Civil Commotion

Soon after the 2016 election, I predicted that Donald Trump’s egregious behavior and bad values would work to the disadvantage of his delerious Evangelical Right supporters.

Third, 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, and that will eventually sink into public consciousness, as in, Wait a minute! What are you saying? The church people gave us that piece of sh*t p***y-grabber?! Yep, they did — and that will be the tale of how the Evangelical Right and ‘movement so-called conservatism’ committed political suicide. They might make some noise, occasionally score a small victory … but they are done. The Trump administration, with its inevitable serial indecencies and corruptions, is their achievement, and they will never live it down.

There has been plenty of frankly contemptuous commentary here and there (right here at Civil Commotion, for instance), but now Raw Story, an important media outlet, has published a piece that unambiguously argues that Christianity is being cynically used as a cover for selfish policy-making.

In reality, the relationship between Christian piety and support for selfish policies is fairly straightforward. It’s not that being Christian makes you conservative. It’s that being conservative makes being a loud and pious Christian extremely attractive.

Without Christianity, the underlying mean-spiritedness of conservative policies is simply easier to spot.

The tide is going out on the Evangelical Right, just as it is on Trump, and nothing can change that because the bone-deep malice and painful stupidity can’t be hidden any longer. Reality always has the last word.

This is about 1/2-mile from where I went to high school.

Preachers are trying to figure-out how to get back in the game.

Millennials and other religiously unaffiliated Americans are eschewing clergy involvement in their weddings.

At least that’s what some statistics and concerned ministers say.

The Knot reported that friend-officiated weddings increased from 29 percent in 2009 to 40 percent six years later.

[ … ]

“I believe – I am hopeful – that the church wedding will become more popular,” she said.

I doubt that will happen. Christianity is simply a cult that made it big — in no small part because of its amoral willingness to use force — and now its narrative and ethics are in deserved disrepute. Holy Men like Albert Mohler et. al. will never admit it in a million years, but they don’t actually believe in marriage; they affirmatively condemn the mutual loyalty and shared ambitions that make a relationship a marriage.

What Albert Mohler believes in is animal husbandry.

Some who have chosen to be childless have actually formed organizations in order to band together. The group “No Kidding” was formed in Atlanta four years ago as a social outlet for couples choosing to have no children. Traci Swartz, an occupational therapist in her thirties, joined “No Kidding” with her husband Jeremy, a 32 year old computer analyst. “When you don’t have children, you are not involved in any activities like a lot of other people, like soccer and ballet,” said Traci.

She explained that “No Kidding” members are more likely to talk about pets, travel, or other common interests. Kids rarely come up as a topic of conversation. “People think we sit around and talk about how we hate kids, but we almost never mention kids,” Traci explained. No wonder.

Another woman in the Atlanta group explained, “you focus those motherly feelings elsewhere. For us, our dogs get all that love.” That worldview is sick, but more and more common.

Christians must recognize that this rebellion against parenthood represents nothing less than an absolute revolt against God’s design.

What Mohler and the like-minded believe is that marriage is a pact entered into in order to combine two sets of skills to grow the cult.

The third theological fact about the family is the continued affirmation of the family within the redeemed people of God – the church. As the Gospels make clear, loyalty to Christ exceeds that of any family commitment, even as the church becomes the family of faith, embracing within its life all who come to faith in Christ and into the life of the church. And yet, Christians are explicitly instructed to honor marriage, to raise their children in the faith, and to order their family according to the Scriptures.

Unfortunately, what Mohler demands is a formula for marital misery.

Joe McKeever:

We were supposed to have a healthy marriage, and here I am putting everyone and every thing ahead of my own family.

What’s wrong with this picture?

That is my greatest regret from over half a century of ministry: I failed to take care of my family.

Bruce Gerencser:

While these memories remind me of the fact that I did spend time with my beautiful wife and children, I find myself saddened by the fact that I should have spent a lot more time with them, but didn’t. Southeast Ohio is a place of beauty, yet I rarely took the time to enjoy the scenery. Enjoying life was for those who didn’t take seriously the commands of Jesus. As the Apostle Paul centuries before, I wanted my life to be a testimony of single-minded devotion to Jesus. Better to burn out than rust out, I thought at the time. Some day, I will enjoy the scenery of God’s eternal kingdom! Did not the Bible say, prepare to meet the Lord thy God? There will be plenty time later to relax and fish along the banks of the River of Life.

My children and Polly have long since forgiven me for not giving them the time they deserved. They understand why I worked like I did, but I have a hard time forgiving myself for putting God, Jesus, the church, preaching, and winning souls before my family.

There is no nice way to say it: If you get married with the intention of putting an Invisible Friend first, and your spouse second, you’re committing a fraud against your spouse, and aren’t ready to get married at all.

A post at SBC Voices takes-up the recent death of a missionary who visited a country where he’d been told he was unwelcome — and got killed for his trouble.

There has been a lot of discussion recently of the death of John Allen Chau, a young missionary who violated Indian laws to go the remote North Sentinel Island to proclaim Christ to the isolated people who lived there and was immediately killed. He was aware of the danger of his actions and said that while he did not want to die he felt the call of God to take the gospel to these people who did not know Jesus.

[ … ]

2. Christians should abide by the laws of the land and live in peace, but if a law says that it is illegal to share Christ with anyone, the Great Commission supersedes that law.

Well.

I’m not interested in debating whether or not it should be illegal to proselytize on North Sentinel Island; I’ll say merely that I don’t think summary death is an appropriate response to those who do so. I am more interested in the highlighted portion of that quote: “… if a law says that it is illegal to share Christ with anyone, the Great Commission supersedes that law.”

No. This is the cultish teaching that has caused so much misery in the world, destroying marriages, destabilizing governments and, not incidentally, getting nuisances like Allen Chau killed; this claim is an exemplar for the sickness that makes Christianity odious.

Russell Moore, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal which takes issue with a pending tax on certain employee benefits.

A little-noticed provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 now looms over faith communities in America, raising serious questions about religious freedom and the First Amendment. While this provision is a relatively small piece of the overall package, the effect of the policy it created will be felt by the faithful around the country.

This change is a new policy to tax nonprofit organizations—including houses of worship, like the Southern Baptist churches I serve—for the cost of parking and transit benefits provided to employees. This effectively creates an income tax on churches.

The legislation does not impose a tax on churches; it taxes certain benefits now enjoyed tax-free by church employess.

Nor does the provision offend religious freedom. Dr. Moore can remain a Southern Baptist. He may continue to embarrass himself by insisting the Bible is inerrant. He may continue to burden his children with the teaching that they were born no damn good. He may continue to get dressed-up on Sunday morning and draw a crowd if there are people so foolish as to find his claims agreeable. Nobody is going to take his Bible away.

It is my religious freedom that is infringed upon, because he wants to continue to exact from me a compulsory subsidy for his employees — who offend reason and common decency every single day.

If the prevailing tax status of churches were honorable, it wouldn’t be necessary for Holy Men to misrepresent it.