I hear the sound of Baal

After Joe Biden was announced as the president-elect last month, many of President Trump’s supporters went into full-scale denial. Kenneth Copeland, known for “name-it-and-claim-it” theology, led an outbreak of laughter at a service, and other self-styled prophets said they absolutely heard from God that Trump would be reelected.

But for sheer lunacy, nothing beats the incantation of Paula White, a member of Trump’s religious advisory team who, during a so-called prayer, called in spirits from Africa and South America to overturn the election results and kept saying, over and over, “I hear the sound of victory.”

It seems to me that she was summoning spirits all, right — but not from God.

White also subscribes to what disgraced evangelist Jimmy Swaggart referred to as “hyperfaith” — that if you simply speak to what you want it’s guaranteed to be on its way. Trouble is, however, God will do that only if doing so serves His purpose and that the request is being made in humility.

And in the case of White, there’s not a shred of humility in her demand that the result be changed.

I was reminded of a situation described by a missionary in my church about three decades ago about a tribe in Southeast Asia that made a fetish and banged it every time a member wanted something from the gods. Of course, the missionary wanted the tribe to understand that God doesn’t work like that.

Then you had the prophets of Baal who, according to 1 Kings 18:20-40, were called out by the prophet Elijah and challenged to a duel. Remember what happened — the prophets of Baal called out his name all day and into the evening, even cutting themselves, with the sacrifice completely unmoved on their altar. After that, Elijah uttered a simple prayer—and his sacrifice was burned up completely.

Does that thus sound silly from a Christian perspective? Well, that’s what White appeared to be doing, apparently believing that if you prayed hard enough you would get the desired results. You could say that she was calling on Baal — who is no God at all.

If you haven’t noticed, Trump has lost the election — and here's why

It probably sounds absolutely crazy that much of the country has refused to accept that Donald Trump lost the presidential election seven weeks ago. Many of his supporters have complained that it was “rigged,” that, among other things, voting machines used in a number of states actually changed their votes (their manufacturer is suing Newsmax and One America News, two right-wing television networks making that phony charge, for defamation).

But what you’re seeing is a lot deeper than Trump — indeed, it has been for a very long time. The political populist right has long believed that power is its birthright and anyone who doesn’t agree with it is illegitimate.

We first saw this with Bill Clinton in 1992.

The right was so frightened of losing an election that it actually filed suit in Federal court in Little Rock, Ark. to have him removed from the ballot (the judge must have laughed them out of his courtroom). Within weeks of his inauguration bumper stickers began appearing that read: “Don’t blame me — I voted for [George H.W.] Bush.” Then you had right-wing media playing up Whitewater, a failed land deal that cost Bill and Hillary Clinton; and his alleged tomcatting and bogus accusations of rape. (Keep in mind that the Fox News Channel didn’t exist at this time.) Then you had H. Ross Perot as a spoiler, apparently taking enough votes from Bush in ’92 and Bob Dole in ’96 to hand the reins of power to Bill Clinton.

Ever since, supporters of the “radical right” wanted a Republican presidential candidate to trash-talk his or her opponents with impunity. George W. Bush didn’t. John McCain didn’t. Mitt Romney didn’t. (Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin came the closest.) Trump, however, did, which is why he’s literally worshiped — it had so much hatred for political opponents that even talking to them was considered surrender because they were considered sub-human.

The thing is, you can “go low” for only so long before folks start to react, which is something that Trump’s minions didn’t, and apparently still don't, understand. The “liberal snowflakes” certainly screamed when Trump got elected. But then, they began to organize, making some headway in 2018. 

That organization became even more focused this year, with groups sending texts to people encouraging them to vote — I received about a dozen such texts — and even the NAACP not only mounting a voter-registration drive but calling upon volunteers to reach out to black voters.

And those black voters came out strong, initially propelling Joe Biden to primary victories in the South, eventually handing him the Democratic nomination and later the presidency. (It didn’t help that Trump denounced the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer, giving them more ammunition.) Then you have his failure to address the COVID-19 epidemic, insisting that it would simply go away. (It should be noted that Trump was raised with Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking,” as a pastor, which might explain his reticence to do more.)

