Pastor Billy Graham’s daughter Anne Graham Lotz, says that God allows terror attacks “because of transgenders and theory of evolution.” Cardinal Caffarra, speaking May 19 to the Rome Life Forum, to 100 family values leaders from over 20 nations, warned that Satan is hurling “ultimate and terrible challenge” at God by society embracing gay families. In his speech, the Italian cardinal warned that we are now facing a “frightful war” on marriage and the family but urged the faithful not to be afraid, to witness to Christ, as the victory is “already won.” Meanwhile Jerry Falwell Jr., denounced any Republican congressmen — including his fellow white evangelicals — who does less than support Trump 100 percent. He hurled what he considered to be the ultimate insult at them by calling them “moderates.” Moderates Falwell said, “make my blood boil!”
To Falwell to be called a moderate is an insult.
United in their extremism and hatred of the Other these evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders represent the new “ecumenism.” It’s not about theology but power.
This is the ecumenism of shared hatreds. Purity of faith (what used to be called “correct theology”) is no longer the point. Unity found in shared hatred is the point.
They call this “Family Values.” These days Family Values have been stretched to include:
- denouncing climate change as a hoax
- “standing up to the gays”
- forcing transgender people to use bathrooms they don’t want to use
- slashing health care for the poor
- deconstructing social services
- banning Muslims
- expelling Hispanics
- rolling back regulations that protect clean air and water
- using voter registration laws to exclude black voters
- destroying the social safety net
- promoting gun ownership
- denying science
- undermining public schools
- being anti-universities
- making the media an enemy
- believing conspiracy theories
- rejecting proven facts as “fake news”
- attacking women’s rights
- resurrecting Jim Crow by supporting mass incarceration in FOR PROFIT prisons
- making sure billionaires get more tax cuts while denying health coverage to poor people
In these denunciations and “stands” evangelicals and Roman Catholic conservatives have found a new unity. Theology — in other words believer’s ideas about Jesus and what we think he said as reported in the Bible and church traditions — is no longer the key issue for these believers. Political power over others is the issue that unites.
When I was a child — being raised in a fundamentalist evangelical mission — my parents Francis and Edith Schaeffer, worked to get Roman Catholics “saved.”
As I describe in my memoir — CRAZY FOR GOD: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back — my parents considered all Roman Catholics as “lost.” Dad used to travel from Switzerland to Milan Italy once a month to conduct “the only Christian Bible study in Italy.” By the word Christian Dad meant to describe fundamentalist evangelical Protestants just like himself- or as he’d say “real born-again Christians.” Everyone else was lost and the Other.
The concept of the Other persists. But American Evangelicals have however redrawn their lines of exclusion. Now Roman Catholic white conservatives who voted for Trump are “in” and “saved” (as it were) while Hispanic evangelicals who believe in Jesus the “right way” but who voted for Hillary are “out” and “lost.”
These days the Other isn’t perceived as a lost person who needs Jesus, but as a political enemy who needs (in Trump’s famous words) a “punch in the face.”
For instance the Trump-supporter and president of the largest evangelical college Jerry Falwell Jr., reserves special scorn moderates in the Republican fold. “I think evangelicals have found their dream president,” Jerry Falwell Jr., said. He added that he’s not happy about the “moderate Republicans in Congress” who seem to be obstructing the President’s agenda. “These moderates just make my blood boil,” Falwell said. “These moderates pretend to be conservatives, they woo conservative voters, and then they’re not conservative when they get in office. So that part just makes my blood boil!”
The “moderates” Falwell hates include the few white evangelicals in Congress who are slightly more inclusive and slightly more compassionate than the hardest line far right fundamentalists who now control the Republican Party.
At any other period of history these moderate evangelical Republicans would have been perceived as far right extremists. But today they are moderate by comparison to the “mainstream” Republican Party that is no longer even an American-style political party but rather a collection of white supremacist fascist Nazi-style oligarchs in service to billionaires.
