Civil Commotion

It wasn’t even intentional on my part. I just noticed a few weeks ago that I had stopped describing myself to people as an “evangelical.” I had begun, subconsciously, to say that I am a “gospel Christian.” When I caught myself doing this, I wondered why and the answer wasn’t long in coming.

The word “evangelical” has become almost meaningless this year, and in many ways the word itself is at the moment subverting the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Russell Moore

Sorry, pal, but you Southern Baptists own ‘evangelical.’ And just so’s you know? Nobody is misunderstanding who evangelicals are; it is who you are that has made ‘evangelicals’ a dirty word.

In those days, being a Republican meant one respected knowledge, respected science and education, sought a fiscally conservative government and had no desire to police other peoples’ bedrooms. Then something began to happen: far right Christians who wanted to police everyone’s bedroom and force their religious beliefs, including biblical literalism, on all members of society — I call them Christofscists — began to be elected to the city committee. Next racist comments began to become more acceptable. Then white supremacy became acceptable. Slowly and steadily, the Republican Party ceased to be what it had once been.

Michael Hamar

There was a time when accomplished, educated grown-ups gravitated naturally toward the Republican Party; that began to change with Nixon’s so-called Southern Strategy, when the party decided to exploit southern hostility to the civil rights movement and invited-in the white trash. Now, here in what Gore Vidal once so aptly dubbed the United States of Amnesia, the retrograde, uneducated, backward-looking southern Democrats of decades ago — think George Wallace, who once campaigned for the presidency as a Democrat — have become the Republican base.

To paraphrase Churchill’s famous metaphor, the Republicans wanted to ride the tiger — and now it is eating them.

The Wartburg Watch has established a Go Fund Me page for some victims of church abuse. I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of what’s afoot, so I can’t personally vouch for any of this, but I trust the Wartburg Ladies and the story sure has a familiar sound.

Billy was sexually assaulted by a member of his church who pled guilty to the crime. Shauna, his mom, who cleans houses for a living lost a number of clients when the church they attended did not support his mother’s efforts to provide a safe environment for Billy.

Those people affiliated with the church told Shauna they didn’t want her to clean for them anymore. This has left Shauna and her son unable to provide for their basic needs.

Billy and Shauna were the victims of abuse from the molester and their own church.

Ask any police officer, journalist, social worker, doctor, lawyer — anybody with firsthand professional experience of it — and every single one of them will tell you the exact same thing: When a congregation learns of this kind of thing, it all-but-invariably rallies around the offender and drives off the victim. You won’t encounter a half-dozen exceptions to the rule in a lifetime.

You can always count on the Godly to kick somebody who is down. Help if you can.

Michael Hamar makes it. I’m not prepared to make a final decision yet, but my wife and I have had the identical conversation and reached the same tentative conclusion.

Trump? Cruz? Rubio? A fascist nutjob vs. a pious nutjob vs. a high school-ish nutjob? No. Period.

Hillary? Yech, but … maybe/probably. I am so sick of voting for the least-awful candidate.

Warren Jeffs’ one-time bodyguard has turned on the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and is now testifying against him in federal court.

Burly and middle-aged with a mop of brown hair, Jessop spent more than a decade as security chief and spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous sect that split from the mainstream Mormon church at the turn of the last century. As head of the “God Squad,” he was perhaps the highest profile FLDS member — with the exception of its prophet, Warren Jeffs.

For a while Jeffs occupied the same row as Osama bin Laden and Whitey Bulger on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Jessop admits on the witness stand that he once helped the fugitive prophet run from authorities. He describes one scheme in which Jeffs dodged a raid on the FLDS meeting house: While others rode out on four-wheelers as decoys, Jeffs and Jessop rode out in another direction on Honda motorcycles packed with cash and fake IDs. They raced up a dry creek bed to the airport.

As everyone knows, Mormonism was founded by a 19^th-century con man named Joseph Smith. That Smith was nothing but an ordinary criminal with a knack for exploiting the sort of fools who gravitate toward mystical claptrap is well-documented in courthouses all across the country.

Smith quickly discovered that lots of women are really attracted to thuggish, self-absorbed prophets and, luckily for him, was soon instructed by Our Invisible Friend that he was meant to marry and sleep with all of them. Things continued in this happy way until Utah wanted to join the Union, which refused to admit the territory unless polygamy was outlawed.

Well … what do you know? The then-Prophet of the church received a message from the Creator of the Whole Big Universe that it was no longer His Will that Mormon men have umpteen wives, the practice was outlawed, and the Utah Territory became a state.

Pure Mormons loyal to the faith of their fathers just continued having lots of wives, because everybody with two eyeballs could see that the new revelation was just a political accommodation and a heresy. They became what is knows as the FLDS and, since their Pure Mormon practices are unlawful, they are even more cult-like than the original version invented by Smith.

Jessop’s apostasy is very nearly unknown — and good for him.

Joseph Smith was a self-serving criminal; the matter is simply not susceptible of any serious-minded dispute. And, yet, Mormonism flourishes, and inspires successive generations of followers of modern-day criminals like Jeffs. Why does it persist? And what does it tell us about the founding of other religions?

Consider this: No Christian will deny that Islam and Mormonism and Scientology were founded by criminal gangs, and most — at least when they’re off-duty — will admit that Abraham was probably not somebody you’d want for a neighbor.

I’m here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that Christianity was founded by an identical pack of conniving, amoral, self-serving criminals, and the Gospels were written by the same smarmy, self-serving and -aggrandizing pack of liars that today write for World Net Daily. Christians have merely been gulled by a different con-artist — and that’s the only real difference.

And the only thing that can end the con is reason, recognizing that faith — belief without evidence, belief in spite of evidence — is a moral evil.