Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread #120 b
“What the Hell?” part 2 of 5

1/ How did Evangelical teachings about sex help prepare their people to support Trump as God’s anointed choice to be President? (“President Trump,” observed Jerry Falwell the other day, “has saved America.”)

2/ When I ask my fellow Evangelicals why they are such enthusiastic Republicans, especially when Scripture is so clear about compassion for the poor and the sick, they usually tell me that for them, abortion is just murder, and they trust the Republican promise to end it,...

3/..to change the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v Wade. (There’s still, in the more rigid Evangelical churches, a strong and regrettable dose of homophobia, but Trump hasn’t yet tried to exploit that, so I won’t deal with it here.)

4/ Evangelicals will tell you that overturning Roe v Wade is a cause like ending slavery in the 19th century; that there has been a holocaust in America; that even if the pregnancy is the result of rape, the fetus is a fully human being.

5/ The Bible doesn’t talk about abortion directly, so there’s no text that would clarify all this for us, though there are plenty of passages that can be used by both sides. The verse that seems wisest to me to turn to is Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry but do not sin.”

6/ The wisdom there is that denying anger is just useless, but when I’m all torqued up about how evil someone is and how righteous I am, when I’m disapproving of the villains who are so utterly unlike myself, then I am really vulnerable to the power of sin over me.

7/ Thousands of years ago, Micah asked the great question, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you...” (Micah 6:8) Are we really able to know what everyone else should do?

8/ We’ll return to the abortion issue in a moment, but for now let’s consider the Donald’s dilemma as he contemplated running as a Republican for President.

9/ Trump knew that without the White Evangelical vote no Republican could win any national election. He also knew that abortion is a great big deal to Evangelical Republicans. He had certain assets that would allow him to appeal to them -- he was rich and white and famous;

9/...people who watched and enjoyed “The Apprentice” viewed him as a brilliant and super successful businessman. Trump was fearless before big crowds. ..

10/..All he had to do was say he is a very strong Christian (despite his own aversion to worshipping God) and change his position from being very pro-choice to being very opposed to abortion. So he said those things and . . .

11/ Whammo! It’s incredible, but that’s all it took for Trump to win over the great majority of White Evangelicals. So the newly anti-abortion crusader Donald Trump emerged to affirm many cherished American myths:

12/... wealth is the mark of God’s favor; men, of course, should run things; government is just a business enterprise; life is a series of deals; liberals are ruining the country...

13/ Our nation has been diminished by Trump’s presidency: a foreign adversarial state decisively intervened into our election at his invitation; desperate children, having walked thousands of miles to flee to the safety of America, are torn...

14/.. from their parents and caged in the desert; the executive branch cannot function; allies are being betrayed and enemies rewarded; our debt is exploding; minority voting rights are being suppressed; wealth is concentrating into fewer and fewer hands.. .

15/ And all this evil is justified by the effort to overturn Roe v Wade?

16/ Here’s a text from Luke which I’ve paraphrased a bit: “Two men,” Jesus said, “went to the temple to pray. One, a clergyman, congratulated himself as he presented his credentials of piety to God...

17/.. and compared himself favorably to the other, a publican, standing nearby.” [‘Publican’ was the title for a tax collector for the empire.] The Publican’s prayer was short: “ ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, said Jesus, this man went home justified...

18/.. while the clergyman’s prayer went nowhere.” That poor clergy guy did not know that he did not know how to pray. The other guy, the one of no standing, knew how to pray. Jesus is a sly Rabbi.

19/ While I honor the sincerity of many in the anti-abortion movement, I think, in the muddled mess that is human society, Roe v Wade does a good job of stopping the power of government at our skin...

20/.. while honoring both the freedom of the pregnant woman and respecting the difference between a non-viable and a viable fetus. The Evangelicals' intensity about this issue tells me that there is a deeper, unacknowledged thing going on.

21/ The unconscious drive that is just below the surface in the abortion debate, the thing that Trump exploits, is male dominance. Abortion rights do threaten male dominance.

22/ I believe God is stirring up humanity to discard this delusion.

23/ Part of the cultural legacy of Patriarchy - a stubborn part - is the assumption that men should control women’s bodies. It’s an unconscious assumption, something that lurks within us, something of which we’re unaware until some of our own behavior reveals it.

24/ What the anti-abortionists call being pro-life can also be called anti-freedom for pregnant women -- part of the determination in our culture for men to control women. No man ever has to have an abortion. But there is never an unwanted pregnancy that is not caused by a man.

25/ Yet Trump, when pressed by Chris Matthews about whether women should be punished for having an abortion, said, “She must be punished, yes.”

26/ This from a man who is promiscuous, refuses to use birth control himself, and pays off his mistresses so that they will never accuse him in a paternity suit.

27/ If they were moved by justice, the anti-abortion forces would have, long before now, demanded that any male who impregnates a woman would be liable for half the expenses of both the pregnancy and the child rearing for the next 21 years.

28/ But no, it’s only the woman who must be punished and controlled and endure the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy for the rest of her life.

29/ Abortion is not directly addressed in the Bible. We will have to figure this out using the Biblical values of compassion, justice and mercy, and do so in a way that honors the gift of life itself.

30/ A woman’s right to decide what goes on within her own body must not be a secondary value.

31/ Adultery, on the other hand, is dealt with swiftly and severely and often in the Bible. Trump is famous for his adulteries, a continuation of his promiscuity since his early teens.

32/ It’s curious that Evangelicals are so passionately convinced of their rightness about issues that are barely mentioned in Scripture, and so cavalier about supporting someone who violates at least nine..

33/.. of the ten the commandments with impunity . (Although he has said of the 10th that he could do it on 5th avenue and get away with it.)

34/ As an American, I am concerned to protect our freedoms. I believe the government’s power should end at my skin. What goes on inside myself, especially what I think and feel, is not the government’s realm. If we lose that principle, we lose the country.

35/ Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again” meant many things to many people, as all propaganda does. In that phrase, (borrowed from Charles Lindbergh's fascist movement of the 30’s) people with any knowledge of American history...

36/.. could have heard: “make America the place where straight white males can get really rich and dominate the rest of the lesser beings.”

37/ From Trump's manner of speaking, and from the roaring sea of white faces yelling their approval,

38/...anyone could see that Trump and his cheering crowds have yet to read the answer to Micah’s great question about what is expected of us: “... to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”