The metal ring kept the fire contained at a campground where birch bark hauled to burn hissed and crackled most satisfyingly.
Our son adored the sound along with twisting bright flames fueled by botulin, the chemical that Nature offers up in wooden sacrifice and cathartic light.
He was fire-tending the entire evening allowing us to sit back and warm our faces under a canopy of trees, flickering with native illumination.
Those instincts carried over many years to keep relationships alive, the conversation between fire and air, the kept secrets and revealed hopes all signaled by smoke and flames running red to orange, yellow to white, and in concentrated heat in blue.
When we’re not with family, these fires mean something different, the practical burns of cardboard and paper, always turning stacks of pages to make sure no financial documents or personal information remain.
As a child, I was instructed by my mother to take our combustibles out to the incinerator, as she called it, a brick pit ten feet deep where I watched the 1960s go up in flame as far as I was concerned.
We watched the civil rights movement on television, and rockets burning with the burden of men striving for the moon to keep Russia from getting there first.
Such is pride, whether personal or national in nature, that we keep lighting fires between ourselves and within our souls to conquer sin, or so we’re told.
It’s astounding to think that some believe there is an eternal pit of hell where Satan is the fire-tender, and we’re left to suffer both tinder and blaze in punishment for not behaving as we should in praising Jesus or the Trinity because free will is supposedly a pile of logs to be kept from the fire lest they burn in effigy of our choices.
Considering these options and the temporal nature of fire left untended, it is comforting to know that they always burn out. Yet sometimes, the time is right to light the fires of righteous anger and truth.
We live in a time when legalistic religion sits stacked like cordwood and Is being tossed into the pit of critical mass, as we’re learning much more about how the narrative was formed, how it grew and consumed through the emphasis of law over love in repressive force and institutional graft that claimed to control the fires of human sin.
Now we’re witnessing the new light of discernment, deconstruction, and honesty toward the Gospels, examining the Letters of Paul and the calculated constructs of Christianity to hold candles in vigils of determined witness.
We can see how the cords were stacked in a bulwark of religious authority despite the fires that Jesus tried to light under the pyres of hypocrisy. Those sparks were long ignored by despots charging money to burn offerings to earn favor with God, and by those selling indulgences to release souls from purgatory, and by preachers selling Prosperity Gospel as fire insurance to the gullible, the hopeful and the eternally victimized.
These are the corrupt logjams of religion that must be burned for the sake of humanity, and we must all be fire-tenders devoted and strong, or they will call us the persecutors of their faith when they have burned it up themselves for millennia.
The Anti-Semitism and Inquisitions. The Holy Wars and political Popes. The scurrilous use of Sodom to curse Acts of love, when the real sin Was gang rape and ignoring the poor, the needy, and immigrants. There is nothing holy in that history.
These are the ‘traditions of men’ that Jesus, The fire-tender, sought to burn. and if you don’t understand that, good luck finding solace in the ashes, dust and detritus of dishonest belief.
Recently I researched how Wheaton College felt about its graduate Russell Vought, whose fealty to Project 2025 is now on full display in his job serving the Trump Administration. I found a column by Timon Cline, whose bio reads: “Editor in Chief at American Reformer. He is an attorney and a fellow at the Craig Center at Westminster Theological Seminary and the Director of Scholarly Initiatives at the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College. His writing has appeared in the American Spectator, Mere Orthodoxy, American Greatness, Areo Magazine, and the American Mind, among others.”
I’ve dissected Cline’s column in the American Reformer attacking Wheaton College graduates for criticizing Vought and his version of Christianity. Cline’s writing in his column is featured here in bold. My analysis of his claims follow.
Wheaton Alumni Issue Attack on Russ Vought
Last week, Wheaton College did a very normal thing: it issued a congratulatory statement on social media to one of its graduates, Russ Vought (‘98), who was recently confirmed as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The author of this piece, Timon Cline, opens with a vapid attempt to normalize Russell Vought’s goal of replacing the Constitutional Separation of Church and State* with Project2025’s legalistic version of Christianity as law in the United States of America.
Cline ignores the fact that Vought’s views on religion ought to have nothing to do with his duties as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. But legalistic religious authorities have a long history of blurring the lines between religion and government. The Bible shows that John the Baptist and Jesus fought the Pharisees and Sadducees over legalistic scriptural interpretations used to create stumbling blocks to God and turn the temple into a commercial enterprise. We can draw a straight line from the practices of those religious authorities to the political and religious objectives of Project 2025 today. They are practically the same people in different eras.
Here’s the sad part. Christians were supposed to learn from Jesus’ example not to fall into legalistic worship patterns created under the “traditions of men.” But once legalistic Christianity consolidated with the Roman Empire, the course was set to impose authoritarian, persecutorial religion for millennia to come. Over time, conservative Christianity became the one thing Jesus most despised, a legalistic religious institution bent on absolute power and authority. Even Reformation attempts failed to eradicate these instincts, and Evangelical Protestant legalism with its literalistic Bible interpretations and “apologetics” are just as bad, if not worse, than the original Catholic model of absolute authority and political control.
That hypocrisy is evident in all of Russell Vought’s attempts to impose a controlling version of religion in the name of Christian nationalism here in America. That’s why Wheaton College alumni protested when the school casually congratulated Vought for his “success” in government. Cline finds that ethical accountability offensive, and seeks to dismiss the corrupt nature of Voughts political theology by heightening the importance of Vought’s position. This is Cline’s attempt to overwhelm resistance to Project 2025’s objectives. Cline writes:
“Few people reach such a high level in American government, and Vought has done it twice. Certainly, this is something worth celebrating for any college, especially for a small evangelical college. Wheaton graduates have done impressive things, but very few have served in such an elevated position as Vought. Though a not insignificant amount have served in government, most of Wheaton’s well-known graduates are theologians and evangelists–think Billy Graham, John Piper, and William Lane Craig. Perhaps, Dan Coats, former Director of National Security, and Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, are the only Wheaton alumni to rival Vought in achievement in government service.”
Wheaton has long claimed Billy Graham as a celebrated graduate, and that’s fair enough. He wasn’t a perfect man, we must note. At one point he stated that Jews had a “stranglehood” on America that must be broken, and Graham tolerated segregation at his rallies to mollify whites offended by integration. Such are the habits of many so-called conservative Christians, who always seem willing to compromise their biblical principles to satisfy political allies and “save face.” But many also have disturbingly secret skeletons in their closets. Dennis Hastert is one such notable Wheaton College alum. Hastert’s political career ended in disgrace when his hush money payments to cover up a child sexual abuse case became known. Yet Cline casually dismisses that corrupt behavior out of deference to people in powerful positions. One has to ask, is that what Jesus would do?
From this theologically corrupt standpoint, Cline begins his line of questioning (he is a lawyer, after all) why Wheaton College removed its post about Russell Vought. Given the shallowness of Cline’s premise, the argument seems to be, “He’s certainly no worse than any other conflicted Christian hypocrite.”
In fact, there’s no stopping Cline’s vacuous strains once he’s gained momentum. He tries justifying Wheaton’s complicit honoring of Vought as a “simple congratulatory statement.”
Wheaton’s post was a simple congratulatory statement including a call to prayer for Vought—a standard 1 Timothy 2:2 practice, it must be said. A day later, the post was removed and replaced with a new one. The “significant concern expressed online” led Wheaton to delete the post. The College did not want to make a “political endorsement,” it said. The College explained to Fox News that the post had led to thousands of “hostile comments,” which prompted them to remove the post “rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction,” adding that said removal did not constitute an apology for expressing congratulations to Vought.
What Cline chooses to ignore is that Wheaton College recognized (or was forced into admitting by its protesting alumni) that its announcement constituted patent approval of Vought’s Christian hypocrisy in turning legalistic scripture into law. Jesus once warned:
25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
Despite such clear scriptural warnings that legalistic religion used for political purposes offended Jesus, Cline whines that Wheaton’s action was “unfair” to Vought somehow, and proceeds to malign its graduates for standing up to Vought’s brand of Right-wing Christian nationalism. He writes:
In other words, what Wheaton itself characterized as a typical announcement was rescinded because enough people dislike the recipient. As Chase Davis posted on X, this is a “glimpse into how Christian colleges and seminaries have been captured by emotional sabotage. Is that really the standard under which Wheaton wants to operate? Vought appropriately commented with one word: “Sad!”
Even this backpedaling was not enough. Wheaton alumni have begun circulating an Open Letter against Vought which American Reformer has obtained and is printed in full below. As is usually the case, Wheaton’s capitulation to the mob has not satisfied it. Now it must be rebuked.
Let’s consider what Cline is trying to accomplish here. It’s nothing short of gaslighting to advance the notion that Vought is somehow theologically and constitutionally “pure,” which is what conservatives always love to claim. But let’s be clear: Project 2025 is a patently extremist view of American government, if you can even call it that. But consider this view from the Global Extremism Project website:
“Within weeks of taking office, Trump issued sweeping executive orders, attempting to grab more power for himself and the executive branch. The dismantling of federal agencies and firing of tens of thousands civil servants has accelerated the far-right and authoritarian takeover of government institutions that will hurt ordinary Americans. And this is just the beginning. Christian nationalist ideals are set to shape this administration, and this country, as Project 2025’s architects work to consolidate power, dismantle progressive policies, and entrench their agenda.”
The ”agenda” Cline supports is rife with bigotry and authoritarian construction and the Project 2025 mission is both vicious and dauntless. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, recently said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” That’s a threat, not diplomacy. Whe Roberts insinuate violence if people don’t fall into line, he’s not exaggerating.
The Kettering Foundatio analyzed Project 2025’s goals: “The plan is ambitious. The Mandatefor Leadership is both specific in detail and vengeful in tone. Its central agenda is to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States. Christian nationalism believes that the Christian Bible, as God’s infallible law, should be the basis of government and have primacy over public and private institutions. Its patriarchal view does not recognize gender equality or gay rights and sanctions discrimination based on religious beliefs. Christian nationalist ideas are woven through the plans of Project 2025 and the pages of Mandate for Leadership. Its thousands of recommendations include specific executive orders to be repealed or implemented. Laws, regulations, departments, and whole agencies would be abolished. It portrays anyone who opposes its sweeping ambitions as being enemies of our republic.”
Cline likes to pretend that this agenda does not threaten the nation. But speciously, he’s never done whining either. He winces at objections to his call to install Trump as king.
Predictably, the Letter picks up media narratives about Project 2025.
What exactly is it about Vought’s contribution to Project 2025, “Executive Office of the President of the United States,” that is offensive, misguided, or unbiblical? Likely, none of the signatories have read the 900-pageMandate for Leadership, but surely, they have perused Vought’s chapter, right? The Open Letter denounces Vought and Project 2025 as authoritarian. Strange given that the first citation on the first page of Vought’s chapter is to Federalist No. 47 wherein James Madison warns against the accumulation of all governmental powers into the same hand or hands. Vought proceeds to argue for constitutional restoration over and against bureaucratic theft of power.
Cline’s argument that Project 2025 is “constitutional restoration” is a patent lie, and he gaslights by quoting James Madison when the Project’s goals have no intention of respecting those limits. There is also no “bureaucratic theft of power.” What he’s calling “bureaucracy” is regulatory agencies created by Congress to protect human and consumer rights, manage financial industries, and protect environmental health and sustainability. Those are basic governmental principles aligne with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” without monopolistic industries trashing the country, stealing money through Big Pharma and privatized health insurance, and raping the environment from shore-to-shore.