As for religious leaders what they are saying these days would have been unimaginable back in the day- for instance when I was a religious right leader as my father’s nepotistic sidekick in the 1970s and 1980s. But today this is the new “normal.” For instance, religious right activist “Coach” Dave Daubenmire declared on his “Pass The Salt Live” webcast on May 31, 2017 that America needs “a more violent Christianity.” He cited President Trump and Greg Gianforte (the GOP congressional candidate whop attacked a reporter) as examples of violent men who are properly “walking in authority.”
“The only thing that is going to save Western civilization is a more aggressive, a more violent Christianity,” he said.
Playing a clip of Trump shoving aside the prime minister of Montenegro at a recent NATO summit so that he could stand in front of the group of assembled leaders, Daubenmire heaped praise on Trump for showing that “he is large and in charge.”
“Look at him,” Daubenmire screamed gleefully while watching the clip. “They’re all little puppies, ain’t nobody barking at him … He’s walking in authority. He walked to the front and center and they all know it, too, man. He just spanked them all.”
Trump’s behavior is an example for the church, Daubenmire said. “The Lord is showing us a picture of the authority we should be walking in.” Daubenmire then cited Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte’s assault on a reporter the day before he won a special election in Montana as another example for the church.
“People are sick and tired of it,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘Yes, a fighter! Go, dude, go!’ … Who won? The dude that took the other dude to the ground.”
“That should be the heart cry of Christian men,” Daubenmire said. “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of God has suffered violence and violent men take it by force.”
Their violent god is not Jesus but the ever more toxic legacy of power and wealth, Ayn Rand.
The ecumenism of shared hatred crosses other former religious barriers too. White American evangelicals love Vladimir Putin and his anti-gay stand. Thus they love the far right white nationalist Russian Orthodox Church that supports Putin, as he launches his police to beat and kill gays and political opponents.
As noted in New York magazine, “Trump and his alt-right fan-base are hardly the only Americans who deeply admire Vladimir Putin: He has a fairly large fan club among politically active U.S. Christian conservatives.”
Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, National Organization for Marriage leader Brian Brown, and American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer, all love Putin. His homophobia and Islamophobia has made Putin one of the Christian right’s favorite international figures.
Putin’s attacks on “gay propaganda” have been particularly heartwarming to Christian-right voters. Here’s Franklin Graham positively man-crush gushing about Putin during a trip to Russia:
I very much appreciate that President Putin is protecting Russian young people against homosexual propaganda. If only to give them the opportunity to grow up and make a decision for themselves. Again, homosexuals cannot have children, they can take other people’s children. I believe that President Obama (and I’ll repeat, he’s a very nice person) is leading America down the wrong road. He’s taking a stand against God.
Caffarra, the archbishop emeritus of Bologna and Billy Graham’s deranged white nationalist Trump-loving daughter and Billy’s even more deranged son all believe that this time in history is a decisive confrontation fought over marriage and the family and sexuality. God and Satan are at war over sex. Putin, the murderer of political opponents and journalists is fine with them because he hates and fears gays too.
“At the root of this is the work of Satan, who wants to build an actual anti-creation,” Cardinal Caffarra said. “This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan is hurling at God. ‘I am demonstrating to you that I am capable of constructing an alternative to your creation. And man will say: it is better in the alternative creation than in your creation.’”
The Graham daughter and leader of AnGel Ministries in North Carolina said during an appearance on right-wing pundit Steve Deace’s radio show, that God has abandoned America because of transgender rights. The US is under the judgment of God in part because “we embrace of the theory of evolution,” which started “this downward spiral away from God.”
Or as the cardinal added in his presentation: “There is no truth” in Satan, “who seeks to kill truth in the heart of man by inducing” him to unbelief.”
Satan is therefore always working against the Lord’s strong force of attraction to himself, seeking to “neutralize” it. And this battle within the human heart becomes manifest in society and culture, leading to “the culture of the truth and the culture of the lie.”
The “culture of the lie” is the “ennoblement of homosexuality,” the cardinal said, which “in fact denies entirely the truth of marriage, the mind of God the Creator with regard to marriage.”
Marriage has a “permanent structure” in the mind of God because the union of man and woman is the “human cooperation in the creative act of God,” Cardinal Caffarra said.
