Category: Falkirk

I’m No Christian Nationalist (But I Play One On TV)

~ phroneticchristian ~ 4 Comments

That’s Robert Jeffress. He would have us believe he is simply a patriot. But his First Baptist of Dallas is a prime example of a Christian church using sacred space for the worship of the nation rather than God. Like its Freedom Sunday, where the whole service was a Pageant of Christian Nationalism, replete with military color guard and salute to our Armed Forces amidst a flag-waving congregation.

“The New York Times has libeled me by characterizing me as a Christian Nationalist”, complains Ralph Drollinger, who runs a ministry to Capitol Hill. If it looks like a duck… yet Jeffress refuses to come out of the closet. And Drollinger claims Christian Nationalism is a fallacy. But not all Christian Nationalists hide their true intent behind clerical robes. “So if Christian nationalism is something to be scared of, they’re lying to you,” declares Marjorie Taylor Greene. “Let’s demonize patriotism by calling it nationalism and associating that with Hitler. Ah, now let’s call it white nationalism,” sardonically said Rod Martin, one of the founders of the Conservative Baptist Network. “Then we’ll call it Christian nationalist so we’ll make it sound like you are the ayatollah. It is all designed to demonize you.” You see, the modern day Christian Taliban is a myth. If Christian Nationalism quacks like Hitler or the ayatollah…

“Listen long enough to any… left-wing group and you’ll believe [the secular] history of America…That version of history… ,” Jeffress preached, “is a complete myth!… America was founded predominantly… by Christians who wanted to build this foundation, this Christian nation, on the foundation of God’s will,” according to Jeffress. And so, the non-Christian Nationalist delivered a powerful rival liturgy to the Gospel story. The operative word is predominantly. There were fervent proto-evangelicals among the Founding Fathers, but there also were non-orthodox Deists and Unitarians, and a very large faction of non-religious influenced by the Enlightenment.

“It’s not in the Constitution!” Charlie Kirk was spouting his own brand of bullshit, this time ranting that “we should have church and state mixed together. Our Founding Fathers believed in that.”  They also agreed on the Constitution’s wording, but somehow left out any reference to “God”.  Jefferson didn’t create “separation between church and state” out of thin air. It didn’t start in 1802 with Jefferson’s Danbury letter. Take for example, the 1797 Barbary Treaty of Peace and Friendship:  “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…” It goes back further, to the Constitution of Virginia of 1776, which stated that “all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.” As if to make the right more definite, the final draft was changed from the toleration of free exercise of religion to its entitlement. 

America was not founded as a Christian nation. It was a nation of many Christians of all stripes – including repressed Roman Catholics, with several states at the time of the Constitution requiring a Protestant religious test oath to take office. And yes, there was a sizeable Jewish population in America during the American Revolutionary War, with many communities of free-born men, having been settled as early as the 1650s. “The Founders of this nation explicitly included Islam in their vision of the future of the republic”, according to a Library of Congress official. She cites as evidence the words of William Lancaster, a delegate to the North Carolina Convention, who on July 30, 1788, makes the following declaration: “But let us remember that we form a government for millions not yet in existence…. In the course of four or five hundred years, I do not know how it will work. This is most certain, that Papists may occupy that chair, and Mahometans may take it. I see nothing against it.”

“The storming of the Capitol cannot be understood outside the heresy of Christian nationalism peddled by the likes of Josh Hawley, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, and the blasphemies of the Jericho March”, writes Christianity Today’s Tish Warren. We’re only beginning to see the repercussions of church-state domination that the Founding Fathers were determined to avoid. Even after 130 years, the Puritans, extreme Calvinists who wanted religious liberty for themselves – but not others (Arminians, Jesuits and Quakers in particular) – cast a long shadow of intolerance. Regardless of the nice, ambiguous words they say, evangelicals/Christian Nationalists are trying to coerce a religious dystopia onto modern society. It didn’t work then and was discredited. What makes any rational think it will work now? Especially when their Christian Nationalist lies are so transparent to a majority of Americas who don’t want their dreadful God being imposed on them.

