Category: Evangelical Depravity

God’s As$hole

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No. I’m not referring to G-d, who is ineffable and utterly holy, bless His holy name. We humans are created in his image. But God is Creator, not a created being but spirit. And God doesn’t possess an anus, any more than He has other human anatomy, like a belly button.

In his controversial book, Naked Lunch, 60’s beat author William Burroughs told a story about a man’s asshole taking over speaking for him. It talked constantly, day and night in a “sound you could smell”. The man got fed up, futilely telling his ass to shut up. “It is you who will shut up in the end, not me”, the anus responded. “Because we don’t need you around here anymore. I can talk and eat and shit”.  The brain could no longer give orders anymore, and eventually died. I make the connection; the analogy is apt for today’s evangelicalism. Lots of celebrity evangelical “leaders” talking out their ass. And the body is dying.

The Apostle Paul applies a “body” metaphor to the church in 1 Cor. 12, noting that “the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty”.  Except today, “the decay from the top of the evangelical pyramid has left a stench so thick it’s hard to take American Christians seriously.” The Best And Brightest Voices of Evangelicalism™ are God’s as$hole, commandeering the entire body. It’s a target-rich environment. My Gosh, there such an engorged rectum in the body of American evangelicalism, its hard to mention only but a few.

Like the late Bernhard Ebbers,  CEO of WorldCom, who served 12 years of a 25-year prison sentence following a $11 billion “accounting discrepancy”, which was actually widespread fraud perpetrated by  dodgy accounting methods. It was the largest corporate fraud case in American history. Some 20,000 employees lost their jobs and shareholders lost about $180bn. Ebbers reportedly had told members of his Baptist congregation, “more than anything else, I hope that my witness for Jesus Christ will not be jeopardized”. The congregation gave the unrepentant Christian a standing ovation. WTF?

Another example: Nebraska State Sen. Mike Groene. He seems nice. The senator is a dedicated evangelical churchman. Meanwhile, his laptop was discovered with some 50 clandestine photos he took of a young female staffer. You know, innocent close-ups of her body parts, to which he took the time to edit and add titles. One was labeled “legs.” Another was labeled “rear tight.”  Asshole is as asshole does.

When asked, “do you think you did anything wrong?”, Groene replied, “I don’t believe so. I apologized. I did not apologize because I thought I did something wrong. I just apologized, because in their view, I had offended them.” Groene apparently escaped criminal prosecution by resigning his legislative office. He then went full-on persecution mode.  ‘I was like Jesus Christ’.  WTF? His wishes for the real victim: “he hopes [she] loses her job in the Legislature”.  

And finally, another Toxic Christian, Alex Jones. “He is a God-fearing Christian…and right now he needs our support,” said fellow professing Christian, Roger Stone. Jones, who comes from a Christian fundamentalist background, runs the wacked-out hate network InfoWars – what he terms a “Christian ‘self-help’ platform”. His perpetuation of lies that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax wound up– at least for now – in a $4.1 million judgment to the parents of a shooting victim. He was blind-sided in court, after swearing he had no pertinent emails – not even using email. Unknown to him, his attorneys goofed by forwarding voluminous phone records to the plaintiffs, exposing his perjury. Meanwhile, Jones filed bankruptcy against his own company, having devised a secured debt against it by another company under his control. Many legal experts see it as a veiled attempt to seal off his assets.

“The sound you could smell”.  I could go on and on about asshole Christians. But I couldn’t stand the stench.

Trust and Obey

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As a young evangelical, although I grew up surrounded by fundamentalism, I didn’t know much about it. Until the first week at Wheaton College, when most of my dorm-mates used their evenings to attend a Bill Gothard seminar, known then as Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts. I didn’t partake in that extra-curricular exercise, but I glanced through the hefty notebooks issued to each student.

