Civil Commotion

I pointed a few days ago toward a post by a Southern Baptist pastor who takes his brothers to task for mean-spirited commentary about, among a great many other things, President Obama.

I am pleased to report that the Holy Men took his criticisms to heart; after the first handful of comments, there is no more discussion of the extraordinary, downright epochal wickedness of the president.

But — Oh, man — you really ought to go read the stuff they say about each other.

I appreciate his [David Platt] grit and his integrity. (Integrity has been, and still is, lacking among more than a few SBC pastors, SBC administrators, and SBC trustees in the last several years. Some self-serving, lying leaders and gutless, ignorant trustees have done great harm to SBC entities and to Baptist State Convention entities. Therefore, to me, David Platt is a refreshing drink of water.)

It’s only going to get better, too, because all these clowns are doomed — and they totally know that. It’s, like, a knife fight on a life raft.

Michael Hamar points toward a piece at Politico that makes a lot of sense to me, and which identifies the Trump demographic as ‘authoritarians.’

Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. Since the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been one of the most widely studied ideas in social science. While its causes are still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened. From pledging to “make America great again” by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations.

They’re children, in other words, who want to be told what to do, who want to be relieved of the responsibility of being an adult.

This has a plausible sound. Remember: When a congregation learns that Pastor Bubba is raping its children, the all-but-invariable response is to rally around the pastor and re-victimize his victims, to double-down on loyalty and obedience to Big Daddy — to the strongman; that certainly fits the description of ‘authoritarians.’ Now recall this: The Japanese believed before World War II that the emperor was a god — and when Douglas MacArthur was appointed military governor of Japan following Japan’s defeat, they simply transferred their loyalty and obedience to the new Big Daddy, the new strongman; the Japanese lined the streets and cried unashamedly when MacArthur left.

Are the defeated culture warriors doing the same, simply transferring their allegiance to a new Big Daddy, a new strongman? It’s the right demographic, and it explains why brazen lies and crude behavior seem to have no cost for him. His demographic simply doesn’t care about those kinds of things; they care about safety in reward for being good little boys and girls.

We should have known this was coming, I suppose.

… probably destroys his career by speaking truthfully about the execrable behavior of the SBC over the past several years.

I wish I saw more fairness. There were a myriad of problems during the Bush administration, but we didn’t hurl near as much vitriol his way as we have thrown at President Obama. That is not fair.

Nice try, Pastor Jones, but your brothers-in-Christ will still be howling sedition next Sunday morning. I’m afraid you’re going to have to start hanging-out with a better crowd if you’re looking for decent, honorable conduct.

UPDATE:   A snippet from the very first comment on Pastor Jones’ post:

I wish I could believe with you in the benign-ness of President Obama’s personal agendas that have unleashed hoards of demons and a chain reaction of godless ideologies with their corresponding leadership, set and ripe for further escalation with little to no resistance from God’s people. Your words here prove it.

Well. Don’t you just hate it when educated people talk over your head?