See, that’s the real reason that Trump complained about the election being rigged — he can’t stand the idea of people, especially those in power, opposing him. During his administration his whole mindset was exposed as defective and his failures were not only magnified but used against him. Even now that he’s playing out the string he’s failing to govern, filing these frivolous lawsuits to try to overturn the election results. And shame on those people trying to argue that “We wuz robbed!” Because they weren’t — they lost fairly and squarely and are about to have their boy turned out because of his own failure.

Let that word sink in — failure.

‘Authority’ vs. ministry

Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

—   Mark 9:35

Have you noticed that, with all the money and connections that the “religious right” has maintained within the halls of power, it has precious little influence around the nation? Outside of it supporters, it has no real power to speak of.

There’s a reason for that.

See, it thought, erroneously, that focusing on “authority” — that is to say, passing laws and getting courts to agree with those supposedly biblical injunctions — was the key to spiritual renewal. Thing is, it never had any chance of doing so, for one simple reason: Seeking authority for its own sake is ruinous, not to mention futile.

In this case, Jesus is saying that any authority actually is derived from ministry — in fact, it’s a by-product.

My church, which I’ve attended for 22 years, has a great reputation in the immediate “at-risk” neighborhood where it’s located, not to mention the city at large and even around the country. It didn’t always, however, because just over 30 years ago it was a drive-in congregation disconnected from the community.

But under different pastoral leadership it committed to reaching out, even adjusting its culture to welcome those on the outside; over time, it grew from 400 to over 3,000 attendees. Most “church growth” experts were likely scratching their heads because trying to build a church that way didn’t, and still doesn’t, fit the model.

They miss the point, however — the church became, and remains, a place of service. One unusual thing about us is that a good two-thirds of adults, myself included, participates in some sort of ministry.

Even at its founding at the turn of the last century, that focus on service existed. When the founding pastor was asked to “superintend the work,” he responded that he couldn’t do so, “but if the Holy Spirit [would], I would gladly run errands for Him.”

The same goes for marriage, which as a newlywed I’m experiencing now. As the husband I have “authority” in the home but prefer to use whatever authority I’m under to serve my wife, not to push her around — whenever I do or say something that warms her heart I occasionally say, “That’s part of the job description,” in which I take great delight.

This is also why I believe that an administration headed by Joe Biden will prove to be more effective than that of Donald Trump, and it won’t take long for that to show itself. From what I see, Biden has always been more of a servant, seeking the best possible solutions to benefit the greatest number of people and working with those who might not agree with him, while Trump from the start was filled with braggadocio, thinking he could simply throw his weight around and get things done. (And he cared about getting the credit.)

Basically, the issue here is humility. A lot of these parachurch ministries claim to speak for God when He has not truly spoken, so when things don’t go their way they have a hard time trying to justify their pronouncements. Their heads wanted to be regarded as leaders, so they hyped up their campaigns and focused on defeating enemies, which raised a ton of money but got precious little accomplished — and I would say that their days are numbered because they not only forgot to serve the LORD but never really encouraged His people to do so.

Listening to the devil

I recently watched a video by “The Friendly Atheist” about several so-called prophets who were guaranteeing a second term for President Donald Trump. After the election happened and Joe Biden was declared the winner, Kenneth Copeland, known in some cases for his false teaching anyway, laughed — and led a congregation in laughter — at the results, and Trump “spiritual adviser” Paula White, in the midst of an incantation, called upon spirits in Africa and South America to overturn the result. I’m sure they believed, and told anyone listening, that they had heard from God Himself.

The problem, however, was not that they and others weren’t listening to God, though they weren’t. It’s that they were hearing the wrong voice and thus got off-track.

What they heard instead was the voice of Satan, who has only one goal: To keep people from recognizing God as He is.

Now, that’s not a charge I or anyone should make frivolously, that anyone could, should or would mistake the siren song of the devil for the voice of God. But the True and Living God won’t prophesy victory for the sake of giving His people a leg up politically, culturally or socially — indeed, He often predicts hard times for His followers despite, and in some cases because of, their faithfulness.

