken in a crusade do a great job answering what I need to be saved from; what I am being saved to – not so much. John Stott comments: “We tend to proclaim individual salvation without moving on to the saved community.” Jesus didn’t tell people to accept him, but to follow him. And that needs to happen within the loving arms of a body of believers, whose practices embody the biblical story.

When Paul the Apostle speaks to the Galatian church about growing “… until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19), he wasn’t talking about weekly meet-ups for religious consumers, or feeding the fast food aggregate of “I”s. He meant a new identity lived out in community. It is where Christians (“we”, “us together”, “among”, “in common”…) put into practice the habits to live Christianly, to encourage each other in godliness, and invoke mutual obligations of care and concern. Worship is connection; brought together with God and each other. Bonhoeffer describes this in Life Together (Gemeinsames Leben). Other cultures have excellent words for this concept English can only vaguely approximate, like the Russian word Sobornost (Собо́рность) or the Greek Koinonia (κοινωνία).

Now, worshipping apart from the evangelical tradition, I’ve begun to think in terms of corporate spirituality, gaining a fuller perspective on life together. In worship we pray, “Our Father in heaven…”  We also profess our faith publically with the Nicene Creed, starting with “We believe (pisteuomen) in one God …” The “we” of the Creed’s opening statement is not only a recitation of doctrinal unity, it also implies obligation and responsibility to one’s neighbor. What is true for me applies to each member of my family of faith, standing together as the church.

Some time ago, the military came up with a recruiting slogan, “An Army of One”. “If you want to be an ‘Army of One’”, one critic noted, “you probably want to join the Hell’s Angels, not the U.S. Army.”  The same can be said for Christianity, where there is no single-person church. The plural use in Nicaea dates back to the early church, and given the post-modern primacy of the individual and its jettisoning of common identities, is especially relevant today for the self-centered “my faith” in isolation from the church, versus the allness of  “our faith” as corporate witness to the Living Word, re-enacting his presence among us in water, bread and wine, and being the vehicle through which the Holy Spirit moves.

We believe!

Freedom Or Religion

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Former Vice President Mike Pence thinks religion means freedom. He claims that First Amendment rights do not protect Americans from having other people’s faiths forced upon them. “It’s nothing the American founders ever thought of”.  Evidently, he is not a scholar of Jefferson, who penned that “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion”. The Constitution doesn’t mention any Supreme being; neither does the National Anthem.

An oft-repeated meme from Vietnam War days says, “We have to destroy the village in order to save it”. Putin likes the sound of that blessed violence – and the sound of his missiles bombing Ukraine, “dehousing” the civilian population back into the stone age. Serious indicators point to Russia preparing for total war – even going nuclear. Despite battlefield losses and chaos, retreat might be possible from worldly things, it’s impossible to retreat “from faith”.

And Putin has set himself up as Holy Russia’s defender of Christian morality. He has the military wherewithal to impose his will – and the anointing of God – to wage a holy “special military operation” against the Ukrainian forces of evil. And the Russians face the children of the Devil, who must be “de-Satanized”. According to Russian propaganda, there are no civilians there, just demons. And when we make others into devils, as C.S. Lewis said, this is “the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils”.

“We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you,” the “People’s Governor” of Donetsk threatened. “But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.” This religion has an ominous Old Testament ring to it. “So go now and strike down the Amalekites. Destroy everything that they have. Don’t spare them. Put them to death—man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey alike.”(1 Samuel 15:3) Speaking on camouflaged piety, Reza Aslan notes that “a cosmic war transforms those who should be considered butchers and thugs into soldiers sanctioned by God”. Russian state media has suggested Ukrainian children should be drowned or burned, women deserve to be raped by Russian soldiers, and anyone who resists should be shot. What a moral difference religion makes!

