Last night there was a Twitter thread that asked who disappointed you the most in the Trump era? While some people named specific politicians others talked about evangelicals they once knew, their pastor, people like Franklin Graham and Eric Metexas. For me the thread hit home in that as I feel devastated by how much was lost these past few years, many other people are also dealing with the same emotions. In the view of this blog American evangelicalism needs to disappear as if stands for nothing and has no character.
“You can tell charlatans when they say ‘big’ in front of everything.“
Harper Reed
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:22-23 NIV
Steve Papez of Milwaukee Metro Cru.
The other night on Twitter I saw an interesting thread take shape. It is worth a brief post after all it captures the emotions of a number of people and topics this blog has written about. And I weighed into the topic in my own personal way. The thread was a political one but then people started to leave other names and faith figures they knew. The thread asked out of all the people you once admired before Trumpism who has disappointed you the most? And while some people started to name specific politicians others started to talk about their former evangelical church or evangelicals they knew. Or they mentioned people like Eric Metaxas or Franklin Graham.
I have to tell you that as of 2021 I feel devastated. I learned that evangelical faith, belief in God and much more was all a lie. And it was the evangelicals who taught me that in the end. I learned that evangelicals have no principles, integrity, character, and in the end no faith. Everything they stood for was all a lie. As I type this post I can recall individuals like my former Crusade director who taught me that a day will come when people want to believe what they want to believe. They will disregard facts and reject truth. And with that we will enter a post truth era. Well who rejected facts, truth, and choose to throw their faith under the bus? Who led the charge into the post-truth era? It was the evangelicals. I have no respect at all for evangelicals like my former Crusade director Steve Papez or my former pastors family from my church in Wisconsin. Someone needs to tell evangelicals that their zipper is down and has been down for years. Stormy Daniels as a porn star has far more character than my former Milwaukee Metro Crusade director and my pastors’ family from Wooded Hills also from Milwaukee. You can read more about this in, “Why Porn Star Stormy Daniels Has More Character and Integrity Than White Evangelical Christians.”
Do any of you have any idea how hard it was to go through the death of your parents? And then to layer this upheaval, fractured friendships and destroyed support systems on top of all that? Did I need all this bullshit? At the time I needed the church the most it failed to do the basic aspects of comforting the grieving and the hurting. Evangelicalism is a lie and to think that so many traded it all away for a man who boasted of grabbing pussy and fucking porn stars. Evangelicals you don’t have the right to preach or share your faith with me, or others. You lost all credibility. I wrote about some of what happened below in a post not long ago called, “What White Evangelicals and Christians I Once Knew Taught Me About Faith in the Trump Era.” Here’s the Tweet that started the thread.
And people started to share and talk about evangelical family members and friends. Or of the evangelical community at large.
Wondering Eagle 
Yes you said it well. Power greatness and money seem to be worshipped more than God Himself. So sad. But the weeding was obviously necessary. Narrow is the road, Jesus said.
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It is beyond crushing to realize that the people who taught you faith were frauds. It stuns and sickens me. It was also painful to watch all this play out. I’m speechless. A bridge was crossed and there is no going back.
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Yes I’ve had to weed out teachers in the past who when I compared them to Jesus and His teachings were missing the Point of our faith.
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Wondering Eagle,
I understand where you are coming from. I am very much an Ex-GOP conservative against Trumpism. All those responses are much the same list I have. Everything for the most presented was a lie and fraud, done in the name of power, influence, transactional expediency, Machiavellian realpolitik, etc.
And here is the supreme irony: Per Scriptures God elevates kings and sets up rulers. I believe that was the case for Trump, BUT not for the reasons all the Evangelical supporters of Trump think. More likely, it was to reveal the utter shallowness and fraud of the vast, vast majority of the Evangelical right members and leadership. The masks are off in front of the entire world and there is NO way they will be able to hide or put them back on ever again. The Christian Left in the US has been impotent and irrelevant for decades, and the Trump era will do that to the Christian Right in very short order. Judgement begins in the house of God per Scriptures. And this unmasking of all the frauds is the first step.
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FWIW,
There were a handful of Evangelicals than did not go all in for Trump (in fact quite the opposite). David French is one example. But as you well know they were excoriated by the followers of The Orange Dear Leader and called all kinds of things from Libtard, Leftie, Marxist, Socialist, Communist, fake Christian, Democrat, Atheist, and so on. Never mind that most of those accusers have no idea what most of those terms _actually_ mean.
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Thats true….but these people were few and far between. In addition to David French who else opposed Trump from a conservative theological background?
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It was a huge shock to see this behavior CM. To lose friends and lose respect for people. I thought l knew people l really did. I was wrong. What people sacrificed for a man who boasted of grabbing pussy and having affairs with porn stars stuns me. Nothing is sacred. The Trump era revealed the moral bankruptcy of evangelicals. It also showed the character of the atheists. It turned everything on its head. There is no going back. I feel like l was dragged doen the street behind a truck emotionally. The disconnect between evangelicals and faith and the Bible thry claim to know is stunning. How did Christians once support Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s? The Trumpist Christians showed me how.
