Jesus and MAGA
Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson has an incredible, if long, opinion piece that is well worth your time. Please do not get bogged down by the headline about the threat the MAGA-evangelical alliance poses to our democracy. The article is about so much more than that headline suggests, and it is well worth considering all that Gerson lovingly lays out.
In short, Gerson makes the case that the Jesus many Evangelicals in America claim to worship would be against the political tactics often deployed by Evangelicals, especially when they team up with Donald Trump and others in Trump's sphere.
To back up this claim, Gerson looks at how the Jesus we read about in the Bible does align with the perceived identity of many Evangelicals in America. Jesus was against hypocrisy, and he was for those who were outcasts. But where Jesus and today's Christians who identify as Trump supporters diverge is in who they direct their ire towards and their methods for noting their displeasure. Jesus, Gerson rightfully points out, spoke out against the hypocrisy of religious people, especially religious elites, for mistreating the poor and oppressed among them. And Jesus did this because the God those religious people claimed to serve frequently spoke against the excesses of the wealthy that only serve to keep the least in society poor and oppressed. As such, the outcasts Christ identified with were the ones on the margins of society — the tax collectors who were reviled by both Romans and Jews alike, a Samaritan woman whose past included numerous husbands, the lame, the blind, lepers, and others like the woman with the bleeding problem whose illnesses made them unclean and unfit for polite society. These people flocked to Jesus because they saw in Christ someone who understood their pain and treated them as worthy.
If you contrast that view of Christ with some Evangelicals in America today, you will be hard-pressed to find much overlap. Gerson points out that Evangelicals in America have often been hypocrites. When women, some of who had been abused as children, came to leaders in the SBC, at Liberty University, Hillsong Church, or part of seemingly countless other churches or ministries with their stories of sexual abuse and exploitation, those leaders ignored them. If these victims were lucky, they would only be cast off; the most unfortunate were intimidated into keeping quiet so that supposedly great religious men could keep their status. And in joining with Trump, aiding his takeover of the Republican party, certain Evangelicals in America have contributed to an "us vs. them" that excludes those they find no social use for. In short, in service to political power these Evangelicals have become the people Jesus spoke out against so strongly in the Bible.
They have done all this because they believe their chosen nation, the USA, not the kingdom of God, is slipping from their scope of influence. This excuse is supposed to justify aligning themselves with Donald Trump, a man whose bad morals have never been in question, to achieve power so that American Evangelicals do not have to feel like strangers in their own land. And it has worked, more or less, for now. But what will come, indeed, is already coming for Christians when this last gasp at power finally ends? It seems to keep Christ in Christmas and rack up other culture war wins; we have forfeited our souls.
All is not lost. There are still many who proclaim Christ who have not given in to the power promised by Trump and the Republicans who back him. Those of us seeking to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly are still here, but there will be heartache in the future as we reckon with the whirlwind sown by those who chose power and influence over this world.
4 More Things:
1) Five Thirty-Eight reports that more than 1 in 2 Americans will have an election denier on their ballot this November. And to help you know who that will be, they have set up a tool that shows which candidates in all 50 states have either accepted or denied the 2020 election results. The project even breaks candidates into categories of fully accepted, accepted with reservations, avoided answering, raised questions, and fully denied.
2) A new study demonstrated that people can be inoculated from online misinformation by educating them on the techniques used to manipulate them. The authors described the study in this article for The Conversation. “At times, the spread of conspiracy theories and false information online can be overwhelming. But our study has shown it is possible to turn the tide,” they wrote.
3) In an excerpt from his new book, Broken News, published in Politico, Chris Stirewalt describes the “addiction model” of cable news. “Unable to sell large, diverse audiences to advertisers, news outlets increasingly focus on developing highly habituated users. To cultivate the kind of intense readers, viewers or listeners necessary to make the addiction model profitable, media companies need consumers to have strong feelings. Fear, resentment and anger work wonders. It helps news outlets create deep emotional connections to users not just as users of a product, but as members of the same tribe,” he wrote.
4) CBS News reports that 64% of Americans now think political violence will continue to increase, up from 51% in January 2021. While the threat of political violence in America is severe and growing, perhaps most unsettlingly is that a majority of Americans, 54%, believe future generations will live in a less democratic America. And before anyone tries to cry that these polls are alarmist, it is worth noting that 49% of Republicans and 47% of Democrats view the opposing party as enemies instead of just political opposition.