The pro-Biden pro-life evangelicals: promise them anything
Apparently there is a group of pro-life evangelicals who supported Biden because he – or some spokespeople for him – indicated there would be wiggle room on abortion and the Hyde Amendment if Biden were to be elected. Now they feel betrayed.
I’m puzzled by how anyone over the age of four can be so gullible. Seriously, why support the Democrats if you’re against abortion? It makes zero sense, but so many things make zero sense these days that I suppose there is no real reason to single out these people for special criticism.
It puts me in mind, though, of what happens quite frequently with tyrants. People who are of the trusting sort can’t tell when they’re being duped, and tyrants take advantage of that. One particularly extreme example is Hitler, who played various German political factions against each other, promising them things he had no intention of delivering on. For example [emphasis mine]:
On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House under turbulent circumstances. Ranks of SA men served as guards inside the building, while large groups outside opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats towards the arriving members of parliament. The position of the Centre Party, the third-largest party in the Reichstag, was decisive. After Hitler verbally promised party leader Ludwig Kaas that Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. The Act passed by a vote of 441–84, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler’s government into a de facto legal dictatorship…
Having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his allies began to suppress the remaining opposition. The Social Democratic Party was banned and its assets seized. While many trade union delegates were in Berlin for May Day activities, SA stormtroopers occupied union offices around the country. On 2 May 1933, all trade unions were forced to dissolve and their leaders were arrested. Some were sent to concentration camps. The German Labour Front was formed as an umbrella organisation to represent all workers, administrators, and company owners, thus reflecting the concept of Nazism in the spirit of Hitler’s Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”).
By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. This included the Nazis’ nominal coalition partner, the DNVP; with the SA’s help, Hitler forced its leader, Hugenberg, to resign on 29 June. On 14 July 1933, the Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party in Germany.The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. In response, Hitler purged the entire SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Hitler targeted Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders who, along with a number of Hitler’s political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher), were rounded up, arrested, and shot. While the international community and some Germans were shocked by the murders, many in Germany believed Hitler was restoring order.
On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died. The previous day, the cabinet had enacted the “Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the Reich”. This law stated that upon Hindenburg’s death, the office of president would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government, and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor), although Reichskanzler was eventually quietly dropped. With this action, Hitler eliminated the last legal remedy by which he could be removed from office.
It’s like a noose slowly being tightened.
Hitler was an extreme example, but the situation doesn’t have to be that extreme for a tyranny to take over. I believe we are well on our way.
Whether our current illegitimate regime of Harris/Biden’s “soft totalitarianism” undergoes a transformation into a truly “hard” version cannot be known (as the great physicist Niels Bohr might perhaps have said, it is hard to make predictions, especially about the future), yet there exists little reason for optimism, as the party which worships power now controls almost everything in the nation and faces little real opposition anywhere, nor, with our whole electoral system in danger of being overthrown with HR1, should the very real threat of permanent one-party mis-rule be dismissed.
There is a word for pro-life evangelicals who voted for Biden. Fools. Harsh? Still fools.
Much like my senior pastor who included a reference to black lives matter in a sermon a few weeks ago which was intended to address “Justice” in an evangelical Christian perspective. When he included an argument of “black lives matter,” that is based on a blatant falsehood (from 2014 Michael Brown shooting), into a sermon, that lead me to question his discernment. Oh, he was careful to say it wasn’t the “Black Lives Matter” political organization, but both are based on falsehood and racism. My reaction continues to be that he needs prayer.
A book of my wife’s that I’ve found useful in understanding how a tyranny can develop is “The Nazi Seizure of Power, the experience of a single German town 1922-1945” by William S. Allen.
If my own reading of Religion New Service and other sources is indicative of what’s up in the evangelical world, the evangelical intelligentsia is actually embarrassed by their clientele and jonesing for approval from other academicians. I doubt there are many religious denominations who don’t have a nest of people at their apex and center whose attitudes are similar to those of randomly selected NGO administrators. Amy Welborn offered a concise assessment of the dispositions modal among the Catholic church-o-crats she had met: “bored out of their minds careerism”. I imagine the problem is less severe in the evangelical world but not absent, perhaps most prevalent in evangelical colleges. These people are professional types who want to vote Democratic like the other members of the word-merchant class, but are constrained by their positions to gin up these contrived excuses for so doing.
IMO, clergymen, divinity school faculty, and the like who know their vocations aren’t motivated to make political endorsements or under any illusions about the number of people they could possibly influence by joining some inane letterhead organization. And serious clergymen in our time are mostly entertaining a wan hope for a government that is not their enemy.
When an actual adult is that gullible, one looks for different answers. Compromised? Bought?
