FOX Jim Daly: Christianity Today is wrong to want Trump removed – Here’s the evangelical argument in his favor
I'll give you a hint... He may lie, cheat, break marriage oaths, have sex with porn stars, grab women's pussies against their will, break POTUS oaths, use his position for personal gain, use a charitable organization like his own piggy bank, fraudulently take money from students and commit other sins... But he is doing good works and therefore should not be held accountable for his excess of human flaws... At least he is a pragmatic and honest about it.
I'll give you a hint... He may lie, cheat, break marriage oaths, have sex with porn stars, grab women's pussies against their will, break POTUS oaths, use his position for personal gain, use a charitable organization like his own piggy bank, fraudulently take money from students and commit other sins... But he is doing good works and therefore should not be held accountable for his excess of human flaws... At least he is a pragmatic and honest about it.
"The call for the president’s removal is shortsighted for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Trump and his administration have championed many issues of great importance to me and my fellow evangelicals.
Is Donald Trump a perfect person? Of course not. None of us is perfect. But the president is the imperfect political street fighter who evangelicals have never had – someone who fights and wins in support of many of our most important values and priorities."
On the upside, apparently I can lower my expectations for self control... (see below) Or is that only for people who are in power? I'll have to ask the next religious person who challenges something I do or don't do. :-) :-) Tap the Pic to zoom.
38 comments:
The argument is powerful. Trump, whatever his moral failings, will do anything evangelicals tell him to do. In particular, he is putting youthful Republican judges on federal courts who will govern our country for generations, long after Trump leaves the scene. In exchange for their support for Trump, evangelicals got a whole lot more than a mess of pottage. Putting pragmatism over morality does have it's rewards.
--Hiram
Tucker Carlson Agrees
But they're not in charge of the Democratic Party, probably unfortunately. The people who are are overwhelmingly white and have credentials from the Ivy League. Where are they? Well, they're not just irreligious. Many of them are aggressively anti-Christian and that may be why they want to force Catholic Charities, for example, to fund birth control and Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. Can you imagine?
It's why they spent a decade crusading, hassling, Chick-fil-A because it donated to a handful of traditional Christian charities. They thought they were immoral.
Why not just leave them alone? Because they couldn't help themselves. Because they truly hate -- truly hate -- traditional Christianity. It's why some of their lawmakers openly speculate that judges like Amy Coney Barrett may be ineligible for the Supreme Court because she might actually believe in God.
So, if you're wondering why so many Christians have been willing to support this president despite his personal life, this is why: It's because whatever his flaws, he's made it clear that he's not the enemy of Christians. In fact, under certain circumstances, he will protect Christians.
For people whose values are under assault every day by powerful forces in America -- and that's not overstating it, and if you're one of them you know that means everything. It's bad enough to be lectured about Christianity by cable news morons who don't know anything about it. But what's happening in the broader country is much worse than that, much more threatening.
The left presumes the right to lecture the people it despises for the sin of not voting for them. Now this may shock some Democrats, but most Christians don't actually think they have a religious duty to be destroyed by people who hate them. They don't.
So apparently they are trusting that old saying...
The enemy of your enemy is your friend?
And I mean Jesus spent time with sinners, though usually those sinners seemed to express humility and a desire to change...
On the upside, these folks seem to at least be acknowledging that they realize that Trump is a sinner... That is a start, since usually they seem to be in denial...
Like when they keep telling me that Trump isn't / doesn't lie... Now that is true denial and unhealthy from my perspective.
In your comment with the Tucker Carlson link, is the long comment from Carlson or is that your thoughts. Either way, I thought it was mostly dumb, though K. Drum has a post of how scared conservative Christians are.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/12/white-evangelicals-are-terrified-that-liberals-want-to-extinguish-their-rights/
Mostly, I want everyone to practice their religion freely as long as they don't impose it on me.
Because they truly hate -- truly hate -- traditional Christianity.
This kind of thing is being said a lot lately. I wonder if it's true. I wonder if anyone thinks it's true. We see this "hatred" thing in a lot of contexts, some of them quite surprising. Trump says Pelosi hates him, and the American people also. Democrats are frequently and unreliably informed hate Republicans. So often the rhetoric these days is about hating this or hating that. Only the context changes.
Why this emotionalism. For myself, I try not to do hate. While I have disagreements with people, some of them quite sharp, I don't routinely hate the people I disagree with. I wonder sometimes, whether this true on the other side. I don't think it is, really, but am I projecting my own lack of hatred on them?
