Leading Evangelical magazine: Trump should be removed from office

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32 minutes ago, Grumps said:

So the result would be that Christians don't vote. That's convenient!

 

1) Not at all what is being said.

2) Think about this.  If all Christians did vote the exact same way, and let's say it's a write in, who do you think wins an election?  65% of Americans identify as Christian. 

[TitanTiger 20,472]

1 hour ago, Grumps said:

So the result would be that Christians don't vote. That's convenient!

Evangelical Christians were not forced to support Trump in the primaries.  They chose to.  Freely.

[Mikey 16,578]

I am not a religionist, but many in my family are and they have been saying that that magazine is off the tracks for years now. The first complaint I heard about it was in 1995. My wife was recovering from surgery and was house bound for a bit and people brought books and magazines over. She had me throw the few copies of "Christianity Today" in the trash. She said she didn't want anybody else looking at what she called "a leftwing political rag."

That's the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

7 hours ago, Mikey said:

I am not a religionist, but many in my family are and they have been saying that that magazine is off the tracks for years now. The first complaint I heard about it was in 1995. My wife was recovering from surgery and was house bound for a bit and people brought books and magazines over. She had me throw the few copies of "Christianity Today" in the trash. She said she didn't want anybody else looking at what she called "a leftwing political rag."

That's the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

Well, it isn't.  I've followed the magazine for the better part of 30 years and I'm a subscriber.  It's solidly evangelical and biblically orthodox.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

Well if anyone was expecting CT to recoil from the backlash coming from the Evangelical Trumpists, prepare for disappointment:

 

Quote

The Flag in the Whirlwind: An Update from CT’s President

Why our editor in chief spoke out against Trump, and why the conversation must continue.

Timothy Dalrymple, December 22, 2019

Reader responses to Mark Galli’s recent editorial have spanned the spectrum. We have received countless notes of encouragement from readers who were profoundly moved. They no longer feel alone. They have hope again. Many have told us of reading the editorial with tears in their eyes, sharing it with children who have wandered from the faith, rejoicing that at last someone was articulating what they felt in their hearts. They felt this was a watershed moment in the history of the American church—or they hoped it would prove to be. Stay strong, they told us, knowing we were about to reap the whirlwind.

On the other hand, we have heard from many readers who felt incensed and insulted. These readers felt the editorial engaged in character assassination, or maligned a broad swath of our fellow evangelicals, or revealed that we prefer the Democrats to a President who has done a lot of good for causes we all care about.

Of course, we appreciate the support and listen humbly to the criticisms. But at the end of the day, we write for a readership of One. God is our Tower. Let the whirlwind come.

President Donald Trump would have you believe we are “far left.” Others have said we are not Bible-believing Christians. Neither is true. Christianity Today is theologically conservative. We are pro-life and pro-family. We are firm supporters of religious liberties and economic opportunity for men and women to exercise their gifts and create value in the world. We believe in the authority of Scripture.

We are also a global ministry. We travel the world and see the breadth and depth of what God is doing through his people all around the planet. It is beautiful, and breathtaking, and immense. The global Body of Christ—and the community of evangelicals—is vastly larger than our domestic political squabbles. But partly on behalf of that global body, we can no longer stay silent.

American evangelicals have always been a loose coalition of tribes. We have fought one another as often as we have fought together. We at Christianity Today believe we need to relearn the art of balancing two things: having a firm opinion and inviting free discussion. We need, in other words, both a flag and a table.

First, then, the flag. Numerous reporters have asked whether the ministry supports what was stated in the editorial. Was Mark Galli speaking on behalf of the institution? CT does not have an editorial board. Editors publish under their own names. Yet Galli has stood in the trenches for men and women of faith for over three decades. He has been an outstanding editor in chief. While he does not speak for everyone in the ministry—our board and our staff hold a range of opinions—he carries the editorial voice of the magazine. We support CT’s editorial independence and believe it’s vital to our mission for the editor in chief to speak out on the issues of the day.