But Right-wing autocrats want those protections out of the way principally to reward the super wealthy with the right to “privatize the profits and socialize the losses.” Cline goes on to play dumb in the face of his own specious arguments. Instead, he replaces bureaucracy with autocracy. Listening to his ugly rationalizations we find a series of contradictions that current forms of government are “overreaching.” Instead, he says Vought and Trump and Musk and Johnson deserve the “whole hog” right to do whatever they want to Americans. But especially Trump, for whom Cline seems to have a political hard-on.
In truth, everything in Vought’s summation of the constitutional power of the executive is mainstream and unsurprising. An executive acting like an executive may seem odd to us now—so accustomed are we to neutered figureheads in the Oval Office, to a “feeble executive” and thereby a “feeble government.” Checks and balances, separation of powers, requires not only that each branch does not encroach upon the power of the others, but also that each one fully exerts the power granted to it. Effective government is hardly unconstitutional. Neither is a well-managed budget according to the actual priorities of government. That is, use of taxpayer dollars for things more pertinent to their safety and flourishing than DEI operas and comic book campaigns in Europe or gender studies programs in the Middle East or spreading atheism in Asia–all things prioritized by the previous administration to the tune of millions.
In those last few lines, Cline paints himself into a partisan corner with his spoiled and possibly uneducated punk attitude. He’s so desperate to hate on liberalism that his word salad denigrates Black history and human equity enlightened dramas here and abroad as “DEI operas.” Apparently, the only programming, theater or movies Cline can handle are Christian-oriented biopics of blabbering demagogues like Reagan and Bush, albeit with a litany of Trump’s Greatest Hits thrown in as croutons on a Christo-fascist salad.
The entire concept of gender also seems to frighten Cline, who also adopts the idea that atheism is “the enemy” of justice and culture. For icing on the cake, Cline attempts a swipe at the “previous administration” by appealing, in the early part of the paragraph, that any initiative aimed at promoting factual history and human rights is a waste of taxpayer money.
Then comes the really ugly part of Cline’s petulant essay. He appeals to anachronism and Federalism as justification for his “winner-take-all” version of triumphal nationalism.
Moreover, an energetic executive is exactly what Alexander Hamilton presented in Federalist No. 70. Indeed, a single executive exercising control over the executive branch was the only path to true vigilance on behalf of the people, said Hamilton. A “vigorous executive” was not inconsistent with republican government but rather its guarantee. “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Surely, “all men of sense” would agree with this proposition, thought Hamilton.
To answer Hamilton’s question, we can turn quickly a personal, political, and economic analysis of Trump, who is not a man of “good sense” by any human standard. Certainly not morally, where Trump is a massive failure, having cheated on a series of wives, often with much younger women, as an NBC News story reported, “Trump was at one point friends with Epstein. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002, before there were any public allegations of wrongdoing against multimillionaire money manager. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump said then. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Trump also lacks truthful financial sense, as his own Trump University paid $25M in fraud fines. His Foundation closed after Trump was found guilty of stealing its funds. His business enterprises earned a $400M+ fine for lying about property valuations. Famously, he also bankrupted Atlantic City casinos. None of these habituated losses point to Trump as a “man of sense.”
He also led attacks on American democracy and the Republic, claiming that he lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud, all while conspiring to create “fake electors” to steal the election for himself. When his supporters came to Washington at his request, they responded to his urgent call to “fight like hell” and invaded the Capitol in a specific attempt to block the certification of Electoral College votes and install himself as President. Trump watched on TV as the rioters bearing Trump and Confederate flags bludgeoned Capitol police, broke into the building and vandalized the property while insane militia members led chants to “Hang Mike Pence,” which Trump never declined. Instead, he insisted Pence did not have the courage to “do the right thing.” You normally don’t get to just walk away from events like that, but Republicans declined the rightful impeachment of Trump for the insurrection, and Right-wing judges excused and delayed justice for high crimes. These were seditious actions.
All of this proves that men like Timon Cline know exactly what they’re doing by insisting that Trump has the right to absolute power. They throw his abuses right back in our faces, proving that Cline is a sycophantic Christian nationalist and an avid fascist. He denies this in “theory,” but he admits it in practice.
The so-called unitary executive theory is not a theory; it is not authoritarianism. It’s just Article II of the Constitution. Russ Vought’s crime, then, is that he wants a well-functioning, secure constitutional order, the only path to ensure, in his words, “the survival of self-governance in America.” And the big reveal over the past few months from outlets like ProPublica is that Vought is aligned with the presidential administration in which he is now serving. Shocker.
It is clear that Timon Cline would suck at the game of poker because he always overplays his hand. He goes on to re-write biblical and American history in revisionist fashion.
If Project 2025 proposed a true monarchy, the Wheaton alumni have a problem. If such a model is “unbiblical” then King David is in trouble. But, in fact, Project 2025 is, in large part, a repudiation of the trajectory set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s long tenure which was as close to a monarchical “restructuring of society” as America has ever gotten. (Indeed, FDR was quite effective in his use of the OMB itself.) If anyone is responsible for the omnipotent, unaccountable bureaucratic deep state, it is FDR and his progeny.
First off, King David was a genocidal, adulterous asshole, whom God disavowed at the end of his earthly life telling him, “No you can’t build a temple in my honor. You have too much blood on your hands.” But Cline seems not to care that his supposedly “biblical” heroes are everything America is supposed to resist. We are supposed to learn from David’s example not to act like him. But evangelical American Christians love to proclaim that “God works with flawed people” because secretly, they understand their entire theology is a hypocritical trashpit of cherry-picking creationism and longstanding bigotry based on tiny bits of scripture that amount to a house of cards.
And so predictably, Cline also chooses to ignore the fact that FDR came into power after Robber Baron capitalists crashed the economy in a spectacularly speculative fashion. Unemployment reached 25% during the Great Depression, while the Dust Bowl raged across the American plains because lying Christo-fascists dismissed the environmental realities of arid country to promise hapless farmers that “rain would follow the plow.” God hates liars, but liars hate to admit they’re ever wrong. Look at Trump.
Amidst these 1930s Right Wing failures, FDR used the government to restore a sense of balance and security in the face of rampant abuse by free market capitalists whose “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” approach was the perverse form of socialism preferred by greedy capitalists. Trump and Project 2025 seek to return to those failed policies again in America and are proceeding with fascist fervor led by the corporatist Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation’s murky band of bigots, economic terrorists, and Libertarian hustlers.
I read Project 2025 and found it grossly unpalatable in tone and objectives. It is a fascist document much like Hitler’s Mein Kampf. There are similarities to its authors, and Trump, and one other famous fascist. As the United States Holocaust Museum website note, “Mein Kampf promoted the key components of Nazism: rabid antisemitism, a racist world view, and an aggressive foreign policy geared to gaining Lebensraum (living space) in eastern Europe.” Do you note the similarities to Trump’s approach here? He’s trying to annex Canada and Greenland for “living space” and “security” for America.
There’s also similarities between Hitler’s economic aims and Trump’s constant grift of selling Trump Bibles and other crap bearing his image. The parallel is that Trump spent time as a political exile, and like Hitler, rose to power again due to populist rhetoric of hate and malignant dog-whistle racism. “Hitler began writing Mein Kampf in 1924 in Landsberg prison, following his conviction for high treason for attempting to overthrow the German republic in November 1923 in the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. Although his coup failed, Hitler used his trial as a pulpit to spread Nazi propaganda. Largely unknown before this event, he gained immediate notoriety in the German and international press. The court sentenced him to five years imprisonment, of which he served less than 9 months. With his political career at an all-time low, he hoped that publishing the book would earn him some money and serve as a propaganda platform to air his radical views and attack those whom he accused of betraying him and Germany.
I created this timeline to show how we’ve moved from MAGA to fascism.
Cline doesn’t recognize it as such, but he’s an avowed fascist. He openly attacked Wheaton College grads for not sharing his brand of Christo-fascist hatred. He also tears at the fabric of scripture itself to score points with his Right Wing audience.
Apart from this fearmongering, the Open Letter lodges a litany of leftwing complaints. The issues? Vought’s goals do not sufficiently prioritize illegal immigrants, homosexuality, and abortion, and do not pay adequate homage to the altar of “racial injustice.” All these typically left-of-center hobbyhorses, apparently, have biblical precedent, according to the Wheaton alumni.
The alumni also complain that Project 2025—the entirety of which they pin on Vought—is insufficiently “concerned with governing faithfully as Christians.” A speech from Wheaton president Phil Ryken is quoted wherein Ryken elevated the type of Christian who can “carry forward the Great Commission.” And I had thought Christian Nationalism was the problem, not the solution. Curious.
The ardent cynicism with which men like Cline engage with these subjects borders on pathological. So there’s an instructional moment here. Pathology is “the study of disease, including its causes, mechanisms, development, and effects,” and Cline’s version of religion and politics is a virus feeding on its host of religious and political conservatism.
At the end of the previous paragraph, Cline conflates the Great Commission with political authoritarianism, perhaps believing that the call to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” is a political call to action. Cline and his ilk take that “commission” to mean “convert or die,” which is why the Crusades took so many lives, and why the Wheaton College mascot was once the Crusaders. But the Wheaton College alumni questioning Vought’s nationalistic tactics invite believers back to Jesus’ original intention: Offer love, not law. Welcome all, not just the chosen few.
But Cline is the unrepentant type, so he cherry-picks some targets much like his hateful hero Trump.
Since Wheaton alums seem so concerned about the OMB all of a sudden, where was the outrage over Shalanda Young, President Biden’s demonstrably unqualified director, and her enthusiasm for federal funding of abortion? Of course, Young isn’t a Wheaton alum. But what about when Michael Gerson (‘86) went soft on gay marriage? Did a very concerned alumni letter circulate then?
Cline leaps to ardently ignorant conclusions here by trotting out terms that appeal to right-wing hypocrites. He maligns those who protect abortion rights, yet where is the right-wing call for men to stop impregnating women rather than blaming women for getting abortions after the fact? The ignorance of the so-called Pro-Life movement is going on fifty years of public whining when in fact, Jesus would tell them, “If you must depend on the law to bring about the Kingdom of God, you have already failed.” Birth control is readily available to prevent the need for abortions, but right-wingers oppose that too. See how lies add up to more lies?
But Cline isn’t with his brand of dishonest apologetics. Not yet. He blames honest Wheaton College alumni for holding “rigid ideological lines” defined as “too liberal” for Cline’s tastes. You’ll get to read that letter at the end of this piece, and will find that many of Wheaton’s graduates do understand scripture, and point that out in their letter protesting Vought’s perverted brand of dismissively bigoted religion.
But, clearly, alumni status is not the determinative criteria for alumni outrage. Wheaton students had no problem weighing in on Jerry Falwell Jr’s views on guns and Muslims, especially when the Washington Post was willing to publish their complaints. Nathan Heath, an analyst at NSI and the second signature on the Open Letter, was one of the authors on the Post piece along with Ciera Horton McElroy, the former editor of the Wheaton student paper and another signatory.
What is clear is that the Wheaton alumni opposing Vought possess their own “rigid ideological lines.” Vought and the Trump administration generally represent a rolling back of the status quo in which the largely millennial and obviously left of center Wheaton alumni are quite comfortable.
Their problem with Wheaton College’s congratulation of Russ Vought is not that he is a political figure; it is that he has the wrong political views.