--Hiram
Kevin Drum On Evangelicals
This seems about correct...
I’d add to this that it’s all unfolding against a background in which the biggest real-world fights are over abortion and contraceptives and cake decorators. Conservative Christians believe that their freedom to refuse these services is also a basic religious liberty, and there’s no question that liberals are pretty determined to take those particular liberties away. Given that, it’s a short step to believe that liberals might someday decide to remove their rights to “hold rallies, teach, speak freely, and run for public office.”
In any case, this is something I’ve written about occasionally: it’s impossible to understand evangelicals and their support for Donald Trump without first understanding just how frightened they are of the steady liberal march toward secular hegemony. They consider the aughts and teens to have been a nearly complete disaster, capped by the 2015 Supreme Court ruling forcing states to recognize gay marriage. Many prominent evangelical leaders literally gave up after that, and the ones that didn’t had little hope for the future.
Then, suddenly, Donald Trump showed up and promised them everything they wanted. In short order he became their Joan of Arc, rallying them back to a fight he assured them they could win as long as he was on their side. And rhetorically, at least, he delivered. The fight was back on.
Laurie,
What you do if you:
- believed abortion was killing a human baby
- were forced to do business with people who you thought were very perverted / sinful
- were forced to provide medication that was against your deepest held beliefs?
Would you roll over and let it happen or would you fight tooth and nail for those ~600,000 babies who callously murdered every year?
Let's say we just started executing every illegal caught trying to cross the border?
What would you do to stop the killings?
Would you support Trump if he was making progress on stopping the killings?
In any case, this is something I’ve written about occasionally: it’s impossible to understand evangelicals and their support for Donald Trump without first understanding just how frightened they are of the steady liberal march toward secular hegemony.
This is weird of course, because many take secular hegemony as a given. It's guaranteed or at least protected by establishment clause of the first amendment.
In recent years, a lot of assumptions I have made, lived by even, have been challenged and rejected. Some are kind of technical, having to do with constitutional law and that sort of things, but rejection of secular hegemony by many Americans is one of the most dramatic.
Going back to this emotionalism, this idea that hatred is a common motivation in our politics, I wonder what role the rejection of secular hegemony plays. Trump, the other day, said Democrats hate religious people. In his letter to Nancy Pelosi, Trump accused Pelosi of lying when she said she prayed for Trump, something as a devout Catholic, I am sure she does routinely. The fact is, lots of religious people support secular hegemony vigorously. I wonder, do people who reject secular hegemony, think people who support it hate them? Trump says those who think he is grossly immoral, something that seems to me to be pretty obvious, hate his supporters. Could that be true?
--Hiram
Secular: denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis
Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others
This is an interesting piece.
As is this one
By the way, that definition of secular is fascinating... I am not sure any human could do such a thing except maybe an agnostic? I mean even an atheist has spiritual beliefs.. (ie denial)
And though the G2A Principles are not specific to any one religion and actually come from most religions, and are based on spirituality
I mean even Laurie's heathen "religion" :-) is a "religion"...
1a: the state of a religious (a nun in her 20th year of religion)
1b:(1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural
(2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3archaic : scrupulous conformity : CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
Laurie,
I am interested in how the UUA handles abortion since their #1 principle is to celebrate the gifts of being human... It seems that allowing the stopping of hundreds of thousands of little hearts each years is a long way from cherishing the human body and soul.
"“Reverence and respect for human nature is at the core of Unitarian Universalist (UU) faith. We believe that all the dimensions of our being carry the potential to do good. We celebrate the gifts of being human: our intelligence and capacity for observation and reason, our senses and ability to appreciate beauty, our creativity, our feelings and emotions. We cherish our bodies as well as our souls. We can use our gifts to offer love, to work for justice, to heal injury, to create pleasure for ourselves and others."
Are you conflicted about your views on abortion? I think most UU's are very comfortable with pro-choice views.
Of course I am conflicted...
If you do not question your willingness to support the stilling of a human heart, I would be concerned for you.
Apparently the UU's only consider the woman to be a human. :-(
I find this kind of sadly humorous...
"WHEREAS, pain, suffering, and loss of life were widespread prior to the legalization of abortion in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court (Roe v. Wade ) and the 1969 amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada;"
I wonder how that number compares to the ~600,000 little hearts flushed every year?
Please remember that I have been pretty consistent over the years.
I am anti-abortion and pro-choice.
Where as sometimes I think some liberals are actually pro-abortion given how hard they work to make it easy access...
