Wendell Griffen: "Chickens of Racism, Materialism and Militarism Have Come Home to Roost in the Convergence of Trump’s Presidency and the COVID-19 Pandemic"

 I'd like to point readers to a valuable essay my friend Wendell Griffen published two days ago in Baptist News Global. It's entitled "Our national curse: the cruel convergence of Trump’s presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic." Wendell does an impressive job of connecting the dots to show that "the chickens of racism, materialism and militarism have come home to roost in the convergence of Trump’s presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic." He writes:

Quote for the Day: Fred Clark on How "Evangelical Christianity Is Turning into 8chan"

At his Slacktivist site today, Fred Clark reports on the decision of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University to make a biographical film about "firefighter prophet" Mark Taylor. As Kyle Mantyla explains at Right Wing Watch, Taylor is a former firefighter who states that as he was watching Fox News, God told him Donald Trump would become president, but only after President Obama had served a second term and built "righteous anger" among God's people that would lead to Trump's election. 

Frank Schaeffer on Why White Evangelicals Love Trump: "The Context Is American Racism" — Implications for White Catholic "Pro-Life" Voters

This is the kind of testimony that white Catholics who claim to be motivated solely by opposition to abortion as they cast their votes do not want to hear. I wonder why?

It's Never About Racism: White Catholic Voters, Abortion, and How the Religious Right Culture Wars Began (Hint: It's About Racism)

In 1958, Jerry Falwell wrote the following:

“When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line,” and said that integration of “blacks & whites...will destroy our race eventually.”

This is the root of today’s #MAGA movement. They haven’t changed.

— Chris (@goingglocal) January 27, 2018

It's never about the racism with white Catholics who have signed onto the culture wars of the U.S. Catholic bishops, and who vote — or so they say — primarily on the basis of the single issue of abortion (with same-sex marriage also often thrown into their calculus as they choose predictably to vote Republican). It's never about racism with the alliance those white Catholics made a long time ago with white evangelicals who got the religious right ball rolling because of overt racism.

As Manafort Goes Up in Flames, Major White Evangelical Leaders Tweet About . . . Something Else, Anything but Manafort

.@RobertJeffress discusses the importance for Christ followers to fight for religious freedom. #FamilyTalk https://t.co/wdZkNSf6iu

— Family Talk (@DrJamesDobsonFT) October 30, 2017

 

As the man who managed the campaign of the moral monstrosity placed in the White House by eight in ten white evangelicals and some six in ten white Catholics and Mormons goes up in flames on #MuellerMonday — the man I'm talking about is Paul Manafort, of course — it's fascinating to see what the leading white evangelical epigones of that moral monstrosity in the White House are tweeting about this morning.

The tweet above is what Reverend Robert Jeffress tweeted* just after news broke about Manafort's and Gates' indictments.