Stupid is as Stupid does

Trump Christians: Everything I’ve long suspected about right wing Christians: They aren’t Christian… Time to expose ‘evangelical christians’ for what they are: not christian !

Why ‘Evangelical’ Is Becoming Another Word for ‘Republican’

Vought is an evangelical Christian who has adopted the Trump credo of the ends justify the means. When he was in the White House he saw people who balked at illegal and unethical activity as squishes and whenever he could his office was helping Trump do end runs around the law and regulations, from re-appropriating funds for his border wall to helping him to blackmail the Ukrainian president in exchange for slandering Joe Biden, which got Trump impeached. He’s the one who came up with the notorious Schedule F, the plan to eliminate the civil service and replace government employees with Trump lackeys. They didn’t have time to fully implement it in Trump’s first term but you can bet they’ll get it done ASAP if he wins in November.

SALON

Most Republicans Support Declaring the United States a Christian Nation

Republicans’ Jesus-less Christianity

This isn’t an oversight, it’s a necessity. There’s a simple reason for the omission: they can’t gaslight us with the words of Jesus. You see, over the past few decades, these people have become experts at slapping a shiny veneer of religion onto the most abominable of ideas and the most sociopathic of behaviors.

They know they can weaponize the rather generic idea of “God”, manufacturing a deity in their own bloodthirsty, morally-inverted, predatory image: a vengeful, joyless, avatar.
They can wield a few random, poorly-exegeted obscure scripture passages like a hammer in order to justify their every phobia and hangup, making frequent mention of a Bible they’ve torn a majority of the later pages from.

They can brazenly conflate Christianity and America and give life to the grotesque, Frankensteined violent nationalism they daily traffic in as if it were sacred, and they will find a small army of devoted disciples willing to suspend disbelief so they can ratify their hatred.

Republicans can use all sorts of theological gymnastics, pseudo-piety, and performative religiosity to fashion something out of God and the Bible to build a theocratic order and fool their rank-and-file.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties are utterly dependent upon their most devout members for their electoral success. As I’ve noted before, nonwhite Democrats (and especially black Democrats) are among the most God-fearing, churchgoing members of American society. At the same time, the Republican Party would be irrelevant without its own white Evangelical base.

The bottom line is that Christians in both parties have absolute veto power over (at the very least) the party’s national candidates. In many states that veto power extends to statewide candidates, congressional candidates, and even candidates for the smallest local positions.

The longer I live the more convinced I am that our Christian political ethic is upside down. On a bipartisan basis, the church has formed its members to be adamant about policies that are difficult and contingent and flexibleabout virtues that are clear and mandatory.

To understand what I mean, let’s refer back to one of my favorite passages in scripture—Micah 6:8. Like many biblical passages, it is simple to understand yet tough to execute: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”