According to The New York Times, even before he officially announced his run for 2016, Trump was already making campaign stops promising largely-Christian audiences that “Christianity will have power” — which I immediately recognized as a temptation because when Christianity does gain power it almost always loses its purpose. Remember, the Gospel of Jesus Christ ultimately is about reconciliation, first between God and people and, then, people to one another — something you would never hear from these so-called ministries who mistake hype and spectacle for His Holy Word and Spirit. And that’s the real reason why, after over 40 years of activism and billions of dollars for advocacy groups in centers of political power, the “religious right” has so little influence.

Now these so-called prophets are being exposed as the charlatans they always were, and I hope their ministries collapse as a result. One thing about “prophecy” not often mentioned is that if a prophet got even one thing wrong in ancient Israel he or she would be put to death, not simply because of the particular thing about which he or she was prophesying but also misunderstanding the underlying issues that caused it. And in our nation today such underlying issues included economic disparity, racial injustice and poor political leadership, which are alluded to in the Scripture but none of which Trump or many Christians had any interest in addressing — and, also, the reason he lost.

I would say that it’s high time for many of us to admit that we were seduced by the temptation of “being No. 1,” something that God just doesn’t promise. Basically, we followed the devil into a rabbit hole and, as a result, got “caught up” in a program that diverted us from a true spiritual path of righteousness and justice. I hope the election will wake us up to our need for repentance.

Who’s crying now?

Last week I tore a Trump bumper sticker off a fleet car that I had picked up for work. The bumper sticker read: “Trump 2020 — make liberals cry again!” (The paper’s editorial board endorsed him for president.)

I thus note, with some irony, just how many people are crying now that he lost that election — and I don’t feel sorry for them. Not one bit. Not only are they crying but they’re also raging, many making the baseless (as it turns out) charge that the election was “stolen,” echoing their fearful leader.

Because if your only or primary purpose in engaging in an election is to humiliate your opponents, you have no business being in power. Folks understand that, which is why he engendered so much hatred — enough to cause those hated liberals to organize against him, beginning in 2018.

And this is what Trump supporters simply don’t care to understand, which is why they’re complaining, essentially, “We wuz robbed!” No, they weren’t. They tend not to talk or listen to anyone else and thus have no idea how much his policies, let alone his attitude, hurt others.

Some people are saying that Trump critics should reconcile with Trump supporters so that we can have a “United States of America” again. I don’t favor that because we’re still dealing with sore losers who see anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy — which is why we’re in this pickle to begin with. Many of these same folks made largely baseless claims about Bill Clinton, wanting him taken out for far less than Trump has admitted to, and hating Barack Obama without cause.

Should the legal challenges to the election stand, and I expect them to, and Joe Biden becomes president in January Trump and his supporters will still be crying. Frankly, they brought that upon themselves; as Jesus Himself said, “The measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38).

False prophets, false prophecies and false prophecy

Probably the biggest earthquake with last week’s election of Joe Biden as president surrounded those in the Christian realm who confidently predicted a landslide by Donald Trump, who they were convinced was God’s “anointed.” When it became clear that he was falling behind in the polls, likely thousands of Trump-supporting Christians fell to their knees in prayer and Paula White, a member of his religious advisory team whom he had known for a decade, called on spirits from Africa and South America to intervene. Indeed, the night after the election several red-hatted believers were spotted praying on the steps of the courthouse in Clark County, Nev. (where Las Vegas, one of the swing regions, is located and votes were being counted).

What that instead resulted in was an embarrassment to the Body of Christ in America, especially since many are still in denial about the outcome.

The first thing to understand about “prophecy” is that it is not “fortune-telling” or “soothsaying” — it’s about declaring the heart, mind and intention of Almighty God in a specific situation. For that reason, prophecy can at times be jarring and, depending on the situation, downright insulting, which is why some of the prophets of old met early deaths — they are as likely as any to say, in effect, “You missed the boat.” Basically, if a “prophet” tells you what you long to hear, you should question whether the person is really speaking for God.

