Civil Commotion

When Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was confronted with demands last summer that some of its buildings be renamed, because they honored slaveholders whose white-trash theology served as an engine of southern slavery and racism, I briefly sketched the political problem confronting the school’s president, Albert Mohler.

If the Southern Baptists were not the authors of so much human misery, I would almost feel sorry for him; after all, he is between the proverbial rock and a hard place. He operates within an infrastructure of religious tradition which has long been the primary engine of southern racism and, however desperately its leadership wishes to change that because it is indispensable to the denomination’s very survival, the laity who pay his salary and once threw rocks at the freedom marchers aren’t going to be good sports about being told they were and are wildly, morally, wrong.

He has a further problem: The Southern Baptists, often with unseemly aggressiveness, claim to be the keepers and guardians of Eternal Truth — which cannot lightly be updated.

Now that evangelicals are flocking to the racist and xenophobic Donald Trump, Russell Moore has been the point man for explaining to them that, No, Christians can’t support the kinds of things he is saying.

W-h-e-e-e-e — you read it here first, folks.

[H]e wrote an article filled with passive-aggressive shots at the Christian electorate who support Donald Trump for president or are sympathetic to some of the ideas he has put forth. In particular, he went after “white American Christians,” as he categorized his audience late in his article. Sadly, instead of addressing the Christian electorate straightforwardly, Dr. Moore chose to confront his audience through implication, innuendo, and insinuation, causing the reader to have to connect the dots a bit, but once the dots are connected, the article was indeed “a rather stinging critique” not really of the Trump candidacy but of those who support the Trump candidacy or are at least sympathetic to some of his ideas. In doing so, Dr. Moore’s rhetoric went too far.

So: Not only is Russell Moore being bashed by The Donald via Twitter, Robert Jeffress is running around saying Moore deserved it, and now the pews are trashing him too.

It’s kind of like the College Boys vs. the Good Ol’ Boys, with neither side bound by reality. How can you not love it?

There are some important political lessons in all this.

• The evangelical leadership are not kingmakers. The next time any of these hot dogs presumes to go to somebody like Mitch McConnell, say, and tell him he has to do this or do that if he wants the evangelical vote, McConnell is going to laugh in his face. Good. Laughter is all they deserve from grown-ups.

• The evangelical right is not animated by theology; it is animated by malice toward anybody who is … other. Nietzsche knew that 125-years ago, H.L. Mencken knew that 75-years ago — but by the time Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, that had somehow been forgotten. The electoral chaos we have today is the result.

  Yes, they have the right to believe whatever they like; there is no natural-born, built-in right to be taken seriously, however. That has to be earned — and these clowns don’t have what it takes.

• People like Moore and Mohler don’t even know who is sitting in their pews and classrooms, and they are so used to automatic deference that they’ve never bothered to find out. It’s going to be ugly when the Southern Baptists meet-up this summer.

I found this picture accompanying a post by Michael Hamar, which takes-up New Hampshire’s rejection of gay-conversion therapy. Since it speaks directly to one of my pet bugaboos, I have shamelessly pilfered and reproduced it here; if anybody can tell me who deserves credit for the picture, I’ll be glad to acknowledge him or her.

Right there you have a righteous rejection of Christianity’s whole degrading schtick — you’re no damn good. Take that away, take away their permission to debase you, and Albert the Pious, Russell Moore, Robert Jeffress, Pat Robertson, on and on ad nauseum, are just a bunch of plaid-suited flim-flam men.

As is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.

U.S. Dept. of Education

The Department of Education will issue a letter today which provides guidance to schools about their understanding of prevailing civil rights laws in connection with transgender issues; the quote is from that letter.

Russell Moore, a Godly Man in desperate need of a P.R. boost, is especially livid.

Well.

For starters, this is not an executive order. This letter is guidance from a Cabinet department, which it is supposed to provide, and that guidance is consistent with the only federal court decision addressing the questions; more and similar cases are in the pipeline. Moore et. al. can mutter darkly about the ‘Obama Administration,’ as if that explains everything, but the uncomplicated truth is that judicial scrutiny of transgender rights was inevitable.

It was probably hastened by the evangelical right’s substitution of transgenders for gays as the Locus Of All Evil following their loss in Obergefell, but it’s unlikely the outcome would have been different.

Most of these battles, and the needless pain they cause, arise directly out of the millennia-old marketing lie that the Bible is a communiqué directly from an Invisible Friend who lives in the sky, and inerrant. It is neither, and it’s time for those of us who know better to stop deferring to those who trust that childish nonsense.

… that might have made the cage-fight between the Southern Baptist Convention’s ‘intellectuals’ and Donald Trump even more fun than it has been has happened: Robert Jeffress, one of the first Southern Baptist pastors to endorse Trump, has said Russell Moore had it coming.

In a recent interview with Time magazine, Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress has suggested his fellow Southern Baptist incited the reaction from Trump:

“Russell Moore has launched numerous vitriolic attacks not only against Trump’s, policies but about his own character and integrity. No one should be surprised that Trump would respond to such attacks.

“This is unprecedented what Russell Moore has done, and I believe there are many people who are not sympathetic with his views toward Trump. While Moore is a respected leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, he absolutely does not speak for all Southern Baptists even as I don’t speak for all Southern Baptists.”

W-h-e-e-e-e-e …

This time, Anne Graham Lotz (Billy’s daughter).

Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of famous evangelist Billy Graham, says she is ready to vote for Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump at the November elections, expressing hope that he can change and become a man of God like King Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible.

If I were Russell Moore, I’d be recalling that hysterical Lloyd Bridges line from Airplane about now: “Looks like I picked a bad week to quit drinking.”