Here’s a statement from an outspoken Christian that isn’t surprising at all: There are those “who take the Bible seriously and those who don’t.”
When a Creationist says something like that, you know what he means. He’s saying some Christians correctly take every word of the Bible literally, and others who wrongly interpret it metaphorically. When a more progressive pastor says it, he might be referring to Christians who wrongly take passages out of context to trash gay people instead of looking at the text in the way it was always meant to be taken.
But leave it to Pastor Robert Jeffress to divide Christians by their support of Trump, saying those who don’t must not take the Bible seriously.
He made the comments on Wednesday to radio host Janet Mefferd:
“Look, poor President Trump gets blamed for everything from the melting of the polar ice caps to now the evangelical crisis. And you know, that word ‘crisis’ means ‘divide.’ And I will admit there is a divide going on among evangelicals. President Trump didn’t cause the divide, but he has exposed it,” Jeffress said. “It’s been a growing divide, Janet, between evangelicals who take the Bible seriously and those who don’t. I call them the ‘evangelical elite’ — the ‘Christianity of the day’ crowd.”
Jeffress continued, “And here’s where it comes down to — think about this. President Trump is the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-Israel president in history. So why do we have this resistance among the evangelical elite while the mass of evangelicals in the pews support him? And what it comes down to is the evangelical elite really don’t embrace these values.”
For Jeffress, the True Christians™ — the ones who “take the Bible seriously” — are Trump voters. Everyone else is a heretic.
What Jeffress failed to realize is that a lot of Bible-believing Christians also have problems with assaulting women, lying, bragging, reveling in ignorance, bullying, tearing apart families, and not taking your God-given responsibilities seriously. They may be “pro-life,” but they recognize that that best way to prevent abortions is to offer comprehensive sex education, access to free birth control, affordable healthcare, and support for mothers who need it. They may be pro-Israel, but they understand that Trump’s declaration recognizing Jerusalem as the nation’s capitol creates more chaos in an already volatile region.
Somehow, those concerns outweigh Trump’s meaningless executive order pretending to repeal the Johnson Amendment.
Even with his admitted victories, like getting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, occurred only because Republicans gamed the process to prevent President Obama from getting his perfectly acceptable nominee through. For all the moves Trump makes to gain support from his white evangelical base, think about what he’s doing to their reputation. If Trump and evangelical Christianity are attached at the hip, it means evangelicals will have to reckon with accusations of racism, sexism, and complete incompetence on the world’s highest stage.
Trump doesn’t care about that. Jeffress doesn’t care about that. And unless more white evangelicals speak out against the idiocy of this administration, the rest of us have a lot of ammunition to use against them well into the future.
The demographic trends were already headed in our direction, but Trump has been an accelerant.
(via Right Wing Watch)