The imminent revival, part 18: Touchdown, Minnesota!

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but Him. To love Him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

--Mark 12:28-34

Those of you who have read my blog over the years know that I’ve spoken about spiritual revival many, many times but in entries mentioned the specific conditions under which I believe has to happen. And I believe that those conditions are being met right now in the Twin Cities, people and churches being united and even some clergy being arrested for living the Word of God.

Basically, they’ve returned to “first principles,” as mentioned by Jesus above.

That’s right — loving God and loving neighbors is all that He asks for.

Over the decades many people have prayed for revival and even set up agencies hoping that God will heed and set up according to their own understanding of Who He is and what He wants. Two examples: The “Asbury revival” of 2023 and the Charlie Kirk assassination of last year. I know personally folks who have studied past revivals and suggested ways in which they could be duplicated.

In my view, they’ve missed the point. A creative God has access to infinite ways to demonstrate His intent and won’t be tied down to any one way of doing things, which I understand. Basically, He will never share his glory with another.

One thing, however, of which I’m convinced: No revival at this time would be complete without a complete and total repudiation of Donald Trump — for spiritual, not political, reasons. He has become an idol to much of the church of Jesus Christ, which has sought political power at the expense of its true mission of reconciliation — indeed, he’s shown that he’s pathologically cruel and has no use for God’s mercy, something that flies in the face of the very Gospel that Christians say that they stand for.

With recent shooting deaths of innocents at the hand of agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement this month, an issue because under Trump it’s targeted non-whites, especially those of Somali heritage, in Minnesota, folks decided to stand up for their neighbors. “Why didn’t they just obey the law?” some people are asking — but this is about the law of God, which Christians believe should supersede man’s law.

We can study the Bible and learn all the theology we want, and I’d never knock those, but if those get in the way of the personal and corporate relationship with God through Jesus Christ, especially if that doesn’t lead to obedience, they will have no effect. The folks demonstrating in Minnesota may not have their theology right or know the Scriptures as well, but they’re doing what Jesus actually said — and that cannot but bear fruit. May we all do the same.

The row over the “black national anthem”

Did you know that my hometown of Pittsburgh has a “national anthem?”

Yes, we do. It’s called “Sugar,” the title tune from an album released in 1970 on CTI Records by tenor saxophonist and composer Stanley Turrentine, a native of the city’s Hill District. It’s referred to colloquially as a “national anthem” because literally every jazz musician here, myself included, can play it in his sleep. (Indeed, the day he died in 2000 — and I co-wrote his obituary in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — a bunch of us “cats” appropriately closed a jam session at a local club with that tune in tribute.)

I was reminded of that when certain folks decided that they would boycott the Super Bowl, being played tomorrow, over the performance of the “black national anthem,” claiming by doing so it would spark racial division. But if anything, it would highlight the division that has always existed but that some folks have refused to acknowledge.

The name of the song, more accurately the hymn, is “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” The words were written by James Weldon Johnson, an officer in the NAACP, and set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson in 1899 — that’s right, at the turn of the last century — and have been sung in most black churches ever since. In that context it might be considered a “national anthem,” understanding that the phrase is a figure of speech for a piece of music that people of a certain culture would know because they grew up with it — including the two-thirds of National Football League players who are black. (Ray Charles even recorded it over 50 years ago for the album “A Message from the People” — the same album as his classic rendition of “America the Beautiful.”) Indeed, if you ever listen to the words, they express not only a greater degree of pure patriotism than “The Star-Spangled Banner” but also a sense of hope for the future — and, for people who believe in God, a reference to Him.

The playing of the hymn at NFL games thus started in response to not only the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020, which President Trump wanted to send in active military troops to shut down; but also then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s “taking a knee” in protest of police brutality in 2017 (which caused Trump to refer to him and other protesters “[S.O.B.’s] who should be fired”). And that wasn’t the first time something like that had happened — you may recall the football players’ threatened strike against the University of Missouri in 2015, which resulted in the resignation of both the president and chancellor for doing little or nothing to discipline those who smeared feces on the school’s black cultural center.

Clearly, a certain segment of America believes that the collective voice of black America should be silenced, witness Trump’s attempt to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in the federal government and that filtering down into private enterprise. And that wouldn’t be news, as at the time of his death Martin Luther King Jr. had only about a 15 percent approval rating and other civil-rights leaders are similarly denigrated to this day.

If there’s a problem here, it’s that the term “national anthem” for “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” is often capitalized, as though it’s a separate anthem for just one race or ethnicity. That’s not the intent — it’s simply a hymn with a great deal of meaning to the black community.

Jackie Robinson: “DEI hire”

Since Donald Trump, who over the years has demonstrated his racism time and time again, has returned to the White House, he has promised to, echoing much of the racially insensitive political hard-right, abolish Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in the federal government, the belief is that having women and racial minorities actually waters down efficiency and that positions and promotions should be based solely on “merit.”

What he and others truly don’t understand is that the concept of DEI is not only not new but has been practiced for decades to get opportunities to “underrepresented” folks into certain fields that had been previously denied to them due to their color or gender.

Exhibit A: Jackie Robinson.