Here was the cult-like teaching of neo-fundamentalism, spelling out in no uncertain terms who’s in charge. Contained therein was an overdose of hierarchic control. Trust and Obey, For There’s No Other Way. Being under authority is one of (since disgraced) Gothard’s most central teachings. Through copious diagrams, he stresses that a woman is subject to her husband; if single, her father remains in charge of her life. The husband is like a High Priest in charge under Christ and the wife totally subservient to the husband; her access to God is through her husband. The mother in turn exercises authority over the children. Presumably, likewise the children over the pets as being the least significant members of God’s family system. Bad, sinful things happen when that divinely ordained chain-of-command is violated.

I think back to Genesis 2, where God made a woman from a rib he had taken out of Adam. It’s a fascinating story. One which makes me have faith not so much because of what the Bible says, but often in spite of it. But for neo-fundamentalist literalists, they not only believe the Bible, they know its true in every respect. Things happened exactly that way because the Bible and Ken Ham say so.

In essence, Eve was a mutant. God made a new being from somebody’s body parts. Most people familiar with Frankenstein would consider that as creating a monster. And that is how neo-fundamentalists (i.e. – evangelicals) view women. A monster which must be controlled; caged by her master. Bad things happen when the monster is let off the leash.  

H.L. Mencken once observed, “morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right.” As religion, evangelicalism tends towards being a cult of (often blind) obedience. An old Gospel song recites, “Fix Your Eye Upon Jesus”. That’s great, except we need our peripheral vision to not bump into things. Or obstacles, like other people and their annoying problems and demands, disturbing our blissful, solo walk with the Lord. The boss takes no crap from underlings in a scheme where all the shit flows downhill anyway.

Take the family, for instance. Jesus said, “I have come to divide people against each other! From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against—or two in favor and three against.” Most people interpret this as you suffering because of your faith.  I see as well as other family members suffering because of your faith. Especially today, when religious organizations use the euphemism “Family” to disguise the fact they are really Extreme Right Wing lobby groups. And Christian families cheering on Trump’s border separation of minors from their undocumented parents. Or like the six-year old looking forward to kindergarten until being expelled from the Christian school because her parents are gay.

I’ve covered a lot of ground here. Let’s just summarize by saying evangelicals put the “nuclear” into family, where rigid conformity to a fundamentalist Diktat is more important than spiritual damage being done to the family. Trust and Obey: use carefully. Among other regrets, I obeyed James Dobson’s advice as a Godly father in spanking the kids. As Mencken implied, a person can be utterly spotlessly religious and still be an asshole. I was that asshole. And I repent.

Never Apologize

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“Never apologize, mister. It’s a sign of weakness.” These words were said by John Wayne in “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”. Wayne was not like other men; he was the ultimate personification of American Masculinity. As Kristin Du Mez points out, “Wayne would also emerge as an icon of Christian masculinity. Evangelicals admired (and still admire) him for his toughness and his swagger; he protected the weak, and he wouldn’t let anything get in the way of his pursuit of justice and order.” No Pussies Allowed.

Apologizing is not only not masculine, its un-Christian. There is a strong strand of evangelicalism that believes being Christian means never having to say you’re sorry. Your sins – past, present and future – are forgiven, so you don’t need to apologize for anything.  “For starters, where in Scripture are we instructed to apologize? I could go so far as to say, ‘Apologies are not biblical’”, one evangelical blogger declared. He’s right, seeing that apologizing is one of the only Christian virtues Jesus didn’t do Himself. And the World’s Perfect Christian, Donald Trump never apologizes.

Evangelicals love victory in Jesus. Evangelicals are pugilistic; they don’t back down. They hold the moral high ground. The worst thing you can accuse a fellow believer of is failing to lead a victorious Christian life. We are Overcomers in Christ. Amongst Bible believing evangelicals, moral self-righteousness is a common form of pride.

Christians need to stop seeing themselves as being more morally and spiritually superior. But saying “I’m sorry and I apologize” makes one emotionally vulnerable and signals a loss of power.   If there’s one trait among evangelicals that needs to change is the inability to hold themselves accountable to others – not just God.