The World Congress of Families, a global network of anti-LGBT and anti-abortion activists held this year’s global summit in Budapest, Hungary.
Many American religious conservatives participated, along with activists from around the world. The ecuminism of hate was in full swing.
Event organizers hailed Hungary’s strongman leader Viktor Orban as a pro-family “hero.” Orban addressed participants on Thursday with what the Guardian called a “typically pugnacious speech” that accused the European Union of being “dominated by a ‘relativising liberal ideology that’s an insult to families.’” More from the Guardian:
The four-day pro-family extravaganza—which will be attended by 3,000 delegates and will include events at the national parliament and other venues of symbolic importance—is the latest episode in Orban’s quest to position himself as a self-styled defender of “European Christian values”, a role he has used to justify his Fidesz government’s draconian treatment of mainly Muslim refugees and migrants.
Adolf Hitler is often used as an example of what happens to a society when traditional Christian moral and social values are abandoned. In reality, one of the reasons why Hitler was so popular with conservative Christians in Germany was precisely because he like Putin, promised to restore traditional morality. He opposed abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and just about everything else conservative Christians complained were ruining modern Germany.
These quotes of Hitler’s were complied by in “Adolf Hitler on Tradition: Quotes on Needing Moral Values.” They could have been spoken to wild applause at any gathering of white evangelical voters, or “family values” Catholic or “tradition-defending” Russian Orthodox bishops, or by Trump in a speech crafted for him by his evangelical advisors like Ralph Reed and Franklin Graham.
Hitler: Woman’s World is Husband, Family, Children, Home
Woman’s world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men.
– Adolf Hitler, quoted in Lucy Komisar, The New Feminism
Hitler: Media Must be Cleansed of Sexual Filth
Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth…Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.
– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 10
Hitler: Decline of Christianity in Europe is Dangerous
While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine — an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular — right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable.
– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 10
Hitler: Institution of Marriage Must Be Defended
A Volkisch state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.
– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2
Hitler: Burn out the Poison of Immorality
Today Christians … stand at the head of [this country]… I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past … (few) years.
– Adolf Hitler, quoted in: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872
To mention Hitler and the white evangelical Trump voters and conservative Roman Catholics in one article is no longer a stretch.
The white Trump voters embrace Putin. Putin is a mass murderer. He has his opponents killed worldwide. He was behind the shooting down of a Dutch civilian airliner to make a point. He invades small innocent neighbors. He is a plutocrat and at the heart of a kleptocracy. Putin is a thief and thus now a billionaire who has stolen his country’s wealth. He has an estimated net worth of $200 billion fortune, 58 planes and helicopters and 20 palaces and country retreats.
Those who love Putin’s “stand” for “morality” indeed love a killer and international criminal just as horrible, ruthless and immoral as Hitler.
As noted in the Washington Post,
The white right and Trump/Putin fascism share these attributes with Hitler:
Hyper-nationalism; Militarism; glorification of violence and readiness to use it in politics; fetishization of masculinity; leader cult; lost-golden-age syndrome; self-definition by opposition (Fascists defined themselves as the bulwark against various evils and menaces to the nation); Hierarchical party structure and tendency to purge the disloyal (“moderates) and Theatricality. In style and rhetoric, fascism and Putinism and Trumpism and white evangelicalism, are, like European 1930s fascism, highly theatrical.
Trump continues to hold election style ego-boosting rallies… even long after the election. Evangelicals revel in TV preacher hyperbole. Putin has crafted a celebrity cult around himself;f.
As wrote in the Washington Post, “noted in Film and audio of Mussolini and Hitler these days make them seem like clownish buffoons, with their exaggerated gestures, their salutes, their overheated speeches full of absolutes and superlatives. Their rallies evolved into elaborate collective rituals for loyalists…. Trump does not strut across stages like a Mussolini, and Nazi-style torchlit parades are out, but his rhetoric fits the fascist style well.”
Franklin Graham, Putin and Jerry Falwell Jr., also use this Hitlarian method. And Trump, like Hitler, constantly calls things and people the worst or the best ever. His rallies feature repetitive chants. Even his studied frown of disapproval recalls classic Mussolini and Hitler poses.