“We were duped,” is a handy excuse when it doesn’t matter what the other party looks like because what art you going to do about it
om Are you sure your pastor actually believes that about Brown? In my somewhat limited experience, people who claim it know better but it’s some kind of a signal.
Wonder how many of the congregation now believe it.
Such leaders that do not accept that the government that actively discriminates against your congregants, how many can meet, how they can worship (sing, chant, interact) in the name of “safety.” Is not an enemy of your faith? Fools indeed.
My reaction continues to be that he needs prayer.
Yes, but his problem is abiding. It’s a decadent age for religious denominations and they’re not attracting people of above-the-median calibre. I grew up in Anglicanism, leaving 20 years ago. I think I’ve met four Anglican vicars ordained after 1955 that I thought I could respect, and one of them just as a member of the older generation, not as a clergyman. As a clergyman, he was, I suspect, Rumpole’s father, though he never admitted to that explicitly. Of the remaining three, one was a man who had left the ministry ca. 1970 for the business world, returning in old age. The other’s vocation was his 3d career, after time in the Navy and time in the business world. I think there’s a lesson in there.
It’s all narrative. If the narrative you believe adheres closely to the real world you won’t be surprised very often. If the narrative (“your truth,” as people say these days) is far skewed from reality you will be shocked often.
“Trump is a divider, Biden is a unifier. Biden cares about the least among us. He said as much in his inauguration speech.”
Trump likely made the three, best Supreme Court appointments for right to lifers in our nation’s history, but it wasn’t proof enough for some people’s narrative. So they are surprised.
We’ve all been betrayed by someone we trusted. Why anyone would trust a career politician is beyond me.
Richard Aubrey:
He preceded his statements about “black lives matter” and “justice” with ‘This will be upsetting to some in the congregation but it must be said …” So I’m pretty sure he is in with the struggle. Spoke with a Serving Elder later in the day and expressed my concerns. Our congregation is Presbyterian ECO.
In fact the ECO denomination has adopted “Racial Righteousness” as a guiding principle which appears to include “anti-racism” tropes. Sad as ECO spilt off from the Presbyterian Church USA in reaction to the gay-ordination agenda which decimated the PCUSA. ECO IMO is now falling prey to the race hustlers (religion of the wokesters).
I know, and know of, some conservative Christians who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump over “character” concerns. Okay, but voting affirmatively for either H. Clinton or Biden presents character problems as well. To believe that Biden would hold the line on abortion requires a naiveté almost beyond comprehension.
I tried to warn a number of Christians–Catholic and Evangelical. They bought into every lie about Trump that was out there and their unfettered embarrassment at his “unpresidential behaviors” and even their fomented hatred carried the day. How they could believe that Biden (Harris??) was any better I will never understand, except for willful-blindness. Everything Trump was ever accused of doing or being, these 2 have done and are. Such irony.
“I’m puzzled by how anyone over the age of four can be so gullible.”
It’s not gullibility. They identify personally, culturally, stylistically, and economically with the white professional class and simply looked for any excuse to vote their class bias.
Mike
He preceded his statements about “black lives matter” and “justice” with ‘This will be upsetting to some in the congregation but it must be said …” S
There isn’t anything structural which induces people to make uncharitable judgments about others. It’s just day-to-day shabbiness. This isn’t the case with other sorts of life choices, wherein the farther the surrounding matrix strays from one animated by Christian moral teaching, the more sacrifice is incorporated into decisions to eschew mortal sin. (See the whole nexus of decisions around sex, marriage, and family life. Faithful Catholics have to be as subcultural as Mennonites and Orthodox Jews).
I knew a Catholic priest ca. 2003 who described his vocation thus: “I want to get to heaven, and I want to take you with me.” That level of clarity is quite atypical among clergymen, half of whom seem want to be V.S. Naipaul’s Peter Roche (“he had no important skills….an organizer of boy’s clubs”) while the other half seem to want to be den mothers on salary.
A serious clergyman is concerned with guiding his congregation toward salvation, and that means addressing their daily lives and daily decisions, not sociological abstractions. Corporal works of mercy are in service to spiritual works of mercy. And, of course, he needs to be under spiritual direction himself.
Another anecdote alert.
Our senior pastor is the son of a teamster but there are many PhDs, professionals, managerial corporate folk in our congregation. So acceptance by those may be an issue. He had cited David Brooks as a conservative Christian voice in the NYT in a sermon a week before the “justice blm” sermon so looking back I shouldn’t have been astounded when he fell headlong into the slough of woke.
I now pick my seat at the end of the row to allow easy exit if he falls off the rails again, I don’t enjoy doing it, but have done it before.
Once I realized that the Holocaust was legal, I lost faith in the law. My husband is a lawyer:-) he tries to reassure me that the law is arbitrary, ie. which side of the road is it legal to drive on, but the intention of the law is to be good. I remind him, speaking of roads, that the road to h#ll is paved with good intentions. He usually gives up at that point because he agrees with me— at least until the next time we have ‘the conversation.’
