Fellow evangelists cancelled Russell Moore -- He was a top church official who criticized Trump. He says Christianity is in crisis...
"What does the Bible say about fake news?"
August 8, 20231:29 PM ET
By Scott Detrow, Gabriel J. Sánchez, Sarah Handel
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Who is he? Russell Moore was one of the top officials in the Southern Baptist Convention.
* When Donald Trump came on the scene, Moore criticized him publicly and found himself ostracized by many other evangelical leaders who embraced the former president.
* Moore also criticized the Southern Baptist Convention's response to a sexual abuse crisis, as well as what he viewed as an increased tolerance for white nationalism within the church.
* Suddenly, in 2021, Moore found himself resigning from his post and on the outside of a denomination that had, up until that point, defined his life.
[...]
On why he thinks Christianity is in crisis:
It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.
On how he begins to address the issues he sees:
I don't think we fix it by fighting a war for the soul of evangelicalism. I really don't think we can fix it at the movement level. And that's one of the reasons why, when I'm talking to Christians who are concerned about this, my counsel is always "small and local." I think we have to do something different and show a different way. And I see in history every time that something renewing and reviving has happened, it's happened that way. It's happened at a small level with people simply refusing to go with the stream of the church culture at the time.
Trump Ignites a War Within the Church "The apocalyptic myth that helps explain evangelical support for Trump ""Is this fascism? No. Could it become fascism? Yes"
The Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats. Watch out for them, they are human scum!
Bible Thumpers probably won't care. Trump offers revealingly bad answers about the Good Book Eric ZornBy Eric Zorn - Contact Reporter October 26, 2016, 6:10 PM Nothing illustrates what a flim-flam man Donald Trump is better than his frequent and oily allusions to the Bible. It is his favorite book, he tells the credulous masses at his rallies. Nobody reads it more than he does. But a review of the record suggests he may not have read it at all.
Right-Wing Is Filled with Biblical Illiterates: They'd Be Shocked by Jesus' Teachings if They Ever Picked Up a Bible
December 23, 2013 |
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly defended the Republican Party’s spending cuts for SNAP by effectively declaring Jesus would not support food stamps for the poor because most them are drug addicts. If his insensitive remark is inconsistent with Scripture, which it is, then the question becomes why do talking heads on the right get away with proclaiming what Jesus would or wouldn’t support?
The answer is simple: Conservatives have not read the Bible.
The Right has successfully rebranded the brown-skinned liberal Jew, who gave away free healthcare and was pro-redistributing wealth, into a white-skinned, trickledown, union-busting conservative, for the very fact that an overwhelming number of Americans are astonishingly illiterate when it comes to understanding the Bible. On hot-button social issues, from same-sex marriage to abortion, biblical passages are invoked without any real understanding of the context or true meaning. It’s surprising how little Christians know of what is still the most popular book to ever grace the American continent.
More than 95 percent of U.S. households own at least one copy of the Bible. So how much do Americans know of the book that one-third of the country believes to be literally true? Apparently, very little, according to data from the Barna Research group. Surveys show that 60 percent can’t name more than five of the Ten Commandments; 12 percent of adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and nearly 50 percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. A Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the first book of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a biblical verse.
So, if Americans get an F in the basic fundamentals of the Bible, what hope do they have in knowing what Jesus would say about labor unions, taxes on the rich, universal healthcare, and food stamps? It becomes easy to spread a lie when no one knows what the truth is.
The truth, whether Republicans like it or not, is not only that Jesus a meek and mild liberal Jew who spoke softly in parables and metaphors, but conservatives were the ones who had him killed. American conservatives, however, have morphed Jesus into a muscular masculine warrior, in much the same way the Nazis did, as a means of combating what they see as the modernization of society.
iMmINeNt RApTUre .. Who Would Jesus Torture? [...] The list could go on and on. Whether we are talking about environmental protection or corporal punishment for children, sane drug laws or responsible sexual education, religious Americans are more likely to take a less ethical, less merciful, or less rational position than atheists and secular people. And just to top it off, sociological and psychological studies since the 1950s have consistently shown that strongly religious Americans, on average, tend to be more ethnocentric, prejudice, anti-Semitic, racist, intolerant, nationalistic, and authoritarian than those who forgo church and don't believe so strongly in God -- if at all.
** I apologize to the posters here on Tornado - how this disintegrated into this - I can't even remember . [...] Many , many people , in my life have asked me - who do you vote for ? They have always told me about their 'person' - AND - my response has always been the same - I never vote for the 'man' - I have ALWAYS VOTED PRINCIPLES and - that is why I have always ended up voting for democrats - it's really simple - if you look at it like I do .
What are my principles ?? - well not too much different than the sermon on the mount .
The Sermon on the Mount
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
AI