Of late a number of conservatives have said that Robinson earned his spot on the Brooklyn Dodgers because he was a great player — and yes, he proved to be a great player — but that had nothing do with his being the first black man to play Major League Baseball in the modern era, called up from the Montréal Royals, the Dodgers’ top farm club, on April 15, 1947.

See, there was never a statutory ban on black players, “Jim Crow” laws being illegal in many states where teams operated. (Recall that no MLB teams called the Deep South home until the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, well after the start of the civil-rights movement; only in former slave state Missouri, where the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, the latter moving to Baltimore to become the Orioles, was that even an issue.) In those days team owners had a “gentlemen’s agreement” to keep black players out, largely due to the large number of Southerners on team rosters.

Then-general manager Branch Rickey, who did want to integrate the game, had several things in mind. One, he saw MLB as stodgy and boring and wanted to bring the excitement that black players, then in the Negro Leagues, could provide, with their base-stealing and defensive flair. Two, he gambled, successfully, that having a black man in the lineup would bring a whole new fan base, not to mention money, into the Dodgers organization. (One of those fans was a black man in Puerto Rico whose name is familiar to us here in Pittsburgh: Roberto Clemente, who actually was a Dodgers farmhand until selected by the Pirates in that day’s version of the Rule 5 Draft.)

But it simply wasn’t sufficient to call up the best black ballplayer. Because he was headed into uncharted territory, with likely the majority of black men in general having the proverbial chip on their shoulder anyway, Rickey needed someone who would not react to the inevitable abuse, slights and insults, at least for three years — that is, exhibit the right temperament and let his playing do the talking. Which led to another goal of Rickey’s: Build team chemistry, with an “us-against-the-world” mentality that might carry a team to a championship, with those not accepting Robinson being cut or traded away. (And it eventually did, in 1956, a couple of years before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, where Robinson grew up and was a four-sport star at UCLA.) Robinson’s presence was said to have inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent crusade to overthrow Jim Crow in the South.

And that is the intent of DEI.

Therefore, it’s an absolute insult to those black folks who actually meet qualifications but, because they’re black and/or female, were seen as less deserving. During his 2020 run for the White House, Joe Biden promised to put a black woman on the Supreme Court; as president, he nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson — who, as things turned out, had higher credentials than anyone already there. Then-vice-president Kamala Harris, after Biden was pushed out of running for reelection and inarguably more qualified than Donald Trump, received the Democratic nomination — but was subsequently blasted as a “DEI hire” who “slept her way to the top” (she did have a relationship with Oakland congressman Willie Brown).

No, the issue was never “merit” — it was a rejection of the power of the entitled-white-and-male “old-boys’ network.” And that’s what Rickey and Robinson blew up.

The untimely end of ‘Christian nationalism’

The bastardization of the Christian faith commonly regarded as “Christian nationalism” may have breathed its last. It may not be obvious right now, but it’s clearly headed for the scrapheap of history.

I say that for two reasons.

One, many of its institutional supporters are — just as in the 1980s, with the TV evangelists — victims of scandal because they wouldn’t police themselves due to their drunkenness on power. Most recently, the pastor of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Mo. was revealed to have abused a number of younger female members of that congregation, which has supported the heretical “seven mountains of culture” doctrine that suggests — with no biblical support — that spiritual revival will come when Christian “take dominion” over those pillars of society.

The problem, of course, is that evangelism, character development and service, the things that grow people in the faith as well as congregations, take a back seat.

The “prophetic movement” in some charismatic circles as a rule has ignored this basic truth, focusing more on outlandish predictions than a scriptural understanding of God’s intent. That’s why it’s making fools of itself and God in doing so, especially in insisting that Donald Trump was a shoo-in for reelection four years ago; and, even now, saying that he’ll return to the White House in 2025.

Which leads to another complication: The SCOTUS’ Dobbs decision obliterating Roe v. Wade.

Much political evangelicalism has believed for decades that making abortion illegal would mark another step in such revival. It never considered, however, that the pro-choice side would mobilize as never before, with six states passing laws or even ballot referendums to keep abortion legal. And rather than Trump thundering about it, he’s gone on the record calling it a “mistake” but also that it should be a matter for the states to decide.

Well, which is it? his supporters are asking. That’s the point, because one thing Trump wants is worship and a continued focus on the abortion issue threatens that. He’s now sounding like of one those mealy-mouthed politicians talking out of both sides of his mouth — indeed, one of the reasons the Christian nationalists supported him in the first place is because they believed that his anti-abortion stance was genuine (even though he’s flip-flopped on the issue). And they clearly don’t have the votes in Congress to enact a nationwide ban on their own.

Yes, the theory of “Christian nationalism” is dangerous. But as a practical matter, it never had much chance of being implemented. And God Himself would see to that.

Is the MAGA movement collapsing?

That the Donald Trump-speared “Make America Great Again” movement, inspired by a Ku Klux Klan-inspired slogan in the early 20^th Century and every bit as dangerous, has been a driving force in his campaign to retake the White House after his 2020 loss isn’t a surprise. Indeed, in certain “swing states,” including my state of Pennsylvania, he and current President Joe Biden are running neck-and-neck.

But two recent situations lead me to believe that “Trump fever” might be breaking.