As an institution, Christianity Today has no interest in partisan politics. It does not endorse candidates. We aim to bring biblical wisdom and beautiful storytelling both to the church and from the church to the world. Politics matter, but they do not bring the dead back to life. We are far more committed to the glory of God, the witness of the church, and the life of the world than we care about the fortunes of any party. Political parties come and go, but the witness of the church is the hope of the world, and the integrity of that witness is paramount.

Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness. It has alienated many of our children and grandchildren. It has harmed African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American brothers and sisters. And it has undercut the efforts of countless missionaries who labor in the far fields of the Lord. While the Trump administration may be well regarded in some countries, in many more the perception of wholesale evangelical support for the administration has made toxic the reputation of the Bride of Christ.

Galli’s editorial focused on the impeachment, but it was clear the issues are deeper and broader. Reasonable people can differ when it comes to the flagrantly partisan impeachment process. But this is not merely about impeachment, or even merely about President Trump. He is not the sickness. He is a symptom of a sickness that began before him, which is the hyper-politicization of the American church. This is a danger for all of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Jesus said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. With profound love and respect, we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty.

Let me protect against two misunderstandings. The problem is not that we as evangelicals are associated with the Trump administration’s judicial appointments or its advocacy of life, family, and religious liberty. We are happy to celebrate the positive things the administration has accomplished. The problem is that we as evangelicals are also associated with President Trump’s rampant immorality, greed, and corruption; his divisiveness and race-baiting; his cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees; and more. In other words, the problem is the wholeheartedness of the embrace. It is one thing to praise his accomplishments; it is another to excuse and deny his obvious misuses of power.

Similarly, this is neither a criticism of the evangelical Trump voter nor an endorsement of the Democrats. The 2016 election confronted evangelical voters with an impossible dilemma: Vote for a pro-choice candidate whose policies would advance so much of what we oppose, or vote for an extravagantly immoral candidate who could well damage the standing of the republic and the witness of the church. Countless men and women we hold in the highest regard voted for President Trump, some wholeheartedly and some reluctantly. Friends we love and respect have also counseled and worked within the Trump administration. We believe they are doing their best to serve wisely in a fallen world.

We nevertheless believe the evangelical alliance with this presidency has done damage to our witness here and abroad. The cost has been too high. American evangelicalism is not a Republican PAC. We are a diverse movement that should collaborate with political parties when prudent but always standing apart, at a prophetic distance, to be what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the conscience of the state.” That is what we believe. This is where we plant our flag. We know we are not alone.

Now, to the table. A table is a place of welcome, a place where bread is broken and friendships are forged. In a political landscape dominated by polarization, hostility, and misunderstanding, we believe it’s critical for Christians to model how to have a firm opinion and host free discussion at the same time. Evangelicals of different stripes cannot continue to shout one another down, bully those who disagree, or exclude one another and refuse to listen.

We hold fast to our view that the wholehearted evangelical embrace of Trump has been enormously costly—but we are committed to irenic conversation with men and women of good faith who believe otherwise. (And since an open letter was published even as we were preparing to publish this statement, let me simply say that I appreciate the thoughts it expresses, and I hope this statement too can be the beginning of a dialogue.)

In the words of Proverbs 27:6, “faithful are the wounds of a friend” (ESV). Deeply aware of our own sinfulness and limitations, we are going to invite supporters and critics alike to produce essays agreeing or disagreeing with our stated views. It is time for evangelicals to have a serious discussion about how our identity as Christians shapes our activity as citizens. We will invite authors who represent a variety of viewpoints in a thoughtful and charitable manner. We will publish those essays in mid-January. We hope we can come together in convicted humility and learn from one another.

Now it is time for Christmas. Christ is still the light that shines upon a people living in darkness. We look forward to resuming the conversation soon.

The flag is planted. The table is set. We invite you to join us at either one.