@Esther:Once I realized that the Holocaust
I am really not sure it was legal under their laws. Yes, they had pernicious and legal discrimination but I don’t believe they ever legalized murder.
I think rather they created an environment where laws no longer meant anything.
The following text is from the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. I think they have it in there as an IQ test:
Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief.
No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion….
Freedom of the person of citizens of the People’s Republic of China is inviolable.
MBunge @5:07pm,
Yup.
A quote I either picked up on this site, or Powerline, or elsewhere is now one of my favorites:
“A great deal of intelligence can be invested
in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep”
–Saul Bellow
Esther,
If you are Christian and read the Gospels the resolution to your recurring debate can be found there*. (Hint: you are correct.)
Fredrick see the T4 Action program, legal in Germany at the time.
“It was Aktion T4, the first “legal” program that took the lives of about 300,000 people and sparked the reign of terror that changed the world. Aktion T4, actually known at the time as Gnadentod (merciful death) or Euthanasie, was a eugenics program that consisted in removing from Germany anyone considered “socially unfit.”
culturacolectiva.com/history/aktion-t4-first-nazi-murder-program
Socially unfit. One thing leads to another ….
geoff b:
I wrote about that book in this post. It’s an excellent although depressing book.
Ron Sider, of that evangelical statement, has been around for decades, arguing, as far as I noticed, for relatively left-wing social policies as being more in keeping with Christianity. It’s a defensible position, up to a point. But expecting anything other than what they got from the Biden administration was culpably dumb. As a commenter on Rod Dreher’s blog said, the Biden administration’s response, if it bothered to give one, would be “The president is a devout Catholic, so stfu.”
Fredrick,
For a little light reading, here are articles about the law and laws in Germany that gave rise to the dictatorship and the “legality” of the Holocaust, aka final solution. The parallels to current events is making me feel sick:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/law-justice-and-the-holocaust
https://case.edu/law/sites/case.edu.law/files/2020-06/Reading%20Materials%20PDF%20small.pdf
Thank you Neo, I hadn’t seen that one.
I agree with Esther that this is something to get really worried about. People are being separated into tribes, by either ancestry or belief systems, and disfavored tribes are being discriminated against, prevented from working, and are subjected to sick public humiliation. It was not okay when it was done to black people, or to Jews, and it’s not okay now.
Looks as though the Democrats have really upped their game.
(To be sure, they’ve been working on it for a while. After all, “transforming” one’s country isn’t for amateurs…or the unprepared.)
Yes, the Democrats have hit upon a winning formula: behave like totalitarians while bathing yourself in liberal, humane, civil righteousness all the while accusing your political opponents of being, essentially, “Nazis”.
So very cunning, so fiendishly clever…. And it works if you have a strong, unscrupulous and ubiquitous propaganda apparatus vehemently, hysterically backing you up 24/7 (thank you for your useful insights, Herr Goebbels).
In the case of the Democratic Party, they can count on the support of a pit-bull media AND especially now the infotech sector as their loyal guardians—fiendish purveyors and zealous filterers, of the flow—and availability—of information.
And it’s all just fine—more than that, it’s the epitome of morality—as long as you call yourselves “anti-fascists” who are, according to the connivers, resolutely and courageously defending the country from deplorable, white supremacist, National Socialist wannabes.
(Which is, no doubt, why ANTIFA is not merely “an idea” but a laudable one at that…as its members attack, burn and destroy properties and lives, in curiously laudable parallel with their Democratic Party allies—experts at other kinds of devastation and destruction: reputations, livelihoods, society and family and civil bonds.)
It’s a fabulous trick; people will fall for it every time…so it seems, alas, as they feel exhilarated by a combination of righteousness for their own virtue and loathing for those on the “other side”.
Yes, a virtuous loathing; a righteous disgust….
Adam Smith insisted that “there is a lot of destruction in a country”.
We’re about to find out just how much stamina the Democrats have for destruction, and how much resistance they will encounter as they sweep through the country like the proverbial conflagration sweeps through stubble.
To be sure, the Democratic Party pyromaniacs will insist that it’s all for the good, and that to resist—or even disagree with—their evil plans is a sure indication of your own depravity.
As the wretched (if unfortunately effective) performance progresses towards its next pathetic act.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/09/the-never-ending-presence-of-national-guard-troops-at-the-u-s-capitol-n1431141
File under: If you want your democracy you can have your democracy.
“It’s a fabulous trick; people will fall for it every time…so it seems, alas, as they feel exhilarated by a combination of righteousness for their own virtue and loathing for those on the “other side”.”
Yep. The End does justify the Means after all.