Regrettably, we see the logical conclusion being played out in evangelical life. Those with whom we disagree are not just wrong, they are evil. Amidst the slaughter, Kremlin mouthpiece Tucker Carlson barfs out that Democrats hate Russia for being Christians. In rebuttal, we point to the some 400 Ukrainian Baptist churches having been wiped out. “It’s not just buildings that have been destroyed”, a Baptist pastor says, “but church leadership and congregations have been broken down”.  In persecuting any believer not under Moscow’s thumb, Putin is converting by bayonet. And American evangelicals echo Putin’s words: “We reserve the right to react and do everything to protect human rights, including the freedom of worship.” The “religious freedom” sought by Franklin Graham and his ilk entails the same Orwellian  formula to “force others to be free.” The evangelical war-god prefers using the same politics and combat methods as Satan: murder, destruction and domination. Pin the tail on the real Satan.

Having seen Putin carrying Russia’s divine mission to fruition, one can only dread what lessons-learned Christian Nationalists here are cooking up to impose when they get the chance. Mike Flynn, has-been Army general (pledged to support the Constitution) is now an evangelist touting Christian Nationalism. (Questioned whether he believed in the peaceful transition of power, Flynn took the Fifth). He alleges America needs “one religion under God”. If America is to be a Christian nation exclusively ruled by Christians, then who will be its Supreme Leader? Pick your thousand-watt celebrity of weirdness: Franklin Graham? Paula Cain? Sean “Guitar Jesus” Feucht?  “It’s time for the Church to rise up with one voice and tell our government leaders and the rulers of big tech that we refuse to be silenced”, Feucht sing-preaches.

But evangelicalism has never been “one religion”. It is polymorphic, with some 200 major denominations in the United States. Likewise, it is polycephalous. There is no Patriarch Kirill, no Pope, no Ayatollah, and no one “owns” the movement. Evangelicals agree on one Truth, but divergent secondary doctrines are equally valid small-T “truths”. Far from being a monolithic beast, its organic complex retains traditional tensions among different religious constituencies. Individual Results May Vary. And these religious play-actors setting themselves up as defenders of traditional morality are not even Christian but Christian-like bastards, “fusing deranged political ideas with a mangled version of the Christian faith”.

This is not Cookie Monster’s game, One Of These Is Not Like The Other. The Russians are missionaries just a bit farther along in their Christian Domination quest. Now if a heavyweight like Mike Pence – together with a religion-coddling Supreme Court – is now singing the Christian Nationalist blues, there is little hope for true freedom (religious or not) in Americans’ near future. If history is any judge, when the “Righteous” run out of enemies to kill, they’ll start devouring each other.

“Hitlers come and go”, a quote of Stalin reads. “But the German people and the German state remain”. The dictator of a Communist country that devoured itself sounded almost eschatalogical. The same aphorism could be applied to Russia or the United States. The house that has been evangelicalism is empty today. The spiritual weather forecast looks grim. But as my blog header announces, our perpetual ruins will be rebuilt; you will reestablish the ancient foundations.. God will protect his church. Even if a “Christian” sword demands Freedom Or Religion.

Mental Illness Versus Religious Performance

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When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he’s not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?

– “When The President Talks To God”,           Bright Eyes

“When his family heard this they went out to restrain him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’”. Ever since Jesus began his ministry, religious fervor has been mistaken for mental illness. Physicians in the 19th Century ascribed many cases of mental illness to religious “excitement”. Nowadays, psychiatrists simply prescribe pills. Even so, psychologists struggle to find the dividing line. The Scientific American suggests even mental health professionals must frequently rely on conclusions based on observable behaviors.

In the Miracle of the Swine narrative mentioned in all three Synoptics, Jesus calls forth a “legion” of demons from a Gerasene man living among the tombs. Psychiatrists would diagnose the man’s pattern of self-mutilation as suggesting schizophrenia spectrum. Christians, on the hand solidly place this as demon possession, with the “legion” of demons crying out, saying, “What business do you have with us, Son of God?”