The first is his walking back on an anti-abortion stance that he adopted to get conservative “Christians” to vote for him — specifically, his vow to have the Supreme Court reverse Roe v. Wade. That has, however, since backfired as numerous states have strengthened their own laws permitting abortion, whether by legislation or voter referendum. Trump has since occasionally called its repeal “a mistake,” disappointing anti-abortion activists, including former Vice President Mike Pence, who were convinced — with no evidence — that he was truly on their side.

The other is tying aid to the war effort in Ukraine to more control of the border with Mexico — or, at least, the ruse of such. You may recall that congressional Republicans were stalling on military aid to Ukraine, which had been invaded by Russia two years ago, to get an immigration bill passed (something that then-President Obama had pleaded for a decade previously). Well, President Biden eventually was able to broker such a bill but Trump, running for the presidency again, said that Republicans shouldn’t vote it because he wanted to bludgeon Democrats with the issue during the campaign, effectively killing it.

Thing is, aid to Ukraine recently passed. Why? Well, Trump of late has been distracted with the “hush money” trial in New York state court involving his alleged one-night stand with adult-film star Stormy Daniels and thus couldn’t comment on its passing; we all know that Trump, when he was president, tried to pull the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, rumored to be at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to destroy that alliance because it crimps his imperialistic tendencies. (Keep in mind that paying off Daniels with $130,000 to keep quiet wasn’t itself illegal; it’s that he tried to charge that money to his campaign, thereby committing business fraud under state law.)

Even more recently, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump’s strongest supporters, introduced a resolution to remove Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House for working with Democrats, which went nowhere in large part because Republicans noted — correctly, in my view — that they’re now being blamed for causing chaos but getting absolutely nothing done, thus giving more power to the Democrats. One GOP congressman even responded to Greene’s move with the sarcastic Southern saying “Bless her heart.” And it’s that chaos that Trump has always brought to the political scene that led Geoff Duncan, a former Georgia lieutenant governor, to write an endorsement of Biden in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

What I suspect we’re seeing is that Trump, who has always painted himself and been regarded as an “outsider,” with his response to the abortion issue turning against him, has been reduced to one of the mealy-mouthed politicians that he has always denounced in acerbic, insulting terms. To be honest, I didn’t entirely expect that the takedown of Roe would have this effect on the abortion-rights-supporting political left. But what we’re seeing now is a man trying desperately to save his own political skin by going back on his stated position because it’s now being used against him, which is why the approval of aid to Ukraine is also important

And that threatens MAGA ideology, because it has always wanted to dominate the political process by bullying its opponents into silence.

An inside job

Recently I’ve noticed a meme on Facebook noting that evangelical Christians had been warning about an “Antichrist” for decades that but when one actually appeared on the scene they ended up voting for him.

I am of course referring to the narcissistic, arrogant Donald Trump, whom exit polls reported in 2016 as receiving an astonishing 81 percent of the votes of white evangelicals for President of the United States despite his lengthy history of corrupt business practices, racism, abuse and denigration of women — and that’s just for starters. Another meme gave specific Bible verses as to the Antichrist’s conduct and how they lined up with Trump’s words and actions. (For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that the Bible teaches about a personal Antichrist, just a spirit of such.)

The obvious question is: How could so many believers be so blind?

I have an answer to that, and it isn’t pretty: These folks never considered that it might be an inside job.

For decades, certainly with the advent of the “religious right” in the 1970s, the focus of many parachurch ministries fighting the so-called culture war became rallying the troops to fight outsiders — most notably but not limited to the “gay lobby,” abortion-rights activists, “globalists” and diversity advocates — to preserve a form of Christian hegemony. (Which is why you have the heretical “seven mountains of culture” doctrine, which started around then.)

And on top of that, many of your conservative church bodies doubled down on their commitment to “orthodoxy,” the American Protestant Episcopal and Presbyterian churches splitting and the Southern Baptist Convention purging its ranks of “moderates” for the sake of what we might consider doctrinal purity.

The trouble with all that remains that the witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the heart of which has always been reconciliation, ended up being pushed aside — and that’s the one thing that the devil cannot imitate because the kind of forgiveness required to do that was never on his radar screen. And when you also consider that many Christians beginning in the 1980s ingested a steady diet of right-wing talk radio laced with bitterness and resentment toward certain targets, a couple of hours of Bible study and church attendance couldn’t compete with the hours of daily spiritual poison to which they subjected themselves.

All this led to the spirit of Antichrist mentioned in Revelation but which has slipped the consciousness of much of the church to a point to where the very words of Jesus, mentioned in especially the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5 through 7, are regarded as “liberal talking points.” (And although I don’t have any empirical evidence of this, I suspect that it’s also behind much of the “deconstruction” going on today, with folks who grew up in conservative churches questioning the veracity of the Scriptures.)

Which is why, if we really want revival in this country, we Christians need to reject Trump openly — because, as things stand now, he’s in God’s way. But more importantly, we need to look inward and recognize how we got off-track because Satan almost never attacks openly, engineering small compromises so that eventually God’s intent is papered over for the sake of power.

And that is the spirit of Antichrist. 

‘Clean up your own back yard’

 When I was a child my parents had the album “O.C. Smith at Home,” which was released in 1969. One of the songs on that album was “Clean Up Your Own Back Yard,” two of its three verses referencing a so-called religious prophet “telling everybody how things oughta be” but still in bed on Sunday morning hung over from a night of drinking and a businessman who prided himself on integrity having an affair.

