Don't blame Jesus. Blame Southern Baptists!

The United States is a democracy. Donald Trump gained power because enough wrong-thinking individuals voted for the man. What has troubled me right from the beginning of his march to the White House was the support Trump received from Christians, especially from the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist group in the U.S.

Donald Trump terrifies me. He also terrifies my wife. Years before Trump's fascism was evident to all, my wife saw through him. For her it was easy, but then she didn't have Jesus blocking her view. Quoting scripture many Southern Baptists saw Trump as the right man for the time. Without the support of the SBC, Trump would never have been elected.

Their mistake, one among many, is seeing the Bible as the instruction manual for life. Got a problem? Turn to God. How? Read the Bible. What a huge, unfair burden to heap on the Good Book. There's a pastor of a London-area church who refuses to follow covid-19 restrictions. He likes to do the-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin as he defends his position. When it comes to stuff like this, my dance card is full. I'd tell him to get on board, make his God proud and do the right thing: wear a mask, practise social distancing and wash your hands.

But taking a wrong-headed message from the Good Book is not new. I encountered this more than sixty years ago when some Bible-thumping, God-fearing folk tried to frighten me into joining their Christian movement with talk of the end-times and the rapture. These were two ideas that even a ten-year-old could see through. The emperor had no cloths, as they say. For a deeper discussion of these two crazy ideas, still sadly making the rounds, read my essay: The Rapture Is Back. Did It Ever Leave?

More and more, people are comparing Donald Trump to Hitler. I think these people are missing the true comparison to be made: Trump's followers compared to Hitler's. Without followers, these two would just be two lonely lunatics. Mean, nasty lunatics. Two hate-filled crazies. One has to add followers to the mix and then, and only then, does all hell break out.

All I the preceding is but a lead up to the following link, a link to a post written by Rebecca Hamilton, a well known pro-life supporter: People Who Stubbornly Follow the Gospels are the Faithful Remnant in the Time of Trump. (I try to check my links. The linked story is a bit strong in language but overall it expresses my fears rather well. But the Patheos site that is hosting Hamilton's post is not to be trusted without careful checking of claims. Be warned.)

I'm going to end this with a short quote from Hamilton's post.

Trump has exposed a lot of things we never wanted to see, and many of us didn’t think were true. 

He has shown us the sheer stupidity of a lot of people. The easy way he has duped people that we’ve known and loved all our lives into believing, supporting and echoing his blatant lies, misogyny and racism has been, to say the least, demoralizing for the rest of us. 

People we love, people we’ve looked up to and trusted, have demonstrated that they are at best easily deluded fools, and at worst, hypocritical phonies. They either don’t believe a lot of the things they have said they believe, or their discernment and judgement are seriously flawed. 

At the same time, our religious leaders, whose discernment and judgement we have been taught to trust without questioning, have demonstrated a callous disregard for the plain teachings of the Scriptures that they claim they represent. This disregard of the Gospels is such an absolute display of faithlessness that it is both breathtaking in its arrogance and faith-challenging for those of us who trusted these men and their leadership.