Onward Christian Soldiers
By Chuck Robison
False Prophets are very good at hiding their falseness. Recently, Jim Baker, the religious swindler and convicted felon, stated that if Trump is impeached “The Christians will finally come out of the shadows.” He went on to state ”Such an impeachment will result in another American Civil War. It will be called for and managed by the Christians.”
In a recent Baptist News Global article, Miguel De La Torre states: “Evangelicalism has ceased to be a faith perspective rooted in Jesus the Christ and has become a political movement whose beliefs repudiate all Jesus advocated.
The beauty of the gospel message — of love, of peace and of fraternity — has been murdered by the ambitions of Trumpish flimflammers who have sold their souls for expediency. No greater proof is needed of the death of Christianity than the rush to defend a child molester in order to maintain a majority in the U.S. Senate.
Evangelicalism’s embrace of a new age of ignorance, blames homosexuality for Harvey’s rage rather than considering the scientific consequences climate change has on the number of increasing storms of greater and greater ferocity.
You might wonder if my condemnation is too harsh. It is not, for the Spirit of the Lord has convicted me to shout from the mountaintop how God’s precious children are being devoured by the hatred and bigotry of those who have positioned themselves as the voice of God in America.”
On November 20th, The Boston Declaration, condemning the abuse of the Christian faith by many conservatives today, was written, signed and released by over 300 hundred Christian theologians attending the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, an annual meeting of nearly 10,000 professionals in religion.
In a dramatic press conference at Boston’s famous Old South Church, where many dressed in sackcloth and ashes to call for repentance and change in Christianity in the United States, the presenters were clear that white American Evangelicalism is in a crisis, a crisis of its own making. It has abandoned the Gospel of Jesus the Christ.
They said: “We are here because Jesus taught us to “love our neighbor as ourselves. We are here because we take the parable of the Good Samaritan to heart. We are here because we refuse to allow Christianity to be co-opted by the likes of people who support abuse of women, the closing of our nation to the immigrant in need and the normalizing of lie after lie after lie.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian pastor who was arrested and ultimately executed by the Nazis for his opposition to Hitler, contrasted what he called “cheap grace” with the costly grace of the Gospel. “Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits.
The Christianity Bonhoeffer denounced is the Christianity we denounce today. It is a Christianity that literally enables hate, hate for people of color, for immigrants, for those of other religions, for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender human beings, for women and girls, for the poor and the most vulnerable among us.”
We have now reached that moment when Christian preachers of every kind must stand up and demand that those who claim to follow The Christ actually follow The Christ. We cannot allow another American Civil War to commence being led by faux Christian leaders who preach hatred, exclusivity and war itself as a solution to anything.
You, the reader of this article and all the other publicity in this crisis, must take this seriously. Six weeks before the firing on Fort Sumter, no one had seriously thought that a real war would occur. And then without warning, America caught on fire.
As the convicted felon Jim Baker says, we are very close to a civil war. Our whole country is armed and dangerous. One match, one bullet, one mistake, even one impeachment trial, and we are done. If we really claim to be Christians, then we must follow The Christ. At the very least we must seek peace with our American Brothers and Sisters. And we must act now.
If we allow this war to start, we will have to learn, again, the hard way, the sad truth of every war. At the end of every war we must answer the very same question that we failed to answer as the war began: How can we live with our brothers and sisters?
Following The Christ, seeking peace and charity towards all and compassion for each, we can grow to the America we were educated to believe we lived in. We are fast leaving that America under a false flag of Making America Great Again.
The Christ, as promised, will be with each of us until the end of time, but none of us will live to see a great America ever again.
Pray for peace, pray for forgiveness, pray for each other.
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