So yes, Timon Cline. Let’s be clear. Russell Vought is the exact kind of religious authority that Jesus would find (and did find) disgusting for the love of power, self-righteous status, and personal aggrandizement. And you don’t get that?
And yet, Timon Cline is all about the language of victimhood and self-proclaimed persecution.
Obviously, congratulating an alum for achievement in government service does not constitute an endorsement of any policy or view. Deplorables like Vought, however, can receive no such treatment. Again, wrong politics. Wheaton couldn’t stop celebrating Michael Gerson whom they pronounced “God’s wordsmith.” Was this sacrilege? Too political? But then again, Gerson had the right politics.
To be clear, colleges should celebrate the accomplishments of their graduates. This is natural and appropriate. By any measure, Gerson was accomplished, but so is Russ Vought. Objectively so.
Cline’s claim here is not sophisticated. He avows fealty to triumphalism, not morality. Then he goes on to gaslighting the Wheaton alums once more by accusing them of Christian Nationalism.
The authors and signatories of the Open Letter should drop the pretense and simply admit that they would like their alma mater to support their vision for the country and not Vought’s. That is all that they are saying. This has nothing to do with decorum or precedent or norms. Indeed, the vision cast by the Open Letter is decidedly Christian nationalist, just of a different variety. The Open Letter is, in fact, asking Wheaton College to take a stand on policy, their policy. The College should not capitulate. Last I checked, Russ Vought, for all his alleged “authoritarianism,” had issued no such demand to his alma mater. Who is the better liberal here?
These word games from Cline are passive-aggressive instincts at play, defined as, “expressing negative emotions indirectly, often through subtle acts of resistance or defiance instead of directly addressing the issue, such as through sarcasm, procrastination, or withholding information.” Many passive-aggressive individuals are manipulative, abusive gaslighters who try to make other people think they’re the crazy ones. It’s a bit surprising that Cline didn’t see fit to insert the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” here. It certainly fit his other methods.
Or perhaps he accomplishes the same aim by claiming that the “marginalized and vulnerable” MAGA populace, including, of course, the avowed racists, anti-Semitics, Trump-flag waving militias and bitter CEOs having to recognize DEI policies that are so beset that they can’t function in this world? Cline seems to think so.
For all their moralizing about the “marginalized and the vulnerable” and government “accountability,” the Open Letter includes exactly no mention of the American people who have suffered under the unaccountable government of the past four years, or the past decade, for that matter. It is rich indeed, in the wake of the USAID revelations, to charge the incumbent administration with “authoritarianism,” unaccountability, and neglect of the public good.
The link he includes in that paragraph begins with deranged accusations that USAID promotes aggressively “anti-Christian” agendas. It reads: “While we shouldn’t celebrate the loss of anyone’s job, we should celebrate the dismantling of USAID, which for decades has been squandering our tax dollars to sow sinful corruption in other countries and indoctrinate the world with transgenderism, homosexuality, atheism, and eugenics.”
The amounts of money ascribed to these supposedly horrific aims are pittances, small amounts to support cultural diversity and realities that hard-line, dichotomous religious bigots love to deny. But there are practical solutions to which they object too.
$1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”
$70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland
Despite what numbskulls like Cline and his audience like to proclaim, transgender people are real, human beings. Recognizing their humanity is not “sinful,” nor is producing a play about the potential difficulties of dealing with rampant bigotry in places where intolerance and ignorance often rule. But Cline seems to think that’s what Wheaton College is nowadays.
Wheaton used to produce serious, thoughtful, and accomplished graduates, and it may do so again, if it can overcome evident mission drift. Where, on the present political spectrum do these infantile alumni think Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry, for example, would have landed? If Vought is unpalatable, then so are they. (Then again, there’s a reason Franklin Graham recalled his late father’s library from the College years ago.)
Cline doesn’t realize that Franklin Graham is frequently the opposite of everything his father ever stood for. He’s a mean-spirited cuss whose political instincts overwhelm any good work he does.
For example, based on Graham’s own words, we see how and why Right-wing Christians are now “pro-Russian.” Graham stated: In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.” He dismisses the fact that Putin is a murderous thug and war criminal to equate the supposed “sins” of gay people with the likes of a man frequently throwing political opponents out of tall hotel windows. If Cline had any honesty in his soul, he would disavow such narcissistic self-aggrandizement as Jesus did. But Cline is not about Jesus. He’s about using fear and hate to control his little world. He even issues economic threats to the college in hopes of dunning them into submission. Cline is a brute.
In any case, Wheaton College has a choice: succumb to emotional terrorism or get back to the business of cultivating faithful national leadership on behalf of American evangelicals. The crop of alumni represented in the Open Letter reflects poorly on the College. Should we expect more of the same from Wheaton or more of the older produce like Vought?
At bare minimum, surely the Ryken administration recognizes the Michael Jordan rule: conservatives pay tuition too. But they won’t much longer if liberal alumni can force a denunciation of people who work in the White House.
Here’s the letter Wheaton College alums wrote to their alma mater.
An Open Letter from Wheaton College Alumni on Project 2025 & Endorsing Russell Vought To the Wheaton College Community and our American Neighbors,
We, the undersigned alumni of Wheaton College, write with deep concern over fellow alumnus Russell Vought’s role in forming and implementing Project 2025 on behalf of the current presidential administration. As Wheaton graduates, we were shaped by an education grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which states that the Kingdom of Heaven is known by the Fruit of the Spirit and made manifest by feeding the hungry, giving the stranger a place to sleep, clothing the naked, and caring for the sick. Our Wheaton education taught us that to serve the hurting and broken in our world is to serve Christ himself (Galatians 5:22-23, Matthew 25:31-46). It is precisely because of our commitment to these values that we find Vought’s vision for government, as outlined in Project 2025, to be antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the mission of Wheaton College—and moreover, we are concerned by the college’s quick and public proclamation of support in social media posts on February 7th, 2025.
Institutional Endorsements Wheaton’s own statement, after removing their original post, says: “Our institutional and theological commitments are clear that the College, as a non-profit institution, does not make political endorsements.” However, it has been repeatedly clear that the institution is making public-facing posts that are divisively partisan, including its affirmation of Russell Vought on February 7th, 2025. Wheaton College also gave Fox News a very different response on February 10th, 2025:
“The social media post led to more than 1,000 hostile comments, primarily incendiary, unchristian comments about Mr. Vought, in just a few hours. It was not our intention to embroil the College or Mr. Vought in a political discussion or dispute. Thus, we removed the post, rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction. This was in no way an apology for having expressed congratulations or for suggesting prayers for our alumnus.”
Wheaton’s student body, and thereby its alumni family, have always encompassed a broad spectrum of social and political affiliations. What unites us is Christian orthodoxy. We ask that the college be mindful of public proclamations that translate as political endorsements—especially in cases where the issues, as in Project 2025, are antithetical to Christian charity.
Christianity and the Temptation of Totalitarianism Project 2025 is a blueprint for consolidating executive power to remake American government and society along rigid ideological lines. The plan proposes dismantling independent institutions, purging thousands of career civil servants in favor of political loyalists, and centralizing authority under one person. Such a system is not only dangerously authoritarian but also profoundly unbiblical. As fallen and sinful people, we acknowledge the need for accountability, regardless of how high or prestigious one’s position or office; indeed, leaders are held to a higher standard and are accountable not only to the people they lead, but to God himself (1 Timothy 3:1-10, Ezekiel 34:10). Project 2025 is less concerned with governing faithfully as Christians than with cynically using Christianity’s majority status to establish political dominance, remake the United States in their own image, and further marginalize at-risk populations.
The pursuit of unchecked political control dismisses the humility of Christ and the servant-leadership model that Wheaton instilled in us. In Philip Ryken’s plenary address at the Fourth Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization, Wheaton’s president was forthright: “There is only one kind of Christian who is able to carry forward the Great Commission…and that is someone who embraces Christ-like servanthood as a way of life. We are all called to be servants.” The cost of service was high for Christ and his Apostles and is high for us as his followers today. As alumni of Wheaton College, we cannot lend credibility to a rejection of servanthood and an authoritarian restructuring of American society.
Marginalization of the Vulnerable Project 2025 promotes policies that target marginalized communities in ways that unequivocally contradict the biblical command to care for the least of these (Matthew 25:40). Among its stated goals are:
Gutting protections for undocumented immigrants and refugees, despite Scripture’s consistent call to welcome those same persons and condemnation of figures who do not (Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 10:17-19, Hebrews 13:2, Matthew 25:43).
Dismantling civil rights protections, dismissing the reality of racial injustice, and refusing to seek the biblical vision of reconciliation and justice (Isaiah 1:17, Amos 5:24, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, Acts 10:28, Colossians 3:11).
Rolling back opportunities and protections for people with disabilities and LGBTQ individuals, failing to treat all people with the dignity and respect that every image-bearer of God deserves (Genesis 1:26-27 & 5:1, Psalm 8:4-6, Ephesians 4:29-32, Matthew 22:39, 1 John 4:20-21).
Going far beyond humanitarian restrictions on abortion, by limiting access to contraception, daycare, and medical interventions for life-threatening pregnancies; prioritizing surveillance and control of women in crisis situations. (1 John 4:18, Luke 8:43-48, Deuteronomy 31:6, Psalms 46:1-3, John 14:27, Isaiah 41:13).
Slashing educational resources and healthcare for families of little financial means, ignoring the Bible’s emphasis on honoring the poor the same as the rich, Christ’s statement that the poor are blessed and that the kingdom of God belongs to them, and his assertion that those who reject the poor reject Him and are in danger of judgment (James 2:3-4, Proverbs 22:2 & 31:8-9, Luke 14:13-14, Ezekiel 16:49, Luke 6:20, Matthew 25:41-43).
These policies seek to enforce a narrow and exclusionary vision of American identity that aligns with political imperialism rather than biblical Christianity. As Wheaton alumni, we worship in accord with people of all tribes, tongues, nations, and languages, in anticipation of celebrating side by side, as one Church before the throne of God (Revelation 7:9). We celebrate and exhort a return to Wheaton’s foundation as an institution committed to the defense of fundamental freedom for all peoples. Under the guise of limiting government, Project 2025 instead proposes consolidations of presidential power. We believe the design of our government, as reflected in the US Constitution, reflects healthy ideals such as the limitation of human power in order to protect the vulnerable. It would be disastrous to subvert such designs.
Moreover, Christ-like values and character, not raw notoriety and power, are critical to the witness of the Church. We celebrate the God-given differences and unique abilities that make up one Body of many parts (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Different social, economic, racial, and cultural identities are brought together by faith in Christ so that we as Christians can effectively live out the Great Commission and spread the good news to all peoples (Galatians 3:28, Mark 16:15). The domination of one American tribe and invalidation of all others undermines the Church’s global role. If not in agreement, we are nonetheless called to live together in unity, edifying each other and standing together as one Church (John 13:35, Romans 14:19, Psalm 133). Project 2025 espouses an abusive authority that is fatally misaligned with the Word that stands forever (Isaiah 40:6-8).
A Call to Faithfulness Wheaton College has stood as a beacon of Christian higher education, committed to rigorous intellectual engagement, faithful discipleship, and responsible citizenhood. To align, even indirectly, with a political vision that prioritizes power over service, exclusion over love, and coercion over conscience would be to abandon the very heart of our faith.
As Wheaton alumni, we publicly distance ourselves from Russell Vought’s work and reaffirm our commitment to the Gospel’s radical call to justice, mercy, and humility. Silence in the face of such an anti-Christian vision is complicity.