Naked Christianity

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A recent news article caught my attention: “Christians strip down at a South Texas nudist community”. It describes evangelical Christians who take it all off. Nudity is shameful, according to Focus on the Family. “From Genesis 3 onward Scripture seems to make it clear that, except in the case of sexual activity, it’s a shameful thing to ‘uncover one’s nakedness’”. I see just the opposite. Most people see nakedness as shameful because of sexual activity. “At Nature’s Resort, public nudity is not sexual,” the owner says. “The initial conception is that this is a sexual thing. People think we’re all out on the front lawn having sex with each other, swapping partners. In fact, if there is any overt sexuality, you see that gate open real fast and somebody is ushered out.”

“I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” God, it seems, intended for humans to live in the nude. That it didn’t bother Adam before the Fall; it would seem that his fear arose more out of the new-found exposure to vulnerability rather than embarrassment.

Nudity was a taboo in the ancient Israelite society. Beginning with Adam’s sin, the Bible frequently associates nakedness with humiliation and dishonor. Noah’s drunkenness, Lot’s daughters – “uncovering nakedness” connotes inappropriate sexual activity. But there are other passages where nakedness has nothing to do with that. Jesus hung naked on the Tree. And we have St. John matter-of-factly reporting that Simon Peter put clothes on when he jumped into the water. In the pre-mechanized world, there were occupations where nakedness was (no pun intended) best suited – those predating physical contact with whirling industrial machinery. Juxtaposed with Jewish morality is a Biblical ambivalence to nakedness where sexuality is not at issue.

Not making a big deal about seeing someone naked is a difficult question for us, in which there is a tension between the modesty of Christians, and the hyper-sexualized, X-rated society in which we live.  That said, I point to C.S. Lewis in saying there is no absolute Christian edit concerning the unclothed human form. One would never think of banning C.S. Lewis as a smut author. But in Perelandra, he casually describes how clothes are unnecessary on inter-planetary visits.  Indeed, in Heaven we are clothed with garments of salvation and arrayed in a robe of his righteousness. (Isaiah 61).

In Mere Christianity, Lewis opines that: “The Christian rule of chastity must not be confused with the social rule of ‘modesty‘”… While the rule of chastity is the same for all Christians at all times, the rules of propriety change. Even Pope John Paul II remarked that “nakedness itself is not immodest”. Context matters. I think of native tribes who lived naked for eons, until missionaries came to inform them it was evil.  Or, my elementary school experience, where we third grade boys didn’t think anything wrong in having to swim naked during pool time.

A stay at a German hotel might shock American tourists, with a sign at the indoor pool saying “No Bathing Suits Allowed”. Whenever I visited friends in Helsinki, we men would nonchalantly head into the sauna –sans clothes, of course.  I was too Puritan-minded to chance a mixed-gender sauna, also a common Finnish practice. In explaining how freeing the experience was, it was incomprehensible to American friends , who asked me whether/why I went to a gay bathhouse! Somehow, Finnish bathing culture escaped our remnants of Victorian prudery.

What person has never dreamed of bathing naked? I’ve done it! I was swimming at a sparsely-occupied beach on the Adriatic. What a sense of non-conformant liberty it brought. Or, at least partially. I kept my trunks on until in the ocean, and tied them tightly around my ankle – in constant fear of the knot becoming untied. And yes, I did pee in the Ocean!

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart,” says Job. Maybe there exists a “naked and without shame” setting in-between where God wouldn’t get mad if you did the same. You don’t stop being a Christian just because you happen not to be wearing any clothes.

I condone a group of naked Christians, who aren’t gathered for an orgy. Those who patronize a naturist retreat on Saturday, and sit in the front pew on Sunday. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. But looking in the mirror, I see almost seven decades of beauty-robbing decrepitude. Believe me, there’s nothing there there. I probably would not accept an invitation, especially since I wouldn’t go unless my wife came with. And that, my friends, would never happen!!

