Bishop vs trump

Ben Cremer, a Wesleyan pastor, wrote the following in 2024:

*When you worship power, you will begin to treat compassion and empathy like they are sins.

When you worship power, the harsher the treatment towards your “enemies,” the more righteous it will look.

When you worship power, tyrants and bullies will begin to look virtuous and wise to you.

When you worship power, the value and dignity of others will be solely measured by their conformity to you."

I think this captures the problem within American Christianity right now. The people that have made a pact with Trump are worshipping power, and not doing the things that Jesus would have us do. So, when this Bishop pleas for mercy & compassion for these vulnerable groups, she is the one treated as if SHE is being sinful, as if SHE stepped out of line.

Am I wrong?

No. When the “Christians” are warning others to not commit the sin of empathy, it is not Budde who is in the wrong. It’s the “Christians” that are awful human beings and see mercy to the downtrodden and feeling bad about it as a sin.

Jesus would’ve sided with Budde 100%.

To set the record straight, Jesus wasn’t the nice guy many people think. He wasn’t Trumpish, but he also talked a lot about people burning in hell, how you must hate your family to follow him, how he came to bring a sword rather than peace, etc.

MAGA distorts Christianity, for sure, but IMHO, people like Budde also twist Jesus/Christianity/the Bible through their own political lens.

Yeah, there is a reason I’m no longer religious. But, Budde’s message was good. Sorry you also see it as political. Not sure how “be merciful to downtrodden” is political…

Basically, she’s trying to get the Bible or Christianity into politics, just with her view of it. Instead of saying, “church and state should be separate.” And I’m willing to bet that she, like MAGA, also applies a cafeteria approach to the Bible. She probably skips over the parts about where LGBT is condemned in both the Old and New Testament in the same way that Trump followers skip over all the parts about mercy and truth.

I would have been totally fine with that as well. As I said before, Jesus didn’t pull any punches either.

T

This is a special prayer service for the inauguration of the President. It is literally there because of politics.

I won’t get into your other parts about people picking and choosing from the bible. Again, one of many reasons I turned my back on the sham of religion.

It seems to me that the republicans have been pushing their version of christianity on the US for years.

Perhaps this brave Episcopalian minister was trying to give them a different perspective on the religion they seem to have claimed and redefined.

Well, I think there are a lot of Christians speaking out against trump. Example: the sermon I listened to in church today (I’m Episcopalian, and proud to be one at the moment). But like everyone else doing so, they cannot be heard against the roar of triumphant hatred and stupidity.

Would you say that most Christians you know would agree with you that the Bishop was wrong to preach tolerance and mercy?

I think they’d probably be split half-half, at least in the circle I know.

But her view on mercy to the meek and vulnerable is in the spirit of what Jesus would think, as opposed to “yeah, run them out of the country.”

Matthew 25:35-40 and Deuteronomy 10:19 come to mind.

See above.

I think she did perfectly.

Any real Christian.

Yep.

Both out of context.

You are talking about Luke 14:26, when Jesus is talking about qualifications to be one of his special disciples, His Apostles. And other translations have it as this-

ERV

“If you come to me but will not leave your family, you cannot be my follower. You must love me more than your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters—even more than your own life!

EASY

‘If someone wants to obey me, he must live like this: He must love me more than he loves his own father and mother. He must love me more than he loves his wife and his children. He must love me more than he loves his brothers and his sisters. He must even love me more than he loves himself. If he does not do that, he cannot be one of my disciples.

So yeah, if you wanted be to one of the 12, you had to give up your old life, and devote it to Jesus.

Jesus never said a word about LGBT. He preached tolerance. Well, unless you were a pharisee.

For goodness sake, she wasn’t even as tough as Jesus. One of my favorite stories when I was in Sunday school was when Jesus whacked the moneychangers in the temple.

Where would that be? Chapter, verse?

Romans 1:26–27. or 1 Corinthians 6:9–10- which can be translated as Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality,

So maybe. Paul seems to have invented a new word, which could mean men having gay sex (but there was already terms for that) Or it could mean men who sell themselves for sex to other men. Endless arguments.

Or this-

In his commentary on Romans 1:26-27, John Chrysostom wrote, “You see that the whole of desire comes from an excess which cannot contain itself within its proper limits.”

  • “Paul isn’t condemning being gay as opposed to being straight. He is condemning self-seeking excess as opposed to moderation—a concern made clear by his repeated use of the term “lustful,” and by his description of people “exchanging” or “abandoning” heterosexual sex.*”
    Committed same-sex relationships simply aren’t in view in [Romans 1](Romans 1 NIV - Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus,… | Biblia).

https://collected.jcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=mastersessays
Many contemporary Christians who use Romans 1:26–27 to condemn the
LGBTQ+ population, fail to understand the cultural dynamics of the text, the text
itself, and the contemporary world. Such a literalistic and ahistorical reading of
Romans 1:26–27 imposes a contemporary cultural context wholly different than
the one in which Paul wrote. The present notion of “homosexuality” as an innate
orientation was a concept unknown to Paul and his contemporaries.

Basically Paul didnt want anyone to have sex for any reason except to have children, and even that was questionable to him. Paul was weird when it came to sex.

We dont really knoiw.

Now the OT condemns it but also condemns wearing clothes ot two different materials, “squaring your beard”, and is okay with slavery and many other nasty things.

However, this can turn into a hijack, so further discussion on this issue needs to go to another thread. I am just answering a honest question here, not inviting debate.

Please.

I have answered Ulfrieda’s question in a new thread in FQ. let us keep this to Bishop Budde’s sermon and trumps reaction.

Not Christianity in general.