Timothy Dalrymple is president and CEO of Christianity Today.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/december-web-only/trump-evangelicals-editorial-christianity-today-president.html

 

 

[Mikey 16,578]

46 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Well, it isn't.  I've followed the magazine for the better part of 30 years and I'm a subscriber.  It's solidly evangelical and biblically orthodox.

You ever watch the cool little Clint Eastwood movie: "Bronco Billy"? There's a line in it that I love. When someone complains about the authenticity of the performers in his wild west show Billy responds: "That's the beauty of the Bronco Billy Wild West Show, everybody can be whatever they want to be". I think religion is kind of like that, everybody can choose their own relationship with God and the various organizations involved.

Beyond that, I'm totally unqualified to discuss the intricacies of religion. Bowing out, more or less gracefully.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

35 minutes ago, Mikey said:

You ever watch the cool little Clint Eastwood movie: "Bronco Billy"? There's a line in it that I love. When someone complains about the authenticity of the performers in his wild west show Billy responds: "That's the beauty of the Bronco Billy Wild West Show, everybody can be whatever they want to be". I think religion is kind of like that, everybody can choose their own relationship with God and the various organizations involved.

Beyond that, I'm totally unqualified to discuss the intricacies of religion. Bowing out, more or less gracefully.

I can't, and wouldn't, speak for your wife in particular.  But what I've found with CT (and other outlets) is that virtually every time I've looked into an accusation that they have "gone left" or caved to progressive/liberal theology, it's over a political matter.  They've written an article that in some way doesn't support or back some position that the modern American conservative political movement does, and therefore they are left-wing and can no longer be trusted.  It's never about any central article of evangelical Christianity like the authority of Scripture, the divinity of Jesus, the doctrine of the Trinity, the sanctity of human life, the centrality of the Gospel, or the call to share one's faith.

What that tells me is that a whole lot of American Christians have blurred the lines between their faith and their political loyalties so much, they are no longer able to separate the two or recognize that they're doing it.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

It appears that Franklin Graham may have been making up what his father felt about Trump and how he voted (or that he voted at all).  Days before the election in 2016, he granted an interview with the Charlotte Observer about his dad.  His own words seem to contradict what he's saying now.

When asked how his father was doing, he said, “Not great. He’s 98.”  He also said, “He’s real quiet. Doesn’t say much” and “Can’t see. His mind is clear. … But he speaks in sentences of one word.” 

Again, this was days before the election Franklin now claims his father voted in and discussed with him.

The paper then asked him directly about his father’s political views. The Observer writes: “As for this year’s presidential race, Billy Graham ‘knows who’s running and that kind of stuff,’ his son said, but there are no real conversations with him about it. ‘He’s 98.’”

https://www.thestate.com/living/religion/article112491462.html

 

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Topical article:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/12/david-nasser-jerry-falwell-jr-liberty-university.html

 

The Buffer

At Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr. has a secret weapon for muffling student dissent.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/23/thanks-be-god-christianity-todays-actually-evangelical-message/

(emphasis mine)

Thanks be to God for Christianity Today’s actually evangelical message

By John M. Buchanan 

Dec. 23, 2019 at 2:02 p.m. EST

The Rev. John M. Buchanan is pastor emeritus of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago.

The Christianity Today editorial supporting the removal from office of President Trump is a remarkable and important document. It is also courageous. Widely read and widely respected, Christianity Today is thoughtful, its tone is consistently civil, and it is unapologetically evangelical.

In that a significant majority of white evangelicals support Trump and about a third say there is virtually nothing he could do to diminish that support, the coming backlash against Christianity Today is inevitable.

It might cost the magazine subscribers and advertisers. So, I register my gratitude and respect for Christianity Today.

