Civil Commotion

Franklin Graham probably didn’t anticipate the cataracts of ridicule that would land on him when he proposed a national day of prayer dedicated to protecting Donald Trump from people who loathe Trump and want him removed from public life.

For the convenience of those who might not be able to attend church on the appointed day or, worse, attend a church comprised of decent-minded grown-ups who wouldn’t be participating, Graham offered the convenience of a prayer-rally at his Facebook page.

I re-tweeted that.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson was a lot harsher.

In their day of prayer, Graham and other Trump evangelicals have used a sacred spiritual practice for profane purposes. They have subordinated religion to politics. They have elevated Trump as a symbol of divine purposes. And they are using Christian theology as a cover for their partisanship.

So: This is blasphemy, in service to ideology, leading to idolatry, justified by heresy. All in a Sunday’s work.

The First Felon was determined to have his prayers, though, and detoured to David Platt’s McLean Bible Church in Vienna, Virginia, on his way back to the White House after visiting a golf course.

“President Donald J. Trump is visiting McLean Bible Church in Vienna, VA, to visit with the Pastor and pray for the victims and community of Virginia Beach,” Judd Deere, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement on Sunday, referring to the mass shooting at a municipal complex that left 13 people dead, including the gunman.

Platt explained in the statement to his congregation that he had been caught off guard.

“At the end of my sermon at the 1:00 worship gathering, I stepped to the side for what I thought would be a couple of moments in quiet reflection as we prepared to take the Lord’s Supper,” he said. “But I was immediately called backstage and told that the President of the United States was on his way to the church, would be there in a matter of minutes, and would like for us to pray for him.”

So: Did Trump visit to pray for the shooting victims, or to receive prayers for himself?

Whichever, Trump managed to visit a church pastored by one of the very rare Southern Baptist pastors not smitten with him, and pastor David Platt had to explain to his congregation that he really didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Afterward, “the president walked off stage without comment, and we closed our gathering by celebrating heroes among us, a couple who has spent the last 48 years spreading the gospel in remote places where it had never gone before they came,” Platt said in his statement. “We then recited the Great Commission as we always do, sending one another out into the city for the glory of our King.”

Platt went on to explain that he had no intention of endorsing the president, his policies or the Republican Party, and said he was sharing details “because I know that some within our church, for a variety of valid reasons, are hurt that I made this decision.”

Seriously: You couldn’t make this up — and this ridiculous story still isn’t over. No. Last night, Jerry Falwell, Jr., weighed in with some manly thoughts on Platt’s apology to his congregation with this tweet.

Sorry to be crude but pastors like @plattdavid need to grow a pair. Just saying.

Falwell seems not to have much of a pair himself, because he has since deleted the tweet.

How can you help a friend who you think could be involved in a cult?

The key, says Lalich, is to keep the lines of communication open, since the cult is trying to do the opposite by separating and alienating members from the friends and family.

Courtney Shea

Now think of all the times you’ve heard Pastor Bubba howl and bellow that Jesus must always come first, that you’re not the spouse you should be unless pleasing Jesus is more important than your spouse, that you’re not the parent you should be unless pleasing Jesus is more important than your children.

Again, then: First-century Christianity was a cult and, like all cults, the first Christians, including Jesus (see Matthew 12:46-50), understood that healthy marriages and families are a threat to their total ownership of believers. The New Testament is the literature of a cult, and the result is that cult-like teachings are embedded deeply into Christian thought.

Go to the park next Sunday morning. Our Invisible Friend can find you there, too, if He has anything to say to you.

So: The First Felon encourages a boycott of AT&T in order to get even with CNN? The world grows more 1984-ish by the day, though Trump has done the valuable service of illustrating to thinking Americans why the First Amendment is so important.

Stripped to the bare essentials, the Christian pitch is this: You’re no damn good, but you can avoid the eternity of punishment you deserve by joining our club.

What do you know? Multiple lines of evidence find that sales pitch is failing.

First, Thom Rainer, formerly the head of Lifeway, the Christian bookstore.

This past week I conducted the same exercise based on some of my updated research and the research of others and estimated the following:

Growth and Decline Categories of North American Congregations 2019

• Fast-growing (growing greater than 5% annually): 3%

• Growing (growing nominally to 5% annually): 24%

• Steadily declining (declining 0% to 3% annually): 32%

• Rapidly declining (declining 2% to 5% annually): 22%

• Declining toward death (over 5% decline annually): 19%

In other words, Rainer estimates that 73% of American congregations, almost three-quarters, are declining.

Meantime, some research published in Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism finds that America is increasingly pro-evolution and non-religious.

Also — and quite ironically — working against theism is the very Holy Bible itself. Among the many atheists I know a good portion were believing JudeoChristians until they got around to reading the entire Good Book and were so disgusted by its dreadfully immoral contents and its obviously human inconsistencies — and by how their clergies had lied to them — that they went atheist.

Apparently, the Bible has about the same effect upon believers as the Mueller Report would have on Trump supporters — if they were to actually read it instead of listening to FOX News, I mean.

Franklin Graham, son of Billy, thinks Americans should pray for The Donald tomorrow.

While on a preaching tour in Vermont a few weeks ago, Franklin Graham got an idea: God had helped Donald Trump reach the White House, and now the President needed divine aid again.

Like no President before him, Trump was under attack, Graham said. From Democrats, Republicans, the media, even powers and principalities beyond the human realm. His presidency was in peril, the country at a moral crossroads.

So Graham decided to do what evangelists do: pray, preferably with lots of other people. After calling evangelical allies, he announced plans to name this Sunday, June 2, as a “special day of prayer” to protect Trump from his “enemies.”

Evangelicals are always grateful when somebody tells them what to do, so I imagine that church services all across America will feature a special prayer for the poor beleaguered First Felon tomorrow.

Fortunately, reality always has the last word and all that pious mumbling will be unavailing. Donald Trump is a corrupt, criminal, madman — and no matter how hard evangelicals squeeze their eyes shut and jam their fingers in their ears, his day of reckoning is coming.