It’s nothing new.

What matters is that when people, in a Christian publication, start talking about supplanting “liberty” with “nationalism”, there is a serious problem.

Yes, the left is a problem, and always have been. Doesn’t mean we ought to defend alt-R tendencies, or arguments.

I can easily come up with a dozen reasons why some Christian leaders embraced Trump early on. When you’re staring the Anti-Christ (one of them, at least) in the face, you evaluate things differently. I put my trust/faith in no man – all are sinners, Trump among them. But he’s not anti-Christian, and that was a huge plus. I stood for Cruz until the very end, but I really don’t care why one Christian leader endorsed one of the 17 over another. They were being as wise as serpents, I’d have to think.
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Well, there can be a tension between liberty, religion, and nationalism in the public square. I can pull papal encyclicals from my bookshelf (literally) from the various popes of the (earlier) 20th century and write for hours on that. So my perspective of the article’s various points will be certainly different from someone less versed (so to speak) or less exposed to the topic. Coming from a libertarian atheist background, it’s been very challenging and I am drawn to the arguments because it has been a thorn in my side.

We have 2000 years of well reasoned debate, nasty bickering and violent diatribes around this matter.
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“Ate the cracker”

I was listening to a museum guide pointing out the Eucharist present in a Dali painting and she called it a wafer. It took all I could to keep my mouth shut. Wafer, cracker, same difference to a non-Catholic. Dali reverted back to Catholicism in 1949 – it was not a wafer to him. Trump’s mangling Bush-ism means little to me.

“2 Corinthians” Sometimes we say things in the way we think of them in our head. All Catholic lectors have been warned about the person at St. Somewhere Else Parish where he/she announced “a reading from the letter of Paul to the Filipinos” instead of Phillipians.

I feel like I’m turning into a Trump defender here, whereas I’m pretty neutral on the man. Your comments remind me of the non-stop attacks on Bush and his battered language. It comes across as petty and I’m not understanding your point. That he’s at best a shallow Christian?
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I do stand firmly with huxley on the existential nature of the leftist threat. (The good Lord knows I try to stay far away when you and Huxley start tangling, but I can’t help myself here.) The Church will stand forever, but she may not be around in the US, or at least in any meaningful capacity.

The anti-Christian leftists in our country are kin to the leftists / statists / tyrants from Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, etc. ISIS is a new-ish threat (whereas radical islam has been around for many many centuries as a threat comes and goes) but I fear the left and their ilk more than I fear ISIS.

Someone here (perhaps Neo herself) recommended a book on the rise of Nazism based on interviews with Germans after the fact. One German was quoted as being surprised at the way their country had changed and fallen to a tyrant. They weren’t surprised at backwards, peasant Russian falling, but Germany? ‘Can’t happen here’ had been his perspective. I’m not saying that something that extreme could happen here, but I pay attention to the little signs that in our legalistic society that tend to get bigger over time.

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We Catholics have an understanding of both a red and white martyrdom. Bloodless suffering is the white kind. I would classify the Christian bakers as white martyrs. Society has changed a lot in the last 10-15 years. The direction and speed are unnerving. From a secular perspective, one could claim I was being dramatic. But it’s kinda’ like bankruptcy – slowly at first, then all at once.

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This wasn’t too edited or reviewed, so sorry if things are jumbled or disjointed in my comment.

In the end, while I may emotionally understand folks’ feelings, it doesn’t mean I have to agree with them, nor refrain from questioning where some of their thinking will ultimately lead us.
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I’m not looking for Jesus’ 2nd Coming to put Him on the ballot. Of course, we are dealing with flawed humans!

However, there is a huge difference between recognizing flaws, and celebrating flaws, in choosing a show of “strength” vs someone focused on building support for a set of ideas / principles / policies.

There is a huge difference in wanting change, vs endorsing someone who is far from the principles one claims to live by (“nationalism” should supplant “liberty”).
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The FT overall seems fine. BUT, there certainly are individuals who seem to be pushing a message that I believe runs counter to what we, as Christians, ought to believe in, and counter to what our country is based on – if we truly believe those are Judeo-Christian values.