I write those words as the former editor/publisher of the Christian Century, the recognized voice of mainline Protestantism and progressive Christianity. The late Billy Graham founded Christianity Today, in part, to counter the influence of the Christian Century. The two journals are different, often espousing different theologies and social positions. But both take seriously the role of Christianity in the world and the body politic, and both are devoted to truth-telling. Both Christianity Today and the Christian Century hold to the biblical promise that “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

As always, whenever anyone dares to criticize him, Trump had a digital tantrum, calling Christianity Today a left-wing magazine and claiming that it is failing. Neither is remotely true, and this once again reveals the president’s profound ignorance. The iron grip the president has on evangelical Christians, despite lying, serial adultery, making fun of people with physical and emotional handicaps, separating infants and children from their parents at the border and confining them in cages, betraying allies and cozying up to dictators, remains a mystery.

I ponder all the suggested reasons: that it’s a matter of appointing judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade, that it is a response to secular, liberal culture; that it is a Faustian bargain to slow the pace of broader social change. But none of those seem to warrant evangelicals’ unquestioned, lock-step support. Nor does it adequately explain the unwavering support of the GOP, once the party of “family values” and traditional morality. And it makes Christianity Today’s position all the more remarkable, important and courageous.

There is no doubt that the president of the United States used the power of his office to try to coerce a foreign government, an allied government under siege, at war with Russia, to open an investigation into the president’s potential political rival to enhance his own chance of winning the next election. That is, quite simply, wrong: politically wrong, humanly wrong, morally wrong. I happen to believe that the Founders were on to something profound, indeed something very close to the political anthropology of the Bible, when they set forth a government based on the brave assertion that we are all created equal and have God-given rights. On that basis, they created a form of government designed to guarantee that those sacred rights were protected.

They built an ingenious government balanced on three centers of power: executive — the presidency; legislative — Congress; and judicial — the courts. Each of the three branches lives in tandem and has respect for the autonomy and authority of the other two branches. The president’s utter dismissal of the authority of Congress to hold the executive branch accountable is perhaps the most egregious — and surely a “high crime and demeanor” — of his dismal behavior.

But at some point, the president’s personal behavior and political policies collide with values that are central to Christian faith and practice, the values that Jesus taught. All Christians revere Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as an example of how his followers should aspire to live. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” Jesus said. How does that not collide with the president’s insulting words about Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) mourning the death of her husband, longtime congressman John Dingell?

Christians all — liberal and conservative, evangelical and progressive — are about to celebrate Christmas, recalling the story of Jesus’ birth. Part of that story is King Herod’s murderous rage at the news the Magi brought him, that a new king had been born. His response was to order the slaughter of all baby boys in and around Bethlehem. Mary, Joseph and their newborn fled to Egypt to escape.

As the president tightens rules about immigration, even in the case of people fleeing violence and persecution, Christians are reminded that their Lord himself and his family were political refugees.

Thanks be to God for Christianity Today, for the courage and faithfulness to speak an evangelical word of truth and justice.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/20/trumps-rage-christianity-today-gives-away-his-scam/

Trump’s rage at Christianity Today gives away his scam

(emphasis mine)

President Trump just erupted in a rage at the magazine Christianity Today over its scathing, moralistic call for his removal over the Ukraine scandal. In so doing, Trump shed light on his understanding of the oft-debated oddity that millions of evangelical Christians remain loyal to the most hateful, depraved, self-dealing and self-aggrandizing individual to occupy the Oval Office in modern history.

In an unwittingly self-revealing moment, Trump responded to the magazine’s indictment of his profound moral failings with an argument that is thoroughly transactional and megalomaniacal: How dare you criticize me, after all the power I’ve granted to your movement? You’re breaking our deal, and now you’re dead to me.

Trump raged:

....have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President. No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close. You’ll not get anything from those Dems on stage. I won’t be reading ET again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019

The magazine’s core indictment is that Trump “attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader” to “discredit” one of his “political opponents.” It adds that Trump “abused his authority for personal gain” in a “profoundly immoral” manner that damages the presidency, the country, and “the spirit and the future of our people.”