When the Buck Stops

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As the leader of his powerful Western democracy, he had been elected on a sizeable margin. His governing style was described as flamboyant, opportunistic and populist. A thrice-married man and serial adulterer, he was a larger-than-life personality – a celebrity in his own right. Rules didn’t apply to him because when you’re a star, you can do whatever you please. He was a groper, and defended other sexual harassers loyal to him. He was a showman who could be humorous, entertaining or intimidating and bullying. His audacity to say whatever came into his mind was hailed as a sign of honesty and guts. His supporters praised his combativeness projecting the image of swift, decisive action.  His detractors accused him of lying, cronyism, bigotry, and amorality. He tore up international agreements negotiated in good faith. During COVID, his response to the pandemic “ranks among the worst public health failures in the country’s history” with many thousands of avoidable deaths. And yet, he flaunted lockdown restrictions.  He was by no means a religious person, but mouthed enough of the right words to win over the religious crowd. He led a charmed life, always coming out on top in fights that would doom another politician. Then came a day when he was out of office. Still, he tried to cling to power, and remained the center of political attention.

Lies? Yes, too many to count. But the core of the matter was “the abuse of power that preceded them.” He made crony appointments based on personal loyalty rather than suitability for the job. He was indifferent to allegations of sexual harassment in his staff, because his only concern was shoring up his own position. His administration had “no public interest, no moral principle or governing priority that could ever trump one man’s appetite for power and his personal vanity”. One article said his party “should hang its head in shame for foisting on us a man so wholly unfit for office that he had to be dragged from it kicking and screaming and threatening to burn everything to the ground.”

Who is this man, Donald Trump? Yes, but here I’ve referred to Boris Johnson. “The Tory party subordinated its history, its judgment and its political identity in service of one man’s monstrous ego,” The Guardian commented. Steve Benen of MSNBC put into the American perspective. British conservatives, confronted with a scandal-plagued leader, concluded they could no longer tolerate the constant stream of disgraces and indignities… [t]hey concluded that their leader’s record of dishonesty and misconduct was something they could no longer even try to defend.”

“They call him Britain Trump,” the former President ineloquently once said of his British peer. The knives are out now for BoJo. With the J6 Committee’s probing and forthcoming Justice Department referrals, we can only hope the comparison remains consistent. Except that BoJo’s downfall was being a clownish fluffer.  Trump’s downfall was in spite of him being a criminal blowhard. At least in his case, hopefully the buck will stop in jail…

Donald Trump assumes the legacy of Jack Hyles

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This post is about Jack Hyles, and it isn’t. It’s about all us within evangelical Christianity. I think it makes more sense to present the story in reverse order:

Jack Schaap just got out of Federal prison, where he did nine years of hard time for sexually abusing an underage girl. Schapp was lead pastor in one of America’s biggest churches. I went to Hammond, Indiana to his 15,000-member church in a Scooby Doo van with a bunch of laid-back Wheaton grad students just to observe an evening service. At the time, I didn’t know much about IFB (Independent Fundamentalist Baptist) churches, but learned all I needed from that evening. It was still when his father-in-law and predecessor Jack Hyles was pastor. We were advised to dress well – and although we left our tattered jeans at home, we stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the suits and ties, and ankle-length dresses. We were seated right in front of the “Preacher Boys”, apparently their version of spiritual apprenticeship. We learned later that the favored pet among them was Dave Hyles – the pastor kid. Brother Hyles harangued the congregation for half an hour or so, occasionally alluding to the Bible – and calling out people by name he reckoned weren’t paying close enough attention. Then came time for the “appeal” and mass baptism. One after another entered the alligator pit – but only after long-haired hippie types were shorn of their locks. It was surreal. Hyles died in 2001, rebuking sinners till the end while refusing to confess his own.

