2y ago

Pastor alarmed after Trump-loving congregants deride Jesus' teachings as 'weak'

www.rawstory.com Pastor alarmed after Trump-loving congregants deride Jesus' teachings as 'weak'

Evangelical Christian leader Russell Moore revealed this week that many evangelical pastors have become alarmed that their Trump-loving congregants have become so militant that they are even rejecting the teachings of Jesus Christ.In an interview with NPR, Moore said that multiple pastors had told h...

Atheism @lemmy.world

www.rawstory.com /trump-evangelicals-2663078391/

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Pastor alarmed after Trump-loving congregants deride Jesus' teachings as 'weak'

www.rawstory.com /trump-evangelicals-2663078391/

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263 comments

Then maybe they should have corrected them when they were just starting out on all the crazy, rather than endorsing the dude that's literally the closest thing this world has seen to the anti-christ.
- Yeah this is a very leopard ate my face kind of moment
- Pretty sure the closest was Hitler.
  
  Pretty sure while the cult of Hitler was insane… and definitely… more… hitler never actually claimed any pretense to being any sort of Christian-god-sent whatever.
  Nazism was a sort of its own thing, and not particularly Christian, where the cult of Trump definitely is.
  While Jews were far and away the largest group that suffered in camps and the holocaust…they were
- Really, the closest?
  
  considering his cult worships as the 2nd coming... he himself described himself as "the chosen one", parrots reiligious one-liners while leading those who do worship him- and yes, that is the appropriate term- away from the teachings of christ.
  
  Remember, the Antichrist is not just "really evil person". It's "really evil person who convinces a lot of people that he's a good person and a prophet".
  
  If you're thinking of the modern pop-culture version of the anti-christ, then no.
  If you compare his behaviour to how the bible actually describes the anti-christ, then yes.
  According to the bible he is supposed to:
  Be a divisive non-politician who comes into power against peoples expectations.
  Be overly arrogant with great boastful speeches
  Lead many people away from Jesus and cause them to blindly follow himself.
  Lead a very powerful military nation
  Publically threaten people as a common tactic
  Be very focused on winning/conquering
  Rise to power through collusion, lies and corruption.
  His election into power will by some be seen as a miracle
  Will use his power to enrich themselves and their allies
  Spread lies and falsehoods as truth, general lies and deception.
  It specifically says he will reward his allies with land/property
  Become angry and threaten the "King of the south"(Mexico)
  Be supported by some of the nations most powerful religious leaders(super churches and such support him)
  See themselves as above everyone else
  Disregard the needs of the most vulnerable in society
  Some will rise up in protest and face violence in return
  Some things that are almost too on the nose:
  Only see one term
  Attempt to stay in power but defeated by the legal system
  Use his armed forced to remove people from a church for their own nefarious needs
  During their rule there will be large inflation in food cost, while oil remains cheap
  There will be a pandemic and mass death during their rule
  Supposed to worship the "god of fortresses" (in reference of walls and keeping people out)
  Followers will wear a mark on their forehead (maga caps)
  
  Yes, really.
  
  Man there was this (satirical, but not inaccurate) blog about how trump actually matches many features of the anti-christ, but I can't find it now, only a bunch of blogspam copying it
  
  I agree, you don't have to look far down the road to see even worse (DeSantis).
  
  Just think about how many of the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth) Trump embodies. Like... fuckin' all of them?
  
  Put it this way, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-666-fifth-avenue/
  
  It may be there are worse people but they are more akin to satan ~~(e.g Hitler was atheist (well not really he believed in the occult but didn't go down religion)~~. Trump claims to be some sort of Jesus figure to religious so hits some.of the "pretends to be Christ" points of.the antichrist
  (Edit Hitler religious views are very complex but I still. Stand by point he less acted like "Christ" figure than trump)