It was the first time I ever heard that phrase, and I was the kind of kid who in those days took things quite literally. And yet I knew the point of the song.

Last week the Southern Baptist Convention released a report that noted that it had kept a secret list of leaders who had engaged in sexual misconduct. I won’t get into the details, but one of the concerns that top leadership had was that, had that list become known, the reputation of the association would have been damaged, compromising its evangelism efforts.

The sad part is that such leadership missed the point of evangelism in the first place — not merely to get people “saved” but to encourage them to live holy lives different from the world. And part of that is recognizing one’s own shortcomings, sins and struggles thanks to the “unholy trinity” of the world, the flesh and the devil.

Put another way, it didn’t appreciate the comprehensive nature of sin. Many of these churches were leading the “culture war” against abortion and gay rights, which generally take place outside the church, but likely never about the things that went on within it.

Of course, this is hardly news. Most of us got a glimpse of it in 1987-88 thanks to the TV evangelist scandals and it’s since been repeated in the Roman Catholic Church and with some “old order” Amish groups, so when it happened again in the SBC, it took virtually no one by surprise.

What’s the root of all this? I would say pride — a desire to appear respectable but on the inside, as Jesus said in Matthew 23:27, “full of the bones of the dead.” Let’s remember that God sees all and knows all — and, when things got out of hand, will tell all.

One thing that I appreciate about the Scripture is its honesty. A few years ago it dawned on me that virtually every major biblical character (except Jesus, of course) is recorded as falling into gross sin. That goes for Abraham, Noah, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Peter, Paul and a few others. And that should give us pause as to what we think we can accomplish — that is to say, if all these characters fell short in some major way, what makes us think that we’re more “spiritual” or “enlightened?”

I think some humility might be in order. Instead of shaking our finger at “sinners,” I say we should look at ourselves soberly and admit, “There but for the grace of God go I.” And not only that, but the Scripture tells us to confess our sins to each other because in doing so “we will be healed.”

In no way am I trying to minimize the emotional damage perpetrated on victims of sexual abuse in churches; if anything, I don’t think it can be emphasized enough. Nor am I trying to ignore the mercy of God through Jesus Christ. That being said, however, God is a God of justice Who in the end always gets His. That should fill us with holy dread but for some reason doesn’t always.

We can laicize or expel offending clergy all we want and certainly should do so. But doing so won’t address the real issue — that, even after conversion, we still have this bent away from God; as the hymn goes, “Prone to wander — LORD, I feel it / Prone to leave the God I love.” And that means that we have work to do in our own hearts, because if we can’t get that right our “evangelism” will have no effect.

And if Trump dies ... what then?

Over the past year, since Donald Trump was dethroned as president but has since expressed interest in returning to the White House, one of the questions on the lips of a lot of people, whether supporters or detractors, is “What are his chances of doing so, and what would happen if he succeeds or fails?” Should a run fail, some have suggested that a failed run would result in an incident that would make the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection look like — pardon the pun — a tea party.

But I think we need to consider another possibility: Suppose Trump doesn’t live that long. That isn’t beyond such a realm, since he isn’t a young man, in great physical shape and even, as we saw two years ago, wasn’t even immune to COVID-19, with reports that he was sicker than he let on. (For a while he defiantly refused to wear a mask, insisting that doing so made him look weak.)

And even if these weren’t the case, he’s a mortal like everyone else and his time on this earth is limited. What bothers me about Christians’ worship of Trump is that they almost assume that he is indeed immortal and thus not subject to the normal parameters of life. As I’ve written before, he’s seen quite ominously as a messianic figure who will remove power from the people they hate — that is, “liberals” — and restore things to the way they, shall we say, “used to be.” (Recall that was the misunderstanding of the original prophecy of the Messiah.)

That was the case with the two travelers on the road to Emmaus, recorded in Luke 24, who didn’t recognize Jesus, who by this time was resurrected, as He walked among them, but He opened the Scriptures to them — and then vanished. The travelers understood that they had completely missed the point — that he had come to redeem mankind, not just Israel.

We would be foolish to expect something similar from Trump despite the prayers and singing of Christian songs before the riot of last Jan. 6. After all, we can be sure of this: When he dies, he will not be coming back.

 

Overturning Roe v. Wade — be careful what you wish for

American anti-abortionists are likely giddy over the Supreme Court’s tacit approval of Texas’ recently-passed draconian abortion law, one that banned it when a heartbeat could be detected and that contains the power of citizens’ arrest for anyone who assisted in procuring an abortion. They may be especially excited because of their commemoration later this month of Roe v. Wade, which removed most restrictions on abortion in 1973.

If they’re Christians and thus believe that abortion will simply end because they laid down the law so to speak, they will get a rude awakening.

This is for several reasons.

One, the linchpin of the entire modern conservative movement, especially the “religious right,” will have been eliminated. Republican candidates in states that have outlawed abortion will no longer be able to run against abortion, especially in “swing” states, and as a result, I suspect, a barrage of urban-based liberal political action in a way we’ve never seen before will result.

Because the “sanctity of human life,” despite what they might say, has never been the issue. It’s always been a pretext for bullying.