This depiction is unequivocally correct. The White House’s own summary of the July 25 call captures Trump doing just this: While withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from a vulnerable ally, Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation that would smear potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden with an entirely fabricated narrative.

Trump’s response again called this “perfect” conduct, reminding us that he is thoroughly unrepentant about all of it.

Christianity Today also indicts Trump’s personal immorality, his nonstop lies and his serial degradation of others, concluding that Trump is “morally lost and confused.”

This nonbeliever will not grapple with the deep spiritual currents underlying this phrasing, and will only note that Trump plainly hasn’t spent a second wrestling with the morality of these actions or their impact on others, and that his only discernible reigning ethic is that if you can get away with grabbing something, it’s rightfully yours.

Indeed, the transactional cast to Trump’s rage over this is particularly instructive, once you understand that Trump and his top advisers have consciously enlisted the nation’s evangelicals as an army of Trump defenders in the war against impeachment, which is widely depicted in the evangelical movement as a kind of epic persecution of Trump carried out by the godless and the damned.

As Sarah Posner details in a terrific piece, this effort is concerted, multifaceted and highly organized. Numerous high-profile evangelicals regularly depict impeachment as a disruption of God’s plan for America to be governed by Christians in accord with “biblical” values.

Impeachment is merely the weapon that the secular, satanic left is wielding to carry out its broader pro-abortion, anti-religious-liberty agenda, which requires the removal of Trump, the savior of Christian America, all to keep the persecution of Christians going at full throttle.

And on top of all that, as Posner notes, Trump is giving evangelicals unprecedented power and access:

With him in the White House, Christian right ideologues have virtual carte blanche to run his administration, as he has handed them control over personnel and policy at a level they could have only dreamed of, even under admired presidents like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Trump has handed them conservative judicial nominees, from the Supreme Court down to federal trial courts, and also has installed longtime evangelical allies at key Cabinet posts.

For all these reasons, the Christianity Today editorial won’t diminish Trump’s evangelical support. As Ezra Klein notes, the conviction that evangelicals are on the losing end of the “post-Christian culture war” is powerfully and deeply felt.

he result of this, according to Robert Jones, a longtime tracker of evangelical attitudes, has been a broad shift of evangelical opinion from Bill Clinton’s time, when personal morality in leaders was a central preoccupation of the movement, to the present.

“In theological terms, Trump has been able to convert evangelical political ethics from an ethic of principle to a consequentialist ethic, where the ends justify the means,” Jones, the author of “The End of White Christian America,” told me.

Trump’s promise to evangelicals, Jones added, was to “restore power and dominance to the Christian churches” at a time when “the demographics of the country are changing, you’re on the losing end of that, I’m going to turn back the clock, I’m the only one who can do that.”

The unacceptable bargain with Trump

Responding to this whole controversy, Christianity Today’s editor in chief, Mark Galli, has now directly engaged with this bargain that many evangelicals have made with Trump.

As Galli noted, there is no longer any way to avoid acknowledging Trump’s moral and temperamental unfitness for the presidency. Continuing to look the other way to get more judges and so forth is no longer worth the moral and spiritual costs to Christianity itself.

“The moral scales no longer balance,” Galli told the Atlantic. “We’ve been a movement that has said the moral character of our leaders is really important,” Galli continued, adding that the association of evangelicals with Trump will do “horrific” damage to their ability to share the Gospel with others.

It’s perversely revealing that Trump’s response to all this is to rage that evangelicals are indeed getting a good deal out of their bargain with him.

But this transaction — as Trump himself defines it here — also requires pretending along with Trump that his conduct was “perfect."

This is the rub. As Galli puts it, the problem that should be staring evangelicals in the face is that what we’ve all discovered about Trump’s corruption and amorality “is actually true.”

Trump has granted evangelicals power in exchange for their unwavering support, but the bargain now includes a requirement that they pretend Trump’s wretchedly corrupt subversion of the country’s interests to his own simply isn’t happening, or that it’s absolutely fine.