I'm not surprised. I've heard stories as far back as 2015 or 2016 about people storming out in the middle of their pastor's sermon because the pastor directly quoting Jesus' sermon on the mount was too "woke."
Mark my words: if conservatives can no longer advance their cause under the guise of Christianity, they won't abandon conservatism. They will abandon Jesus.
- This is an extremely interesting thought experiment, and one that is not without precedent. I left a comment below about the misrepresented and often repeated claims regarding Hitler's (as well as Nazism more broadly) views on religion, occultism, and atheism.
  I bring this up again here because what happened in Germany was essentially the opposite of the proposition you are suggesting. Instead of throwing Jesus out of Christianity, Hitler made a specific and distinct push to remove any perceivedly Jewish teachings from what became German "Positive Christianity". This included the removal of the Old Testament, the Pauline epistles, and the framing of Jesus as a dogmatic Aryan ideologue who opposed the teachings of Jewish mysticism.
  The notion that the modern crypto-fascist & christian-nationalist movements might take the opposite approach by throwing out or obfuscating the teachings of Jesus which they perceive as liberal or socialist in nature and therefore counter to the authoritarian hegemony they seem to be advocating for is a fascinating proposition. I also happen to believe you are correct, and that we have been seeing this happen in real time over the last several decades at least.
  I am sincerely afraid that the most damaging threads of the 20th century will be repeated again, and I'm not so sure that humanity is as prepared as it should be to fight against that potentiality. The destruction of education in this country, and the tears in the facade of infinite-growth-capitalism have made the United States the perfect hotbed for this kind of ideology to rise again...
  
  I am sincerely afraid that the most damaging threads of the 20th century will be repeated again
  Looks at Uyghur camps in China
- They won't think they're abandoning Jesus. They will start worshipping some different badass with the same name who brings vengeance upon his enemies with swift application of firearms. They'll call that entity Jesus, but it will have no relationship to the Christian concept of Jesus.
  
  Republican Jesus has been a thing for a long time.
  
  Well, that's what religious people have always done. They follow a religion until it disagrees with them, then they leave and start a new 'slightly different' branch which agrees with them.
  You know, sort of like how Catholicism was founded about 30 years after Jesus' assumed death date, but then 1600 years later, Baptists decided to branch off create their own flavor.
- I suggest you check out the Conservapedia Bible Rewrite project/Conservapedia Bible Project for a good laugh.

They never accepted his teachings in the first place....
- You have a point, however, there seems to be a difference in severity. It's like how openly and aggressively racist some of these folks have gotten. Sure, they always probably harbored those feelings, but now they are more brazen about it, and the behavior is getting worse as a result.
  
  They just needed someone in a position of authority to tell them it was okay to be awful.
  
  Yup. The jokes made under their breath have turned into heckles from the crowd.
- Arguable. The stories have him talk about the right price and your rights with slaves, and as commonly understood "not one jot or tittle" would directly conflict with "let he who..", unless the second is an edict ("hey, you, sinless one, go chuck a rock at them and bludgeon then go death").
  Where the bible isn't monstrous, it's at best inconsistent.
  
  Pretty insane interpretation of jesus's teachings, ngl
  Super edgy tho

...did the pastor just wake from a 6 year coma?
'Christians' switched to Cult-45 the day Trump entered into politics.
- I grew up fundamentalist, and they had abandoned his teachings in the 80’s in service to Emperor Reagan.
  
  I mean, really, when did Christians ever follow Jesus' teachings considering how many people were converted by the sword...
  
  I wasn't alive during the crusades, but I think that would be a pretty good starting place.
- The leopard is still hungry
- Christians have ignored the teachings of Jesus from the start. Just one example: You cannot serve God and money. Matthew 6:24. I think Jesus was a communist who would probably also be crucified today by the people who proclaim to be Christians.
  
  Paul derailed the Church right out of the gate. Here's a guy who has had an absurd amount of control over the fate of Christianity who never met Christ, and who advocates principles that directly contradict Christ's own teachings while being very similar to the teaching of the Jewish temple Paul previously held power in as a Pharisee. Paul took Christ's teachings and merged them into a contemptible, incoherent hybrid of Christ's message and the Jewish law-focused faith, brought full circle back into a religious bureaucracy by the Roman Catholics.
  
  Total agreement. His message was revolutionary.

No one hates Jesus and his teachings as fiercely as a Christian. Christians would be the firsts in line to crucify Christ for his hippie, soft ideas again if he were to resurrect, this has been known for centuries.
- I have a 20 year old t-shirt that says "If Jesus comes back we'll kill him again" on it in tiny white script. People always thought it was a statement of my intentions but it was always just a comment on society.
- Reminds me of the South Park ep Hare Club for Men, when Bill Donahue, of the Catholic League (read: assholes with persecution complex), says to kill the Jews (Jesus was Jewish). Jesus wasn't hardline enough.
  