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Agree 100%. I thought I knew these people (including family members in my own case) as well. It was shocking, stunning, and emotionally exhausting as you said. I realize that was reality and the truth all along. And truth does set you free, as Scriptures state.
I realized that my own mother has been a fraud all her life in her supposed “walk with Jesus” and her conversion. She is really a truly racist, unprincipled despicable waste of a human being who hid things well for decades _until_ her Cheeto Jesus was elected. Her principle is like Trump’s is whatever works to get what she wants. I am shocked and angry, yes. But more so that I did not see it sooner. Of course it helped her that she could play all the “Honor your parents” and the mother’s guilt (which all moms have done since we descended from the trees) bullshit cards to deflect and deceive. Especially when I actually gave a shit about Christianity, which unfortunately was several decades.
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“BUT HE HELD UP A BIBLE! A BIBLE!! A BIBLE!!!”
“And gave us a Supreme Court that WILL overturn Roe v Wade! Put Prayer Back in Schools! “Merry CHRISTmas!” instead of “Happy Holidays!”! Anointed President FOREVER Praise His Holy Name!!!”
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I believe the term that fits me best these days is “Biden Republican”.
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Did he close with SCRIPTURE, i.e. “And GOD Shall Send them Strong Delusion, that They Shall Believe a Lie. TSK. TSK.”?
“But He gave us a Supreme Court that WILL overtrurn Roe v Wade! Put Prayer Back in our schools! No more ‘Happy Holidays’, only MERRY CHRISTMAS! And He held up a Bible! A BIBLE! A BIBLE! O COME LET US ADORE HIM!“
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The irony is that SCOTUS even with these Trump appointees will likely not overturn Roe v Wade. I loved seeing Trump and his evangelical cult followers go ballistic when one of “their judges” ruled in a 6-3 decision that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex in Bostock vs.Clayton County, GA.
Of course the libertarian in me says that statism from both TEAM RED and TEAM BLUE is BAD. And Trumpism is TEAM RED statism bar none. So I applauded this decision as I did Obergefell and Masterpiece Cakeshop. God forbid I should think that the Constitution, the BOR, and Federalism be equal opportunity offenders to the sacred cows on both teams of statists.
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I have mentioned here before how my disappointment in many evangelicals has actually strengthened my faith in recent years. It has completely disillusioned me with most of the evangelical church, but my faith has remained. I think that seeing so many self-serving or deformed or counterfeit expressions of faith has only increased my appreciation of and my desire for the real thing.
But make no mistake, I am sincerely disappointed in so many evangelical Christians, and there are vast swaths of evangelicalism which I can no longer respect, which I no longer believe, and which I will no longer give any benefit of the doubt. Seeing so many evangelicals constantly contorting and shifting their definition of faith and the gospel in order to fit their sociopolitical agendas has been both disheartening and angering. There are so many people I used to respect and listen to, and now I believe that in reality they were doing a “bait-and-switch” scheme. I have seen that they are perfectly willing to shape and mold their faith and what they proclaim as “Biblical truth” to conform to and fit their political aims. In so doing, they reveal clearly their true object of faith. When you let your political beliefs mold your understanding of faith, rather than vice versa, you have demonstrated what your true god is.
My faith in God has increased as my faith in (hu)mankind has fallen tremendously. While so many evangelicals now put their faith and trust in politicians and political strongmen to be their “salvation” in their increasingly angry and hate-fueled culture war, while they vigorously defend and lavish praise on their political “messiah” and “deliverer” like the ancient Romans kneeling before Caesar, I am increasingly drawn to Paul’s words in the epistle to the Romans: “Let God be true and every man a liar.” And also to Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits you will know them.”
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Trump has succeeded where Caesar after Caesar failed.
Even the Nazarenes bend the knee, burn the pinch of incense on his altar, and take his Mark.
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My friend of 30 years has turned out to be a Trumper who argues with my Facebook posts and laugh-emojis at them, but I don’t see her doing that to our mutual liberal friends, just me. When I posted last weekend that I got the COVID shot, she got into an argument in the comment section with a couple of my friends, so I deleted that. A few hours later, as I felt the effects of the shot, I looked and saw she laugh-emojid the post. Everybody else has been liking or loving it! I checked the posts of a couple of friends who also wrote they got the shot, but there was no sign of her being petty with them. Just me.
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I hold to the tenets of The Apostle’s Creed as non-negotiable.
They have nothing whatsoever to do with Trump (though I’m glad Biden beat him), partisan politics, or Bart Simpson for that matter.
My faith has not been damaged, nor has it been lessened in any way, because it does not hang on the gods of this world. It’s mine and mine alone.
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Sweet Muff!
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