“You talk to God, you’re religious. God talks to you, you’re psychotic.” So goes the old saying. But not if you’re religious. Or at least a charismatic Christian, following a tele-preacher who acts as a conduit for the “Spirit of God”.  Especially those COVID-19 denying faith-healers whose Anointed Word from God has killed many of their own flocks, by claiming the people of God “have dominion and authority over COVID-19”. Including self-proclaimed “prophetess” Kat (Jesus-loves-dessert-in Heaven) Kerr who broke Satan’s lie that Biden had become president, by laughing it off in the Spirit.  She’s the same nut job, among other wacky prophecies, dispatched “1000 Special Ops Angels” to ensure Trump would get reelected. It’s just a smidgen of her spiritual looneyness that JoeMyGod takes a deep dive into.. And evangelicals – for which faith detached from reason plays well – keep nodding their heads in approval.

Søren Kierkegaard was spot on when he observed that “in paganism the theater was worship – in Christendom the churches have generally become the theater.” The best televangelists are accomplished thespians, knowing they are the lead performers acting in a religious theater.  It doesn’t matter what pours forth from the performer’s mouth – however toxic – so long as it keeps God’s people entertained. Is it performance art, or mental illness?

Ever since the Moral Majority days, an evangelicalism founded on racism has spilled over its self-righteous banks to put a voodoo curse on Others they don’t like.  In a recent pro-Trump rally, the crowd cheered as a “prophet” declared that the “Angel of Death” is coming for named Democrat politicians by the end of the year. Kill the Gays! Kill the Abortionists! Now the dam is bursting into society at large: Kill the Librarians! Kill the School Board! Kill Election Officials. Kill the FBI!  Kill the George Floyds!  Kill George Soros globalists!  Or whatever Demon-Du-Jour St. Tucker of Carlson anathematized the evening before. These are the divine commands they are receiving loud and clear now. Of course, it’s rarely been translated into criminal action – excepting Jan. 6th – but the imprecatory rhetoric is rampant throughout an evangelicalism bent on smiting its perceived enemies.

It gets deadly serious when the National Leader hears divine voices. People by and large adjust to presidents who formulate policy by personal gut feeling, or just plain lie about their inner motivations in executing it as they see fit. What about a foreign leader with claims to righteousness and to revenge, and who hears the audible voice of God?  Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, the Ayatollah, Putin?  Surely they were demon-possessed – or at least delusional. What about an American president?  

George W. Bush, for example. “I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq... And I did.” Bush was not elected; he was ordained to carry out God’s commands, taking the leap from seeking to obey God’s will to embodying it as earthly redeemer. Bush claimed his anointed position obviated accountability to any mere mortal. “I’m the Commander – see, I don’t need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the President”. Those close to Bush were spooked by his “sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do”. As Gary Wills noted, “the conviction that we might benefit by removing Saddam is not the same as believing that God wills it – except in George Bush’s mind.” Cal Thomas ascribed Bush’s dangerous arrogance to individuated religious feelings, which “supplant objective truth and make the individual a high priest unto himself.”  Meanwhile, estimates of total fatalities in his contrived Shock and Awe against Iraq vary between 800,000 and 1.3 million.   

I could go on and on about Presidents who were utterly unqualified, or otherwise psychologically and spiritually impaired. But cut to the short and say Donald Trump wins the prize. “Against his staff’s warnings about dictator Kim Jong-un, Trump boasted their personal “love letters” assured international peace. Despite that North Korea continued unabated at delivering a nuclear missile to “hit and wipe out” the American mainland. “Only I know”. Donald Trump didn’t ask Americans to place their trust in each other or in God, but rather in himself alone. I Alone Can Fix It. According to Trump’s psychologist niece, the former President is mentally ill with an attention-seeking Messiah complex.  Theologian  Diana Butler Bass agrees. “The King of Israel? The second coming of God? He thinks he’s Jesus. That’s where we are.”  His dangerous attempts to hold on to power after he lost the 2020 election almost convinced his cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. It had the opposite effect on millions of his “Let’s Go Brandon” followers, with many expressing their willingness to die for him. It becomes a shared psychosis, arousing a “similar pathology in the population that creates a ‘lock and key’ relationship”.