That’s what I wrote on a Facebook post in a group calling itself Christians Against Trump. A person in the group was objecting to people crowing about the passing of the conservative businessman and politician, Herman Cain, who died from Covid-19 after attending a Trump rally. He’d boasted about the refusal to wear a mask on his Twitter account.
Cain was making the bold claim that PEOPLE ARE FED UP with wearing masks, yet he’s now dead from contraction of the Coronavirus. One cannot be sure that he caught the deadly bug while sitting in the audience cheering on Trump. But the quid pro quo is compelling nonetheless.
Herman Cain also considered himself a mouthpiece for God. He connected his religion closely to his politics. During his campaign for President in 2012, he made a direct connection between his 9-9-9 tax proposal and his ardent belief in the Almighty. “If 10% is good enough for God,” Cain proclaimed, “9% ought to be good enough for the federal government.”
Scriptural warnings
Given these almost scriptural musings about the nature of life and government, one wonders if Cain understood the fuller meaning of scripture that warns us against putting the Lord our God to the test. (Matthew 4:7)
Going out in public without a mask during a worldwide pandemic seems to be a keen way to put the Lord to the test. Yet it is a popular meme with some religious folks. There is no escaping the fact that Herman Cain tested the power of his faith and it didn’t work out that well for him.
A common sense approach
That’s the problem with banking on religion to protect us from all kinds of evil. God still expects us to use common sense. The Book of Genesis starts out with a test of that sort to warn us against getting too cocky about the support of God in this world. Even after Adam and Eve are told not to take fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, they engage with a legalistic serpent who shows up with a promise that they can be like God, knowing good and evil, if they take matters into their own hands. “You surely will not die,” the Serpent promises them.
But a harsh lesson awaits. The Serpent’s promise is only good in the short term. The deceivingly religious Serpent has tricked Adam and Eve into thinking they have immunity from their own actions. Such is the case, it seems, with Herman Cain and millions of other religious believers who too easily neglect the lessons of their own scripture. While claiming to represent the Will of God, they eagerly take fate into their own hands.
The legacy of Herman Cain
There is more to the conflicted legacy of Herman Cain than his unfortunate death. HIs life as a businessman is depicted as a classic “up by the bootstraps” lesson about corporate perseverance. He rose through the ranks of several fast food companies to bring Godfather’s Pizza to renewed profitability. But when President Clinton pursued a plan to require employers to support health insurance for employees, Cain complained that plan would make it impossible for companies “like mine” to stay in business.
In a textbook example of conservative victimhood, Cain stated “For many, many businesses like mine, the cost of your plan will cause us to eliminate jobs. What will I tell those people whose jobs I will have to eliminate?”
Two bad choices
That tactic of offering up two seemingly bad choices to defend an ideological premise of conservatism under the banner of capitalism is a classic conservative ploy. What Cain refuses to consider or mention is why employers are even involved in the business of dispensing healthcare in the first place? Conservatives love to ignore such topics, leaving businesses across America responsible for the major headache of paying premiums and managing our healthcare system in the increasingly expensive triage of combatants vying for profitability. These are healthcare insurance companies, healthcare providers and networks, and Big Pharma. All of these lobbies want to protect their own interests, and corporate politicians gain big donations by doing so.
And the rest of America is left living a lie of bad choices. The United States barely ranks in the Top 40 worldwide in terms of quality and affordability of healthcare. So much for American exceptionalism. The fight against the Affordable Care Act was not about constitutional rights or Death Panels or any number of conflated reasons concocted by the Republican Party. It was about the selfish interests of all these profit-pursuing entities trying to slice pieces of meat from the other. And the GOP plays the role of butcher by trying to cut people out of the ranks of the covered.
Purposeful blindness
Herman Cain’s purposefully blind approach to resolving health care needs in America is the entire premise of the Republican Party’s non-plan to protect the health of everyday Americans. For decades, millions of people living outside the bubble of corporate-sponsored health care went without coverage. And worse, those with pre-existing conditions were essentially banned from pools of favorably-priced health insurance even if they tried to buy it on the open market.
The Republican approach to health insurance was, and remains, a death warrant for anyone who works for a man like Herman Cain. So we must ask, how does a supposedly God-fearing Christian man come to a place in life where he aggressively opposes the needs of people who work for him? It turns out scripture has something to say about that too.
Up-from-the-bootstraps
That “up-from-the-bootstraps” mentality favored by conservatives is more about selfishness than it is about solutions. It’s the “tough luck” school of thought that Jesus combatted in the religious authorities whose love of tradition moved them to invent laws and rules and restrictions that stood as stumbling blocks for those trying to reach out to God for spiritual sustenance. Instead it became a transactional religion run by people in positions of power and authority who got to call the shots, even to the point of sentencing people to death if they were accused of doing something wrong.
That’s the lifelong lesson of Herman Cain in a nutshell. His supposed love of personal responsibility was actually a politically dismissive ideal that cost him his own life in the end.
But as scripture tells us time and again, God loves irony. It teaches so many lessons.
Recently a long-ago classmate from high school showed up on Facebook. He Friended me and began complimenting bird photos that I posted to my wall. The connection for the first few weeks seemed genuine. He’d never been a nature guy to my knowledge but had lived next to a forest preserve back in the day. Perhaps his upbringing near the wilds had emerged as a deeper interest in his retirement.
He posted photos of his own, images of birds and such around his property. Then one day a cryptic post appeared on his wall. It was rife with jingoistic and politically flirtatious language that was all too familiar to me.
Bald Eagle. Photograph by Christopher Cudworth.
He claimed at the moment to have a neutral stance on the state of the nation these days. Perhaps he was an Independent of sorts? Even a Libertarian? Over the years plenty of that cropped up in social media too. And then there are the supposedly objective among us, who view all politics and government as the scourge of life. “They’re all crooks,” goes the line.
Meanwhile, the comments kept coming about nature and birds and such. He knew that I was a birder way back in middle school and high school, earning the not-so-complimentary sobriquet “Birdman” from friends who found the hobby ridiculous. So I continued our friendly repartee and helped him identify some species that showed up at his feeder from photos that he’d posted.
Then came the Purple Post. My new-old-friend had decided to “lift the veil” on his political affiliations and made a statement to that effect with a closing statement: Vote Trump 2020.
I wasn’t shocked. But I was disturbed. My concerns were specific and real. If he claimed to love wildlife and the environment so much, how could he possibly support what Donald Trump has been doing to our country’s laws and regulations that protect clean air and water, conserve both common and endangered species, and honor key acts governing even archeological and paleontological resources?
The list of attacks on these protections is long. I call them the Trump Killers, because he’s presided over legal and political attempts to kill every one of these laws. Here are the major policies that Trump and the Republicans have set out to kill, or have killed already.
The point in posting this list is to help people connect the dots between the wildlife my supposed Facebook Friend loves to enjoy and the laws that provide protection and habitat for these living things to survive. That’s a simple enough concept, right?
Yet in Trumpian fashion, his love for Trump is so ardent yet so shallow that he likely has no idea that any of these actions are being taken. He lives near one of the few habitats where Kirtland’s warblers breed in Michigan. Birders have worked to help protect that and many other species. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act alone is designed to protect hundreds of species that travel to our country during spring and fall. Does he even know why such laws are important? Doubtful.
Too many Trump supporters appear to come from a background where science is considered a worthless opinion. Some of that stems from religious prejudice wrought from an evangelical mindset based on biblical literalism and its intellectually retarded offspring, creationism. Some 35% of Americans tend to abide in that worldview, and the consequence is that men like Trump and his greedy Republican allies grant carte balance to industrial polluters and environmental abusers because, it is claimed, the human race has dominion over the earth.
Eastern Bluebird. Photograph by Christopher Cudworth.
That is the absolute brand of cognitive dissonance at work in Trumpism. It aggressively fails to recognize the connection between these environmental and resource acts and our nation’s contribution to their survival. In other words, Trump supporters completely refuse to connect the dots between the things that actually make America great and the things Donald Trump does to destroy them. And if you question their passive-aggressive practice of posting provocative Pro-Trump memes and then whining when you challenge them, the first instinct is to gaslight all those with the gall to present evidence of the President’s own lies and contradictions of his own statements. They want to make you feel like it all never happened. “You must be crazy,” is the implication.
And sure enough, when I commented on my friend’s Purple Post, he immediately made a baiting statement that he “knew I’d be first to comment.” In other words, he was taunting me and others. Just as predictably, his Trump-loving friends chimed in with memes supporting Trump and ridiculing those who don’t “get it.”
And finally, one of those Trump Lovers branded me a Trump Hater.
That’s the “go-to” dismissal for all Trump supporters. It implies an irrational hatred for the President. It directly aligns with the so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome that Trump supporters use to paint those who oppose them as radical leftists who oppose true American virtues. But it’s interesting how many terms it actually takes to insult those who oppose Trump.
The hypocrisy in all this is quite evident. If a Trump supporter loves birds and wildlife but does not understand that the President is doing everything he can to gut laws protecting those resources, that’s plain stupid and irresponsible. And if a Trump supporter claims to value civil rights yet wants to deny those rights to gay people or people of color, that’s an insult to the entire notion of what civil rights mean. And if Trump supporters claim to love life yet refuse to limit access to weapons capable of slaughtering dozens of innocent people in minutes, then they are lying to us all.
That is the dynamic that exists across the entire spectrum of Trump policies. Claims to virtue counteracted by repression of those whom the Trump world hates. And Trump himself is the most consistent lawbreaker. From breaching emolument laws on conflicts of interest to pressing foreign countries to interfere in our nation’s elections, Trump has flaunted our Constitution and its foundational premises. He refuses to respect the rule of law and at the same time uses it to punish those causes he considers his enemies. He is the most hateful acting of all Presidents, fueled especially by hatred for Barack Obama, whose legacy he has steadfastly and vengefully tried to erase.
Bobolink. Photo by Christopher Cudworth
But it’s the birds that illustrate this whole hatred thing the best. Many of those laws listed above were actually implemented with collaborative approval by Republican Presidents and members of Congress and the Senate. But Trump hates them all. The real Trump Hater, in an active sense, is Trump himself.
So I’ll not abide the insults and the targeted claims that I’m somehow “deranged” for opposing the nasty things this President is imposing on our country. They are hateful in every respect, a testimony to the selfish and shallow fraud of a human being whose grasp of even the most simple concepts is at best questionable. Yet he calls himself a genius and brags about his intellect, all while gutting the purposes of our public education system, our civil rights and our heritage as a haven for the desperate and the poor. Donald Trump is the most hateful man on earth right now, and his supporters love him for it. Yet they call us Trump Haters.
LAS VEGAS, NV – APRIL 28: Chairman and President of the Trump Organization Donald Trump yells ‘you’re fired’ after speaking to several GOP women’s groups at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino April 28, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Trump has been testing the waters with stops across the nation in recent weeks and has created media waves by questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)
That’s a sickness of mind and an ugly testament to the twisted mentality required to vote and approve the actions of a President who is a bully, a despot, and a fascist in every aspect of his demeanor and conduct. In other words, he is a man genuinely worth of hate, but his supporters instead grant him a brand of worshipful love that resembles a cult.
So we supposed Trump Haters are for the birds, and many other good things in this world, including civil rights for all, a fair and equitable economy that does something other than shovel money to the wealthy, a foreign policy that respects rather than manipulates and brutalizes our allies, a nation free from religious oppression as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and a country where guns are not the final word on respect for law.