A timely, fascinating, disturbing article (which is no doubt why it is being linked to by Powerline blog):
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/fear-loathing-and-surrealism-in-russia/
(It is purportedly about Russia, and it is: but it is also a warning….)
OM – “There is a word for pro-life evangelicals who voted for Biden. Fools. Harsh? Still fools.”
I would use a different word…Chump. It has a more pejorative impact. What would you rather hear from someone “You are a fool” or “You are a chump”.
Soon you will be able to add another label….Warmonger. Play Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” in the background when you do it (Warren Haynes is the best version in my mind). Tell them it is their new theme song.
http://themostimportantnews.com/9-signs-that-chess-pieces-are-being-moved-into-place-for-a-major-war-in-the-middle-east/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4IW7qrF5Qw&ab_channel=AlanMoe
Remind them “You should be happy. You VOTED for it…chump.” I will not be gentle with them.
For some reason two of my posts disappeared from this post. So I will try a brief post and see if it works.
OM – “call them fools” Better yet call them chumps. It has a bigger pejorative impact. Also tell them “YOU voted for this.” Never let them forget.
It’s not gullibilty of which they are guilty but a willful blindness.
The pro-Biden, pro-life evangelicals are simply moral cowards. The motivation for willful blindness is always moral cowardice.
Xiden has long made it very clear where he stands on abortion.
There is another group of my fellow self described Christians that I cannot get my head around. These are the “ pro choice” but anti gun , anti self defense, anti capital punishment crowd. I just cannot under stand them. They are ok with a woman hiring a person to use lethal tools to slaughter an unborn child, but if that same woman used a gun to defend her born child they think she has sinned.
Consider the possibility that these folks are pro-lifers who made the call that Biden, despite his awfulness on abortion, was still less bad than Trump. (I’m not agreeing with that conclusion, but I know people who reached it.) Anyway, if that is the case, the authors probably have to write this letter whether they believe it will make a difference or not. In other words, this could be about a difference in judgement rather than naivety or willful blindness.
Regardless, we need these folks to support Republicans in 2022 and especially 2024, so we shouldn’t mock too hard.
Bauxite:
Pride and foolishness are hard to overcome. After all it’s us that have made a pact with the Prince of this World. Abortion after all is a nuanced problem, like sex and gender. Chumps who worship the woke, cus it makes em feel better about themselves. Chumps.
Bauxite:
They say that they trusted the assurances they were given that they would have a dialogue with him about the abortion issue and that he was open to their input, and that after he was elected his administration wouldn’t give them the time of day.
“Consider the possibility that these folks are pro-lifers who made the call that Biden, despite his awfulness on abortion, was still less bad than Trump.”
That is not an unreasonable position. But these people specifically refer in their public letter to an expectation that Biden would support an “active dialogue and common ground solutions on the issue of abortion.”
https://thewayofimprovement.com/2021/03/06/pro-life-evangelicals-for-biden-respond-to-the-covid-19-relief-package-we-feel-used-and-betrayed/
These are grownups who presumably both feed and clothe themselves. There is NO WAY they actually believed that pro-choice Joe Biden would defy and anger his own party and the ruling cultural elite to make nice with them. That’s simply impossible. When they say that was their expectation, THEY ARE LYING.
They’re lying because there’s no way for a conservative evangelical to argue that Donald Trump as President is worse than more dead babies from abortion. In fact, have any of the pro-Biden/anti-Trump “conservatives” out there been honest in any way? Have any of them admitted “Yeah, we knew Biden and the Democrats would do this stuff…but it’s still better than having Trump in the White House?” I’m not sure I’ve seen a single one.
Mike
Castro did something similar in Cuba. Though it was a coup, much of his support was based on his promised restoration of the old constitution and civil liberties. Once in power, well we know the rest of the story.
To Neo and MBunge – I guess the issue then is whether the Evangelicals for Biden knew they were being lied to. They probably write the same letter whether they knew or not. (Now if the pastors did know that Biden’s dialogue promise was a lie, but used it to convince their congregations to vote for him anyway, that’s another issue.)
The amazing thing to me is that “safe legal and rare” or even a promise to keep the Hyde amendment would have probably been enough to convince significant numbers of pro-lifers that Biden actually was less bad than Trump. Progressives preferred to risk losing the election rather than moderate even one iota on abortion.
To Jimmy et al: one of the primary complaints the Democrats & some GOP had against Trump was that he kept, or tried to keep, most of his campaign promises.
WYSIWYG
“In fact the ECO denomination has adopted “Racial Righteousness” as a guiding principle which appears to include “anti-racism” tropes.” – om
It’s not a new tactic, or even a new strategy.