  I'm pretty sure that killing Jesus is not very Christian.
- That's simply not true. A truthful statement is that these people were never Christians. They flew the Christian flag because it lent them credibility and control. But it has been a long time since we've seen any Christian values from the loudmouths we see in the news claiming to be Christians. Actual Christians aren't the people you see on the news. I know a few and they're great people who do a lot for their communities and the people around them.
  
  A truthful statement is that these people were never Christians.
  This is like the most very basic "No True Scotsman" that you can do.
  These people are Christian, whether you like it or not. You don't get to decide that they aren't. All Abrahamic religions and their holy books are full of awful awful stuff. And no, not just the Old Testament.
  Now you know how most Muslims feel.
  
  Not a true Scotman. Read a history book. Christians have been beheading, slaving and murdering people ever since Constantine converted in his death bed. It was never about being a good Christian in the eyes of God. Religion has always been about power.

He's not wrong. But what he's leaving out is that all this is very rich coming from him personally, a bit of too little too late when he was actually well-placed in 2016 to make a real stand.
It is true that Russell Moore has been speaking out to some extent against Donald Trump for years. But it is also true that when it would have counted most, during the 2016 campaign season, Moore walked back the strength of his anti-Trump statements in order to keep his highly-positioned job as president of the internal ethics board of the Southern Baptist Convention (an organization I consider to be deeply corrupt anyway):
On June 1, 2013, Moore became President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention's official entity assigned to address social, moral, and ethical concerns. . . . [Three years later,] Moore's vocal criticism of then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 election season drew a backlash from fellow Southern Baptists, triggering a crisis in which more than 100 churches threatened to withdraw donations to the denomination's Cooperative Program in protest of Moore's stances and leading to calls for his resignation. After Moore issued statements of apology in December 2016 and March 2017 for "using words… that were at times overly broad or unnecessarily harsh," Southern Baptist leaders affirmed their support for his leadership and he remained in his post. (Wikipedia)
It's hard to call upon the rules and be taken seriously when you have not taken the rules seriously yourself:
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth." -- Jesus
EDITED TO ADD: I am not a Christian myself, just comparing idolatry to idolatry here.

Shouldn't he be like the false prophet they warn themselves about? I mean, is not that I expected some of those dumbfucks to even know what the bible says, but fuck, the level of idolatry is astounding.
- Trump embodies every single characteristic that the Bible ascribes to the antichrist. CPAC even built a golden idol of trump a few years ago.
  
  Here's a fun list of the many ways trump falls under the description of the antichrist.
  
  how do they not see that. What would take a literal money exchange booth in the church.
- This pastor seems to think so.
  https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
  I am not a Christian, and don't have a dog in this fight.
- Well, clearly Jesus is the actual false prophet, because a long-haired dark-skinned Middle Eastern socialist who got executed as a criminal sounds like a LOSER.
- Obviously that was Obama since he was black.
- Irony is often lost on people whose primary personality trait is cognitive dissonance.
- Maybe the origin of their beliefs has less to do with the meanings being sacred texts, and more to do with being walking, breathing, confirmation bias machines.

I like messiahs who weren't crucified.

"I never thought the leopard would eat MY face." These people got in bed with quite possibly the most godless person on Earth, Trump is very likely one of the first true Atheist Presidents we've ever had. He's probably paid multiple women for sex and abortions, cheated on all of his wives, lies on a constant and regular basis, and is just generally a shitty person on every level. This is the person they hitched their wagon to to get Roe v Wade overturned. I sure as hell hope it blows up in their face.
- I think it already is blowing up in their face, and agree fully with your sentiment. While atheists dont depend on religion to define their morals, they get the opportunity to self-define their morals. A narcissistic egotisticial born-with-a-silver-spoon person like Trump is a wolf in sheep's clothing parading as one of them. He decays or corrupts everything he touches, and the GOP and evangelical Christians have been rubbing all up on him for 7 years. Both groups are in crisis these days.
  The GOP has no true platform beyond revenge politics, and the churches are bleeding congregation members... people leaving either because they aren't on board the crazy train of their church peers or leave because they've allowed their beliefs and morals to twist out of whack in conflict of scripture.
- Not only that, but all of that was well known prior to him winning the election.
  They don't care.
- it's not that he's athiest - he still firmly believes in a God and a Supreme Being™, it's just that he sees himself in the role…
- Just a note... whether he is atheist or follows a religion isn't actually related to his garbage character.
  I get it... I know some religious people mistakenly think that morals come from religion. So it's interesting they pick someone who doesn't even put on a show of practicing their religion.
  Of course, as the rest of us know, any amount of observation in life will show that there are both decent and despicable people in both religious and non-religious camps.
  But, yeah it is painfully ironic that religious people hitched their wagon to that lying, adulterous, greedy, gluttonous, (etc) slime bag.
- All that immoral behavior you mentioned reads much more like the behavior of an outspoken conservative Christian rather than an atheist. You know, all the “rules for thee but not for me” type stuff.
  It may be true that neither of them really believe deep down, but only one is using it to look good while being shitty.