But those who love Trump apparently hate all these things, and hate the world as well, because they’re willingly glad to destroy it in order to keep their man in power.
The big word on the street this week from leading conservative voices such as Sean Hannity is that Marco Rubio really “stepped in it” during the last Republican debate.
Governor Chris Christie essentially called Rubio a robot for repeating the same 25-word speech three times…about how Rubio does not like the fact that Obama is trying to change America.
Well, duh. That’s what Obama promised to do in both his campaigns. And what does the Republican Party promise to do in return? “Take Back America” is its primary slogan, and the phrase is also repeated ad nausea by all the Republican candidates. They are all, in a word, acting like conservative robots.
Rubio isn’t a robot so much as an automoton. So let’s consult the dictionary to examine what that really means. “An automaton (plural: automata or automatons) is a self-operating machine, or a machine or control mechanism designed to follow automatically a predetermined sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions. Some automata, such as bellstrikers in mechanical clocks, are designed to give the illusion to the casual observer that they are operating under their own power.”
That fits Rubio perfectly. And sad to say, there are a whole lot of conservatives who like that brand of predictability just fine, as long as it aligns with their desire for doctrinal control.
Clutch Cargo
Rubio is certainly moving his lips to spit out conservative doctrine. Yet he somehow comes off like one of those Clutch Cargo cartoons from years ago. You know the one, where the creepy lips are projected through a static cartoon face in 1960s low grade animation? And that would be accurate except for that fact that Marco Rubio and his cartoon logic on issues such as abortion date from the 1950s at best. So let’s talk about rape, since that what Marco Rubio thinks he does best.
Rape is harmless to women
Rubio thinks, or so he says, that women should have the babies caused by rapists no matter what. “It’s a terrible situation,” Rubio said. “I mean, a crisis pregnancy, especially as a result of something as horrifying as that, I’m not telling you it’s easy. I’m not here saying it’s an easy choice. It’s a horrifying thing that you’ve just described.”
“I get it,” he added. “I really do. And that’s why this issue is so difficult. But I believe a human being, an unborn child has a right to live, irrespective of the circumstances of which they were conceived. And I know that the majority of Americans don’t agree with me on that.”
Rubio defensively claims that he actually “gets it.” Yet he then flatly turns around to deny women the authentic right to control what happens to their own bodies. He is calling rape an essentially harmless action, meant to be dismissed as a “terrible situation” by women unlucky enough to experience such a criminal violation.
Lack of prescience
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida
Rubio goes on to admit that a majority of Americans don’t agree with him on the issue. Basically, he is also saying that the freedom for a woman to determine the outcome of a rapist’s violent crime is non-existent. This is heinous disregard for human rights. It is also abetting the cause of rapists to commit such a crime and then claim rights to the child. It is patent approval of the act of rape.
The lack of conscience in such a position is breathtaking and should automatically disqualify any person from a position in public office, much less the President of the United States.
Rubio apparently thinks his interpretation of the Law of God somehow trumps the United States Constitution and Supreme Court rulings that protect the rights of women to control their personal reproductive freedom.
Rape of the angels
But Rubio’s possibly theological point actually goes against examples from scripture in which God rules on rape and abuse of others. Let’s take the famous story of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. You may recall that when a pair of angels shows up at the house of Lot in the town of Sodom, a group of rowdy townspeople arrives at Lot’s door demanding the strangers be turned over (as was ‘the custom’ of the day) to be raped and sexually abused for the simple crime of having no place to stay after nightfall.
Yet rather than comply with the demands of the unruly mob to turn over the strangers to be abused, Lot offers up his own two daughters as ransom for the safety of the two men he has offered shelter in his house.
We are forced to ask: what if that story actually resulted in that outcome? What if Lot’s daughters had indeed been turned over to the crowd to be raped, and then were forced to have the children from unidentified fathers? Then (and only then) we might have to agree with Marco Rubio that God agrees that it’s a just cause to rape women and demand they have those children.
Rape as an act of war
Scholarly studies of such issues show that rape is indeed often used as a war on women. In her treatise title “Rape, Women and War,” scholar Angela Robinson documents how throughout history, rape has served as a tool of disenfranchisement in war and cultural conflicts. “The rape of women has been utilized as a tactic of terror in wars since the beginning of armed conflicts. It appears to go through three main stages: First, rape is a routine and expected reward to the victors. Secondly, rape occurs due to a lack of military discipline. Finally, rape occurs as a military technique to demoralize the opposition. Through these horrific actions, women experience the loss of home and the loss of land, which is synonymous with the loss of identity. This is known as ethnic cleansing.”
So we see that given Rubio’s position on rape and apparent ownership of women by men, the Republican War and Women is real. And despite his claims of virtuous theology and protection of the so-called unborn, Marco Rubio is dead wrong about God’s ultimate intent for rape victims.
Lots of lessons
Because rather than encouraging Lot give over the two men under his protection to an abusive crowd seeking to use rape as an expression of power, God’s servants instead grant protection to Lot and his family. The servants then warn Lot to get the hell out of town. Lot and his family are warned not to look back, yet Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt for violating that promise. God does like those who doubt his intentions, or have prurient curiosities.
Yet the harsh lesson of the Bible, and the message Marco Rubio refuses to comprehend, is that God does not indeed favor the acts of abusers.
Because if he did, God would have allowed Lot’s daughters to be thrown out into the streets for rape and abuse, and then be forced to carry the bastard children of the men willing to commit such acts.
Think about it: Marco Rubio is telling your daughter that if she gets raped, she has to bear that child. He’s telling your wife that if she gets raped, she has to have that baby. He’s telling all the men of America that it is not worth even trying to protect the women in their life, because if some man rapes them, it is actually God’s will that child should be born. There is nothing anyone can do about it.
Of course, that was not the lesson conveyed in the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nor is it an acceptable narrative according to the map of human rights laid out in the United States Constitution. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness do not include having to bear the child of a rapist, or to be gunned down in the streets because you refuse to carry a handgun. This is lawlessness as a political doctrine, not political freedom.
Anger sells and greed propels
Yet there are millions of ignorant people out there who favor the doctrine of men like Marco Rubio because they speak with the force of conviction. And quite often, this brand of conviction sounds a lot like theology. And when an entire political party claims to own the wisdom of God, it gets easier to sell a brand of angry, selfish schtick as truth.
This is the methodology of angry, abusive, misogynistic political doctrine the Republican Party and its media mouthpieces have espoused for years. Sometimes they use dogwhistle terms, euphemisms and confessional language to get the point across. But the effects are just the same. The KKK claims to be a service organization even while it works to undermine the rights of blacks and other minorities. All such euphemistic claims are designed to hide the anger, fear and greed behind such prejudicial movements. Anger sells and greed propels. It’s as simple as that.
Ugly aims in plain sight
As long as we’re being honest, let’s also be direct. A political machine like the Republican Party (the automaton of conservatism) that simultaneously works to ban women from using birth control while telling them that rape is an activity they must accept to the point of bearing a rapist’s child is a confused, nasty brute of a machine. It does not deserve to exist. This isn’t about free speech any longer. This is about gaining and protecting human rights for all people. Conservatives love to claim that a fetus is already a person, and promote many compelling examples to prove their point. But whey then do so many Republicans seem to hate Planned Parenthood, an organization designed to empower women in controlling their own reproductive health. And prevent the need for abortions.
But of course, Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood over the supposed moral issue of having sex outside of marriage, or without the goal of procreations. But conservatives are hypocrites about that, too. Even the so-called rhythm method, a birth control effort advocated by the Catholic Church, is a knowing attempt to avoid conception. Hypocrisy, in other words, because the Lord typically considers intent as bad as the real crime.
Conservative cabal
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida
So the clear intention of the conservative cabal, if Marco Rubio and his ilk have their way, is to impose sexual and social control over women while accepting none of the responsibilities of being a principled human being, and worthy of trust and respect.
As a result, the Republican Party has also become an automaton of vicious, contradictory lies. Marco Rubio unwittingly captures this Republican fealty to male dominance and disrespect toward women, and men like Donald Trump are certainly no better. Ted Cruz is an obvious family fake. Take a look at his recent contrived video and the lengths to which he must go to get his own family to play along with his worthiness.
And the lone woman candidate on the Republican side is a person so obsessed with preventing abortions she refuses to change her story about a fake video even after it was proven to be a lie.
And so, there are no signs that any Republican has a remotely enlightened attitude toward women. Certainly their lead spokesperson Rush Limbaugh, who dispensed with no less than four wives, knows nothing about how to treat or respect women.
It has become evident that the Party of Elephants has dissolved into a Passel of Pigs. Snorting and derogatory behind the scenes, they like to make nice and religious-like in public to cover up their possessively penile priorities. But their shallow debates and thinly disguised prejudices toward women, minorities, are the drivel that has driven the Republican agenda for years. Fortunately, Republicans also don’t know how to govern, so their fecklessness has allowed America to continue is progressive advancement of human rights despite the fascist goals of the neo-conservative regime.
Brimstone
If you tune into Republican rallies with their angry moods and Take Back America chants, it truly brings to mind the crowds of men assembled outside the house of Lot. They keep making demands and pressing on the liberal aims of Lot, which are simply to make his house and home a place of protection for the immigrants that have come into his care.
So let’s recall what happens to the angry crowds Lot leaves behind when he and his family leave town. God sends brimstone down upon Sodom, wiping out the abusers, and not the abused.
So perhaps it will happen that God will not bring about the apocalypse as so many Republican conservatives like to predict. Instead he may choose to cast firey brimstone on the Republican landscape and bury the GOP Congress under its sulphurous force. That would be the Congress that has threatened the public for years, and attempted a very public rape of Hillary Clinton’s reputation by conducting countless expensive investigations into the supposed scandal they branded Benghazi. But nothing stuck because there was nothing there that was done wrong.
The same Congress has made multiple attempts at raping a health care law that delivered millions of new policies to Americans in need of coverage, especially those with pre-existing conditions. The Congress along with the Republican-controlled Senate even raped the American government itself, shutting it down for ideological reasons.
It would appear the reason Republicans want to “take back America” is to rape it for all their worth, then blame the ensuing costs of raising their babies on the liberals.
Source of link: http://www.usm.edu/gulfcoast/sites/usm.edu.gulfcoast/files/groups/learning-commons/pdf/rape_women_and_war.pdf
There is so much pain in the world. Christians seeking to heal that pain rightfully turn to their faith as a means to promote forgiveness that can relieve personal and spiritual pain. That leads to healing.
The challenge to this process is in learning how to use the Bible to communicate the forgiveness that leads to healing. The Christian church with all its variegations and interpretations of the Bible is not much help.
The prime example of how to understand scripture rests with Jesus Christ, who taught using parables anchored in organic symbolism to convey spiritual principles such as love, mercy and justice. Christ’s parables made the kingdom of God accessible to all.
Authoritarians
This example was lost on those whose zealotry for godly authority drove them to turn scripture into law. Jesus, therefore, experienced conflicts with religious authorities who refused his often symbolic warnings and prophecies. When Jesus threatened to knock down the temple and rebuild it in three days, people mocked and laughed at him because the stone temple had taken years to build.
But that’s the point of scripture: it uses hyperbole to express the spiritual wonders of God.