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/christianity-and-social-justice-what-cs-lewis-said-subject/
Additional post on the same subject, just two of those that showed up on my search for the central Lewis quote.
https://www.str.org/w/is-your-christianity-merely-a-means-to-a-social-justice-end-
“Consider the possibility that these folks are pro-lifers who made the call that Biden, despite his awfulness on abortion, was still less bad than Trump.” – Bauxite
Some people can indeed be fools (or chumps) with the best of intentions, if not a lot of intelligent investigation (as many have pointed out – Biden (or at least “Biden”) was pretty clear, and the Democrats have been the all-abortion-all-the-time party for decades now.
However, although we must leave final judgment to the only One who knows their hearts, there is a quick rule of thumb to determine who was duped and who was willingly “deceived” — when you cross the latter, they get mean.
“The amazing thing to me is that “safe legal and rare” or even a promise to keep the Hyde amendment would have probably been enough to convince significant numbers of pro-lifers that Biden actually was less bad than Trump. Progressives preferred to risk losing the election rather than moderate even one iota on abortion.” – Bauxite
Well, maybe they knew they weren’t risking anything.
(And I agree with you about any pastors who knowing pushed a lie on their congregations. I suspect Dante has a circle of the correct dimension.)
Might be time to consider the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century), in which he states the best form of government is a monarchy, because it is based on delivering the “common good” (though all humans are imperfect, commit errors, and do sinful things), and a tyranny is the worst, because it is based on fear.
An overthrown tyranny, St. Thomas observes, is usually replaced by a worse tyranny, inspiring more fear. See Batista, then Castro, in Cuba. Or the Czar, then Lenin/Stalin.
A good read on this is in “Written On The Heart: The Case For Natural Law” by J. Budziszewski, a professor at Univ of TX in Austin, of all places!
@Cicero:
Pretty much all serious thoughtful (as you might imagine there are a few diversions, pitfalls, bridges of asses to be avoided on the journey out there) people on the Far Reactionary Right are Absolute Monarchists. Some for the reasons you state, and some because they have a weird autistic belief that Formalism is the opposite of what we have now and can therefore only be better than the present cesspit of power politics.
Formalism being the high-falutin version of Confucius’s Rectification of Names: if something does other than what it says on the box, you’re going to end up in a world of trouble. Exponentiate the Trouble if the misnaming affects any manifestations of Power and and the ways in which it can be exerted by one individual or group upon others.
Parliamentary Democracy, Constitutional Republic: you only need to take one look at both to see that they don’t do what it says on the box and that real power does not flow in anywhere near the ways in which the Civics 101 Org Charts are presented, let alone Muh Constitution claims things work.
Monarchy has its problems, huge ones… but it’s easier to sift for one Virtuous Ruler than a Virtuous People. And don’t we know it. There’s still a mare’s nest of edge cases and corruptions, but when they center about a single person they become more tractable.
If you’re going to put one guy in charge, however, best put General Winter into every lesson starting with Kindergarten.
Curtis Yarvin also makes the point that in a healthy society, most people should be unconcerned with politics most (if not all) of the time.
(cont.) A society in which every act and opinion is politicised all of the time is a very sick society.
Natural Law is a necessary foundation for any society. But one still has to stay sharp on the lookout for a very human tendency to want to Out-lawyer God: see your local Eruv or the historical Selling of Indulgences, etc.
Regular purges, perhaps… Oh, wait…
Moving Right Along…
There’s no one true ring to rule them all… but some Gordian Knot Chopping, Simplification, and Subsidiarity wouldn’t go astray.
After the sustained and unceasing national—and global—mud- and feces-slinging campaign aimed at Trump and anyone even mildly supporting him, and if one’s sources of information were pretty much limited to the Mainstream Corrupt Media, one should conclude that many who were not aware of just how corrupt, dishonest and—there’s no other word—disgusting the media is, and who MIGHT have been willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, were swayed to believe that he was a monster, particularly those, such as Evangelicals (or members of other religious groups) for whom “morality” and decency are a prominent issue in their lives. Add to that the dimension (and accelerator effect) of social piling on, then the wild, and grotesque, success of the Democratic Party and its media helots is undeniable….
In fact, the anti-Trump crusade is likely the most successful and sustained campaign of vilification, slander and denigration—not to mention sheer, utter dishonesty—in American, if not global, political history (and it is, of course, still on the front burner).
And that it is not terribly encouraging that the country has now been hijacked by a gang of venal criminals, unrepentant liars and totally unprincipled (if earnest-sounding) conpeople and liars…one could, perhaps, look on the bright side and argue that at least the Democrats are occasionally—if rarely or, as is most likely, accidentally—cognizant of the existence of truth…
https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2021/03/09/biden-aide-coronavirus-pandemic-best-thing-that-ever-happened-for-democrats/
By their “truths” (or is that “friends”?) thou shalt know them?…And certainly China, the Mullahs and the Palestinians are ecstatic that their man “won”….