Oh, I can’t tell if he is a crook or a religious fanatic,” declares one of Sinclair Lewis’ characters in his political novel, It Can’t Happen Here. The man is listening to the nomination of presidential candidate Buzz Windrip. Supported by both fundamentalist Christians and large corporate interests, the cunning Windrip ultimately wins the election, and proceeds to transform America into a dictatorship. Is Trump an attention-seeking, Bible-fumbling performance artist, or is he certifiably insane? Either way, it appears our country is life imitating art at the whims of another wrong hero. One, like the deranged “precious bodily fluids” character in Dr. Strangelove, who has his finger on the nuclear button. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. (Ps. 118:9). Sadly, Trump will keep his crowds entertained until the final curtain falls – directly on top of all of us.

Santa Ain’t Coming.

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Why should a fool have money in his hand to buy wisdom when he has no sense? (Proverbs 17:16)

Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions.  (Isaiah 30:10)

I am a rather plump older man with a large, flowing beard that is pure white. In fact, I get many requests to put on my red suit and portray Santa during holiday season. Which I accept, but only for free at nursing homes and for Special Ed kids. Invariably, starting this time of year, random kids gin up the courage to ask this stranger if I am Santa. Of course I play along, avoiding any promises about the presents they ask me for. For a kid, asking Santa is like offering a prayer. Because Santa is omnipresent like God – everyone knows he’s there, but no one’s ever actually seen him.

Large swaths of evangelism key in on that innate trust in other-worldly blessing.  Prosperity gospel pyramid scammers like Kenneth Copeland tell their children of God to ask for affluence (like he has), and God will give it to them. (But only if you first give bountifully to Copeland ). But even after delivering truckloads of Seed-Money, God doesn’t come through with a Learjet or hand them the keys to a spreading mansion. And Santa ain’t coming.

One Christmas, I was desperate for a BB gun. (Of course, I didn’t get one). But I still believed in Santa. It wasn’t his fault; maybe I didn’t believe hard enough. After trying my best to be a good boy, next year I knew he would come through for me. Funny, how so many adults still place their hopes in a God that looks more like Santa. Maybe, with enough faith – and send enough checks – they’ll soon hit their heavenly lucky numbers. But Santa ain’t coming.

Fabulist Word-Faith preachers promise big miracles for desperate believers. When the Heavenly Amazon doesn’t deliver, posing as God’s earthly surrogates, they plead that no person can know the mind of a god whose intentions and decisions emanate from a metaphysical realm. Their trade is in transcendence. After all, these are businesses that deal exclusively in the divine, not the natural world. Santa doesn’t sell toys; he’s selling dreams. And just like with Santa, you can’t sue God when you don’t get stuff from him. If parishioners miss out on God’s financial largesse, it’s their own fault because of their lack of faith. Any questioning is viewed as a spiritual attack of the Devil. And Santa ain’t coming.

Peter Popov vowed, “I can see God leading people into new homes, new automobiles!” Never mind that Popoff is a debunked faith healer, even today he has a popular nation-wide “ministry”. He brings a “feel good” message that resonates with thousands seeking the Christian self-improvement and emotional therapy he sells – regardless whether he was an enormous fraud. He nevertheless reflects who people want to hear, offering the good life.  But Santa definitely ain’t coming here.

Convicted felon, Jim Bakker, likewise has successfully resurrected his God-business.  What got him into prison was a Ponzi-scheme selling condominium time-shares at his Heritage USA property that bilked hundreds of his – mostly elderly – followers out of their life savings.  Today, it is an ugly, abandoned ruin that resembles eastern Ukraine. Santa never came.

Here’s Bakker’s problem: when these preachers move from commercialized transcendence to dealing in “here-on-earth” goods. You know, like ones involving legally enforceable contracts. Like the “Holy Ground Tiny Houses” manufacturer featured on social media, who promised to build 250 homes tiny homes, never delivered, and then declared bankruptcy.  “He came across as a godly person”, one empty-handed buyer remarked. “It was a Christian organization,” another said. “That’s the only reason I went with it.” NBC reports that, among other things, he “spent five years in prison for bilking more than $470,000 from investors”. Bernard Ebbers, former chairman of bankrupt WorldCom was sentenced to 25-year for cooking the books in a securities fraud which drained billions of dollars from retirement accounts. But Ebbers had the balls to tell his Baptist congregation, “more than anything else, I hope that my witness for Jesus Christ will not be jeopardized.”[i]  They’re full of apologies, but Santa ain’t coming here, either.

