Fighting Like Hell, For Trump and For God

"THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION is an abortive political revolution that turned moral." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe). The revolution that aborted was an uprising against the Roman Empire. It turned moral when a charismatic rabbi-teacher assured the failed revolutionaires that they needn't be concerned about achieving political freedom in this lifetime, that they would have something better,eternal salvation and joy in heaven, if they agreed to certain terms. Hence was born the Christian religion, almost as if by accident, an expedient transition from politics to religion. Every century has had a different version of Christianity, which wasn't even called "Christianity" until several centuries after Christ lived, and, temporarily, died. (It was called "the truth"), In the early twenty first century, the true faith seems to be taking a step backwards, re-insinuating itself into the political sphere, in these United States. First came the "moral majority", which was famously neither. Reagan, an evangelical Christian like Jimmy Carter, but with the added benefit of being politically conservative, was America's born again Republican president. Traditional religions harmonize with political conservatism. Then came Donald Trump, and the evangelical movement, looking for a savior, a strongman to fight like hell for the true faith, had found one. That Donald Trump is as a person the antithesis of traditional Christian values matters not; he fills the bill. God was looking for a bully, and, in any event, has a habit of elevating reprobates to positions of great import. Evangelical Christianity took control of the Republican party, and Trump took control of the Republican party, a match made in heaven, if not hell. With evangelical Trump-Republicanism emerged several subsects, just as the true faith itself fragmented over the centuries, a fragmentation which proceeds apace today. New Christian denominations are born almost daily. Surely, at least one of them has the blessing of the one true God, the one in the christian Bible. Maybe, all of them, diverse in dogma though they be. Perhaps the most extreme and thus most dangerous Christian subsect is the "New Apostolic Reformation". This marriage of political conservatism and evangelical Christianity, the "New Christian right", is white, angry, far right wing,filled with grievances, and determined to destroy secular democratic America and replace it with a Christian nation, politiclly, culturally, by taking "dominion" over all aspects of American society and culture; economics, education, arts and entertainment, the whole ball of wax, so to speak. An incisive new book, "Preparing For War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism, and What Comes Next", by Bradley Onishi, lays out the landscape, past, present, and future. Oshino should know. He is a refugee from hard core conservative Christianity. He was saved (from religious fanaticism) by education, at Oxford University. Accordingly, America is the shining city on the hill, just as Ronald Reagan claimed. The USA is destined to lead the entire world, starting with itself, to God,the Christian one, by violence, if necessary. Christian nationalism. Dominionism. The "New Apostolic Reformation" being the formal name of its spearhead movement. Trump is the leader on the political side. The insurrection at the Capitol on jaunary 6th, 2021, was full of evangelicals, kneeling, praying, carrying the NAR flag in one hand, and assault rifles in the other. Now the Christian dominionist Republican nationalist horde seeks to return their icon leader to power, by violence or election stealing if necessary. Whatever works. They tried it before and it was an impressive dress rehearsal. And they are not going anywhere.