More accurately, the true prophet really doesn’t care whether he or she has an audience or not. When I hear about these so-called prophets with huge followings I immediately become suspicious, wondering if they’re giving the people what they want in order to fleece the flock.

Moreover, a lot of these people take Scripture out of context. Some have referred to Trump as a latter-day King Cyrus, the Babylonian king who allowed Israel to return to her land and try to, shall we say, “make Israel great again,” ignoring the fact that she was sent into exile in the first place for disobedience to the Law of God, and showing no repentance anyway for their gossip toward and character assassination of political opponents. Some even denounce the Democratic Party as “of Satan,” which certainly doesn’t help matters because that expresses a certain arrogance and bitterness that shouldn’t exist in their hearts.

Another major issue is Trump’s incompetence when it came to governance. We saw that specifically during the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer and, more importantly, his inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has by now cost over 200,000 lives — I’m not saying that no one would have died, but most of those deaths could and would have been prevented with stronger measures earlier as well as coordination with state governors. See, in this country, we have presidents, not kings who rule by decree, and just because the president wishes something would just go away doesn’t mean it will. After all, we’re not talking about God here.

As things stand now, even though votes are still being counted (and a manual recount ordered in Georgia, where Biden is ahead), it’s likely that Biden still defeats Trump. And if that be the case, what happens to the prognosticators who clearly failed? It’s not that God has — perhaps He’s elevating Biden to that office for His purposes. Furthermore, hopefully such folks would learn to hear from God rather than project their desires for political and cultural power onto Him, because when you do that you negate the Power of the Holy Spirit.

And if Biden wins …

What should the majority of Americans do should Joe Biden win the presidency in two weeks with the supporters of President Trump to reclaim a United States of America? According to Russ Joseph’s “A Radical Proposal for Dealing with Trump Supporters After Biden Wins,” published last week in medium.com, put aside differences and reach out to them.

It’s understandable and high-minded. But it isn’t very smart, because it ignores recent history.

What folks might not understand or appreciate is the depth of animosity of Trump supporters toward anyone who disagrees — and not only that but that such animosity against “liberals” has been percolating for decades before he came on the scene (I began noticing it way back in 1980, in “Christian” media). Even then, if you knew where to look, you could hear broadsides against the government, the media, the Democratic Party, the “deep state” et al. Today that list has been extended to Black Lives Matter supporters and Antifa activists, the latter of which Trump has accused of burning down city neighborhoods (though in fact it’s been pro-Trump forces causing the riots).

These were the folks who wanted Bill Clinton strung up — for the “crime” of getting elected president — and helped to spread salacious rumors about his sex life. These are the folks who questioned whether Barack Obama was actually born in this country and have referred to his wife Michelle as “he.” And those are just off the top of my head.

Clearly, we’re not dealing with a full deck here. Such folks have forfeited any right to power or authority and ought not to be brought back anytime soon — if ever — because their intent always was, and apparently still is, division.

Joseph tried to make parallels to post-Nazi Germany and Japan after World War II. The difference is that those nations not only recognized where they went wrong but at least made some effort to change their ways and responded when former enemies reached out to them, and both nations are allies today, in large part due to different leadership. Not so here, especially with pro-Trump militia members recently plotting to kidnap governors in two states and try them for “treason” due to their actions to combat COVID-19, linked to the complaint that the only alternative to Trump is “communism.”

Anyway, a better example would be ancient Israel under Roman rule. The Jewish people of that day deeply resented Rome and sought a Messiah who would overthrow it similar to what happened a century earlier when Greece occupied — the impetus for the holiday of Hanukkah — and Jesus became that person (one reason He never volunteered that he was the true Messiah was because the term had political implications that He wanted to avoid). After His ascension, however, that resentment still lingered, which is likely why the Apostle Paul, in Romans 13, instructed the early church, which of course was heavily Jewish, to pray for those in authority — to save itself from bitterness. Eventually, but not right away, the Roman Empire ended up not only conquered but destroyed from within.

Joseph mentioned that “I ... hope you’ll join me and the rest of the Democrats, Independents and Never-Trumpers as we forge a relationship with Trump supporters.”