What most people don’t realize is that the “religious right” didn’t even start because of abortion — it added it only as moral cover for, in essence, segregation. In 1978 the Carter Administration removed tax exemptions for private Christian schools in the South founded to circumvent court-ordered public school desegregation — angering the likes of Jerry Falwell Sr., who founded Moral Majority with the help of secular conservatives. That should give you pause right there, because secular conservatives have never given a rip about God, faith or religion — except, as both Billy Graham and Barry Goldwater suggested, to manipulate religious people for the sake of power.

Another issue is that such secular conservatives subscribe to an anti-biblical worldview in that the second of Jesus’ two Great Commandments — “love your neighbor as yourself” — is at best abridged and at worst totally ignored or trashed. Sometimes doing what’s right means political action, the last thing secular conservatives want because it threatens their power. Oh, sure, they make allowances for a purely anti-abortion stance but only to sell a pro-industry and anti-poor agenda. That’s why they won’t support truly diaconal support for those women who really need help — they just don’t want the money to be spent.

Moreover, evangelicalism has placed an overemphasis on the “spiritual” aspect of abortion, which is never directly mentioned in the Bible. That is to say, many people and organizations have insisted, with no evidence, that once outlawed revival would result. (I do oppose it but did so before becoming a Christian as part of an overall “social justice” ideology.) On top of that, fighting abortion has built many an organization — and thus, what will happen when the money dries up, as it will?

This might be a case where Christians may be isolating themselves — not just from the greater society but even from the very movement that gave them power in the first place. Put another way, we may be winning this battle but ultimately losing the war for hearts and minds — and have nothing to show for it.

‘Let’s [not] go, Brandon!’

The raging bitterness and over last year’s presidential election is continuing to overflow and shows no signs of stopping. And now an apolitical NASCAR driver has become part of that campaign of anger.

You may have heard the chant “Let’s Go, Brandon” in certain inappropriate situations as code for “F___ Joe Biden” — even, at times, in churches.

For what it’s worth, Brandon Brown is a NASCAR driver who won his first race a few months ago, and while a sportscaster was interviewing him a group of fans was chanting that vulgar anti-Biden diatribe behind them. Perhaps in a diplomatic way, she said they were saying, “Let’s go, Brandon!”

Wrong. 

Clearly, we have a situation where folks can’t accept defeat graciously and work with opponents to make this country a better place. And since the epithet is “clean,” that will make it acceptable for Biden-hating Christians to express their unwillingness to bow to the inevitable.

But you best believe that God sees the heart, and if the heart is wrong so will the resultant actions be.

And for that matter, Brown, while he did vote for Donald Trump, said in a recent op-ed that he had no intention of being a focal point of the anti-Biden campaign. He said that he was interested only in winning his next race.

So “let’s not go, Brandon.”

Trump: Dividing the church

I’ve been privileged to attend a church for over 20 years that is nationally-renowned for maintaining unity in the midst of diversity, whether racial, cultural or generational. But, perhaps in my naïveté, I didn’t foresee just how much Donald Trump would affect even it.

During our missions emphasis month in 2016, which coincided with the end of the presidential campaign that year, the missions committee adopted the slogan “Welcome the Stranger” — an Old Testament command — and hundreds of white members left the church in protest, believing that the slogan was a shot at then-candidate Donald Trump’s stance on illegal immigration. What’s worse, I later learned, that some of the folks who left were spouting racial slurs on the way out, which tells me that they never fully embraced God’s Gospel of reconciliation.

And this is perhaps why the Christian faith, at least in this country, has been compromised. Frankly, part of me wants to give into despair.

Some months ago I wrote a letter to a church in my immediate area that, I learned through an email, was sponsoring a talk at a school board meeting from a black pastor in opposition of “critical race theory” being taught in district schools. The problem is that the district is racially and culturally diverse, with numerous black students and parents as part of it and likely aware of that history that I see the church as trying to suppress. In my letter I wrote that the church was in danger of causing further division by focusing upon such items but not the injustice that spawned the legal doctrine. (I never got a response.)

The bigger issue, however, is that a lot of “Christians” don’t want or intend to make room for those who don’t agree with the right-wing worldview, which is — indeed, always has been and, frankly, intended to be — offensive to many believers “of color.” You see, because of our unique history, we read the Scripture differently and even look to those books and passages, most notably in the Prophets, that most white evangelicals skip over. And it’s that refusal to understand things from another perspective that has kept believers divided over the decades.

Despite the loss of members and the money that they contributed over the years, my church has embarked on a building campaign to unify all the areas — children’s ministry, adult ministry, sanctuary — on its campus. (Culturally, we have generally refrained from building edifices on our two-acre campus, preferring to put any increase into ministry.)

I see this nation now more than ever as trying to keep “different” people out. I hope to God that the church doesn’t succumb to that temptation.

Someday …

Over the past few decades those studying eschatology — the study of things to come — have focused on the phrase “in the last days” and trying to determine what will happen and when.

I think those folks have missed something significant. One thing not often understood about Middle Eastern society and culture is that those who live there don’t have the same relationship to time that we Westerners do; thus, “in the last days” isn’t referring to some kind of specific timeline.

Rather, it’s probably better understood as “Someday…” and refers to more of a wish, although one with the caveat “By God” (and I mean that literally), “this will happen.”