Schaap repeatedly used his authority as pastor and personal “counselor” to groom the minor – repeatedly initiating sex in his office, during a church youth conference, and at a secluded cabin. The court denied his two attempts to reduce his sentence, noting that he demonstrated little remorse in “trying to cover up and eradicate evidence”.  Neither did it go over well when his attorneys maintained the 16 year-old victim was just a slut. The church joined in shredding her reputation, submitting over one hundred letters asking for clemency – effusive in praise of their pastor-felon, yet not a word of compassion for the young girl. “You hurt my entire family,” she wrote. “We all trusted you. We went to church for our entire lives. Now, I am in counseling to deal with the constant anger, sadness, guilt, and shame that I feel.” So Jack did his time, albeit losing some good conduct reduction when reportedly caught with his hand fondling a woman’s crotch. His plans following release are not known. But with many still willing to “lift him up back on his feet”, I assume he will be restored to a pulpit somewhere.

A corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. It didn’t start with Schaap. The senior Hyles was a long-time adulterer until his death. Hyles the junior – still living and ministering faithfully within the IFB bubble – was an alleged serial rapist, reportedly being hustled off by his influential father to from one church to another in the wake of recurring scandals.  In 2020, reports emerged of screenshots a woman in her 20’s took purporting to show the 67 year-old – balding and pudgy – man bragging about his penis and wanting to masturbate online with her. “I’m the boss; I can do whatever I want”, he allegedly wrote. IFB churches may be conducive to this depravity, but they are not unique to it. As one victim stated, the experience made her “understand that these people exist everywhere,”

Like his father-in-law who demanded “100% Hyles” obedience and issued denials while rumors were swirling around him, Schaap exercised command control over his congregation. They absolved themselves from accountability to anyone but God. It’s not a rare occurrence among many within the evangelical cult. All of us nurture our own gardens of rotten fruit, and I point these out not to heap scorn, but to emphasize a truism of evangelicalism, with which Trumpism shares many cultic elements:

  • A strong authoritarian Leader unaccountable to anyone.
    • Invincibility of the Leader as “anointed”, who is never wrong..
    • Leader espouses morality, but does not live it inwardly.
    • Belief in the Leader’s word, regardless of reality.
    • Unquestioned loyalty to the authoritarian Spiritual Father.
    • A strong us-versus-them mentality.

Once during a sermon, Jack Hyles held up a cup embossed with skull and cross-bones, and clearly marked “Poison”. He called over a deacon and asked him to drink it. He gulped it down without hesitation. “People keep wondering why the evangelical church has been one of the staunchest supporters of Donald Trump”, asks Karen Spears Zacharias . She answers her own question: “Why not? Donald Trump is the legacy of Jack Hyles’s life and ministry.”

Why not? Because they are all personality cults. And dangerous. Because they gladly get drunk on kool-aid brought forth from an evil tree.

Pissing Into The Wind

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Train up a child in the way he should go:
Advert featuring Proverbs 22, used by the Uvalde massacre gun manufacturer

“The time to stop the next shooting is right now”. This past week, I’ve noticed a prophet in the biblical tradition speaking out against American gun idolatry. Beto O’Rourke confronted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at his press conference after Uvalde. . “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed,” he said. Amidst jeering and shouts for O’Rourke to shut up, Dan Patrick – Texas Lt. Governor, Southern Baptist, outspoken Christian, and politician with an  “A+” rating from the NRA–  stood up to tell O’Rourke, “You’re out of line and an embarrassment.”  Super-Christian and gun-lover Ted Cruz shamed Beto’s behavior as crass, embarrassing; “it was disgusting”, accusing him of a political stunt. O’Rourke was not dissuaded: “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday.”

It is the prophet’s duty to proclaim a message from God. It doesn’t always involve fore-telling; but forth-telling. The present is the kairotic moment of the prophet’s message. It is this day, and also for this today, that we are to listen, not to hang on predictions concerning tomorrow. There is an immediacy; an urgency in the prophetic word to respond by retracing our steps towards the Jesus waiting for us in the Gospels. Today, we need more people who speak honestly about our own blind spots – prophets to tweak the conscience of evangelicals and recapture the prophetic mission of the church. “The task of the prophetic imagination,” writes Walter Brueggemann, “is to cut through the royal numbness, to penetrate the self-deception so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.” [i] That’s exactly the prophet’s calling! It’s not a choice; it’s a divine obligation.

