Donald Trump: he slept with a porn star while his third wife gave birth to his fifth son. He admitted, on camera, to grabbing women in their private parts—and getting away with it. He bragged about perving on teenage girls dressing and undressing in his Mrs. American pageants. He was best friends with a notorious child sex-offender (Jeffrey Epstein). His first speech in his announcement to run for president was to declare Mexicans are “rapists, drug dealers, and murders.” He is everything Jesus adamantly opposed, and YET, Evangelicals supported him enough to make him president.
After four years and averaging more than twenty thousand lies, false or misleading statements, corruption, impeachment, scandals galore, and a pandemic that has ravaged our country, (white) Evangelicals still support him, as much as 75 percent. Trump was right when he said he could stand on Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot people, and his followers would still support him.
His high-profile Evangelical supporters have been disgraced (Jerry Falwell Jr.), or imprisoned or faced criminal charges , and yet, Evangelicals fight for him as if he were the messiah (antichrist is more like it).
He has committed every evil known against humankind. He has violated every directive Jesus ever made. And yet he enjoys the support of white Evangelicals across the nation. So much so, that they’re desperate to overturn democratic election results to keep him in power. Even major Evangelicals such as Pat Robertson are claiming that “God” will overturn the results of the election We’re talking the same God that Jeremiah and Isaiah said would hate Evangelicals.
Trump is the antithesis of everything Jesus stood for and yet, he receives support from the very people who claim to wear Jesus’ name.
It’s time to admit that Christianity has the same problem in its rankings as Islam does in its philosophy. Islam has the Taliban. Christianity has Evangelicals. Islam has ISIS, Christianity has MAGA. And we have the same problem as Islam. How do we deal with our extremists yet save our religion?
If we call them out for the danger that they are to us as a religion (let alone as a species), they pull the persecution card. That we don’t want them as part of our “community” is because of their extremism… which only confirms in their minds that they’re persecuted.
Which is the struggle we face. If this were a “reasonable” conversation we wouldn’t be having it in the first place. So what do we do? And this isn’t hyperbole, nor is it hypothetical. I’m serious. I’m not the sharpest too in the shed, but I do realize that “sharp” matters. When dealing with those who refuse reality, what do we do… especially if it’s in the name of God? Evangelicals (and radicals of all religions) are destroying our species, and any attempt to stop them becomes “anti-religious” and a threat to white Evangelicals—a violation of the “First-Amendment (and worse, Second Amendment) rights.”
As an observer, I admit I can only watch. I have very little power in the scheme of things, but I do have a voice—small though it is. And in that voice I ask, what do we do when an entire section of our country’s population has abandoned reality?
My answer? “I don’t know.”