People who take the Bible literally often miss these crucial examples. The Book of Genesis is one such book that has been raked and damaged by those mining it for literal interpretations of the Creation story. As a result, Christianity itself has been ripped up the middle by this divisive interpretation of Genesis. Jesus himself would be aghast at what has become of the Creation story in the hands of these so-called Christian perpetrators, religious fundamentalists without imagination, hope or trust that God’s Word can do more than talk like an ignorant child.
Recovery
So Christianity needs healing. It needs to be recovered from the wounding hands of those who try to use it as a weapon against modernity and science. It needs to be rescued from the medieval notion that Christianity necessarily needs to be a Crusade for religious anachronism and the threat of sending all to hell who do not abide by zealous literalism.
A viper waits below the surface.
Again, Jesus called that brand of believer “hypocrites” for casting blame against all those who broke the rules they created. He further characterized them as a “brood of vipers.” Take note of Christ’s use of naturalism to explain that powerful concept familiar to all. You don’t want to enter the den of venomous snakes, do you? Well, then we’re supposed to know that it’s best to avoid those who turn literalism into legalism.
None other than Pope Francis of the Catholic Church is promoting a departure from legalism, literalism and faith build on ramparts of dogma and divisiveness. Of course he’s getting tons of resistance from religious conservatives stuck in the past and happy to use the divisiveness of legalism to win political and religious converts to their own benefit, power and authority.
It will take quite an effort to recover the faith from the hands of these murderous intents.
Modernity
So the healing of Christianity needs to come from these clear warnings from Christ. There is no need to castigate science or evolution as oppositional to God. There is no call to avoid modernity at all, for the Word of God is eternal, not intransigent.
What follows is a passage of healing for all Christians to consider. It is written with all loving intent, for it is designed to heal the rent between old brands of faith and a new, truly born-again approach to faith in God and Christ.
This communicates the basics of a sustainable brand of faith that does not cower before science or force people to rent the gut of Christian faith in order to demonstrate their fealty to God. Consider it a creed of sorts, for Sustainable Faith in the modern age.
Healing Christianity
Evolution explains our material origins. The Bible explains our spiritual origins. Genesis represents humankind’s spiritual awakening to God, our birth, as it were, into that relationship. The entire Foundation of scripture depends upon deeply organic imagery to describe creation and how that is an expression of God’s love for the world. Jesus taught using parables anchored in naturalism as well. He did so to make spiritual concepts accessible to all those who would listen. When his disciples either refused these methods or did not get it, he called them “dull” for missing the vitality and purpose of these metaphorical stories. Christ’s example is how we need to look at the entire Bible in order to grasp its connections between material and spiritual truth. Jesus would have no trouble with Darwin, evolution or science.
Jesus taught using parables anchored in naturalism as well. He did so to make spiritual concepts accessible to all those who would listen. When his disciples either refused these methods or did not get it, he called them “dull” for missing the vitality and purpose of these metaphorical stories. Christ’s example is how we need to look at the entire Bible in order to grasp its connections between material and spiritual truth. We repeat: Jesus would have no trouble with Darwin, evolution or science.
Christ’s example is how we need to look at the entire Bible in order to grasp its connections between material and spiritual truth. In fact, he celebrated nature as expressive of God’s fidelity, but also free will and change. Evolution and free will go together, you see. Our lives are not predestined, and God makes no guarantees of happiness, wealth or favor. But our relationship with God and Christ overcomes all such circumstances with faith and grace.
In the end, it is our spirit that defines us. The body withers and fades away. This is true for all living things from amoeba to insect to bird to ape to human beings. Dust to dust. But explaining our evolutionary and proven material relationship with nature is no crime of thought. Through genetics, we understand that human beings share 98% of our genes with apes, and more than 60% of all our genetic material with every living creature on earth. We are connected, in other words, to all of creation.
This worldview mimics that of Jesus Christ and the Bible, and we should grasp that worldview in the same way. There is only conflict between the world and God if you make it so. Yet that explains much of the state of religion and politics today.
Christianity needs healing. It must begin with this understanding that Jesus Christ was our leader in how to approach and understand the organic roots of scripture and our relationship with God.
Poor National Geographic. Since being purchased by the conservative scion Rupert Murdoch, the first issue out of the gates is a massive tip of the hat to conservative religious ideology. The biblical figure of Mary is hailed as the most powerful woman in the world.
Of course the figure of Mary carries with it some heavy theological baggage. That would be the so-called Virgin Birth.
How unsettlingly ironic this new testament to the power of womanhood really is. The Virgin Mary myth begins with the idea that the Son of God could not be conceived by conventional sexual means. Instead, it requires an immaculate conception in which the Holy Spirit essentially rapes a woman for God’s supposed purposes.
So, the question has never been answered. Is she still a virgin after this conception? Or is pregnancy not somehow an establishment of womanhood? Which is it?
How the Virgin Mother myth evolved
We know by now that the concept of a virgin birth (itself a malapropism) is adopted from other cultures to serve the idea that a supernatural being has entered the human race. The idea that some people become gods through status or divination was important to ancient cultures seeking leaders for military, cultural or religious purposes.
Buddha was ostensibly born of a virgin. So were many other goddesses and mothers in religious history. All impregnated by heavenly spirits.
Christianity was late to the game but just as determined to turn their Virgin Mother myth into a powerful religious meme. So the New Testament does a bit of work to make that a seeming reality. The Book of Matthew tells the story as a sort of scandal in which Joseph considers divorcing his wife when he learns that she is pregnant without his seed.
“But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
A group of University of North Carolina scientists dug into the issue of virgin births in the modern era. Their findings were interesting, as the main pool of people claiming “virgin birth” were Christian women who took the vow of chastity or some other indication of purity (abstinence education, for example).
The articles notes:
“Except for in the Bible, virgin births or asexual reproduction occur only in the plant world and among a small group of vertebrates: pit vipers, boa constrictors, sharks and Komodo dragons.”
Of course none of these creatures considers virgin birth all that important. Asexual reproduction is a matter of practicality, not miraculous events. But it does make one think hard about the fact that both John the Baptist and Jesus referred to religious leaders of the day as “a brood of vipers.”
Brood of Vipers indeed
That was because the original fundamentalists of the Jewish faith were caught up in the process of turning religious laws into a power structure that conferred them political advantage and wealth. If you tried to divest them of that power, they struck at you like a brood of vipers. In fact that is exactly what got Jesus killed. He was bitten by the poison power of fundamentalism.
In his absence, the ministry of Jesus Christ was hijacked by similar zealots who then interpreted the story of his existence to fit their desires in some ways. They had already aggressively borrowed traditions like the virgin birth to make predictions in what Christians call the Old Testament. It was now up to the authors of the New Testament to make those prophecies “pay off.” Competitive prophecies have to fit together like a puzzle or they are unconvincing. Hence the Virgin Birth was canonized and copied over and again in the Gospel narratives.
Beyond theft and deceit
If this makes you sad to think about, don’t be alarmed. We can still believe in the power and majesty of Jesus Christ without the stolen myths of pagan religions to prop up the story. The teachings of Christ are sufficient in wisdom and transformative power to work miracles in the lives of everyone they touch. Men such as Thomas Jefferson saw this and extracted the miracle stories from the Bible to put greater focus on the wisdom of the man we call the Son of God.
But thanks to the conservative, patriarchal tradition in which men competitively want to cherish the notion of owning and then taking the virginity of a woman, we’re forced into reciting this falsehood in Christian creeds and other ways.
New Conservative Zealots
It’s no coincidence that the magazine National Geographic has been forced into parroting the Virgin Mary myth by its new conservative owner Rupert Murdoch. Oppression of women is a favorite habit of male conservatives.
One wonders how that actually squares with the supposed humility of Mary’s husband Joseph, who demurely accepts the idea that his wife is pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Would conservative men of this day and age accept that as truth? Or would they behave like conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, who branded Sandra Fluke a “slut” simply for advocating the idea that birth control should be covered under health care plans? We already know the answer to that one, don’t we?
Perception and truth
Again, perception is often more powerful than truth. The University of North Carolina study found a not-too-surprising commonality among women claiming to be virgins and even men claiming to be virgins even though their wives were already pregnant. “For the larger original study in 1995, which included both males and females, she said scientists were surprised by some of the findings. “There were a few virgin fathers lurking around in data field,” said Herring.
The article states: “We found [the “virgin birth” phenomenon] was more common among women who signed chastity pledges or whose parents indicated lower levels of communication with their children about sex and birth control,” said Herring.
“The immaculate conception group may have been small, but researchers did find an even larger group, whom they called “born again virgins. “They reported in an earlier study a pregnancy, then later said they were virgins,” said Herring. “Those may have been a misclassification issue.”
False Virgins
Such may be the genuine case with the so-called virgin Mary. The controversy about her “virginity” stems from interpretation of the Hebrew word almah, which can just as logically mean “young maiden” as virgin. But given this prophecy from the book of Isaiah, one can understand the longing for fulfillment of this passage: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel,” (Isaiah 7:14).
Who made the original mistake? Likely a patriarchal author seeking to compete or outdo competitive religious claims to godhood. Then it got worse with the advent of Jesus.
As noted on the website Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, “The LXX is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. This translation was made around 200 B.C. by 70 Hebrew scholars. In Isaiah 7:14, they translated the word, almah, into the Greek word, parthenos. According to A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature,2 parthenos means virgin. This word is used in the New Testament of the Virgin Mary (Matt. 1:23, Luke 1:27) and of the ten virgins in the parable (Matt. 25:1, 7,11).”
How the Virgin Birth hurts us all
What is the damage to all these Virgin Birth claims? For starters, it sets up an artificial standard for the divinity of Christ.
It undermines the notion that normal sexual relations can serve to fulfill holy means.
It depicts women as subservient to a male standard of desirability.
It enforces a power structure in which women are property rather than human beings.
It deceives millions of women into thinking that chastity is preferable over a healthy, normal sex life.
It egregiously twists the notion of bible prophecy to fit the aims of a perpetual “brood of vipers” seeking to control the biblical narrative for their own select purposes. Often these aims include the oppression of women. The fact that so many women buy into this narrative is a sad consequence of history.
What would Jesus say?
None of this would have been necessary if it were up to Jesus himself to determine the notion of a Virgin Birth. He fully accepted the earthiness of life and embraced in his most intimate teachings the organic foundations of the world because these symbolized the creative powers of God. Is not conception itself a miracle? Ask anyone that has tried and not been able to conceive whether that is true or not.
Jesus would not have demanded that his mother be called a virgin in order to be blessed. It’s as simple as that. Of course the faith developed in his name will not likely abandon the falsehood of the Virgin Mary myth because it is a cult unto its own means. After all, we have politicians and religious leaders claiming to represent Christianity while simultaneously advocating greed, dunning the poor, espousing racism and discrimination and battling with other faiths over power and authority here on earth.
None of these things is Christian. They are as false as the Virgin Birth. So it should be no surprise that so many people are misled by the “brood of vipers” that continues to vex the world to this day.
But that doesn’t mean that rational believing Christians have to play along in the myth that disrespects and abuses real womanhood.
The Republican propensity for denial of responsibility and grasp of fact is now so revered among the party’s elite it has become the first tool of response to any challenge.
The most recent denial of fact is the Republican claim that their last President of the United States was not, in fact, actually the President when the 9/11 tragedy took place. The initial volley about the issue came from none other than Donald Trump, ostensibly the Republican leading the polls among conservatives. This is what Trump said about George W. Bush and his responsibility for 9/11.