“Then they put their hands over their ears and began shouting.” Unlike St. Stephen in Acts 7, Beto wasn’t stoned, but he was escorted out with the mayor screaming he was “a sick son of a bitch”. Likewise, a quick review of biblical prophets discloses that their prophetic utterances did little more than piss off those mired in persistent disobedience. “Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him—you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.” (Acts 7:52-3)  Jesus suffered and died on the cross, having exposed the moral hypocrisy of the religious elite – the Pharisees – who appeared on the outside “to people as righteous but on the inside are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (Matt. 23-28).

A quick glimpse through Google for “white evangelical prophets” returns the glaringly obvious. Most of this soothsaying issues forth from the religious flotsam sitting at Donald Trump’s feet. False witnesses aside, I’ve known a few prophetic voices among evangelicals – most of which were scorned, vilified or cast out of the camp. Jim Wallis. Beth Moore. Shane Claiborne. Tony Campolo. And many others who spoke against guns through the centripetal urgings of the Holy Spirit. Divine Truth was entrusted to human truth-bearers. Like the late Sen. Mark Hatfield, who used his National Prayer Breakfast speech to condemn President Nixon for prolonging the Vietnam War. (And managing to piss off Nixon’s golf buddy, Billy Graham in the process). These modern day evangelical prophets gave voice because God spoke first. The words they spoke were of Someone Else. Confrontation was not something they set out to do, but something they had to do.

I place Beto O’Rourke squarely in that prophetic tradition. Beto spoke truth to power; to those who would rather cradle their AR-15 babies than elementary school children. “Stay cool. Run out the clock.. But don’t worry: this moment will be over soon”, was the advice Republican advisors were giving the wake of Uvalde mass shooting. Now here’s a fresh thought: let’s reduce mass shootings by getting more guns! In other words, do nothing in the shadow of death; then do more of the same. Like the Pharisees, evangelical moral perfectionists persist in their sanctimonious refusal to listen – or act in the slightest against gun idolatry. They are too busy Making America Great Again to bother about making childhood childhood again. And the waiting list of children to be blood-sacrificed on the evangelical altar to Moloch grows each day. Nothing stands in the way of AR-15 bullets– except those moved of the Spirit to speak truth to power. Pray that God raises up more prophets to expose the moral depravity of the religious elite! Bold prophets – who aren’t afraid to “spit” into the wind and proclaim “the time to stop the next shooting is right now”!.

[i] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001, p. 45.

The WOW factor…

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Hey Mom and Dad!

Tired of buying gifts that your kid just tosses aside as boring? Here’s a fun sensation that’s gonna grab your son’s attention like a bang!  Introducing the all-new Junior AR-15 assault rifle.

Don’t let this fool you – it might be kid-sized, but like its bigger brother, it packs one helluva whollop!  It shoots real bullets – just like Mommy and Daddy’s guns!  Ideal for graduations, birthdays, first communions – or those occasions when he seems a bit down and just needs a mommy hug and something to cheer him up.

Come and get this super-soaker guaranteed to cool his summer down.. This is one stress-reliever that keeps the WOW factor with the kids. Buy now and we’ll include “Why Everyone Needs an AR-15: A Guide for Kids” for free. This helpful AR-15 guide walks you through how awesome the Second Amendment is.

Take it from Sarah Palin: “an AR-15 makes a great gift – what more says ‘I love you’”?

Jesus and Dead Children

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Image yourself in Sunday School singing, “Jesus kills the little children”. Yet again, I return to a national crisis we should know the answer to. There will be a next time. Because there always is. And Christians do nothing but empty-hearted hand-wringing. “Such a heartbreaking tragedy. 14 students & a teacher were killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, TX, today,” tweeted Franklin Graham as the story broke.