For some evangelicals, at least, this bargain has crossed over into a species of scam that they can no longer accept.

 

LOL!  "ET".  And as if he ever read CT in the first place.

 

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/evangelicals-have-been-reshaped-into-the-image-of-trump-himself/2019/10/28/f37f5154-f9c0-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html

White evangelical Protestants are fully disrobed. And it is an embarrassing sight.

It has always struck me as strange that a narrative about genocide — Noah and the ark — should be employed as a children’s story. As the other boys and girls in Sunday school focused on the cuteness of the rescued animals, I remember thinking about the mass of humanity desperately clawing to get into Noah’s boat. This exposed an early tendency to see the glass as half-empty — particularly when it contained so many floating corpses.

Now I understand that all the best stories have sharp edges of tragedy and danger. Even so, the story of Noah is an odd curricular choice for young children. Fresh off the boat, according to the biblical account, he plants a vineyard, gets drunk and lies naked in his tent. This is a source of consternation to Noah’s sons, who don’t want to see the dark side, much less the backside, of their father. So they cover him with a handy duvet.

Rabbinic and early Christian scholars — figuring that there must be more to the story than meets the eye — postulated that adultery, rape or castration were somehow involved. But there is an application closer at hand.

I thought of drunken, naked Noah while reading the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2019 American Values Survey. In the PRRI survey’s pages, white evangelical Protestants (WEPs) are fully disrobed. And it is an embarrassing sight.

Consider the matter of immigration. Republicans who are WEPs are the most likely group to say that immigrants are invading America and changing its culture. More than 90 percent of WEPs favor more restrictive immigration policies. They support the policy of family separation at the border more strongly than other religious groups and more strongly than Americans as a whole.

How have we come to the point that American evangelicals are significantly crueler in their attitude toward migrant children than the national norm? The answer is simple enough. Rather than shaping President Trump’s agenda in Christian ways, they have been reshaped into the image of Trump himself. Or, more accurately, they have become involved in a political throuple with Trump and Fox News, in which each feeds the grievances and conspiracy thinking of the others.

Christine Emba: Why millennials are skipping church and not going back

The result has properly been called cultlike. For many followers, Trump has defined an alternative, insular universe of facts and values that only marginally resembles our own. According to the PRRI poll, nearly two-thirds of WEPs deny that Trump has damaged the dignity of his office. Ponder that a moment. Well over half of this group is willing to deny a blindingly obvious, entirely irrefutable, manifestly clear reality because it is perceived as being critical of their leader. Forty-seven percent of WEPs say that Trump’s behavior makes no difference to their support. Thirty-one percent say there is almost nothing that Trump could do to forfeit their approval. This is preemptive permission for any violation of the moral law or the constitutional order. It is not support; it is obeisance.

An extraordinary 99 percent of Republican WEPs oppose the impeachment and removal of the president — which probably puts me in the smallest political minority I have ever had the honor of occupying.

If Trump survives the impeachment process and somehow wins a second term, many explanations will be offered. It may be that the Democratic Party went too far left, or picked a nominee with a glass jaw, or couldn’t swim against the political tide of a good economy. But there will be one reason behind all of these reasons: because evangelicals lost their taste for character and gave their blessing to corruption. And this grand act of hypocrisy would mark them for a generation.

The reform of evangelicalism is probably the work of men and women of a rising generation, who have significantly different views and values from their elders. About two-thirds of young white evangelicals believe that immigrants strengthen the country. Their approval of Trump is significantly lower. Time will work in favor of sanity.

But we should not underestimate the cultural trauma that many leaders of the religious right have inflicted. It is in the order of things that a younger generation should challenge the views and values of its parents. It is a source of cynicism and social disruption when an older generation betrays civilizing values in full sight of its children. Many evangelical leaders now lie drunk, naked and exposed.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

A good Twitter thread that succinctly explains the divide between the fundamentalists and the evangelicals, Christian Post vs Christianity Today, over Trump:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1210307139719376897.html