“The Republicans House members were fantastic yesterday. It always helps to have a much better case, in fact the Dems have no case at all, but the unity & sheer brilliance of these Republican warriors, all of them, was a beautiful sight to see. Dems had no answers and wanted out!” Trump tweeted.
If Harvard is a Religious Corporation, then, what is the main product? It has to be Absolution. I contend the Republican Party is now a Religious Corporation that has a political agenda.
Reporters are saying this is another Historic Day – that I predicted was coming! With Boris Johnson getting a landslide mandate in the UK, the doom and gloom I saw coming – is here! Prophesying is another product of Religious Harvard, that does not exists anymore. Most fellow reporters are wondering what we do have. They are wondering why Trump does not appear before the Senate and testify on his own behalf – after allowing others to testify – and produce revelent documents to present to – ALL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
Millions of Americans are wondering why millions of Evangelical Republicans do not want anymore PROOF, if they wanted any PROOF in the first place. Many Nazi were religious. Why they made a Dictator more powerful than Jesus, is the real concern, because their consciousness had been removed by clever propaganda. They owned no guilt as they did hideous things to millions of other Christians.
Rudy Giuliani just flew into town from the Ukraine with a bunch of papers. Do you think our President can admit he did anything wrong? Could he go to church and confession to admit his sins and crimes? Sure the Republican Senate will not throw their Messiah out of office. But, there will be ‘Their Wounded Savior On The Cross’ to deal with till election time. The BIG SHOW is just getting started.
Trump is BIGGER than Democracy. For now, the existence of the Democratic party is the firewall against Tyranny. This is why the Republicans stop short of DEMONIZING the Democrats in Public like they do behind the back of The People. We are just a kiss away from being transported back in time to the court of Queen Elizabeth who has gotten rid of the Catholics, but is now looking at the rise of the Puritans – who are poised to cross the Atlantic and launch the greatest Religious Expedition in history!
That the female head of Harvard could not, or, would not consult Men of God about the change to the ‘Fair Harvard’ – is the premiere lesson of the day. Trump might be inclined to change the words of this song – back – with his bold marker. I will send him a letter making him aware of this Holy Outrage that will be the title of my paper, my experiment. What is key, is, the Dean and her ilk failed to put Hillary Clinton in the White House. However, we could be looking at Traditional Republicans, who have voted the Republican ticket for generations. This is how it goes. I have read many accounts of Holy Guilt-tripping your opponents in a religious monarchy. It is not pretty.
Our President from New York likes to play music from The Phantom of the Opera when he comes on stage. My search for the bones of Reverend John Wilson, and his large folio, takes me down a staircase at Harvard, where under the organ, is a hidden vault. The Truth…..is The Truth!
Why did they get rid of the organ with the sea symbols?
John Wilson Rosamond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolution
“The Republicans House members were fantastic yesterday. It always helps to have a much better case, in fact the Dems have no case at all, but the unity & sheer brilliance of these Republican warriors, all of them, was a beautiful sight to see. Dems had no answers and wanted out!” Trump tweeted.
“It isn’t enough for Franklin Graham and Eric Metaxas, two prominent figures within the American evangelical movement, to lavish praise on President Donald Trump. They have now decided they must try to demonize his critics.
During his November 21 interview with Graham, Metaxas, a Salem Radio Network talk-show host, asked the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, “What do you think of what is happening now? I mean, it’s a very bizarre situation to be living in a country where some people seem to exist to undermine the president of the United States. It’s just a bizarre time for most Americans.”
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Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, responded, “Well, I believe it’s almost a demonic power that is trying—”
At which point Metaxas interjected, “I would disagree. It’s not almost demonic. You know and I know, at the heart, it’s a spiritual battle.”
Graham agreed, though his defense of Trump was based on economic rather than spiritual or cultural issues. (Graham argued that a strong economy leads to more tithing and church-building programs.) Metaxas then complained, “People seem to have devolved to a kind of moralistic Pharisaism, and they say, ‘How can you support somebody blah, blah, blah,’ and then go on to cite how he’s the least Christian—you know, they go on and on, and I think these people don’t, they don’t even have a biblical view when it comes to that—you know, that if somebody doesn’t hold to our theology, that doesn’t mean they can’t be a great pilot, or a great doctor or dentist. I mean, it’s a bizarre situation that we’re in, that people seem only to have these standards for the president somehow.”
To which Graham responded, “I believe that Donald Trump believes—he believes in God. He believes in Jesus Christ. His depth—he doesn’t, you know, he went to churches here in New York; he didn’t get a whole lot of teaching.”
Absolution is a traditional theological term for the forgiveness experienced by Christians in the life of the Church. It is a universal feature of the historic churches of Christendom, although the theology and the practice of absolution vary between denominations.