Nurseries of Sedition

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There are any number of examples through history where millenarian Christianity fused with secular rebellion. Like Thomas Müntzer, Luther’s religious antagonist, who led the German Peasants’ War.[1] Or the antebellum Southern churches, which “led by their ministers, have gone heart and soul into the rebellion and the war against the Government.”[2]

The phrase Nurseries of Sedition became known during the English Civil War era to describe Dissenters whose aim was “not to spread the Word of God or the imitatio Christi, but with great caution and stealth” to support those intent on overthrowing the government.[3] The most radical among them made up the Fifth Monarchy movement, whose “millenarian convictions, combined with an assurance of divine sanction for their use of military and political means to bring down earthly governments and establish the reign of the saints to usher in the millennium.”[4] Funny thing about spiritual warfare: the fight is usually more visceral than supernatural.

“Christians should rule the world,” says Dominionist Michele Bachmann. Her hero is proto-culture warrior and fervent anti-abortionist Francis Schaeffer, whose son quoted him calling for “the violent overthrow of the government if Roe v. Wade isn’t reversed.” Politics, for many evangelicals, is an apocalyptic, zero-sum struggle. Whether you’re a radical Atomwaffen devotee of accelerationism, or a Tim LaHaye-indoctrinated Dispensationalist, or a Dominionist/NAR/INC/Christian Reconstructionist immanentizing the eschaton, dismantling democracy is a small price to pay for a government of White supremacy, preferably theocratic. Secular and sacred sedition have the same goal: domination. We answer to a higher authority to get holy revenge. Don’t believe me? Try this: Let’s count Christian ministers who’ve advocated death for gays.

Evangelicals from across America hopped on a plane or bus to travel to the Washington “Save America March,” to have the president’s back as he has had ours. Many of their churches encouraged them to do so, some even hiring busses. “The name of God was everywhere during Wednesday’s insurrection against the American government,” writes Emma Green for The Atlantic. Like the January 6th Jericho march, whose organizer framed it as “denouncing any and all acts of violence and destruction”. Yet, the organization’s website listed skilled incendiaries like Mike Flynn, Mike “My Pillow’ Lindell, Eric Metaxsas as speakers that day. “I didn’t incite anything,” protests another speaker, convicted felon Ali Alexander. “The lord says vengeance is his, and I pray that I am the tool to stab these motherfuckers,” the Christian activist also said, which seems to be a slight contradiction. Giving a platform to these radical Christianists was like carrying lit matches into a gunpowder factory. Metaxsas boasted he was prepared to shed blood for Trump (although it conveniently turned out to be other peoples’). Also on their webpage was a large photo of Donald L’état, C’est Moi Trump with the caption, Be There, Be Wild.  This didn’t exactly have the makings of pious, law-abiding Christians being uplifted at a Billy Graham Crusade.

“The people who stormed that Capitol, the people who killed that police officer, were not a part of the kingdom of God, as some people claimed; they were a part of the kingdom of Satan,” Robert Jeffress stated. For once, this spiritual blowhard for Trump got something right. But many came from churches – probably a horde from First Baptist of Dallas as well. The Kraken comes in various flavors – evangelical being one of the most popular. “The day was peaceful,” writes the My Pillow Guy, “with police letting people in to both the Capitol grounds as well as to the Capitol itself, with some scuffles as the police tried to control the crowds so they would enter safely.” The trouble-free and non-violent First Amendment expression of civil disobedience peacefully resulted in five deaths.

Evangelicals who sit lovingly through Sunday church – probably including a number from Jeffress’ own – jumped the barriers and raged through the Capitol like a pagan horde. Pastor Caleb Cooper, a self-described “young firebrand revivalist,” recounts his exhilaration at being among the hordes of righteous Christians that invaded the Capitol. “The patriots were innumerable. They filled the top platform of the Capitol, with a sea of people extending down the stairs and into the courtyard and beyond. Over the crowd, I saw American flags, Trump flags and Appeal to Heaven flags being carried past the barriers and making their way to the top as the crowd began to sing the National Anthem and shout ‘USA’.” Meshawn Maddock, prominent Trumpist from Michigan, is proud to proclaim, “I’m a Christian and I believe that God qualifies the called.” She organized buses headed to the protest. The hometown paper reported that she and her husband joined a Facebook group which openly discussed civil war.

I don’t fault the pastors of a hundred thousand churches across America trying to keep their flocks together amidst a pandemic and political partisanship, both of which are out of control. I accuse the politically radical media Christians. Like Charlie Kirk, the college dropout that manages the Falkirk “think tank” – and who launched more than 80 busloads of Trumpists aimed at the Capitol. “This attempted coup,” writes Hemant Mehta, “could not have happened without the active participation of Christian Nationalists who have been brainwashed into thinking they’re victims of persecution by pastors who will never admit their role in this tragedy.” He’s not exactly right, but well on the way. Of course, there are Christian Nationalist/QAnon pastors – many of them – and he points to one in Minnesota who says Trump must enact martial law. But that is a man who “shepherds” in a black robe with an AR-15 strapped on. These blind folks feed a false Gospel to a blind congregation.