That simply will not happen, as no relationship is possible or even practical. We can do the “love” thing all we want, but in the Greek, true “love” is synonymous with justice, which often demands confrontation — which they’ve always tried to avoid.

Best to leave them alone otherwise.

A ‘Hail Mary’ pass

You may have heard of the story in the New York Post last week about a new twist on the old, debunked story that Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was trading on his father’s name while being on the board of an energy company in Ukraine. (I won’t get into the fabrications here.) You should know, however, that the story has already been proven unreliable, with the author(s) withholding his/her/their name(s) because it couldn’t be independently verified — and it turns out the former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now serving as personal lawyer to President Trump, planted the story as per Russian spies.

That said, this qualifies as a desperation move from pro-Trump media to find a way to take down Biden just weeks before the election. And it won’t work.

Reason?  This election is less a referendum on Biden’s fitness for office than Trump’s failure to govern properly. Unfortunately, Trump supporters aren’t interested in governing, only in power, and that’s been his, and their, downfall from day one.

Of late they’ve done their best to try to marginalize those they don’t agree with as, say, “radical left” or even the old, played-out cliché “communists” for standing up for justice.

You see, for some people the idea of “equality” is a threat, which to me is a tragedy but which is also why Trump is actually popular with his crowd. But the COVID-19 pandemic and especially the Black Lives Matter protests that took place over the summer discombobulated that hegemony and left him with little to work with because the nation had real problems that needed to be addressed.

In other words, he was exposed. And with even parts of his base, including some evangelical Christians, eroding, drastic measures were deemed necessary — thus the story about Hunter and Joe Biden’s alleged corruption.

The last time Trump wanted Joe Biden investigated, it got him impeached — more accurately, he tried to strongarm the president of Ukraine into announcing an investigation — because he feared Biden. And with Biden’s willingness to build a broad-based coalition, from far-left activists to disaffected conservative Republicans, he had good reason to fear.

I’d say that pass is incomplete or intercepted.

Thoughts on President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis

During the current COVID-19 pandemic a number of people I know often wondered what would happen if President Trump ever tested positive for the coronavirus.

We’re about to find out, since it was announced last night that he, First Lady Melania and other members of the White House’s inner circle have done so and are now in a mandatory two-week quarantine (and thus won’t be campaigning).

To those of us who admittedly don’t like Trump, this appears to be poetic justice. Since its discovery stateside in January of this year (and he later admitted that he understood the next month just how bad it would be but kept silent because he didn’t want to cause a panic), he has sought to downplay its effects — perhaps in the hope that what his supporters call economic “sabotage” would be minimized. Later, while visiting factories and holding rallies, he refused to wear a mask out of concern that doing so would make him look weak.

He may not realize that he isn’t God and that if you have to pump yourself up as “strong” you’re already weak — not just in the face of COVID-19 but also in his desire to humiliate his opponents.

And this is where I must speak out. If you ask people to join in prayer that the president recovers but not that he changes his ways, your prayer might fall on deaf ears. Understand that he got elected and remains popular with his base due to his bad attitude, and it’s that attitude that got him into this predicament in the first place.

Perhaps Trump’s diagnosis is thus the result of divine discipline — not for Trump per se, since I don’t believe that he’s a true Christian, but for many of his supporters who are believers. There are consequences to actions or the lack thereof which affect others, and now it’s apparently come back to haunt him. Repentance is in order, but I’m not counting on that happening.

The limits of ‘snarl’

Despite what was scheduled to be a debate but became what appeared to be a food fight last night between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, one thing became clear to me last night: Biden cares about the entire country. Trump does not.

That became clear to me when Trump, per usual, tried to run over not only Biden but also debate moderator Chris Wallace with lies, deflections and personal attacks.

But, as I think we’re beginning to see now, “snarl” can get you only so far.

Trump, significantly down in the polls in major swing states, has nevertheless never made any effort to unite the country, with his attacks on people of color, Muslims and especially “liberals” (which he overstatedly refers to as the “radical left”) being part and parcel of his never-ending campaign strategy.