“When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time,” Trump said. “He was President, okay? Don’t blame him or don’t blame him, but he was President. The World Trade Center came down during his reign,” Trump replied. ”
O Brother
Those simple facts did not set well with Jeb Bush, another Republican hopeful who has repeatedly claimed that his brother George “kept us safe.”
He may have been referring to the idea that no additional foreign terror attacks took place during the remaining years of the Bush presidency. But as noted, Trump was having none of that nonsense.
This harsh divide manifested in Trump’s domineering approach to criticism breaks with the Republican tradition of attacking only the opposition and not criticizing their own. That has been the presiding, if not perfect, strategy behind the Republican push for power over several decades. There may be ugly fights behind the scenes among Republicans, but the goal has always been to keep those spats private.
Breaking the rules
Trump is not playing by any of those rules, and as a result, is not really running for the Republican nomination so much as he is forcing the party to reform itself around this meme of gaining power at all costs. Even by Trump’s standards, that means leaving the rest of the nasty baggage behind. This could be the ironic salvation of Republicanism, if not the Republican Party itself.
See, the tradition of denying its own failures has both a benefit and a cost. Sooner or later you get to the obvious and well-documented parts of recent history, and you must deny even these to continue on the path toward power. The denials launch from the dusty calls of legislatures and courts on Constitutional matters to exploding buildings and wars started by sitting Presidents who stretched the truth to justify their ideology and their actions. In other words, you can only win by breaking every rule of conscience and truth.
Trumped at their own game
That’s what Trump is calling to account, and Jeb Bush has put his image of brotherly love and political credibility on the line, deciding to throw his support behind his brother’s claims of success rather than confont the facts, which point to a massive failure in intelligence, both gathered and native, by his apparently dimwit brother.
Yes, George W. Bush did some stupid things, and Donald Trump is having nothing to do with making excuses for what he perceives as the dumbing down of recent history. What we’re witnessing in real time is the height of arrogance and the depth of denial running the Republican Party. Their grasp of reality isn’t just slipping away, it is gone entirely.
Denial as a worldview
Republicans also deny the science behind global climate change on claims it is arrogant to think human beings could ever cause such a massive shift in the earth’s foundational temperatures.
Look at how that works. The GOP hates Al Gore for his claim that global climate change is, to quote a phrase, “An Inconvenient Truth.” So by directing their anger toward Al Gore they accomplish two things. Poor Al tends to come off as arrogant in his general demeanor, which makes him an ideal target for Republican denial of fact. They use him to deflect the factual arrogance of denying 97% of the world’s climate scientists who find tons of evidence that our current pattern of rising temperatures and warming oceans is a result of human activities.
But think about what’s happening here. If it is possible to deny the fact that 9/11 happened under the watch of George W. Bush, denying the complex and scientifically predicted influence of climate change is simple by comparison. The height of arrogance and the depth of denial work together fantastically in the propaganda-driven mode by which the Republican Party communicates.
In other words
As a result, terms like “sustainability” and “gun control” become catchphrases and buzzwords of resistance in the party of denial. These terms bespeak change in favor of temperance and planning, which are translated as government intervention by the party with a professed aversion for government even as it seeks total dominance over the three branches of jurisdiction; the Presidency, legislature and the courts.
This is the height of arrogance and the depth of denial at its most sinister level. To claim to hate the thing you want to rule is both an arrogance in purpose and a denial of responsibility.
Christian fakes
That’s what’s taking place on a grand scale here in America. The height of arrogance and the depth of denial also rules the brand of Christianity used to back Republican aims. The movement to wield the power of Christian faith in politics without abiding by the basic principles of Christianity is now 30-40 years old. Conservatives seeking to align their supply-side economics with biblical authority conveniently ignore the call to divest themselves of wealth in favor of spiritual governance. As a result, churches feel free to politicize and make the claim that you cannot be both liberal (ne: a Democrat) and a Christian.
Running interference
It’s no surprise that the inconvenient truth of science, especially the theory of evolution, interferes with this narrative that a fundamentally literal interpretation of the Bible is the only way to gain truth. This also denies the fact that Jesus taught using metaphors drawn from nature to explain important spiritual principles.
When pressed about his own faith and love for the Bible, Donald Trump ripped a page right out of the Republican playbook with this statement: “I wouldn’t want to get into it. Because to me, that’s very personal,” he said. “The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.”
Again, the height of arrogance and the depth of denial is at work.
Twitterized
But not everyone buys this brand of junk. Using his own quotes and philosophy, folks on Twitter took after Trump (and by proxy, all of RepublicanLand) with a feed called #TrumpBible. Take a look at how they handed Trump his stupid hat.
It’s time we all got a bit wiser about how this game of arrogance and denial really works. No one should get away with stupid remarks like Jeb Bush claiming his brother was not responsible for 9/11, or the partnered meme that Bush was not even President when it happened nine months after he was installed as President.
The sad fact is that so many people prefer the height of arrogance and the depth of denial. It fulfills their worldview on many fronts, exonerating them from responsibility for painful social issues such as gun violence, racism and economic exploitation. Let’s be honest and hold these people accountable. Stop letting your friends and conservative associates turn bald-faced denials and unaccountable arrogances into something resembling fact.
Donald Trump is just the starting point. He symbolizes the so-called anger expressed by so many Americans, and for all the wrong reasons. Denial is not a form of government. It is the absence of governance, and an entire lack of conscience.
Don’t let them get away with it. Call them out. The height of arrogance and the depth of denial is exactly what is killing American hopes and a future fit for all.
Toward the end of a seven-mile run in a prairie park in Wisconsin, my companion and I passed a group of soccer players engaged in a pickup match on a small mowed field. They wore the jerseys of teams from Mexico, Central America and Europe. Soccer is the world’s game, you see.
Earlier on the run we’d seen a group of women and children walking the gravel path together. These were the wives and children of the soccer players, for they all gathered together under a shade tree when the match was done.
I’d turned to my companion and said to her, “Just think, their descendants came to this continent from the other side of Pacific.”
Science and genetics tell us the people who settled the North American and South American continent came over the land bridge to Alaska. Through human evolution and adaptation to environment these post-Asian peoples populated a highly diverse and unknown world. In many cases their skin evolved toward a brown or red color in response to hot, sunny climates. In that small way they were evolving back towards the dark-skinned origins of the African past from which we all came.
Civilization
These tales of massive emigration provide important foundations for discussion of the human race and the racism that drives much of its self-perception. We know that highly evolved civilisations in Egypt and Asia emerged from the original migration out of Africa. Their mathematics, arts and sciences represented a Renaissance of importance to all of civilization. Even through dark times in history and wars of slaughter over tribe, race and wealth, it was this belief in self and the theater of the mind that remained most important in sustaining human life and progress. In the wake of all this movement were structures representing the human desire to reach for the sky and deities. The pyramids of Egypt and the temples of the Aztecs evolved as the highest expression of human culture on earth.
Behind the Eight Ball
Back in Israel and the Middle East the concurrent battles over worldview were taking place a little later than the Asian and Central American pursuit of self-realization. Yet the events that took place there in the sands and hills around Jerusalem were telling in their net results.
The Romans had long tried to impose their values and their religion through force, but ultimately what emerged triumphant in that society was a faith supposedly architected for peace. The Eight Ball of fortune and force turned out to be wrong.
Christianity was embraced as the official religion of the state through Constantine, but its message of tolerance and brotherly was ultimately subverted for a focus on triumph of holy will. Because as Europe was settled, the warlike aspects of a largely white race of human beings found tremendous and convenient mobility in the history of the religion they embraced. Once the Jewish temples had been razed a few times over, faith become mobile. Canonized in a Bible, The Word superseded the traditional anchor of capitol and place.
Of course the Jewish Torah tried to accomplish the same thing, but that story took a different path. Blamed for the sacrifice of Christ, the Jews became targets for violence rather than partners in history. Just as they had experienced before in history, the Jewish people were left without a home. So they too used their wits, replacing capitol (city or state) with capital (money and negotiation) as a means to survive.
Where once the Judeo-Christian culture knew its place in the temples of Jerusalem, and capitol was where God could be found, the culture actually reversed course (or was forced yet again) to become a nomadic people all over again. Capitol was traded for pursuit of capital, and anyone that stood in the way of that pursuit became the enemy. But this adaptation became a parallel point of competition between Christians and Jews, who were in turn doubly ostracized and persecuted for being better capitalists than their Christian brethren. We hate in others what we find most lacking in ourselves.
Nomads
The Jews had many times before been a nomadic people, migrating “out of Egypt” to assume lands that God ostensibly bequeathed to them. This history conveniently (yet ironically) supplied the motivation and belief that God was on the side of all those who supposedly followed His way. Essentially this providence was stolen by those with a willingness to ignore the obligation to faith and honor of God’s law that came with it.
The Ark of the Covenant originally represented by Judeo-Christian tradition as a symbol of God’s promise instead became a possession as much as a promise. People embraced this materialistic version of faith because it resolved the guilt over being both rich and favored by God.
Made in God’s image?
For powerful Christians, there was still the issue of painting over the notion that Christianity had diverse origins in terms of race and culture. White Christians painted pictures of Jesus in their own image, and built tremendous cathedrals as signposts of its journey to world domination. Pagan traditions were folded into the faith as recruitment tools and these became (as Christmas did) signs that devotion to the faith was complete. This cultlike triumphalism burst across the European landscape backed by religious fervor and an increasingly inventive ability to kill in the name of God.
This restless, almost unhinged worldview was held at bay by civilizations to the East that could resist its restless and warlike tendencies. Surely the Crusades were an attempt to “take back” the so-called Holy Land, but it never really stuck. That is still the case today. Another religion that shares the Abrahamic storyline simply won’t give in to Western pressures. That would be Islam, whose principle zealots hate both Jews and Christians alike.
Truth be told, no one really knows who was made in God’s image, or what lands and nations were bequeathed to whom. So the fight continues to this day.
Commerce and conquest
Fortunately, as civilizations grew and trade evolved, necessary compromises emerged. But even those promise continue to be broke by those too greedy to realize that sustainability is a foundational value in God’s kingdom.
Instead, the world is still being ruled by a desperate need for extraction based on the early Genesis belief that God ceded all the earth to a chosen people. Of course these folks miss the fact that their ancestors repeatedly engaged in behavior that invoked God’s wrath. So remains that this faulty history is a legacy that makes it convenient to go out and kill in the name of God, then beg forgiveness as if the carnage never happened. After all, that was how it was done in the Bible.
But even warlike Christians can’t conquer all. Stifled by resistance from the East, the now largely white races of human beings embracing God as their witness looked to expand their Empire in other directions. Africa was close enough, and a known quantity, but somehow it did not capture the imagination of Christians whose search for gold and conquests across the ocean still beckoned.
So the white migration embarked on its trans-Atlantic conquests, murdering and enslaving people as they arrived on the islands of the Caribbean, all along the Gulf of Mexico and up into North America. Cortez and his ilk had no mercy. It was kill and extract resources in the name of Kings and Queens and God.
Second wave
Then warlike whites flowed over through North America and the real conquest of the New World was begun. Once it got rolling and Manifest Destiny was invoked to justify the killing, there was no reason to slow down and consider what was truly going on. It was genocide all over again, and in biblical proportions.
Love your enemies, to death
When it came to world expansion and domination, the whole “love your enemies” aspect of Christian tradition became an inverse equation. “We love our enemies because we bring them the message of God,” was the essential justification for taking over entire nations. Religion became confused with patriotism. Missionaries ran in the company of killers. It was either convert or die. Such is most of human history.
