Looks like some evangelicals are seeing the light.
As fallout continues from the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol, Ed Stetzer, head of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, has a message for his fellow evangelicals: it’s time for a reckoning.
Evangelicals, he says, should look at how their own behaviors and actions may have helped fuel the insurrection. White evangelicals overwhelmingly supported President Trump in the 2020 election.
Some in the protest crowd raised signs with Christian symbolism and phrases.
“Part of this reckoning is: How did we get here? How were we so easily fooled by conspiracy theories?” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “We need to make clear who we are. And our allegiance is to King Jesus, not to what boasting political leader might come next.”
In the interview, Stetzer also laments that evangelicals seem to have changed their view of morality in order to support Trump.
“So I think we just need to be honest. A big part of this evangelical reckoning is a lot of people sold out their beliefs,” he says.
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And that’s the whole point of the presidency to them. Just something to elevate the “brand”. Reality TV at its pinnacle. We’ll see how that works out for them.
In my view, the money quote from that “evangelical reckoning” article is this:
This connects directly to the excellent “Long Con” article @Ann_Hedonia posted a couple of days ago, which was written back in 2012 and observed that the conservative media dedicated to promoting Romney’s candidacy was riddled with obvious-bullshit advertising — get-rich-quick schemes, snake-oil health potions, and the like. It’s the kind of stuff that nobody with more than two functioning brain cells would fall for, but clearly the promoters of these scams believe they’ve found a lucrative demographic.
And it makes you wonder: What is it about a culture where people quietly sit and obediently absorb the authoritative pronouncements of a well-dressed, well-spoken man telling them what and how to believe that would lend itself to the death of active critical thinking? Truly, it’s a mystery.
That sounds like an attempt at re-branding, to me. Church leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, and other evangelical denominations, have been fretting and worrying over their declining numbers for years. And they’ve found that the number one reason they’re losing members – especially the younger ones the churches need to survive – is because they’ve tied themselves so tightly to the culture wars and right-wing politics. Most of them respond by “jesusing harder”, as atheist blogger Captain Cassiday calls it. Maybe Ed is trying a different tack.
Maybe he’s sincere. But that would mean admitting he – and the evangelical movement – were wrong. And that’s something evangelicals hate to do; the Christian right might have invented “doubling-down-when-caught-lying”.
This is why I’m still skeptical of reports that McConnell is supposedly pleased Trump is being impeached. Time to put up or shut up, Cocaine Mitch: start the trial tomorrow, and then you’ll make a believer out of me.
Religious conservatives are guilty of the same offenses that the billionaire class is: they want power, and they will justify anything to get it.
The Great Lie shouldn’t just refer to the phony “StoptheSteal” movement or QAnon; the Great Lie is the ones that Republicans have been telling for decades, which is that the rich are the job creators and we need economic policies that favor corporate profits and growth over the economic welfare of the middle class. Their lies go beyond merely philosophical differences; economic data clearly show that Democratic policies are generally better for the economy in the aggregate, which leads to the first lie: Democrats and progressives are “socialists.”
It’s from that lie, that all of the other more outrageous lies have been spawned and justified. Republicans have gone from being a party of reasonable conservatives who want to put limits on the welfare state, to being plutocrats who want to use character and moral issues to slander their opposition and drown them in a bathtub full of deception and smears.
I sort of get the point you’re making, but I’m not sure how you come out, right now, against increased security at the government building that was just invaded by a murderous mob. I’ve lived in the United States for 20 years, which means that basically my whole time here has been post-9/11. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to walk through metal detectors, including when entering all sorts of government buildings. While the current emergency lasts, this should be a no-brainer.
That said, I do hope that the Capitol Police don’t over-compensate for their own failings by making it even harder, in the long run, for the people of the United States to visit the people’s house. The era after 9/11 resulted in so much dehumanizing and pointless security theater, and I don’t want to see it all kick off again. Congress should also resist the temptation to massively increase the force’s budget, because if the history of police forces tells us anything, it’s that when you give them lots more money, they tend to spend it in newer and better ways to hurt people.
“How did we get here?”
Next thing, he’ll be asking how babies get made, and whether it is possible that bears shit in woods.
Anyone who has supported Trump and the Republicans for the last four years, and who only now is questioning their loyalty, should be assumed to be doing nothing but damage control. They should get no credit for distancing themselves from him now.
For what it’s worth, the guy interviewed in the article has been a longtime Trump skeptic who has previously tried to raise warnings and get fellow evangelicals to think about what they’re doing. He’s not somebody who’s had a sudden change of heart in the last couple of weeks or months. He’s been delivering this same message for years. And he thinks this is a potential opportunity to get traction on it, where he was previously ignored.
the intense attack at the portal happened later. it was after met police came in to help. met police were in riot gear and they were in an full out action at the portal.
that is where the insurgents pulled down the policeman and took his gear.
Fair enough. Good for him. It must have been a frustrating few years.
Maybe he can get his fellow evangelicals to return to their regular activities, like yelling at women entering health clinics, attempting to censor our media choices, railing against same-sex relationships, and placing the Ten Commandments in public buildings.
Oh, and tax cuts, of course, because God wants the righteous to be prosperous.
“I am cooperating with the FBI,” Newbold told ABC News in a 45-minute interview in which he expressed remorse for his actions and said of the attack on the Capitol that “it was all taken too far.”
Speaking in an anguished tone far different from his post-riot video, Newbold professed that he “felt rage” that day, but that he accepts that Joe Biden will be the next commander-in-chief.
“I would like to express to you just a cry for clemency, as you understand that my life now has been absolutely turned upside-down,” Newbold told ABC News. “I am not a terrorist. I am not a traitor.”
So if it had accomplished… something? Like what? Fully interrupting the certification? Reversing the election? Whatever. If it had accomplished that, then would that have been sufficient justification?
Yeah. Fuck that guy.
He’s gonna be super surprised when nobody at the court-martial is especially sympathetic to this line of argument.
If we put pressure on people to abandon Trump we’ve got to give them a place to go where they stop feeling that pressure. That doesn’t apply to everyone of course, there are some people who should receive no succor no matter how vehemently they oppose Trump now. But if Trump supporters are going to continue to feel the pressure even after they’ve abandoned him then what incentive do they have to do so?
This guy is a traitor and his life is upside down due to his own actions. I strongly recommend against his plea for clemency as he most likely is a high level traitor due to his status as a Seal. He is a Navy Seal for fucks sake, he should own up to his mistake and take the punishment like the man he is supposed to be.
You’re right, of course, but it shouldn’t just be “Thanks for doing the right thing; we’re all good now.” It should be made very clear that Trump himself didn’t change on January 6; he was the same person that he’s been all along, and everything that happened last week was a reasonably predictable consequence of his behavior as president. January 6 shouldn’t just create a convenient reset point whereby people can claim that they never knew what Trump was really like.
If today’s hearings are any indication, I seriously doubt impeachment is going to change shit. Despite lots of chatter on the interwebz about a seachange among Republicans, all I’ve seen so far among House Repubs is “Well what about…stuff?!” and “We need to stop these divisions (that we created).”
