Is there a strong Christian backlash to Trump's sedition?

Thank you. So far that is as close to what I am looking for as I can hope.

Here’s an article that was posted over in the QAnon thread:

Yep, numerous conservative prophets got the 2020 election wrong just like they got the 2018 midterm prophecies wrong. Conveniently they always predicted victory for the side they wanted to see win.

At least one conservative evangelical pastor has blamed the defeat of Trump on (not making this up) God being displeased with Trump’s support of gay rights. :roll_eyes:

That is part of the historical development of Protestantism in 19th century America. Probably a thread hijack to get deeply into it, but there is a kind of logical progression of ‘reforms’ which valued charismatic leadership and personal revelation over dogmas and creeds. The resistance to governmental bodies much more distant than the congregation’s own elders has given rise to smaller and smaller units. This built-in rebelliousness and local tribalism was most congenial to rural white communities with antecedents in Scotland and northern Britain, such as in Appalachia and the smallholder class in the South. This culture is the hearth of reactionary knownothingism that we suffer from today.

Religion in these particular communities is a social binder and loyalty test to a degree I believe unexcelled by any other Christian bodies in the US.

A friend of mine who spent some decades as an Evangelical die hard and then returned to her childhood Catholicism told me that she saw her former friends’ faces harden and go blank when she told them the news. She said she changed in their eyes from a beloved respected compatriot to an enemy in the blink of eye.

Y’know, I could not be a member of any of these churches as I would have soon started asking questions about how come this “God”'s plans and goals keep being stymied by actions or even just attitudes of mere humans.

Also, when someone prophesies about a future event, they’re saying that God told them X will happen, not God told them that God wants X to happen. Presumably (within their belief system) when God tells Mr. or Ms. Prophet, “X will happen,” God is quite aware of human obstacles, and is saying it’s going to happen regardless.

So when Mr. or Ms. Prophet tells the believers that God told them X will happen, and it doesn’t happen, ISTM that (again, within their belief system) at best, they’re an unreliable witness to God’s words: that God may be speaking to them sometimes, but they can’t tell the difference between God speaking to them, and their own gut feelings or whatever. Their ability to discern God’s message is flawed.

(You’d think that if God’s in the business of choosing prophets to give specific messages to people today, he’d be capable of choosing prophets that weren’t afflicted by such a significant disability. Or capable of getting his message through in a way that could not be mistaken for anything else.)

Worst case, of course, is they’re liars. (True regardless of belief system.)

Interesting. Back in mid-November, Fred Clark cited Jeffress as one of those who’d prophesied a Trump win:

So what does it mean that so many prominent white evangelical Americans “prophesied” that God had spoken to them, assuring them that Donald Trump would be re-elected?

Paula White said God had told her this. So did Jim Bakker. So did Robert Jeffress, and Curt Landry, and Michele Bachmann, and Kat Kerr, and Frank Amedia, and Dutch Sheets, and Janet Porter, and Steve Strang. And they were all wrong.

Is it wrong of me to find this hilarious, in a “People’s Front of Judea/ The SHOE is the sign!” kind of way?

Well, I’m over here rooting for injuries, so I’m probably not the best person to ask. :smile_cat:

Following up on the OP, there’s some discussion in this article:

Follow the gourd, splitter!

In general, anytime these false prophets are wrong, they use one of the following approaches:

  • Ignore it and move on, hoping their followers will let go and not make a big deal out of it (which many oblige)
  • Postpone and kick the can down the road (“well, that date was wrong, but it WILL happen, just keep waiting for (insert new date)”)
  • Claim that it did happen anyway, just not in the way prophesied (“Oh, Trump DID win the election, it’s just that the results make it look like Biden won”)
  • Blame other people’s lack of energy for the prophecy failing to come true (“Trump would have won if people had prayed harder and showed more energy, but your lackluster effort cost the win”)
  • Shrug it off (“a prophet doesn’t have to be right every time”)

In fact, these are the standard ways that anybody who makes an inaccurate prediction or forecast tries to explain why the prediction or forecast is apparently incorrect.

Love it, awesome mashup of “Delerious” & “Religious.” :crazy_face:

What’s funny is that such a test is described in the Bible itself:

Deuteronomy 18:21-22 (NIV)

You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” [22] If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

I’m tempted to post this on my Facebook after I saw people (on other people’s pages) trying make excuses for how Trump truly is God’s prophet and has a mantle on him. (The current logic is that there is “Trump the man” and “Trump the position.” Yes, really.)

I’ve tried that approach and it rolls right off like water off a duck’s back. I got suspended from a charismatic Christian message board last December, in fact, for pointing out that all the prophets who claimed Trump would be reelected were, by that Deuteronomy definition, false prophets.

Here’s another one:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles?’

Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Go away from me, you evildoers!’

        – Matthew 7:21-23 (NIV)

Yep. Problem is, if you use that one, they’ll claim Trump was doing God’s will, somehow.

I was reading a cite from Ann_Hedonia when I came across this bit:

“I certainly did not believe, or have any anticipation, that [Trump] would take matters to the extent that have become clear over the last few weeks,” Albert Mohler, the head of an influential evangelical seminary in Kentucky who hopes to be the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told me. Mohler opposed Trump in 2016, citing what he saw as the candidate’s poor character. But last spring, he publicly declared that he would support Trump in 2020 and vote for Republican presidential candidates for the rest of his life. “We are undoubtedly in an agonizing moment, in which evangelical Christians who supported Donald Trump now find ourselves in the position of being tremendously embarrassed by this most recent behavior,” he told me.

~Max

“Trump the man” has the gold fringe.