“Much like my senior pastor who included a reference to black lives matter in a sermon a few weeks ago which was intended to address “Justice” in an evangelical Christian perspective. ” – om
A few more perspectives on that subject.
https://notthebee.com/article/heres-the-trajectory-your-church-will-follow-once-its-gone-woke
It includes this image, which pretty much tells you what isn’t happening in that church.
https://media.notthebee.com/articles/article-6044d5a9077c5.jpg
And adds this:
I feel inclined to also share a story about a prominent Southern Baptist celebrity leaving the SBC because they have gone the other direction in mixing religion with politics, by putting their faith in the arm of the Trump (but at least he does support policies more in line with Christian teaching, and isn’t actively trying to shut down the churches).
https://religionnews.com/2021/03/09/bible-teacher-beth-moore-ends-partnership-with-lifeway-i-am-no-longer-a-southern-baptist/
It’s easy to fall off the strait and narrow way in either direction.
om
I’m PCUSA.
I’ve gone around with some of the SJW types, individually and in meetings. It’s one of the places where I get my concern–which Neo has heard for years–about how nobody can be this stupid without serious effort. They have to fool themselves. Is there such a thing as self-virtue signaling? Can you believe two contradicting things at once? Is being seen to tell the right kind of lie a check mark among the anointed?
If you start with the point that nobody’s that stupid, the alternative is that they lie. But is it possible to convince yourself if you lie to yourself convincingly?
I don’t believe the orangemanbad campaign would have worked as well as it did if there had not been a gaping maw of a market for it. But from where?
I know two of the folks in such discussions who dismissed the massacre at Waco because they were a “Cult”. But Floyd…..oh brother. Is there some kind of psychic reward in making yourself look stupid and evil?
We had a fair amount of racism discussion in the month after GF’s death. Nothing about Jessica Whittaker (aka “who?”). Back to religion since in the services.
My wife’s book club read a book by a woman who’d barely escaped the carnage in Sudan and ended up in white-as-white west Michigan. Finished growing up, made something of herself Never had a lick of trouble from white folks. Married a white guy. The Sudanese community in Grand Rapids really, really did not approve. But we, see our discussion groups, are so evil it’s hardly worth talking to us.
Ran into a woman at Emory in Atlanta. Ribbing her about driving in snow. She was from Dem Republic of Congo, hence her complexion and accent. She is a nurse. She said she knew how to drive in snow. Spent twelve years in Grand Rapids. Loved the beaches in Grand Haven. Never had any trouble. But we need sack cloth and ashes. Or perhaps “we” need to load others up with S&A while only pretending about ourselves.
Months ago, I raised the question here about whether a person with a functioning brain is morally required to use it in matters of public affairs.
This weekend, we’ll be visiting a couple where the wife is an orangemanbad, MEAN TWEETS person and I hope she doesn’t bring up politics. I anticipate the confused look when I bring up an actual policy. I dread it. She’s a nice person who’s had some lumps. A dozen or so guys, mostly who think as I do, went out of their way (I helped as well) over a couple of years in difficult circumstances. But she doesn’t get it. As with the pastors in the original story far above; how can they/she…..? Be so stupid.
Fools! Just like the suburban women from Blue States who would not vote for Trump because of his tweets who are now gnashing their teeth because their schools are still closed while Red State schools are open. Elections have consequences.
Richard Aubrey:
Thanks for your perspective from inside the PCUSA congregation. When our church split off from the PCUSA some of the more strident committed leftists left but some of the more stealthy progressives remainded it seems. “Rust never sleeps” as they say.
om I’d like to say nobody pays attention to Louisville. Probably never heard of it.
Sermon some years ago on Paul WRT his pre-conversion experience. “Sort of like Rush Limbaugh.” Smug laughter. Actually, more like Lavrenti Beria. As in “who?”
It’s astonishing the ignorance of the supposedly educated. And I see this outside the PCUSA as well. Makes no difference.
Pride expressed with smug laughter, a case of motes in eyes? But we all fall.
The Presbyterian Layman (a bit incendiary) provided a running commentary on the Louisville coven and their follies. I wonder if ECO needs a similar oversight publication or maybe a interweb thing?
Well I see my two initial posts decided to come in from the ether cold and show up.
For a lot of these people they generally come from genteel society where it is bad form to be dis-respectful or at least maintain a facade of it. They are invested in a system that minimized confrontation. They go to a mainline church that offers pablum from the pulpit. Been there, sat in the pew and got the sermon. That Trump was brash, loud, spoke unpleasant truths and was confrontational was too much for them. They shut out what he was saying. He was a threat to their comfortable lives as they live in safe places, have safe jobs and safe friends.
