What happens when your political idol’s actions and words diametrically oppose what your religion promotes?
Do you stand firm by your faith, or do you bend to political idolatry?
Is it worse to be ostracized by your church or shunned by your political, social group?
Oh, the pain and discomfort of internal conflict!
But wait, there’s another way!
With the advent of Republican Jesus, you can stand by your religion AND swear allegiance to a demagogue who espouses the opposite views of your lord and savior!
Isn’t America Great?
Republican Jesus is no less wonderous than the birth of Original Jesus (or Extra Crispy Jesus, for that matter).
People have been bending religion to fit their world and political view since the beginning of time. All gods are man-made. When you start with that fact, everything you see in today’s Evangelical community regarding politics makes perfect sense. And let’s face it, it becomes easier to bend and contort one’s religious views in a world where god is less visible than ever before.
Fuck being uncomfortable with contradiction; let’s be Christ-like and Un-Christ-like in the same breath! Once you start, it’s easy! After that, it’s a brand-new, all-encompassing, carpet-bomb-the-caravan-and-fuck-the-disenfranchised religious freedom!
Step 1. Cherry-pick your favorite bits and pieces from that book written in iron-age ignorance.
Step 2. Infuse it with a political ideology that suits your worldview.
Step 3. Well, you get the gist.
Before the first charlatan saw religion as a money maker and a kingmaker, religion’s primary purpose was personal and somewhat benign (at least initially).
Religion eased our fear of death and explained the unexplainable. In the hardware store of life, you could find religion in the aisle for caulking and other “gap fillers.”
Now that politicians know just how fluid the beliefs of Evangelicals are, they are taking full advantage. And the President is leading the way.
To politicians, malleable faith has become the low-hanging fruit of our electorate. Evangelicals’ susceptibility to authoritarianism and an innate fear of different people represents political opportunity, money, and votes at the ballot box.
Today’s Evangelicals are evolving (how ironic!) before our very eyes. In a swirling tsunami of hypocrisy and verbal gymnastics, Evangelical leaders dismiss adultery, kidnapping, and murder, so long as political bed-mates deliver favors unto them or to their America. And the Evangelical flock follows blindly. Their relationship with the President is like a loveless marriage – purely transactional in nature.
They give him support; he packs the court.
All the contradictions of the President’s behavior to their faith get dismissed or obfuscated.
I suspect, like the rest of us, Evangelicals understand if Donald Trump (or either of his sons) knocked up the help, there’d be an abortion doctor on the doorstep faster than you can say “fetus.”
But Evangelicals have struck a Faustian bargain with the Orange Devil, simultaneously turning their heads and supporting his un-christlike policies.
Anyone with an ounce of intellect (and intellectual honesty) knows Trump is less Christian than a salamander or a turd. Instead, Trump uses his relationship with Evangelicals in a quest for power and money.
To the skeptic and realist, all of this is as clear as day.
Our best hope for turning this shit show around are young people, who are generally less religious than their parents, and who see the marriage of politics and religion for what it really is, a marriage of convenience that benefits the few and endangers the rest.
Let’s hope they get out and vote because the longer this goes on, the harder it is to stop.
bendingtheneedle 