Trump-supporting Christians have abandoned the call to be Christlike and turned Christianity into something barely recognizable. It’s time to ask ourselves honestly: what are we doing?
I’ve always referred to myself a lifelong Christian, and I intend to remain faithful to God till I die. I’m very grateful for being raised in the church. If not for the solid, heartfelt faith of my parents and extended family, I’m not sure I’d still be wearing the “Christian” label. Because of Trumpism.
Here’s a quote I saw recently, trying to belittle atheists:
“When people choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
I propose that, no, the exact opposite is true:
“When people choose to believe in God, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
It’s true. We have been guilty of a massive lack of discernment, and the sooner we admit it, the better.
First, we paired ourselves with a man who…well, you know the long list of strikes already against him even before he won in 2016. In spite of his many indiscretions and deep-seated vices, we Christians excused and embraced him. Every time some new trespass came to light, we found a way to brush it off.
Everyone is a work in progress; everyone deserves forgiveness and a second chance, but we’re not talking about a friend or coworker here. This is the man on track to be in charge of our country – the primary steward of our taxes, the priority-setter for the whole world. Before election day, he showed us that he was a fake Christian.
It’s practically a Golden Calf. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is in full swing, and nothing has caused more buzz than the full-size golden statue of Donald Trump, dressed in American flag shorts and flip-flops. (I’m not allowed to steal a photo of this statue to show you, but you can see it here. It’s quite a sight, and it was made in Mexico.)
Honestly, if this statue doesn’t wake conservative Christians up to the idolatry they’re indulging in, nothing will – unless Charlton Heston comes back from the dead and recaps his Moses. That might do it.
Oh, wait. I spoke too soon – check it out. It didn’t work.
This is a come-to-Jesus moment for y’all, conservative, Evangelical Christians. You have a golden statue in front of you. It’s so obvious, you can’t possibly miss it…can you?
I spent most of my life as a conservative, Evangelical Christian. I often wonder, if I hadn’t gotten out around 2014, would the Trump frenzy have caused me to leave? I honestly don’t know. I do know that, as unnerving as it was to leave behind something I’d known all my life, I couldn’t stay with something that I’d seen to be so defective.
I pray that my Evangelical-leaning, pro-Trump readers will courageously open their eyes now when an almost-literal Golden Calf is staring you in the face.
A golden statue of Donald Trump that has caused a stir at the annual US gathering of conservatives was made in Mexico – a country the former president frequently demonized.
The statue is larger than life, with a golden head and Trump’s trademark suit jacket with a white shirt and red tie. Video and pictures of the tribute being wheeled through the halls of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, went viral on Friday.
The conference is seen as a vital gathering of the Republican right, and this year has become a symbol of Trump’s continued grip on the party, despite being cast out of office after two impeachments, seemingly endless parades of scandals, and a botched response to the coronavirus pandemic that has cost half a million lives in the US.
For more than a quarter-century, professional golf has endured a binary existence: a tournament either had Tiger Woods in the field or it did not.Everything flowed from his presence or lack thereof — prestige, television ratings, gallery size, buzz. Wins by his competitors were even plunked in two buckets: Did you beat Tiger? Or did you just beat everyone else?
In America’s bloody history of racial violence, the little-known Elaine Massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas, which took place in October 1919, a century ago this week, may rank as the deadliest. The reasons why the event has remained shrouded and obscure, despite a shocking toll of bloodshed inflicted on the African-American inhabitants of Phillips County, speak to a legacy of white supremacy in the US and ruthless suppression of labor activism that disfigures American society to this day.
Phillips County, located deep in the Arkansas Delta, was largely rural and three-quarters African-American; in the small town of Elaine, there were ten times as many black residents as white. The African Americans of Phillips County, like those throughout the South, were subjected to segregation and disenfranchisement, those twin pillars of white supremacy. But the black sharecroppers and tenant farmers there were also the victims of a particularly harsh form of repression known as “debt peonage.” Under this system, they were loaned money or rented land by plantation owners; they were then forced to sell their crops to the owners at below-market rates and to purchase their food and other supplies from over-priced plantation stores, trapping them in a cycle of perpetual debt, with the owners keeping—and often doctoring—the accounts.
In the spring of 1919, a group of Phillips County African-American sharecroppers and tenant farmers, many of them veterans who had recently returned from service overseas in World War I, decided to challenge this system by joining a union called the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA), which had been founded the year before by army veteran Robert Lee Hill, a black tenant farmer in Winchester, Arkansas. The union’s goal was “to advance the interest of the Negro, morally and intellectually,” and its constitution ended with a proclamation: “WE BATTLE FOR THE RIGHTS OF OUR RACE; IN UNION IS STRENGTH.”
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Arkansas State Archives
The body of Frances Hall, one of the few victims of the massacre who can be identified by name, thanks to the journalists Robert Whitaker and Ida B. Wells, near Elaine, Arkansas, October 1919
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
James' World 2 