So the true meaning of “love your enemies” was beaten with a religious stick and cast aside out of convenience. It has never gotten completely out of the ditch into which it was self-righteously thrown. But like the Good Samaritan of old, there are Christians now seeking to right these wrongs and bring back the notion of loving our enemies in its full meaning. Likewise, these believers abhor use of indefensible discrimination by race and culture as tools of political manipulation and domination.
Foxy thinkers
The capitalistic Christians are fighting back hard. They treasure their supposed triumphs and value the social and political position it has bestowed upon them. They give it names like American Exceptionalism to justify the seeming victory of capital over loving our neighbors
But God knows better and always has. God does not like the calculated erection of euphemisms any more than the construction of a Golden Calf. These all represent efforts to circumvent the covenant of love and trust that is supposed to ride at the heart of all faith.
Violent defense of racism
It is both fascinating and disturbing to witness the often violent defense of racism as if it were an expression of God’s will. Of course it isn’t, but it reflects a conveniently perverted narrative of faith that embraces racial warfare as a sign of providential progress. Such was the case when a certain class of moneyed Christians tried to justify the use of slavery to prop up the economy of the American South. They even advocated secession from the Union as a tool of protest against their racist, stringently capitalistic worldview. Ultimately this effort failed, and yet their are millions who still abide by its philosophy and fly a Confederate flag as a sign that they have not yet evolved in their thinking.
Media wars
When you throw a dose of class warfare into this mix and enough money to broadcast the message through modern media and even news outlets, it can be hard to hold the line against the emergent brand of capitalistic faith.
Yet God and Christ said the meek shall inherit the earth, so we have that on our side. But it’s hard to watch the social and political carnage that takes place as a result of evil at work in the world. It has always been that way. Psalms and Lamentations have been written about why God allows evil to triumph. Perhaps it’s all one big godly big joke, and the Second Coming is the cosmic punchline.
Lacking that eventuality, we must look to the present for signs that balance can and will return. Of course evolution has an answer. It always does. We know that 99% of all living things that ever existed on the earth are now extinct. And despite the Judeo-Christian belief that God will provide a New Earth, there is biblical justification for thinking God has less of a sense of humor than we like to believe. The metaphor of the Noachian flood alone parallels God’s willingness to wipe out every living thing on earth in order to make things right again.
Noah’s Real Ark
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings that I have created––people together with the animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.
Who were these people God regretted? Were they the people who according to his word loved their neighbors as themselves? Or were they full of capitalistic fervor and conquering, warlike ways? Were they racists as well, bickering over the color of skin and the nations of origin? These were the evils God abhorred in human beings, for they lead to violence against any or all that they encounter and judge to be inferior.
And what does Noah represent? He represents those that hold out against such capitalistic fervor and the rank behaviors (the love of money is the root of all evil…) that come with it. The real ark of Noah is this commitment to hold out against violence, racism, discrimination and exploitation of others through war, commerce and prejudice. The real Noah recognizes that preserving aspects of God’s creation is paramount to faith.
Evolution and salvation
How interesting that it turns out our capitalistic ways of extraction and unhindered appetites for resources are similarly violent toward the very earth upon which we depend for survival? Indeed, we depend upon the earth even for salvation, yet capitalistic Christians defy laws that protect the environment on grounds that human beings should have the right to exploit the earth’s resources any way they see fit. This is based on the idea that the Genesis-driven notion of a literal “dominion” over the earth excuses all behaviors.
Yet what more potent symbol is there for salvation than protecting the earth, God’s creation? It’s almost as if evolution and God were conspiring to produce the same result as foretold in the story of Noah.
“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence,” the Bible says. “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them with all the earth.”
Notice that God’s massive anger is not about sex, or gay marriage or Mexicans working jobs that other Americans won’t take. God is angry about violence, especially capitalistic (exploitative) violence based on the unhinged belief that God bequeaths all the earth to a single race of people.
Sickness of mind
It’s a sickness of mind that ignores the lessons of both evolution and God. Yet here we are, with news outlets and political parties proving every day that the real lessons of Sodom and Gomorrah were never learned. Those violent men at the door of Lot were not there for sex, but for violent, aggressive purposes of dominance and exploitation. That is why God destroyed those cities as well. The aggression and assumptive behaviors of people who thought strangers were their property to abuse was the real tipping point for God.
Those same people stand at the doors of society today, threatening and cajoling innocent citizens with their demands for wealth and power. They beg for our votes and hate the very government to which they get elected. They are conflicted, angry and violent men (and women in some cases) willing to take a nation to war as a means to further exploit the world and its resources.
And are you really going to believe what these types of people have to say when God clearly hates the violence and greed of their ways? One should hope not.
META referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.
Somewhere in the long arc of its transformation from a religious belief system to a political movement, Christianity lost a big chunk of its soul to a social phenomenon more concerned with owning the public dialogue over proving its theological merits in actual practice.
This was the advent of Meta Christianity, in which confessional language and dog-whistle politics contrive to take over society.
Big Dogs
It’s not hard to point out the cast of characters that borrowed the authority of a well-respected religion as a means to self-empowerment. They are all famous names with whom we are all familiar. The process was slow at first, with social and religious conservatives frustrated by democratic rulings on issues such as abortion. But then the movement toward a more political form of Christianity formed around the likes of Jerry Falwell, a televangelist who formed the so-called Moral Majority in collusion with equally conservative politicians that found it quite convenient to borrow the authority of Christianity for their personal objectives of getting elected. Again. And again.
Voting blocs
Courting the so-called Christian voting blog translated into power for conservatives willing to say all the right things to convince conservative voters their morals were in the right place. The power conferred by the Christian voting bloc further converted the forrmely faith-based ideals of Christianity into a brand focused on social and political authority. The word Christian came to mean something entirely different than it once did, taking on a form that willingly confused God with Country. To achieve this aim the new form of old-time Christianity needed to ignore the very plain language in the United States Constitution Establishment Clause which says“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….”
And that was the advent of Meta Christianity. No longer was conservative Christianity going to bother abiding by its tradition of self-examinative remorse, repentance and reformation.Meta Christianity said the hell with that. The former introspective faith in the model of Christ would now be replaced by a self-referential new order focused on never admitting you’re wrong and asking people to join along because it’s the right thing to do. The Meta Christian takes a new vow: “We’re more interested in gaining power and getting our way than explaining ourselves to people who don’t get what we’re doing.”
Conventions
By these methods Meta Christians began by definition to refer to itself and its conventions as a genre outside the realm of normal social criticism. Using the age-old methods of requiring “proof texts” from the Bible to engage in any criticism of its objectives, Meta Christianity has endeavored to remove itself from any form of social criticism at all. It does the same with its politics, especially by claiming loudly and often that America was founded as a Christian nation.
Manifestos
These tactics extend to the view of America both as a nation of destiny and as a tool for the End Times. Fundamental Christians love to claim the mantle of God’s Chosen people. The thin veil of the former worldview known as Manifest Destiny is thus torn away and worn all over again like a new garment. The Meta version of its racial overtones embrace age-old prejudicial values against people of color and origin, lambasting emigrants and Muslims and anyone that Meta Christians choose to see as an enemy. This is all based on the Meta-Christian’s perceived state of privilege by providence.
End Times
Meanwhile some Meta Christians seem eager to hurry along the end of time any way they can. When George W. Bush first attacked Iraq in 2003, there was some hope in some deeply religious (but apparently not patriotic) quarters that a magical key was being turned in the Mideast that would bring on Armageddon and drag Christ back to earth for Judgment Day.
Even analysis from within the Christian faith has no effect on Meta Christians. Progressive Biblical scholars such as Marcus Borg, John Crossan and Rev.John Shelby Spong easily point out the contradictions inherent in Meta Fundamental Christianity by documenting the many ways in which the Bible is not infallibly composed. Bart D. Ehrman in his book Misquoting Jesus (Harper/San Francisco) documents how scribes who copied scripture sometimes changed it either intentionally or unintentionally. In so doing he points out the foibles of taking any section of scripture literally, and demonstrates the danger of those foibles at play in the modern context. Typically these include persecution of those who are made targets by literal interpretations of scripture. These include women, gays, Jews, blacks or anyone that gets casually or pointedly mentioned in the Bible as a transgressor of some sort. There is no distinctive virtue in these methods except that it provides a convenient way to define “the other” and thus give Meta Christianity the enemies it needs to rally troops to membership and shared power.
Science of denial
But Meta Christianity turns a purposely deaf ear on such erudite analysis of its beliefs. It also lovingly ignores the findings of science, flirting happily instead with the science of denial constituted by contrived theories such as creationism and intelligent design. As a result, some 30% of Meta Christians in America claim not to trust science, especially the theory of evolution. That’s one out of two people under the influence of Meta Christianity, which uses its reputation as protectors of the truth to fuel doubts and fears of intellectual pursuits in its constituents.
Rightward ho!
Thus the advent of self-referential and self-evidencing religion of power over biblical substance continues to evolve. When challenged over this assumed position of authority in society, Meta Christianity has simply moved farther to the Right as a means to insulate itself from any brand of secular analysis. Of course Meta Christian politicians love that kind of voter. It saves them lots of work trying to convince people they are indeed “voting their values.”
Dead Ends
There’s just one problem with all this Meta Christianity. It’s a literal and physical dead end when it comes to addressing the problems of the present and future. The Meta Christian relationship with End Times theology is problem enough when considering what to do about foreign relations and plans for dealing with global climate change. Meta Christians are prone to the disturbing claim that the end is coming soon and there’s nothing we can do about it anyway. No wonder Meta Christians fall in line with the radical political right on the idea that government is the problem, not a solution to human problems or needs. If the most radical brands of Meta Christians had their way, America would simply dump its entire governmental system and trust God to solve all problems in the home of the brave and the land of the free.
F the Establishment Clause
That’s definitely not what the Founding Fathers set out to do in forming a more perfect union or writing the United States Constitution. The Establishment Clause exists for a reason. It protects the freedoms of all citizens, not just those who claim to curry favor with God. Meta Christianity sees that as an obstacle, not the law of the land. We will be wise to keep an eye on protecting the Constitution from those who would redefine its purpose in a self-referential way.
Rubio is certainly moving his lips to spit out conservative doctrine. Yet he somehow comes off like one of those Clutch Cargo cartoons from years ago. You know the one, where the creepy lips are projected through a static cartoon face in 1960s low grade animation? And that would be accurate except for that fact that Marco Rubio and his cartoon logic on issues such as abortion date from the 1950s at best. So let’s talk about rape, since that what Marco Rubio thinks he does best.
Scholarly studies of such issues show that rape is indeed often used as a war on women. In her treatise title “Rape, Women and War,” scholar 
If you tune into Republican rallies with their angry moods and Take Back America chants, it truly brings to mind the crowds of men assembled outside the house of Lot. They keep making demands and pressing on the liberal aims of Lot, which are simply to make his house and home a place of protection for the immigrants that have come into his care.
There is so much pain in the world. Christians seeking to heal that pain rightfully turn to their faith as a means to promote forgiveness that can relieve personal and spiritual pain. That leads to healing.
Poor National Geographic. Since being purchased by the conservative scion Rupert Murdoch, the first issue out of the gates is a massive tip of the hat to conservative religious ideology. The biblical figure of Mary is hailed as the most powerful woman in the world.
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