White evangelicals love Trump. They love Putin. The mask has fallen from the family values Trump-loving religious right. The Putin/Trump-embracing global white religious right is not religious at all, but more purely fascist by the day.
Sean Hannity, Seth Rich, Noah’s Ark and Trump: Why Fake News and Fake (Evangelical) Religion Endures
Trump’s Decision to Pull out Of the Paris Climate Accord Forces Us to Ask the Ultimate Moral Question: Is Human Existence Only a Vicious Arena Where Ruthless Destroyers Compete for Deadly Advantage, Or Do We Still Dare To Yearn For Beauty, Righteousness, Meaning And Purpose?
14 comments. Leave new
1) We are in absolute , total and complete agreement on one thing . The Gospel of Ayn Rand has superseded the Bible in many if not most US Protestant churches as well as a fair number of Catholic and Russian Orthodox Catholic churches not to mention becoming the predominant influence on the Alt/NeoCon what ever NeoLiberal Right as well as the NeoLiberal Left .
2) In reality having had dealings with Trump and his father since the 60’s 70’s saying the Donald ‘ supports ‘ much of anything beyond his personal wealth and moment of fame is a stretch on the best of days . Suffice it to say he is a child in a 70 year old suit who doesn’t ‘stand ‘ for anything other than himself and will say anything in support of that his only agenda … changing his mind quicker than you and I change our socks and underwear in support of his sole agenda
3) Lets not quite go over the edge just yet claiming the Alt Right / NeoCon what ever Right and their sycophants are quite in the Hitler / Nazi camp just yet . Granted they’re damn close but for the moment they’re still deeply entrenched in their greed addled NeoLiberal agenda … which once again leads up back to the Gospel of Ayn Rand
4) I’ve always found it ironic that in ” Mein Kampf ” Hitler warned about the demise of the Christian faith but once in power went out of his way to disassemble and destroy it in order to replace it with an occultism and state based religion of his own and his minions making
5) Perhaps I missed it but I think you forgot to add misogyny to the list of ills/sins of the Alt/NeoCon Right and the Evangelical / Roman churches
In conclusion though Frank … as one who was mentored by a Van Til protege .. influenced deeply by your fathers apologetics .. and though still holding on to my Biblical faith ( do not for a minute dare to call my wife or I an ‘ Evangelical ‘ ) having lost my ‘religion’ a decade ago due to the blatant and obvious hypocrisy of the Church .. and on many subjects am on your side ..
Might I suggest Frank that you tone it down from mad rant to thoughtful and insightful commentary ? Or to borrow a pop culture idiom .. turn it down from 11 to about a 7 . Suffice it to say you and I could fill this Blog for a month of Sundays pointing out all the hypocrisies and dishonesties of the Church without so much as making a single criticism towards the Faith they’ve so willingly abandoned … not to mention at least another month of Sundays exposing the influence of Ayn Rand upon the Right without nary a mention of Hitler or the Nazi party . . And to be honest Frank having known your work for years you’d be much more effective as well as reaching a wider audience that needs to hear much of what you’re saying if you did .
Lastly .. a couple of articles ago you made mention of the Evangelical heresy regarding Israel claiming that it has its roots all the way back to the 40’s . I’ve only been aware of that heresy’s existing since the 80’s ( I discovered that when in Seminary in the mid 80s ).. so could you please provide a few references to show that it existed as early as you claim ? To be fair I’m not questioning the veracity of your claim .. I simply need the historical references and context in order to adjust my claims if necessary
TJ Martin
Thanks for the thoughtful reply… Best, F
Good article. I’m in the middle of reading your book Crazy for God.
thanks!
Hello Frank, I’m a Christian who agrees that many Christians are gravelly wrong or mislead by politics. It’s gotten difficult for me to attend any church where I live in right-wing Indiana. I read your book Crazy For God several years ago, and I remember, I believe, that you said then you were going to a Greek Orthodox church. Do you still feel comfortable there? I really would like to find a group of good Christians who don’t think like these extreme right-wingers, but do believe that Jesus is the son of God and that the Bible is, although not in a literal sense necessarily, but mystically perhaps – the true word. Does any group like that exist? Thank you or others in advance if you can help. Sometimes I feel really lonely as a seeker.