But with the economy tanking, racial unrest rising and especially the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, he’s shown himself, as Michelle Obama said during the Democratic National Convention last month, “not … up to the job.” For that reason he’s maintained his propensity to lash out at enemies, real or perceived — he has nothing else left.

Last night’s debate sounded like a hot mess in a train wreck, and upon inspection it proved to be such (I stopped watching after 45 minutes). But there was a deeper meaning that you shouldn’t miss: This was a face-off between a bully and a decent person — and the bully is losing as things stand now.

Trying to ‘save face’

It does seem a tad daft that so many people, given the recent rise in COVID-19 cases, especially in “red” states, complain about the use of masks in public places such as stores and restaurants. They demand that they want to live normally and that their freedom is being squashed by left-wing governors more interested in pushing people around and embarrasing President Donald Trump.

But there’s a reason why you see so many people rebelling like spoiled children against directives from governors of “blue” states.

You see, it’s not about their “freedom” per se — it’s an attempt to save face, pardon the pun, on the part of many Trump supporters. Recall that Trump minimized the pandemic from the start in favor of economic prosperity, which he believed was his key to remaining in power, and they’re trying to dodge the reality that they were always wrong.

In other words, part of the reason they support him is to thumb their collective nose at the rest of the world.

Funny, but a life-and-death situation like the current coronavirus isn’t allowing that. And with the recent death of supporter and former presidential candidate Herman Cain, who tested positive for the virus after the Trump rally in June in Tulsa, Okla., the gambit that the pandemic could be dodged simply and clearly failed.

(It should be noted that COVID-19 doesn’t always kill directly — like HIV, it weakens the immune system so that other diseases can finish someone off.)

For the last four decades and even more so since Trump was elected, conservatives’ strategy was about “owning the libs”; now with the pandemic, however, the conservatives are the ones being “owned” and don’t like it. They have two choices — admit defeat or contribute to the culture of selfish immaturity, neither looking particularly promising now because the latter might lead to more deaths.

Trying to maintain the narrative — but losing control of it

It appears that the political populist right is terrified. It thought that it had found its messiah in Donald Trump, but he stumbled out of the gate and is now in free-fall due to his not only mishandling the responsibilities of the White House but also criminal activity. Some folks are even arguing that the response to COVID-19 combined with the Black Lives Matter protests represent a liberal/media conspiracy to besmirch and eventually remove him, not to mention divide the country.

That sentiment is not only ridiculous on its face but also terrifying in the long run.

For openers, the country is already divided and has been for the better part of 60 years — and it was the conservatives, not the “liberals,” who did it for the sake of power. From the “Southern Strategy” of Richard Nixon, whose then-aide Pat Buchanan helped shepherd it through; to the late-1970s rise of Newt Gingrich, who discouraged other Republicans from fraternizing with Democrats on weekends and referring to Democrats as, among other things, “sick”; to the era of Ronald Reagan, who courted Southern racists in 1980s, leading to the endorsement by a leader in the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia; to the smears against Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, they have no authority to complain about anyone else. And that doesn’t even take into account the “religious right” and the rise of right-wing talk radio laced with outlandish conspiracy theories.

That leads to the problem at hand, which is that the right has always sought to impose its views on American society, Rush Limbaugh admitting that he wanted to “control the language.”

The vast majority of us African-Americans Christians understand this, which is why we’ll never be on board. We’re not listening to the denunciations of BLM as Marxist, since the same charge was made against Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil-rights movement. We turned a deaf ear to the same charge against the African National Congress, which did have Marxists in it but only because the ANC and the South African Communist Party were officially underground entities in South Africa under apartheid — and today, the SACP is virtually nowhere to be found. And to this day, the political right has never apologized for its support of the white-minority government.

More to the point, however, we don’t accept that the current crises stem from anything but Trump’s criminal incompetence in dealing with the pandemic and overt racism. Doubling down on rhetoric thus doesn’t help the cause, nor does it solve any problems.

In other words, what the right wants everyone to believe we don’t accept as true, and that’s increasingly the case around the country. It’s why the right, and the Republican Party it controls, is in trouble across the country.

