Tag Archives: evangelism

national news

Evangelicals face a reckoning

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If there is justice lurking in the election returns that have produced a new president of the United States, it well might rest within the evangelical Christian movement.

I now shall explain.

Evangelicals lined up behind Donald J. Trump, a man without even a passing acquaintance with Scripture. He is an admitted philanderer and has acknowledged groping women, grabbing them by their genitals. More than two dozen women have accused him of various forms of sexual assault. He paid a porn star $130,000 to keep quiet about a liaison she said she had with the future president, who also has denied taking the tumble with her during a one-night stand.

They stood with him as he sought re-election. Trump lost that campaign, however, to Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic — the second Catholic ever elected president.

President-elect Biden is devoted to his faith. He attends Mass regularly. The president-elect has suffered unimaginable pain through death. He has buried two of his children, one an infant, the other an adult. His infant daughter died in a car accident that also killed his first wife and grievously injured his two sons.

The president-elect has proclaimed repeatedly over the span of time that his faith in God and his belief in eternal salvation carried him through his grief.

Still, the evangelical movement stood with the alleged sexual assailant and admitted philanderer.

Yes, if there is justice in these election returns, it should present itself with the evangelical Christian movement looking deeply into its political alliance with someone many of us consider to be downright evil.

religious news

Faith on the rise? Yes, but here is a cynical view

Vice President Mike Pence posted this little nugget on Twitter.

Faith in America is rising again because Trump and our entire administration have been advancing the very principles that you learned here in the halls of College.

Yep, you read that correctly. The vice president says the serial philanderer president is “advancing the very principles” taught at Hillsdale College, a conservative faith based school in the Midwest.

I’m not usually prone to cynical responses, but I’ll offer one here to the vice president.

It well might be that “faith … is rising again,” but perhaps for vastly different reasons than any policy initiatives coming from the Donald J. Trump administration.

It might be instead that people are turning to God and praying that he protects us against the craziness that emanates from the White House. I know that’s a terribly cynical way of looking at an important part of many people’s lives.

As a practicing, church-going Christian I do not take my faith lightly. But for the life of me I cannot see how the president’s long history of self-aggrandizement, personal enrichment, hideous behavior with his first two wives (which he has acknowledged) and his serial lying along with his philandering have called Americans to answer the call of their better angels.

I am left only to presume that the vice president’s belief in a boost in religious faith in this country is a result of a sort of collective fear that Donald Trump is going to do something so stupidly irrational that he places the entire nation in harm’s way.