Hi Susan, I do feel comfortable there… but that is because it happens that I’m in a local community of very open tolerant people. We come together for liturgy, not politics… and members range from atheists there for the old village atmosphere and community, to devout litreralists… and all points between. As for the “denomination” it is not representative of my views on so many things… But I could say the same about the country I live in too. Best, F
Susan, you may feel comfortable at an Episcopal Church. Our theology is pretty mainstream. We focus on the traditional liturgy and sacraments, as opposed to long-winded bombastic preaching. The people are polite and friendly but don’t “get all up in your business.” Most of us don’t take the Bible literally. We allow members to reach their own conclusions and have a diverse membership including a few atheists. I came to the E.C. after 13 years in exile, having been forced to attend right-wing fundie evangelical schools as a child which totally turned me off to Christ. I never thought I’d feel at home in a Christian church but was very pleasantly surprised to find the E.C. a good fit. All the best to you.
Although I agree with the seriousness and urgency in assessing the incompatibility of everything we may know about Jesus of Nazareth with current extreme right wing religious stances, I agree with the above writer, M. Martin, that your writings feel just barely in control. I agree with all you say, and think we are in an emergency of irreligious thought, I too wish you would put your passion and understanding into “less of a rant”. I worry that you’ve been trapped into an emotional overstimulated state which may prevent you from coming up with your best intellectual product for us, your readers. I think you are uniquely prepared by your life history to help others understand the” far right” and its manifestations today. Continue to use your history and talents wisely.
Hi take a look at the free chapter 1 of my new book Letter to Lucy and let me know if that’s the tone you are thinking of… BTW re blogging it’s blogging! As my pal A Huffington told me when I was one of her her first bloggers “Don’t be coy, this isn’t op-ed… blogging is it’s own beast- a contact sport.” Re Trump there is no over-reacting. This is a panic situation and to treat it “reasonably” is nonsense. This is the time to shout “Fire!” not to debate the physics of combustion. We are in a war. Best, F
“War?” Really? More like “The Second Coming” when “[t]he best lack all conviction, while the worst [a]re full of passionate intensity.” Peace, Friend . . . may the Peace of Christ be with you and with your spirit.
I agree with you, Frank. I understand where some of your readers are coming from with regard to the intensity, but I believe your reaction to current events is [unfortunately] appropriate. Great article! The parallels with Nazi Germany are indeed uncanny and disturbing. Not to mention, Pence and his dominionism. Everyone says I am exaggerating and I tell them to read your book “Crazy for God” to understand how we got here, and that the Religious Right is serious about their agenda… I look forward to reading “Letter to Lucy” in the near future. I started reading “Dancing Alone” but have been distracted by life’s drama and this particular book didn’t “pull me in” like all your others did. Anyway, keep up the good work.
I’m old, and so when I read print my brain thinks its a book or magazine I’m interacting with. So I guess I don’t know how to “take ” a blog. Surely there are lots of others in the same fix. We just aren’t yet “with it”. Thanks for replying. I’ll take this under advisement. I do understand that this is an emergency.
Remember the 19th C poem/hymn: “Once to every man and Nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of Truth with falsehood for the Good or evil side—-“. The verses are all pertinent to this Time, Our Time. I’ll try to think of you on a soapbox in the blog, not calmly writing in your study. Thanks for continuing to keep up the Good Fight. So may we all.
You hysterical vulgarians who equate Trump to Hitler have really painted yourselves into a corner, as Trump simply shrugs off your nonsense and goes about the business of governing. Now you are left with nothing else to call him, as you have used up the worst of your silly insults and vile epithets, as well as exposed your intolerance of differing points of view. I laugh at you and your idiocy.
I was just listening to your orthodox talk. I was so amazed by it. What happened to you that you left that? Was it not popular enough for you to make money from that?