 “America’s problem is not political. It is religious fanaticism,” writes Frank Schaeffer. I don’t always agree with Schaeffer, but he is spot-on saying the “White evangelical delusion problem” is the enemy of democracy. We saw that in action on January 6th, as evangelicals essentially blessed the cannons. We’ve seen it intensify over the past four years, serving Donald Trump – the Cyrus President – as their new savior.

The riot, noted The Atlantic, was “a Christian insurrection”. I wish there some happy note to conclude on, but don’t see an end to it. Not until the various Christian media despots either repent or are deposed. “Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them.” These evangelical fixtures are nurseries of sedition – against the government which they are to pray for and to submit to, but more importantly, against the Jesus of the Gospels. I pity a future of evangelical Christianity largely left in their hands.

[1] “Now if you want to be true governors, you must begin government at the roots, and, as Christ commanded, drive his enemies from the elect. For you are the means to this end. Beloved, don’t give us any old jokes about how the power of God should do it without your application of the sword.” William C. Placher, Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Vol.2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), 29.

[2] Robert Livingston Stanton, The Church and the Rebellion (New York: Derby & Miller, 1864), 245.

[3] Jason McElligott, Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006), 193.

[4] Warren Johnston, Revelation Restored: The Apocalypse in later Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), 15

One Thing I Didn’t Miss This Election:

~ phroneticchristian ~ 1 Comment

Jerry Falwell Jr.’s continued rise in national political influence. Jerry was AWOL during the time he would have been most useful to Trump – during the November general election. His face would have been spread across Fox News and its many imitators, pronouncing the evangelical doctrine of Trumpism. But that was not meant to be.

It’s amazing the power of a glass of “black water” can have. Soon after photos of Jerry aboard a yacht emerged with his hand around a woman’s (not his wife) midriff and zipper at half-mast, he resigned as President of his dynastic empire, Liberty University. There’s much more to this story, and Falwell denied any monkey business. Suffice it to say, casually embracing a woman on a yacht with pants undone – well, it was perhaps too suggestive of Presidential candidate Gary Hart, who in 1987 was snapped with Donna Rice sitting on his lap on the yacht, Monkey Business.

Well, there was some sordid sexual content involved in the scandal as well. Maybe harmless antics as defined in the secular world, but allegations with a pool attendant, Giancarlo Granda, that would besmirch Falwell’s reputation among evangelicals. “He enjoyed watching,” the young man alleged, confessing a years-long liaison with Falwell’s wife, while the husband was looking on approvingly. That’s not the story Falwell himself tells. In fact, he accused the 21 year old of extorting him and his wife with “outrageous and fabricate[d] claims”, and demanding money from them.

It’s a typical he said-she said story that would have ended there, except that Liberty University “moved quickly” to support and act on Granda’s allegations, which Falwell alleged destroyed his reputation. Falwell filed suit against his own university for defamation of character.

Anybody can file a lawsuit, alleging anything including the kitchen sink in the complaint. The meat and potatoes come during discovery, when something called evidence enters the picture. Depositions sworn under oath become important features. The truth typically comes out when people are being stupid and lying; they go to jail. Falwell withdrew his suit before it came to that steep step of truth.

I don’t know the facts; there is so much secrecy surrounding the evidence that no one will probably ever know the truth. But I’m a lawyer sitting on 40 years of experience, and a client doesn’t withdraw a suit sua sponte without a compelling reason. I wonder whether Falwell worked a deal with Liberty. Experience says, when you’re mudwrestling, even the winner comes out dirty. Not speaking specifically to this case, but an unforced withdrawal agreed as in the best interests of both parties usually means some sort of undisclosed benefit exchanged hands.

Of more curiosity to me is Falwell’s reticence to sue Granda for defamation of character. It’s all there; he has been most public in assertions which are no doubt injurious to Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s reputation as a committed Christian. And yet, there is inexplicable reserve from the lawsuit-prone former President. Perhaps in the spirit of Jesus, he is turning the other cheek in forgiveness. Sometimes, silence is the best way to let someone know they did you wrong. On the other hand, silence can speak volumes. Either way, I really do not miss the silence of Jerry Falwell, Jr.