That the person recommending the particular article to read at FT is also one who recently in all seriousness commented
about lining up and shooting dems, and the article reads like it could be from the same author of “Flight 93” should tell us something, should it not?
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People are free to feel and think what they want, but, just as much as the left thinking is corrupting, so is this stuff.

That it shows up in a Christian publication, and isn’t a lone example, is just seriously disappointing, at best.

Granted, Trump is an idiot about Christianity and his moral lapses leave much to be desired, but where is the red line past which conservatives Christians must forego voting for a candidate who otherwise represents their political agenda, as best they can calculate?

How do you know?

Neither Jesus, Peter nor Paul was on the ballot. Ronaldus Maximus had left the building as well.

Republicans had a deep bench last year but none of them really stood out … except Trump in his bizarre way.

It’s not a perfect world. You pays your money and you takes your chance.

Nonetheless, other people, other Christians slice these things differently. I can honor that.

As I said, it’s arguable how much of an ultimate threat is at stake. But it is clear that Christians, especially White Christians are being pushed out of the public place and into the Klan box.

If you want to argue that you have the true line on Christianity — even though I suspect you discarded your faith long ago — over the rubes in flyover country who are still serious about Christianity, you can make that argument, but it’s not an approach I respect.

It strikes me as sheer Alinsky, how many non-Christians feel entitled to lecture real Christians on what real Christianity is.

Right. It’s just like the Christians in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, etc..
/sarc

I understand the “threat” well enough to know that what concerns us in the US is far from an “existential threat to Christianity”.

If folks need me to “validate” their “feeling” like it is so, fine. Yes, they “feel” that way. Is there a grain of truth to it, yes.

But is it Existential, as in an imminent demise of Christianity – absolutely not close!

It is far from the “Flight 93” case, that the one article echos.

Seems there is more to worry about “Christians” who give up on what they know is “right” and start to argue about “strength” (rather than principles), and that concepts like “liberty / freedom” should give way to “nationalism”.

The threat is to our liberty, period – be they dems or alt-r (hiding under the guise and grace of good Christians).
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My point is Beware. After all, there are those among us who’d line up dems and shoot them.

That is the ultimate path of this type of thinking.

Is that where we want this to go?

Well meaning but misguided, or wolves in sheeps clothing, IDK. But, we ought to recognize this stuff when we see it.

The more we give them cover, and not challenge them, perhaps excused as “concerned Christians”, the closer we get to that being acceptable to a broader audience.
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“So these Christians looked around for someone carrying the flag to do battle with the left and Trump looked like their best shot.”

Come on, the guy who “ate the cracker”? Mr “2 Corinthians”?

Several Christian leaders made their choice well before it was clear trump would be the nominee, when there were other choices available (assuming they only had a binary choice – another debate altogether).

Christianity has lost its way if trump is the “flag bearer”, ESPECIALLY “to do battle with the left”, given his history.

It bears no resemblance to the Christianity that I was raised under, know, and understand it to be.

Nor is it conservative – at least how we used to think of it – but that is what the alt-r are attempting to do – redefine all this, and perhaps having some success.

I’ve been reading FT now and then for years, mainly The Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) and Spengler (Daniel Goldman) whom I had followed previously.

I’m sure most conservative Christians, who voted for Trump, weren’t crazy about his morality, or lack thereof.

However, I’m not sure you grasp how precarious these Christians feel their situation to be in today’s America. The progressive left is not only working hard with notable success in flipping the US to socialism, they have also continued the left’s age-old war against Christianity with similar success.

For these Christians, the Democratic Party has become an existential threat. One can argue the ultimate seriousness of that threat, but by slow degrees Christianity is being driven out of the public square, as JuliB put it. Even worse, the left is intent on painting White Christianity as the larger case of the KKK.

So these Christians looked around for someone carrying the flag to do battle with the left and Trump looked like their best shot. I get that.

Christians aspire to moral perfection but they also have a deep awareness of human weakness. That’s baked into the Christian understanding of the world. Lastly Christians who know the Bible know God works through flawed people.

http://guardianlv.com/2016/06/is-donald-trump-ancient-israels-king-saul/