And if you understand that, you might understand God’s intent.

Remember at the beginning at the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, when one of the disciples asked Jesus, “Are you now going to establish Israel again?” His response, in effect, “None of your business.” Most of Israel, still wanting to be free from Roman rule (because the church at the time was primarily Jewish, its members also had that hope), had misinterpreted the prophecy of the Messiah to mean that he would destroy Rome.

There’s also the Revelation of Jesus Christ, a vision given to the Apostle John, in exile on the Greek island of Patmos and by this time the only Apostle left (the rest, including Paul, had met violent premature deaths). Its purpose was to encourage other Jewish believers undergoing persecution, and his audience would have understood the symbolism chock full of it.

And indeed, the very intent of “prophecy” is only secondarily about telling the future and primarily about declaring the heart, mind and will of God. That’s why we see false prophets get some things right but not others — in their desire to gain an audience, they missed God.

That’s why it’s important that the Word says, when it comes to Jesus’ bodily return, just to keep an eye peeled. (When He was asked straight-out when that would be He responded, “Only the Father knows” — which meant that He Himself didn’t know.)

For this reason, trying to determine the identity of the Antichrist, the “beast” and the “false prophet” are a fool’s errand distracting from His commands, to, using a football analogy, “play until the whistle blows.” Middle Eastern culture understands that the future will take care of itself — and, as a result, so should we in the West.

‘Get over yourselves’ — the REAL meaning of Romans 13

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.  Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 

Over the past few years numerous Christians have tried to discern the meaning of the passage in Romans 13, depending on the party in power. Can we rebel against the powers that be or do we simply accept their authority without question?

Well, one thing to consider is that, at the dawn of the church, the Jewish people (and by extension, the early Christians) harbored a deep resentment toward Rome, which had begun occupying Israel about two centuries earlier. Indeed, the prophecy of the Messiah held, wrongly as things turned out, that he would kick out the Romans; when Jesus, who confessed that He was the true Messiah but only after being prodded, didn’t do so that created some disillusionment.  Even after His resurrection some folks still harbored that hope.

It’s also in that context that Paul wrote Romans 12:2, the passage about “renewing your mind.” Basically, he’s telling people to trust in the LORD regardless of who’s in power.

And I’m not simply saying this to folks who despised Presidents Clinton and Obama — I took the very same tack with more liberal Christian friends after George W. Bush was reelected in 2004, saying to them, in effect, “God’s still in control.”

This is not to say that we can’t say that our government is doing wrong, even though it might be, and in Western democracies we have the power to change our leadership and Christians can be a part of that process. The ultimate point is that God is still on the throne and leaders are raised up and brought down only according to His permissive will. And that should keep our faith in Him, not in political leaders.

The big lie that led to the Big Lie

It’s no secret that supporters of now-former president Donald Trump are subscribing to the nonsensical notion that he lost the 2020 race for president on the grounds that the Democratic Party committed fraud. Given that no solid proof has ever been offered — his campaign filed some 60 lawsuits, all but one dismissed and that one here in Pennsylvania allowed to stand only on a technicality — it may seem like a mystery.

Well, it isn’t a mystery if you go back several decades. You see, this didn’t start with Trump.

It actually goes back to Newt Gingrich’s arrival in Washington in 1978. Gingrich, a congressman from suburban Atlanta, decided not only to promote his Republican Party as fundamentally good but also the Democratic Party as irredeemably evil. The nascent conservative movement that dominated the GOP followed, as did the “religious right” in its Machiavellianism. That means in practice that, no matter what we do, they’re inherently worse.

I suspect that’s the reason that the political right went after Bill Clinton so hard. After all, there was far less on Clinton than on now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was credibly accused of sexual harassment during his hearings in 1990. (Clinton escaped his impeachment, of course, in part because much of the nation knew what was up.) It couldn’t ensnare Barack Obama in any kind of scandal, so beginning in 2011, hopefully in time for his reelection campaign, it decided to institute voter-ID laws to keep minority voters out of the voting booth and thus turn him out of office; fortunately, that failed.

And then you had Trump.

Basically, as I have mentioned earlier, you have an ideology where anything connected to “liberals” is inherently evil; by contrast, any opposition to them has to be inherently good. The trouble is that such a mentality cannot be justified using the Scripture — no, not even with abortion, which in fact is nowhere directly mentioned there. (My opposition to abortion has never had any connection to my faith.) Underhanded tactics simply have no place in the Christian toolbox regardless of the reason; remember that God sees all, including people’s hearts.

And that’s the real big lie that led to the other “big lie” about the election being stolen.

That’s why Christian support of Trump has led to a major braking of spiritual commitment, with younger evangelicals leaving churches in droves —  the trust of their elders always has been in the political process, not in an omnipotent, almighty God Who is willing to move mountains to prove His sovereignty.

We just saw hearings during which police officers endangered by Trump supporters on Jan. 6 offered testimony. What should be insulting, but for some reason isn’t, is that many of the rioters claimed Christ as Savior and LORD, that they were doing, shall we say, “His work.” Thing is, He would never authorize anything like that for any reason.

What we have here is people unfaithful to Jesus Christ, willing to sell Him out for the porridge of power and not looking to Him for spiritual sustenance. It is actually a practical form of atheism that focuses much more on receiving than giving His blessings — and thus making Him, as well as them, look bad.