The imminent revival, part 15 — “Black Lives Matter”

I’ve believed and said for quite some time that spiritual revival was coming. And with the recent outpouring of support for the “Black Lives Matter” movement, seven years old but renewed with the death of George Floyd last month in Minneapolis, that time may be at hand.

If that sounds crazy, consider that revival never happens in isolation or among the powerful — it often comes from the streets. And the choking death of Floyd at the hands — or more accurately, under the knee — of now-former officer Derek Chauvin, has galvanized the nation like nothing in a half-century.

Why do I say we’re ripe for revival? Well, the Christian Gospel is designed to speak to “the least of these,” not the high-and-mighty who have no need of things to change.

And this is where the “religious right” and its sympathizers and sycophants have always missed the boat. They believe that once they established themselves as the authority in this country things would turn around morally; the ideology Independent Network Charismatic teaches that it could happen should Christians climb and take over “seven mountains of culture.”

Now, some folks have denounced BLM not simply due to its support for black lives but also those in the LGBTQ community. I’m not feeling that, for the simple reason that they too have been marginalized for similar reasons — and if you really want to go there, most gays have already understood the pain of rejection and, as Philip Yancey wrote in “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”, judgment.

Even the cliché “Hate the sin but love the sinner” comes out as judgment, in large part because such folks haven’t completely dealt with their own sins, which they consider “lesser than.” Of course, in the final analysis it doesn’t work quite like that.

On top of that, Scripture calls Christians to “mourn with those who mourn.” Many of us have refused to do so, saying that we can only when the demonstrators behave properly. That misses the point because, really, in effect we’re telling people not to express their rage and, even more arrogantly, not even to feel it. The irony is that, were such victims known Christians being persecuted for their faith, we would complain that no one is supporting us. (Perhaps our refusal to stand with those who aren’t like us is the reason.)

Anyway, the folks demonstrating in the streets I now see as an invitation from the Holy Spirit to join in and pray, contend and work for justice for all of God’s creation, to “seek the welfare of the city.” If that happens, we’ll have more revival than we know what to do with.

Losing control

I first became aware of the “religious right” in 1980 while attending a megachurch in suburban Atlanta, and from the start it seemed to be focusing on defeating enemies rather than acting positively to promote religious values in public life. If you subscribe to its media, and I did for a while, you would have heard the latest outrage against “Christians,” specifically why we needed to stand up for our rights by electing folks to office so that they could send friendly judges to the various benches, the bottom line marginalizing perceived enemies. That’s probably the primary reason many evangelical Christians supported Donald Trump for president four years ago.

The religious right hasn’t been very successful on stemming what it might consider moral decay despite all the money its groups have raised over the past four decades as it is. But several things that have taken place just this year have caused me to suspect that they’ve lost control completely and thus run the risk of being marginalized in their own right.

We witnessed the worldwide spread of COVID-19 — the “coronavirus” — coupled with denial that Trump’s mismanagement of the crisis caused many more deaths in the United States than it should have; right now, a number of Trump-supporting state governors are trying to lift quarantines in their respective states to get the economy going again — and seeing a spike in positive cases as a result. That was followed with the exploding “Black Lives Matter” protests that some are even now convinced represent a media/left-wing conspiracy to divide the country (as if such division didn’t already exist). Then you had Trump’s stunt of clearing peaceful protesters in order to hold a Bible in front of a church, likely cheered by some but condemned, rightfully, by most.

But perhaps even most devastating was yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, authored by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did indeed protect LGBTQ individuals from employment discrimination. After all, one reason religious right groups supported Trump in the first place was in the hope that such folks would be driven into the closet to stay. (To that, evangelist Franklin Graham made an angry remark about “religious freedom.” It was more likely that he was thinking, We didn’t get what we thought we had paid for.)

The first mistake, of course, was in believing that secular conservatives were friends of the Gospel in the first place — they do what they do because they want votes, not because they share those values. But ultimately and more importantly, disappointment will be your reward when you seek power at the expense of your soul, not least because you end up losing both.