God’s little sheep keep getting hurt. It’s the natural outcome of our demonically-twisted faith in God AND guns. “You’re supposed to have an AR-15. It’s biblical. So if you don’t have one, go get one,” an evangelical activist implores. “You can’t be a Christian if you don’t own a gun,” a parachurch honcho preached to an enthusiastic Texas church. The same God-fearing Texas where gun laws are the loosest in the country. And where a teenager in Uvalde, Texas got two semiautomatic rifles on his birthday and promptly emptied them into grade schoolers’ bodies. Twenty of the 26 victims were between the ages of five and six. A 15 year-old boy in Michigan was gifted a handgun for Christmas. He killed four students wounded seven. The Sandy Hook mass murderer fired 154 rounds in less than five minutes, claiming 26 lives – most of which were ages six and seven.

A school shooting survivor was asking, “do 2nd, 3rd, & 4th graders not have the right to feel safe at school?”  After Uvalde, President Biden likewise asked, “as a nation, we have to ask: when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? These are phrased rhetorically – meaning the question prompts its own answer. Jesus frequently uncovered the truth by answering a question with another – as in Matthew 12, where he showed “that the logical consequences of an extreme adherence to the law lead to the absurdity of a sheep being hurt or dying simply because it is the Sabbath day. His rhetorical question is the message; it exposes the wrongness it addresses. That the Pharisees knew this truth becomes evident as they grew indignant and tried ways to evade Jesus’ underlying message.  Because the real question is not literally the one posed, but rather a deeper question of ethical and spiritual ultimacy implicated by the first, which all understand as the real one to be answered. Pres. Biden comes to the point: When, in God’s name, will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” Like the Pharisees who think they know all the correct answers, evangelicals know the true answer to the marriage of their guns and religion, and evade it.

Über-preacher James MacArthur exclaims, “there is a war on children! This generation of leaders, the immoral people that are engaged in this massive assault on children are going to have to answer to God.” (And this from a pastor whose church harbored a child molester on staff.) Evangelicals claim these tragedies occur because the wicked and evil have removed God from public schools. And while evangelicals like Franklin Graham decry the “sin-sickened” state of America, they are busy lobbying to make it easier for the same morally unfit people to use these super-soaker weapons.

“Across the country, parents are putting their children to bed, reading stories, singing lullabies— and in the back of their minds, they’re worried about what might happen tomorrow after they drop their kids off at school”, wrote President Obama in the wake of Uvalde. I can hear the echo of the Pharisees in Tucker Carlson’s cynical response: Obama was desecrating the memory of recently murdered children with tired talking points of the Democratic Party.

Obama prophetically defines the real war on school children, which has the answer already in it. Meanwhile, their lifeless bodies keep piling up. It’s spiritually incomprehensible to be both so-called “pro-life” and pro-gun. Evangelicals don’t have a gun problem. They are modern day Pharisees who have a Jesus problem.

“There was a time when we might have thought that the mass shooting of an elementary school would have been the final straw. Targeting tiny children in their classrooms, randomly gunning them down in front of their friends who had to witness the carnage, the horror endured by the families of the victims would seem to be the sort of thing that would shock the collective conscience.””

Not anymore; not with evangelicals. Evangelicals are all about helping ‘protect families,’ no matter how many kids have to die. And they just don’t give a shit.

The Usual Pedo Grifters

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A growing swath of MAGA and QAnon conspiracy theory- infected evangelicals embrace pedophilia as their new pejorative against the “Other”. It’s become more than calling someone a pervert. It’s used against any group opposed to their agenda. “Disney stop grooming our children.” “Democrats are the party of ‘grooming and transitioning children’”. “Biden is the groomer-in-chief:” The usual pedo grifters.

Joe Rogan recently went off on public school teachers. “No! No, there should be no groomers! How about that! This is what they wrote, they said, “Not all teachers are groomers, but a lot of groomers are teachers.” And that’s real! That’s a real fucking problem. I mean, constantly, teachers are getting arrested. For exposing themselves to children, for masturbating in front of children, for sending nude pictures in front of children. Every couple days there’s a new one that pops up in the news. And how many of those people haven’t been caught yet? And how many of those people are out there?”