Having allies

Last month my wife, who is white, and I attended a performance of a local blues band, the lead singer of which I had met about two years ago at a jam session. I had originally hoped to get some work out of it.

That hope ended during the break, when he came to talk to us — and, according to her (I didn’t hear much of the conversation), he made some racist remarks, including using the archaic term “colored” for black musicians. She became so angry and shaken that she told me that we would have nothing to do with him from here on out and soon afterwards made a post on social media announcing her displeasure.

Two people who reacted to her rant especially heartened me.

One of them was a singer and bandleader I’d worked with 20 years ago who asked his identity so that “we can shame him.” “Musicians police their own,” he said.

The other was a woman with whom I’ve attended social dances over the past few years, and she told a story I hadn’t previously known. At one dance I had just finished dancing with her when she was approached by an older white man who after their dance said afterwards, “I dance better than that colored, don’t I?” (I have never claimed to be a great dancer, though I do it a lot.) She said that she was initially taken aback and later said to him, “His name is Rick, and he’s my friend!” before really letting him have it.

Those two other folks who also expressed outrage on my behalf and whom we later thanked proved to be “allies” willing to stand up and fight for me — letting people know in no uncertain terms that what my offenders said was out of bounds. What’s more, they didn’t do anything they considered out of the ordinary; in their view, it was simply what decent people do.

I’m also reminded of the Freedom Riders of the early 1960s. The late evangelist Billy Graham, who demanded his crusades even in his native South be integrated back in the 1950s. The late Jim Reeb, the Boston minister and seminary classmate of the former pastor of my former church martyred in Selma, Ala. More recently, the millions of whites who joined Black Lives Matter marches last summer in light of the death of George Floyd at the hands of now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Lately I’ve heard a number of evangelicals say, “Why do we have to focus so much on race? Can’t we just love each other?” But the reason why we need to is because racism is still very much a thing, especially with attempted suppression of black voting power and distortions of “critical race theory”— folks must be willing to say, “This will not stand.”

And that would be true love — in the Greek, agape.

Some thoughts on systemic racism, critical race theory and social justice

Back in March my wife and I closed on a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house on a cul-de-sac in a nice suburban neighborhood. It’s close to pretty much everything — shopping; the main expressway to get to work, church and gigs; the whole nine yards. (The schools are pretty good as well, but since we won’t be having children that’s not a factor.)

And yet I’m occasionally reminded that I couldn’t have grown up in this home, which dates back to the late-1950s.

You see, because my parents were African-Americans, banks would have denied them the low-interest loans prevalent back then to build new houses in what we call suburbia. And over time the value of those houses would appreciate in value. Indeed, most major cities eventually not only emptied out of its growing white middle-class but took its financial and social clout with it.

And that has led to, among other things, the racial wealth gap we see today.

And that is an example of the systemic racism that critical race theory, which was formulated in law schools in the 1970s but is now being vilified by the political right as “divisive,” attempts to address. “Systemic racism” is real, folks, and black folks understand that; the situation with housing is just one example of that.

As such, I believe that it would be a Kingdom of God value not simply to repent of racist attitudes but also to dismantle the systems that crept up as a result of such. His justice says, “We got ours, and we will help you get yours.”

That’s why my racially- and economically-diverse church has from time to time has held home-buying workshops, not simply for the permanence and stability that owning a home offers but also for the financial benefit. (Perhaps other churches hold them, but I’m not aware of those.)

Thankfully, most of the specific situations that caused such systemic racism in the first place have been addressed, but the fallout still lingers. How we address that issue we can discuss—but we must, hopefully without rancor.

Because it’s not enough to open the doors without providing the means for people to succeed. In that way we can build what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the beloved community.”

Bitterness over Biden

It still amazes me just how many evangelical Christians are still angry that their preferred candidate, Donald Trump, lost the 2020 general election to Joe Biden. And we’re talking seven months down the road.

Folks are still railing about Biden’s alleged senility and dementia. They’re insisting that Vice-President Kamala Harris is the real power behind the president. They’re still complaining about alleged wholesale election fraud.

None of these have been or will be proven — because they have no basis in fact.

Folks, we need to get over ourselves because these accusations are the result of sheer bitterness that was always there but is now coming to the surface. Trump himself was a bitter person in his own right, which is likely why much of the equally bitter “religious right” supported him. And we know, because of numerous Biblical teachings, the result of unaddressed bitterness (as I have personally experienced and since dealt with).

I wonder how many Christian Trump supporters have sat down with God since then and asked Him, “What are You trying to tell us?” To this day I’m convinced that Trump’s defeat was sanctioned by God, especially after he arrogantly held up that Bible in front of that church last year, perhaps trying to indicate that “God is on my side.”

Well, He doesn’t work like that — He’s God in His own right and thus endorses no one. For that matter, He’s not a tribal deity deigned to confer political power on certain folks, nor is the Christian faith reducible to a set of political positions.

But because the above question isn’t being asked and its ramifications aren’t being addressed, what we’re seeing today is a massive sabotage of Christian witness. We’re seeing the result of placing our trust in fallible political leaders rather than God, which is straight-up idol worship. We’re not seeing hearts and minds transformed, and we’re not seeing unity of the Spirit under the bond of peace.