They seem to see that little growing human as nothing more than a little benign tumor. :-(
No wonder people who recognize that little growing human for what it is like Trump. :-)
Laurie,
By the way, you did not say what you would do and who you would support to save the live's of my imaginary illegal border crossers.
Just imagine that your opponent is okay with killing 600,000 of them because they "are less than human" from their perspective. Kind of like you are viewing that little fetus...
Which devil would you embrace?
or
Would you just let them continue to die?
your analogies are really dumb
also, why is it that you claim to be prochoice and yet have such difficulty understanding of the pro-choice viewpoint.
Because I see a fetus as a human being, especially once it has a heart beat.
Now being raised on a farm and being a very pragmatic person, I am okay with ending a human life if that person is genetically flawed, suffering, etc. Be they a few cells or a living human.
However I still mourn whenever it would happen. :-(
Do you mourn for the ~600,000 lives cut short?
Often because the woman was irresponsible or did not want to be inconvenienced?
I rarely think of abortion other than when it is a topic on your blog. I just think a woman should have the choice in ending or continuing a pregnancy.
So maybe next you can lecture readers about the approximately 3.1 million children that die from undernutrition each year. What are all the anti-choice people doing about that? What has Trump done for all those children/
Secular: denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis
We see the this kind of definitional approach all the time. If you aren't explicitly religious, you aren't religious at all. But it isn't an either/or thing. Religions of all kinds and in varying degrees influence us. BuBut t no specific religion governs us. Under our constitution, in so many words, power comes from the people, not from God, rejecting the theoretical basis for political power that, for example, governs Britain today.
--Hiram
Laurie,
I have faith that you can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Or maybe mourning and thinking about the ~600,000 lost innocent lives would be too painful for you if you stopped to truly think about them. All those innocent little forming babies ripped away from their food source.
My advice as always to both the folks on the Left and Right is to stop focusing on the rights / freedoms of adults and starting focusing on the needs of children.
As for my dumb analogy... I think you are the one not understanding the other's position...
You think of illegal border crossers as humans with the right to protection and human dignity.
The Religious Right sees a fetus as a human with the right to protection and human dignity.
You just see a woman's choice (ignoring the consequence to the forming baby), whereas they see a cold blooded end of life event.
No different than the execution of another human because of the inconvenience they cause.
So again, what would you do to stop a " cold blooded end of life event", or a hundred thousand of them a year?
Hiram,
As I noted, most religious rules and principles are similar...
Not to mention the Under God is baked into the cake.
Not to mention the Under God is baked into the cake.
It's not in the constitution. The founders chose secular hegemony. that's what's baked in the cake.
--Hiram
I am not finding God, Religion or Secular in here…
Are you sure you are not making some assumptions...
The first words of the constitution "We, the People" establish that under this constitution political authority comes from the people. In contrast, in Britain which lost the Revolutionary War, political authority comes from God. Presidents are inaugurated in a ceremony conducted in front of the capitol. British monarchs are crowned in Westminster Abbey.
--Hiram
Yep, big assumption...
By this I mean, that if we the people are mostly Christians...
Of course the government will look Christian as it does...
However as we the people changes, the government may change for better or worse.
By this I mean, that if we the people are mostly Christians...
I didn't assume the constitution says power comes from the people. It's right there in the document. Of course you can go on to make assumptions about the religious views then and in 230 years since, something the founders didn't seem to be interested in. We do know the first thing they did after the constitution was enacted was pass the establishment clause.
--Hiram
"Of course the government will look Christian as it does..."
If that's what passes as Christianity, count me out.
Moose
Hiram,
That was not the assumption. Your assumption is that we are somehow mandated to be a pure secular hegemony.
It seems the establishment clause has a lot of wiggle room in it.
Yes Moose, I understand that you are okay with ending the life of a fetus for the convenience of an irresponsible woman... :-)
Could you ever put a pillow over the face of a preemie to suffocate it? Just curious...
Your assumption is that we are somehow mandated to be a pure secular hegemony.
Ours is a secular hegemony. There is nothing pure or mandated about it. Britain is a religious hegemony, although not a pure one, I suppose. The constitution is quite specific on the subject.
--Hiram
I searched both the constitution and the first amendment and did not find the word secular...
Please provide a source for your assumption.
I searched both the constitution and the first amendment and did not find the word secular...
You didn't find the word God either. That's what makes the hegemony secular.
--Hiram
Please feel free to rationalize as you will.
The reality is that it is government set up by its people for its people.
If they are mostly Christians and Jewish...
It will look a lot like the Bible and Torah...
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