Praising Trump From the Pulpit

CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN MINISTERS, some of whom achieve celebrity status by seducing sycophants in large numbers through the seductive power of charismatic personalty, snappy attire, and provocative proclamations, have been especially in evidence since the political advent of Donald Trump, in large part through their near unanimous support of him, but also because of the often extraordinary nature of their explanations for his ascent to the American presidency. It must be said, however, that explanations and proclamations issued from evangelical ministers often contain elements of the extraordinary, nearly always unverified and unverifiable. Carl Sagan said: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Extraordinary evidence is the key component invariably missing from extraordinary and provocative proclamations. Most folks are familiar with the standard issue. The AIDS epidemic is God's wrath being visited upon America for its tolerance of homosexuality. The lord has established the United States as his bastion of the Christian faith on earth. The righteous of this denomination or that denomination, at the end of days, shall be raptured into heaven, leaving everyone else in the dust,, or extreme heat, or worse. The usual bill of fare. These hyperbolic pronouncements have in common that they presume a considerable degree of knowledge of not not God's future behavior, but of the motivations behind it, they clearly delineate an "us against them' paradigm, in which "them"those who adhere to the proclaimer are the in group, the "us", safe ensconced within the fold of righteous, and the predictions inherently evince probably futures of apocalyptic proportions. And of course, they are shouted to all the world in stentorian style, complete with dramatic gesticulations by comparison to which nineteenth century stage actors would seem inert. lately our evangelical screamers have been outdoing even themselves for histrionics, and for the unverifiable extraordinary. The purveyors of percipience form the pulpit have been political in nature since the late nineteen seventies, when the moral majority inserted itself into the political arena, defying the wise admonition of true believer and esteemed academic C. S. Lewis that religion goes astray when it becomes entangled in political affairs. Having cast its lot with the repackaged pro life pro straight sex "good Christian" Donald J. Trump, the conservative evangelical community has no reason to go go half measure. according to Graham Jr., Falwell Jr., or both, Donald Trump has been anointed, by god, by GOD, to be the president of these United States, and is the most christian president in american history, notwithstanding Woodrow Wilson's ministerial bond fides, notwithstanding the tendency of nearly all nineteenth century presidents to begin the day on bent knee. Ever inclusive, conservative evangelical issuers of unprovable profundities include explanations of the motive of members of the Democratic party. why not? Accordingly, the Democrats have invented their own God, goes the gist of the gaslight. In truth, the Democrats have invented much, including social security, medicare, minimum wage and labor laws, and a safety net for the disadvantaged, ostensibly helpful, compassionate things widely considered blasphemous anathema throughout politically conservative evangelicaldom, which prefers a social Darwinistic approach, despite the evil falsehood of exhaustively verified evolutionary science. But no Democrat has ever been confirmed to have invented an imaginary God, but only to have described the christian one in terms more verifiably, scientifically compatible with observed reality. Any tendency towards a more compassionate, more sane deity more in keeping with observable nature quite naturally meets with the dismissive disapproval of the conservative Christian community, which much prefers to stick with the harsh god of the Biblical kind, the one who scares Abraham half to death by ordering him to execute his own son as proof of exclusive fidelity to the divine, and who strikes dead fifty thousand and seventy poor souls in retribution for breaching the privacy of a document in a box. What cannot be denied, and can be verified anecdotally, is that this ruthless, genocidal god of the Bible is far more compatible with the mentality and moral principles of Christian conservatism, and Trump MAGAism, than any watered down, toned down, rational deity ever invented by any damnable Democrat.