Christians for Pete Buttigieg

"Christian gays are the new thing apparently" texts my daughter Roz to me with a happy face laughing so hard it's crying.

She also sends a quote from USA Today with a photo of Pete Buttigieg captioned,

Buttigieg to Pence: If you have a problem with who I am, your quarrel is with my creator.

Then she comes upstairs to ask if I want anything from Yummy.com.  I don't.  It's 10 pm. 

"Have you heard of this Christian gay guy?" she asks.  

"Yes, Vicki emailed me about him a month ago.  She wanted me to donate $10 to help him reach the required number of donors to be included in the presidential debates, and I did."

"So did I," she says.  "The media are acting like it's something new, but you and your friends knew about it forever."

"Right," I laugh.  "They're only 30 years behind EEWC."

Evangelical Women's Caucus, now EEWC-CFT, took a stand for gay civil rights in 1986, and two of our leaders published a pro-gay book in 1978, four years before Roz was born.

"I like him--he's my religion," she continues.  "He's an Episcopalian.  The Democratic Party needs to claim the religious high ground so those stupid evangelicals--"

"Roz!"

"Sorry, present company excluded!"

She identifies as a gay Episcopalian, not an evangelical. 

Hooray for the Creator and for churches changing their understanding of sexuality--gradually.

Check out Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? by Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.  

Give a copy to a friend and to your church.

Pence? Not to worry...

Thank you, Frank Bruni, for your reassurance today that we don't have to worry about Mike Pence running for president in 2020.

His op-ed column in today's New York Times is titled "Sorry, Mike Pence, You're Doomed."

"He sold his soul" to Trump, Bruni explains, so if Trump is still in office in 2019-2020, Pence can't compete with Trump for the nomination.  

John Kasich can run, Ben Sasse can, Tom Cotton can.  

Even if Pence did run, argues Bruni, he has no credibility.  His "surrender of principles" in support of Trump leaves him powerless as a follow-up alternative to Trump.

Super-Christian Pence doesn't act like a man who is following Jesus.

He trumpets his conservative Christianity and avoids supping alone with any woman other than his wife, then turns around and steadfastly enables an avowed groper with a bulging record of profanely sexual comments.

He publishes a testimonial, “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner,” in which he invokes Jesus while vowing never to repeat such political ugliness in the future, then turns around and collaborates with a politician whose ugliness knows no limit.

He's "a marked man."  

"There's no afterlife in this equation," concludes Bruni.

We may have to endure a year or two of a Pence presidency after Trump resigns or is voted out of office by the Senate, but he would be confined to a limping-along performance hampered by an empowered Congress.

Does Pence have the moral authority to be president?

Many have wondered why President Trump’s associates haven’t taken away his Twitter access, but Tom Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, cut to the chase on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, March 5.  

"Forget Twitter," he said. "They're going to be talking about taking away his football, and I mean the nuclear codes."

A president has formal authority, Friedman noted, but Trump "is eroding his moral authority.” He described the tweets on Saturday, March 4, against former President Obama as "juvenile behavior."

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

Well, suppose Trump does indeed get himself impeached or rendered impotent, and we have Mike Pence as our president.

I'll take a sane president over an insane one any day, even if he's anti-abortion and anti-gay.

In that case, however, I begin to look at Pence's moral culpability for putting Trump in office.

He and most other Republicans finally went with Trump against their better judgment in order to gain power and advance their agenda.  It was an opportunity, much like Satan tempting Jesus in the desert.

He showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." --Matthew 4:8-9.

Jesus said, "Away with you, Satan!"

Pence said "Yes, I will be your running mate and we will win."

His decision gave Trump the votes of many evangelicals, who overlooked his flaws to win on the abortion issue and choose the next Supreme Court justice.  These votes were key to the slim Republican victory in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  

Trump wanted the power and splendor of being president, and he has it, for the time being.

Pence wants the same thing, and he may get it.

But in the long run, historically and eternally, both will be judged.  

Voters are culpable, but the Jesus judges common people less harshly than the rulers who lead them astray. "Woe to you, blind guides... hypocrites," he often said, as in Matt. 23:13-39.

The Judeo-Christian god, as well as the god of the Qur'an, is above all a god of justice.  Look at the judgment scene in Matthew 25 or these commands from Torah and the Qur’an:

Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice – Deuteronomy 27:19.

You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt – Exodus 22:21.

One who repulses the orphan and does not encourage the feeding of the indigent will face judgment – Surah 107 of the Qur'an.

We must each work for justice for refugees, immigrants, the poor, people newly insured by the Affordable Care Act, minorities, and others.

Doing so requires us to work against the Trump administration, and we may have to endure government by the morally compromised Mike Pence after Trump fades from the scene.

Nevertheless, I take comfort in knowing that Trump and Pence, like me, will finally face their Maker.

Evangelicals against the GOP nominee

Thank you to Andy Crouch, editor of Christianity Today magazine, for speaking out strongly against dt today in his Where We Stand article, "Speak Truth to Trump."

His words make me proud to say I once worked for CT as a summer intern in 1970 and 1971, continuing as a stringer for several years thereafter.

"In these closing weeks before the election, all American Christians should repent, fast, and pray—no matter how we vote," he writes--an excellent idea.

We have made many mistakes as a nation and as individuals.  Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of repentance and reflection for the coming year.  I will join in repenting this October rather than relishing the collapse of dt's campaign.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/october-web-only/speak-truth-to-trump.html

Of course, he includes a paragraph of critique against Hillary Rodham Clinton in order to balance his statement.

I don't agree that "several of the Democratic candidate’s policy positions are so manifestly incompatible with Christian reverence for the lives of the most vulnerable."  He's referring to her pro-choice position, which actually shows a lot of reverence for the lives of women who find themselves pregnant and unable to welcome a child--often another child.  

Surely these women are among "the most vulnerable."

I guess he's not classing immigrants, refugees, African-Americans and other minorities as among "the most vulnerable."  Hillary Rodham Clinton's policies show a lot of reverence for these people.

He couldn't be referring to her support of affordable health care, which shows lots of reverence for the health and well-being of "the most vulnerable."

What does Crouch mean when he says "her party is so demonstrably hostile to expressions of traditional Christian faith"?  

Her vice presidential running mate is a devout Catholic.  She has been a strong Methodist all her life. Many Democrats, like me, are evangelicals and Christians of other types.  

He must mean something by "traditional Christian faith" that I can't understand.  People against gay marriage?  That's not in the Nicene creed or the Apostles' Creed.  The Trinity, Jesus as redeeming us from our sin--that's traditional Christianity.

In his analysis of dt, however, Crouch is sharply accurate.

"He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool," Crouch says, citing ways in which dt is an idolator: "He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable."

Most importantly, Crouch calls out dt on his "defiance of God’s manifest concern for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed"--a central theme of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels.

Immigrants, people of color trying to rent apartments, women trying to retain dignity in the face of sexual assault--these are the vulnerable whom dt has humiliated and demeaned.

Many people were tweeting and retweeting Crouch's stinging condemnation today.  After three months of wondering why evangelicals like Mike Pence are supporting this nominee, my faith in born-again Christians has been renewed.

It's also good to see Karen Swallow Prior's article on the CT website against the notion that "locker room talk" is an acceptable excuse for any and all misogyny.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2016/october/call-out-locker-room-talk-for-sin-it-is.html

Christianity today faces many challenges; it's good to see this magazine come out swinging against the Republican nominee.