Like with my BB gun, people are often disappointed when what they wished for doesn’t materialize. Even when a big name preacher-man – or a smooth talking evangelical layman – promises for sure it’s God’s will. The moral here is not necessarily to avoid evangelical marketiers (although probably a wise decision). It’s about not being a “mark” yourself. Especially from trusting others on instinct just because they are Christians. Otherwise, you’ll be singing “I’m gettin’ nuttin for Christmas”.

[i] Jeter, Lynne W. Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at WorldCom. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2004,  p. 188.

Die Juden sind unser Unglück

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There was a time when evangelicals just whispered the “J” word. Now, Trump has given license to say whatever bigoted stray thought that escapes their closed minds.  Take for example, QAnon Christian, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blamed California wildfires on a space laser controlled by “Globalists” – code word for the Rothschild banking firm. And Jewish multi-billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who a motley collection of MAGA cultists see as a nefarious mastermind of international conspiracies. It was impetus enough for a Florida man to deliver a pipe bomb to the Soros home. “Soros was the one behind everything,” an acquaintance  recounted him repeating. “He was the one buying the whole Democratic Party, he was the epicentre of what is going wrong in the United States of America.”

Blame the Jew. “The truth is”, writes Seth Cohen, “there is only one sordid reason for why attacks on George Soros are constantly trending, and it is not because of his money or his politics. It is because he is Jewish.”  He shares that blame with Jews who “control” Hollywood, the media, banking and finance. The usual suspects: Janet Yellen, (Jewish Secretary of the Treasury) and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish Goldman Sachs Chairman). Others “who don’t have your good in mind.” “I stand with the Christians worldwide not the global bankers who are shoving godlessness and degeneracy in our face,” fervent evangelical Wendy Rogers recently scapegoated. Her solution: build more gallows for these traitors.

Last November, I posted The Problem With Judaism: All The Good Jews Live In Israel  which identified Soros as the personification of Jewish blame for the moral collapse of Western civilization. (For Donald Trump, who claims American Jews are disloyal, as with a wide assortment of Christian Zionists, Israel-loving is “a different story.”)  “Most churches in America today do not think they are anti-Semitic. Many churches allow small attacks on Judaism that make larger attacks more likely”. Evangelicals blithely imprint Soros, a Holocaust survivor, while pretending the ugly trope is not an ambiguously disguised reference to Jews as a whole.

There was always anti-Semitism in evangelicalism. One can recall Billy Graham candidly speaking with President Nixon, unaware that he was being recorded. The Watergate tapes reveal Graham’s personal feelings about his Jewish “friends”:  ”They swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country”. Things have changed since. They’ve taken an extreme turn for the worse. And evangelical churches are a hub for radicalization. Forget that passé right-wing mantra, Judeo-Christian heritage. “We have to have one religion ” Mike Flynn spouts as he traverses the country speaking at churches.

Anti-Semitic Beliefs Grow Among Evangelicals, reads a Forward headline. Take for example, popular right-wing pastor Rick Wiles of Florida (a state where anti-Semitic incidents have increased by 50%). Wiles called the attempt to impeach President Donald Trump a “Jew coup”. He went on to claim Jews will “kill millions of Christians.” Perhaps he took a cue from Hitler-loving Trump himself, who outright threatened U.S. Jews to “get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!” “We are called to be at odds with any religion that does not acknowledge Jesus as the Prince of Peace,” another Florida pastor declared. Or take celebrity convert Kanye West’s threat to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”. These are not outliers in an evangelical church disfigured into a politically-influenced identity cult. “This is not an aberration in behavior. It is the default.”

What to do? Firstly, Christians should verse themselves in what St. Paul commands: “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good”, and “as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12). Secondly, determine you will love and pray for them, regardless. Thirdly, reclaim the Gospel from those kidnapping the faith, watching out “for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.” (Romans 16).