The beginning of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer,” recited at 12-step recovery meetings, goes as follows: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I understand that defeat hurts, but God is far more interested in how we handle it — because in this life no one gets everything he or she wants. Moreover, whatever we receive here we must understand to come from God, Who alone understands all the ramifications.

And that’s why it does us no good to remain bitter over Trump’s loss. It’s a sign that we still have some growing up to do.

A demonic delusion

You’ve no doubt heard about the criticism leveled recently at Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney from members of the Republican Party — their own — for not only refusing to believe the baseless accusation that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump but for even stating publicly that it’s false. Romney, speaking at a meeting of the Utah party, was actually booed.

The trouble, of course, is that over two-thirds of party adherents believe that nonsense. And since evangelical Christians represent a large bloc of the GOP, it becomes not just a political issue but a spiritual one as well — and one on which they look absolutely silly.

What we’re seeing is the result of a deliberate longstanding campaign by the Enemy to deceive Christians. And by longstanding, I’m talking about over 40 years.

The first and foremost problem is Christians’ focus on political and social power and, in the process, jettisoning the power of the Holy Spirit to cause the change that they say they want. Basically, they failed to trust in God and were moving “in the flesh’ — and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that little, if anything, has changed.

But rather than admit that they were barking up the wrong tree, they continued to pursue the goal of power for its own sake regardless of the means.

Which leads to their endorsement of a man without any moral compass but who told Christians that “Christians will have power.” (Given Jesus’ wilderness temptation, the parallels should be obvious, Jesus telling Satan, in effect, “Go back to hell where you belong.”) The reality is that Trump became quite literally a messianic figure, and in his arrogance he accepted the accolade; that pride led him to hold up that Bible in front of that church, and you can’t convince me that that action didn’t cause God Himself to pull the plug on him.

The delusion has become so strong, however, that, in light of the last election, which they still can’t admit that he lost, a number of people have dreamed up ways in which he would be returned to power. And they would run roughshod over the political process to encourage that — indeed, they did, participating in the riot outside the Capitol on Jan. 6.

I’m sorry, but this campaign, including the QAnon conspiracy garbage, is coming straight from the pit, and as a result the witness of the Gospel is being sabotaged. I do believe that God will put a stop to it but won’t pretend to understand just how or when; when He does, a lot of people will be embarrassed — or worse.

‘Haters gon’ hate’ — dangerous times ahead

Now that Joe Biden has become president and his comprehensive “infrastructure” package will put our nation’s money where former president Donald Trump’s mouth was, benefiting probably most people, including his die-hard supporters, it would be nice if we had tranquility in Washington and elsewhere.

It would be nice, but it won’t happen because, as the saying goes, “Haters gon’ hate.”

We need to keep in mind that many of your Trump supporters never cared about policy as such — they were, and are, angry, bitter, resentful people attracted to his snarl. For the last 30 years or so politics has clearly been far less about which philosophy governs than about side is defeated — no, destroyed, out of sheer hate. Trump tapped into that contempt for anyone or anything that leaned left, not because he or anyone else was proposing any alternative. (The opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010 by Barack Obama, must be placed in that context.)

But Trump’s worshipers are still trying to promote him as a messiah. One outlandish scenario has him running for Congress from Florida and, assuming that he gets elected, becoming Speaker of the House and engineering an impeachment of Joe Biden.

(It’s outlandish for two reasons: 1) Trump’s ego is way too big for him to be a “team player’ on any level; and 2) More importantly, it was God Himself who took Trump down because he tried to usurp His throne.)

That being said, let’s not be fooled. Despite his being banned from social media for his incendiary comments that violated their terms of service, he’s still a force to be reckoned with and we forget that at our peril. Moreover, his followers don’t believe at all in accommodating other views; as we saw on Jan. 6, they see compromise as surrender.

As the phrase coming from urban America goes, haters gon’ hate. And because of that, I see trouble on the horizon.

The imminent revival, part 17 — an imminent split

Especially in America, being involved in a religious community and engaging in rituals to display religiosity have not only always been popular but are often even encouraged, especially in evangelical culture.

The problem is, however, that truly following Jesus isn’t and never has been. That’s why He said that the gate was “narrow.”

With a recent Gallup poll indicating that, for the first time, a minority of Americans aren’t involved in a church (or perhaps mosque or synagogue as well — I don’t know the breakdown by affiliation), I think it’s time that we looked at some hard truths about where the Church is today.

Since the late 1970s perhaps a majority of American evangelicals have focused on political and cultural power to maintain social power. The trouble is that in the process they’ve continually ignored the power of the Holy Spirit, which is why their efforts produce only resentment toward them and anger and bitterness among them.

That’s the backdrop of not only people leaving the Church but a growing number of self-identifying evangelicals criticizing it — out of love and humility, not resentment, mind you. The response has been, unsurprisingly, anger — against the likes of Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention; Beth Moore (no relation), the Bible teacher who left the SBC; and blogger and pastor John Pavlovitz.

This is why we’re headed for a split — between those who really want to follow Jesus and those who simply want to play church. The numbers might continue to drop — but He’d be OK with that, because then we’d know for sure just who’s serious about depending on Him.