He just as easily could have said, “not all evangelicals are groomers, but a lot of groomers are evangelicals”.  “And how many of those people are out there?”  The Zacharias, the Gothards, the Duggars – the list of prominent evangelicals is long. These people exist everywhere, especially in churches – (see thewartburgwatch.com ). Just a quick headline perusal shows:

  • Former Illinois pastor arrested for grooming minor (Baptist Press)
  • Pastor charged with child sex crimes (Baptist Press)
  • N.C. pastor charged with child sex crimes (Baptist Press)
  • Former Baptist minister charged with child sex crime (Baptist Press)
  • Former Baptist leader charged with sexual assault (Baptist Press)
  • Former Southern Baptist president accused of sexual assault in an explosive, third-party investigation. (Houston Chronicle)
  • Church youth group leader, former coach, arrested on sex abuse charges for second time. (WSET News).

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” My personal heartache with this involved my eldest brother, who in 1960 was sodomized as a pre-teen at a Schroon Lake summer camp. It drove him away from the church better than any avowed atheist ever could.

According to Fox News, some 20 years ago a certain pastor raped a 16 year old girl on his office floor. According to reports, he became aware that she was now prepared to expose him. To get ahead of the story, he announced to his congregation that he was guilty of adultery. “To my wife and family, who I deeply hurt, I have confessed my sin, and they have graciously forgiven me and expressed their love to me,” the outed pastor said. Seduction, enticement, molestation, statutory rape, sexual misconduct – these are not just personal sins; they’re crimes on every state’s books. Felonies that involve prison sentences and placement in the national sex offender database.

It seems natural for all types of sexual predation to exist where evangelical pastors love to preach on sex. A recent Southern Baptist report exposed widespread sexual abuse within the denomination, which were purposefully hushed up. In every community I’ve lived in, there has been some sexual scandal involving church leaders. Catholic, evangelical, fundamentalist – it doesn’t matter. Satan also attends every church service; in numerous cases, in the pulpit itself.

In most cases, the tragedy continues after the crime(s), where the victim is slut-shamed, but the perpetrator is administratively “cleansed” and restored. The sexual predator is allowed to leave the damage behind, and continue on serving the Lord in another locale. Sexual predators have been quietly recirculating just like this in many denominations. The objective is to control the narrative, and deflect or counter-attack the victim to minimize any institutional damage. Who’s gonna be convinced our loving, family-oriented pastor is in reality a sexual creep? It’s not easy within a cult-like culture where church members are taught to never question authority. Everyone is willing to let it go, except the victim who doesn’t have that luxury. That too is violence – spiritual violence.

I’m not an expert on sexual predation. But I have a few suggestions for churches to minimize its effects:

  • Take the beam out of your own eye before pointing the finger at “Others”.
  • Implement a public truth inquiry – not a witch hunt – which gives voice to the sexually exploited who have been rendered voiceless.
  • Repent collectively and individually for any act or failure to act that facilitated or contributed.
  • Restitution – restoring that which was unjustly taken – is not possible. But every effort must be made to remove the effects of the wrong. Repairing the broken relationship may never be achieved, but restoring trust may well mean sitting with victims for outside counseling.
  • Because an overseer managing God’s household must be blameless, procedures should be in place to dismiss anyone not qualified to serve in leadership or ministry through sexual misconduct.
  • Do deep diligence and pre-hire vetting of all applicants
  • Publish and abide by a policy that defines and describes prohibited sexual behavior in the church, including on how a complaint is filed and resolved.
  • Invoke safeguarding adult and children classes that are mandatory for all church leaders (including criminal background checks). The Episcopal Church does excellent training on this.

I doubt few churches practice all – or even any – of these safeguarding policies. We all know problems exist. WE ourselves have been among the Usual Pedo Grifters. With God’s help, let’s repair the damage so far, and take precautions as we move on. The Holy Spirit expects nothing less.