So in their minds they thought Zhou Baiden would return them back to the days of polite obfuscations of Obama where they could pretend everything is alright. Reality is seeping in. Call them chumps not dupes. Ask them why they were so willing to be chumped. Make them explain themselves. Change is a process and not a moment.
I totally agree that in a healthy society very few people have to pay attention to politics. We are definitely hurting right now.
When you run into a “true believer” and you can tell after a while you can switch into Saul Alinsky mode and use Rule # 5 ridicule. What you are doing is not to persuade that person but to put doubt in other people around them.
One stock phrase I can use is a quote attributed to Orwell “That idea is so stupid/silly that only an intellectual could be believe it.” Ie. that their world view are not based in reality. Follow-up with “I subscribe to Robin Williams philosophy “reality what a concept”.” Funny skit. Ask them why they are willing to lie to themselves. On guys I sometimes use the phase “you are stupider than you look…and that takes effort.” Another one I use is “you are like Flounder in Animal House who had his brother car wrecked. Otter told him “you f’ed up! You trusted us.”” Most people on our generation gets the reference (1:10 mark).
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=animal+house+you+f%27ed+up&&view=detail&mid=174CED4BE752980A1A0C174CED4BE752980A1A0C&rvsmid=CEF8F627127FDC7BAA45CEF8F627127FDC7BAA45&FORM=VDQVAP
I don’t like doing these things, but after January 6th I am less reticent.
Richard Aubrey:
Some people can indeed be that stupid. Others are just restricted in the information they get and the arguments they hear.
I certainly used to be one of those latter people, and I was neither stupid nor knowingly deluding myself. I was misinformed. In those days, of course, it was much easier – prior to the internet really getting popular – to limit one’s information. I read the Boston Globe and sometimes the Times and The New Yorker, and considered myself well-informed. I did not realize the bias in the things I was reading, and I would have had to have gone out of my way to challenge it. Why bother? I wasn’t even interested in politics at the time, and I was very busy. Almost all my friends, my husband, and my relatives were of the same political persuasion as I was (not because I chose them for politics; in those days we almost never talked politics).
Plenty of people still operate that way, and the MSM brainwashing is now much worse.
When I titled my series “A mind is a difficult thing to change,” that title wasn’t just arbitrary. One a person has a certain worldview, it ordinarily takes a lot to challenge it before that view is changed.
Everyone selects what information to process and what to ignore, “the informed, intelligent, tolerant, progressives” just don’t accept that they have their blinkers on and are being led and fed chump fodder.
Cue The Matrix, and dark gnostic conspiracies.
I, on the other hand, know it all ….. 🙂
They are not gullible.
But they think you are. They think that you can easily be gulled into assuming they are men of principle and courage who were wronged; rather than weaklings complicit in tbeir own destruction. That way, they imagine they can be weaklings and still avoid your contempt.
Not being excluded is the most important thing for them.
They yielded because they are easily browbeaten herd animals looking for an exit from psychic stresses they find unbearable.
Pretending to trust someone they know full well is untrustworthy, gives them what they farcically imagine is a face saving way to cave.
They find being swindled is easier than being disliked.
In this case they get both.
“You will be hated by all for my name’s sake” is too tough a saying in a country where that possibility has become real.
This is their way of surrendering without supposedly surrendering.
Won’t do them any good. They will have to apostatize, dig up their ancestors’ bones and burn them, and send their children to be raised by drag queens before the progressives will relent; maybe, for a little while …
DNW:
You do not have a window on their minds any more than anyone else does, except for the people involved. My knowledge of people – and I do have some knowledge of people – says that a lot of people really are gullible, although of course not all.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast, and hope leads to being gullible to con artists and tyrants. It’s an old story, not a new one.
Fortunately, we don’t need a window into their minds as your college experiments with rats partially demonstrated. Motivation is more transparent under certain circumstances than we like to believe, though the web of internal justifications the subject may spin, will not be.
And as well as you know human beings, I think that you would readily grant that I probably have a much greater familiarity with Evangelical Christians and Protestants in general, with their theology, their culture, the attitudes of the pew sitters, and the strengths and weakness of it all, than you do.
And my knowledge of people in general – and I do have some though perhaps less than a clinician like yourself – says that historically many of them will profess to believe something merely because it is the thing to do, and will then abandon or compromise the belief at the drop of a hat if they can realize some material advantage or avoid a threat.
DNW:
As I said, I would think that your description is correct for some. I don’t think it’s correct for all that many, though.
I know some evangelicals and Christians, by the way. I actually do live in the actual world.
I don’t disagree with your last paragraph, by the way, but that’s not what you were saying earlier. You were saying that they were “Pretending to trust someone they know full well is untrustworthy.” I don’t think they were pretending; I think they were gullible, taking the easy way out, and did not realize that person was untrustworthy.