If anything, Christians can learn a lesson from House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern, who recently invoked a new committee rule against “batsh** crazy” legislation (in this case, from Lauren Boebert) from proceeding. “I’m sorry. We’re not doing this”, he declared. “We’re not doing this. I’m not going down that road. I’m not going to be part of any effort to legitimize people who are f*cking lunatics”.

Unless our opposition is vocalized and actualized, evangelical Christians will be facing the same fate as German pastor Martin Niemöller described under the Nazis:

… Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Joint.

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“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee”, sang Merle Haggard back in the hippie days. Today in Oklahoma, a person can get a medical marijuana license following “a documented in-person medical evaluation”. Times have changed. In the anti-drug propaganda 1967 episode of Dragnet, “The Big High”, Detective Joe Friday hears reports of marijuana smoking in a white suburban home. The husband in a normal-looking, well-bred family declares, “In a couple of years, things may change when all the kids grow up and start wearing ties and go into to the polls”.  Prohibition-oriented evangelicals fighting the cultural “war on drugs” have opposed legalizing weed since forever. Perennial culture soldier Franklin Graham has drawn his line in the sand, warning Christians not to allow dragging the U.S. “into the drug pit”.

Overwhelmingly, evangelicals take communion with unfermented grape juice, as opposed to a thimble-full of wine. They maintain weed use is almost always sinful, analogizing it to alcohol. I have known many evangelicals priding themselves on life-long tea-totallers. There is apparent ambivalence in the Bible, where it often speaks of wine as a divine blessing, which for example “gladdens the heart of man” (Ps. 104:15). Jesus himself “brought” some 1,000 bottles of the best wine to a wedding feast in Cana (John 2). Perhaps that’s why the brick wall against pot is eroding, with only 40 per cent of white evangelicals now saying using is a sin or prohibited by the Bible. (Although pot is never mentioned in the Bible). And recent archeology has found that cannabis was used in early Jewish temple worship.

“I do not believe that the Bible teaches teetotalism”, Billy Graham once pronounced. And some 77 percent of evangelicals do not view drinking alcohol as morally wrong where used in moderation. And for morally-proper purposes. For example, St. Paul himself advises Timothy to “use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities” (1 Tim 5:23). It would be a far stretch to say its biblically appropriate to use alcohol or psychotropic drugs recreationally with the intent to get high. But many users take marijuana for medicinal purposes. Disclaimer: I’ve taken edibles twice for painful osteoarthritis. I found those small (legal) doses to be medically helpful to this elderly man.

Many evangelical leaders like Mike Huckabee fixate on the dangers inherent in “reefer madness”, pointing out that states where marijuana is legal have seen an increase in traffic accidents involving drivers testing positive for THC. “Legalization of marijuana doesn’t come without a cost”. Although “increased marijuana use itself is likely not the sole cause of the increases seen.” Bingers gonna binge, and there is evidence indicating excessive alcohol consumption is often also involved. The risk from driving under the influence “of both alcohol and cannabis is greater than the risk of driving under the influence of either alone.”

Vehicles, like many everyday items – chainsaws, hairdryers, propane space heaters or even Tylenol – can kill when used against instructions. (Let’s not talk about guns!)  But the potential for improper use does not ban their use. In fact, laws exist to minimize their inherent risks – for example, showing an adult ID when buying the sorts of spray paints used by adolescent taggers. The same for cigarettes. A highway safety engineer brings an important perspective: “First, convince everyone that driving under the influence of marijuana is not okay,” he says. “Then, enact laws and sanctions penalizing those who ignore the message. Finally, make sure you have the resources (i.e., staffing and training) to enforce these laws and sanctions.”

Years ago, I knew a newly-Christian couple who thanked Jesus when they lit up together. Based on the spiritual guardrails of sound judgment and discretion I see in the Scriptures, I don’t see why not. In everything give thanks. Praise the Lord and pass the joint.

Dumb, Ignorant, Lazy or Just Plain Stupid?