Some traditions see absolution as a sacrament (the Sacrament of Penance), a concept found in the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Catholic Churches, and Eastern Orthodox churches. In other traditions, notably Lutheranism, absolution is seen as an extension of the forgiveness of sins granted in the sacrament of baptism. In other traditions, including the Anglican Communion and Methodism, absolution is seen as part of the sacramental life of the church, although both traditions are theologically predicated upon the Book of Common Prayer, which counts absolution amongst the five rites described as “Commonly called Sacraments, but not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel”. The concept of absolution within the life of the Church is largely rejected by protestantism of the Calvinist school.
Liberals have a tendency to wring their hands at the strong support President Donald Trump — he of the three wives and multiple affairs, and a tendency to engage in exceedingly un-Christian-like behavior at the slightest provocation — continues to receive from the white evangelical community. White evangelical support for Donald Trump is still at 73 percent, and more than 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016.
But focusing on the disconnect between Trump’s personal actions and the moral aspects of their faith misses the issue that keeps their support firm: racism. Modern evangelicals’ support for this president cannot be separated from the history of evangelicals’ participation in and support for racist structures in America.
Evangelicals, in religious terminology, believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of humanity. They have a long history in America, and include a number of different groups, including Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists and nondenominational churches. After the schism among the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in the 1850s over slavery, conservative denominations like the Southern Baptists — who defended slavery through their readings of scripture — came into being. And because the primary schisms between northern and southern denominations was over the issues of slavery, in the pre- and post-Civil War years, African American Protestants formed their own denominations.
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Evangelical denominations formed from these splits in the South were usually comprised of people who had made money from slavery or supported it. After the Civil War many were more likely to have supported the Ku Klux Klan and approved of (or participated in) lynching. The burning cross of the KKK, for instance, was a symbol of white Christian supremacy, designed both to put fear into the hearts of African Americans and to highlight the supposed Christian righteousness of the terrorist act.
During the civil rights movement, many white evangelicals either outright opposed Martin Luther King Jr. or, like Billy Graham, believed that racial harmony would only come about when the nation turned to God. in the 1970s, evangelicalism became synonymous with being “born again” and also against abortion and, with the rise of the Moral Majority in the late 1970s, they began to seek not only moral, but political power.
Ronald Reagan, who also counted evangelicals among his most vociferous supporters, started his presidential campaign on the platform of states’ rights from Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murdered by several Klansmen with the participation of local law enforcement in 1964, while attempting to register African Americans to vote. Decades later, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the evangelical leader, opposed sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime and insulted Bishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Prize Peace winner, as a “phony.”
After 9/11, many evangelicals vilified Islam and created cottage industries and ministries promoting Islamophobia. And when Barack Obama was elected president, they regrouped, bought guns and became Tea Partiers who promoted fiscal responsibility and indulged in birtherism, promoted by no less than the son of Billy Graham, Franklin.
Still, evangelicals have worked to make a good show of repenting for racism. From the racial reconciliation meetings of the 1990s to today, they have dutifully declared racism a sin, and Southern Baptists have apologized again for their role in American slavery — most recently in 2018 via a document outlining their role.
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But statements are not enough. Proving how disconnected they are from their statements about atoning for the sin of racism, the 2019 Annual Convention of the Southern Baptists was opened with a gavel owned by John A. Broadus, a slaveholder, white supremacist and the founder of their seminary. In the meantime, the most visible Southern Baptist pastor, Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, recently said of Trump that “he does not judge people by the color of their skin, but whether or not they support him,” calling that “the definition of colorblind.” (Jeffress is such a supporter of Trump that he regularly extols him on Fox News, and even wrote a special song for Trump’s Campaign, “Make America Great Again.”)
So it’s not surprising that white evangelicals supported the Muslim ban, are the least likely to accept refugees into the country (according to the Pew Foundation) and, though a slim majority oppose it, are the denomination most likely to support Trump’s child separation policy. White evangelicals certainly are not concerned with white supremacy, because they are often white supremacists.
And Trump appeals to these evangelicals because of his focus on declension, decline and destruction, which fits into evangelical beliefs about the end times. When Trump used the term “American carnage” in his inaugural address, evangelicals listened; they too, believed America is in decline. Their imagined powerlessness, and the need for a strong authoritarian leader to protect them, is at the root of their racial and social animus. Their persecution complex is a heady mix of their fear of “socialists,” Muslims, independent women, LGBT people and immigration. Their feelings of fragility, despite positions of power, make them vote for people like Donald Trump — and morally suspect candidates like Roy Moore. Rhetoric, not morality, drives their voting habits.
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All of this has made a mockery of white evangelical protestations about morality and the family. Moral issues once drove white evangelical votes but, first when Obama was elected and then when the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on same sex marriage in June of 2015, what remained was their fear. Trump promised justices and a return to a time when they felt less fear, and he delivered, at least on the former. White evangelical fealty to him is firm. Evangelicals in America are not simply a religious group; they are a political group inexorably linked to the Republican Party.
Trump delivered evangelicals from the shame of losing, and they will back him again in 2020 to avoid losing again. So perhaps we should take evangelicals at their word that they will support Trump come hell or high water, rather than twisting ourselves into knots trying to figure out why.