And even the motivations of rats are not fully revealed by experiments. We know far less about people.
Neo. I get what you’re saying about your earlier situation.
The people I am mentioning are not lacking in mental capacity. Most have degrees gotten in the usual way, or in pieces while working adults or in the service. They have made fewer than the average dumb life choices.
It’s not being misinformed. When information comes to them, it’s as if they’re brandishing a crucifix in the face of a pack of werewolves. They DO NOT want to be informed.
In your case, your positions were informed by information. The cases I am mentioning HATE information they find challenges their position they arrived at for some other reason. And it’s the other reason(s) that concern me.
Richard Aubrey:
You are exactly correct about some people. I’d say among my friends who vote Democratic, though, it’s about half and half. Half are interested in new information and half get very angry if you try to give them any.
“says that a lot of people really are gullible”
People are not gullible. A person can be gullible but when groups of people, particularly ones not connected by time and space, all adopt the same incorrect beliefs, it’s not because they all coincidentally possessed the same level of gullibility.
Joe Biden is pro-choice. Everyone on his campaign is pro-choice. The Democratic Party is pro-choice. All the major influence groups within the party are at least nominally pro-choice. The political media is pro-choice. And neither Biden nor his campaign ever once made any public statement that indicated any wiggle room on the issue of abortion.
If a group of people decided to ignore ALL of that and put their faith instead in some informal, behind-the-scenes, unofficial assurances or implications, it’s not because they were gullible. It’s not because they were stupid, either. It’s because they were motivated to believe an obvious lie over an obvious truth.
Mike
MBunge, Or to know better but intended to pretend they’d been diddled.
If they knew better, and actually didn’t believe the Biden promises, there had to be some other reason which would be better for them personally or organizationally than the downside of looking foolish and, going forward, incompetent and untrustworthy.
I recall a massive zoning issue, huge exceptions far outside the actual regulations and the general tenor of previous decisions. It was seriously contentious with overflowing public meetings. The trustees just sat there listening to one opponent after another; technical, real estate, business, etc. Looking bored and blank and completely unreceptive.
They looked as if they’d been bought and were just going through the motions. So, to look as if they’d been bought for the rest of their lives in the city would be the downside. How much would they have to get to be ahead of the downside?
Wonder if these guys are in that position.
Have you ever heard anyone say something like: “I just don’t know how I could live [ fill in the blank with] ” … if that were true”; or ” … if the world was like that” or with regard to some other difficult or disconcerting fact unrelated to actual physical suffering?
As you say, they have a personal delicacy, or as MJR observes a paucity of alternative moral resources, that makes them that way.
So they tell lies. They are used to it. Lies have served them well; enhanced their bank accounts, padded their credentials, gained them esteem. Lies, are the very breath of life to them. They live in world based on a lie. It is critical to them that everyone around them repeat the lie.
Women, unfortunately, are as guilty of this as are men. Some of them in my experience, I again emphasize some, seemingly normal, are nonetheless among the most ardent narrative spinners one is likely to encounter this side of outright psychopaths.
It might be some kind of self-protection device, meant to comfort and console.
The only people I have ever personally encountered who outright cackled in derision at the words “truth” and “freedom” being mooted as among the highest human values were rather ordinary seeming females: one an office secretary, another a mail carrier … as I have described several times before.
They are not being fooled. They have made a choice. And for some of them, who would rather pretend not to have made that choice, that choice involves them in certain contortions and fictions.
@DNW:
You might just be a Red-pilled Deplorable 🙂
I have over the years invested some time in sitting in coffee shops, nose in book, or sometimes ostensibly wearing noise cancelling earbuds but actually listening to conversations going on around me. I’ve heard far more casual betrayal, callousness and moral depravity or just plain vacuity (general and moral) from chattering women there than I have in a wide variety of male environments — whether it be fighting over material spoils, women, or the kind of no holds barred exchanges of opinion and confidences that happen during a long night out on the town with friends or colleagues.
Bit backward to be listening in coffee shops: they boast about it on Instagram, Twitter, and FB these days.
Standard Not All Women Are Like That (NAWALT) disclaimers apply. As always I like to think in terms of the good old Normal Distribution, and there is no doubt that the male and female populations skew differently.
Despite the standard woke fantasy that Evangelicals are Cross Burning Bubbas… as with many religious groups, they’re heavily female-driven. A lot of the men involved are just along for the ride on auto-pilot. What women get out of ‘religion’ is another story again… but suffice it to say that the public display of virtue is more important than self-abnegation in most cases. Now that public virtue has warped itself into something different, it’s hardly surprising that women and the cucks who sniff after them would drag supposedly based evangelical congregations in the same direction.