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One of the most religious countries on the earth is also a nation of religious illiterates – Stephen Prothero

When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. (Mark 6:34)

The Greatest Book Never Read – evangelicals have become a religious tribe of biblical illiterates. The People of the Book revere the Bible – “but, by and large, they don’t read it. And because they don’t read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates.” For many an evangelical Christian , the word is more a brand than a faith. Evangelicals are identified politically more than theologically; simply another word for ‘Republican’. “This is what religion without religion looks like”, writes Shadi Hamid.

How did we get here?

There are plenty of reasons, and throughout this blog, I’ve been stuck writing the same thing over and over again on the manifold failings of evangelical leadership. We likewise need to examine the effect of those sitting in the pews.

A Christianity Today article entitled, Why Johnny Can’t Read the Bible, found an appalling scriptural illiteracy among the very biblicists who uphold its every inspired and inerrant word. Only about half of those who define themselves as professing Christians bother to read the Bible. Frankly, it belies a common American lack of curiosity about the known world, confirmed as I taught ninth grade world geography. I had to dumb things down and teach from a seventh grade textbook. Even then I had to soft-ball exams, with students answering, for example, that Hawaii was a country.  Jay Leno spelled out this embarrassing national ignorance on his Jaywalking segments.   

By and large, Americans are not well-read. And the same goes for evangelicals, where more and more, faith ignorance rules the day. Even at a evangelical seminary, a theology professor was astonished to find incoming students needed remedial training on Bible content. Its a damning confirmation of modern evangelicalism’s anti-intellectualism. It’s not that Johnny Evangelical can’t read the Bible. He’s just grown up in an environment where verbalizing the orthodox faith isn’t that important. This lack of Bible-reading explains why we supposed Biblicists assume we know the Bible, when we really don’t.

One could go further.  Many evangelicals come pre-loaded a scatter-text of Bible snippets, rather than an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Biblical literacy means more than winning a game of Bible Trivia – a cut-and-paste approach that looks to the Bible as one’s personal answer book. Bible literacy needs to be more than meeting our emotional needs. Rather than approaching the Bible as a “grab-bag repository of texts that reaffirms the reader’s prior commitments”, Christians need to be readers seeking the unfolding of God’s redemptive process. 

Sunday school is passé. Forget catechism – it’s is for Catholics! Feeling is Believing. Small group relational Bible studies are called inductive, but are more assumptive; weighted by with free-flowing devotionals that don’t force us to wrestle with our Christian belief and practice – or as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer put it, hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures . Today’s blind collectivism arises from little taste for “theology” in what has become a post-denominational movement inexplicably hung together by individual autonomies.

To my mind, foremost in the formation of disciples is having read the Bible cover-to-cover, and frequently. From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, we see the arc of Scripture in Creation – Fall – Redemption – New Creation, with its centrality being Jesus Christ. That’s why I recommend against reading the Bible front-to-back. A serious Bible learner should start in the Gospels, which hang the larger narrative together in redemptive completeness.

Where do we go from here?

Americans have an innate quest for authentic spirituality. Even many who are “Dones” turned off by the institutional church remain, like the Bereans, eager to learn more about Jesus. Marva Dawn asked, “will we give away the Church and its gospel power by dumbing it down or by failing to reach out?”[1] One of my favorite writers, Dawn incisively begins at the heart of Christian community: worship.

“My major concern for the Church”, she continued, “has to do with worship, because its character-forming potential is so subtle and barely noticed, and yet worship creates a great impact on the hearts and minds and lives of a congregation’s members. Indeed, how we worship both reveals and forms our identity as persons and communities.”

Why do I paste a book on communal worship into a post on “dumbed-down” Christians? Because the Bible was meant to be read and discussed in gathered community. The locus of that gathering is koinonia, where we “experience God’s grace and power, informed by the written Scriptures, mediated by the Holy Spirit, and based upon the work of Christ on the Cross.”

I assign “dumbed-down” Christians two homework assignment: Buy a fresh Bible and immerse yourself in it. Then read Marva Dawn’s works and introduce her to your congregation.  

[1] Marva J. Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology Of Worship For This Urgent Time, (Grand Rapids: Erdmans, 1995), 12.