You helped create these people. You are these people.

They keep saying that Jesus will return. Yet if he ever did they would dismiss him as a "dirty hippie" and cheer for the cops who beat him to death.
- Then crucify him. Then glorify him for dying for their sins again.
- They’d be too confused by the fact that he isn’t white.

They like the "is Lord" part. The idea of divine royalty and unquestioning loyalty. They aren't so keen on teachings of kindness, introspection, self awareness, caring, mutual respect, humility, poverty, etc.
- It's kind of weird to accept someone as your Lord white disobeying all his instructions.
  
  In the 30+ year old words of Bill Hicks:
  They believe the bible is the exact word of God - Then they change the bible! Pretty presumptuous, huh? "I think what God meant to say..."

Moore also said that one problem is that many Christians simply feel alienated and lonely, as politics have come to take over the community outlets that churches once held.
Oh, hey, it's basically me. There isn't room for "love your neighbor as yourself" in the Republichristian party. I don't feel welcome at church anymore.
- You're at the wrong church then. A good one can be hard to find in some areas...
- Sounds like you should find a new church then.

The last true Christian was a Middle-Eastern socialist Jew.
- Peter?
  
  I think he means The Jesus
- Santa?

Almost as if they never gave a shit about Jesus's teachings in the first place and only cherry picked a couple of things that fit their existing desires.
Now they're just going mask off.
- It doesn't take much. For starters "Greed" is one of the 7 deadly sins...

"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?'" Moore revealed. "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.'"
Looks like these "churches" are in desperate need of salvation. If only they knew someone who could provide that...
- If only they knew someone who could provide that...
  Uh, is it Trump? It is, right?

Separation of church and state was created to protect both the state AND the church. Churches are not supposed to be political organizations for their own good. Dividing into camps along political lines and shouting at each other is what happens out in the world. It's not supposed to happen at church.
- Dividing into camps along political lines and shouting at each other is what happens out in the world. It’s not supposed to happen at church.
  Wait, I thought this was their main feature...
  The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
  He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
  He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
  Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."
- Churches should be taxed though. Give unto Caesar and all that.
  
  There's nothing special about churches. The ACLU has the same tax breaks and associated restrictions.
  It's why the ACLU is actually 2 different organizations. There's the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation. ACLU is a political lobbying group that is directly involved in political activities and therefore has to pay taxes and donations to it are not tax-deductible. The ACLU Foundation other is a legal services charity that is tax-exempt and donations to it are tax deductible.
  Churches simply don't have the direct political arm. If they do, then they should be taxed. I once saw a church lose it's tax exemption when the pastor told the congregation they should vote for Obama.
  If churches should be taxed then all non-profit organizations should, and you therefore shouldn't be able to make any kind of tax-deductible donations.

I find it absurd that evangelicals support Trump so hard. A man who is quite literally the exact opposite of what they are asked to be in scripture. He throws them a couple of pieces of red meat and they dive on it. How sad.
- Christianity was never about following scripture, it's always been about using scripture to maintain power over others. If a personis going to put christians in that position of power, they're going to follow that person, simple as that.
- Authoritarians don't vote for other authoritarians, they vote for charismatic strongmen who don't share their political beliefs. It's literally crazy.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarian_personality
  
  "Charismatic"

The golden calf strikes again
- Would be interesting to see what reaction one would get to "Trump is Lord" posters.
- They built a literal golden idol of trump.
  
  @Anticorp @HurlingDurling
  Ofc they did.
  
  I just see a golden turd statue
- They wouldn't get that reference.

Bunch of brainwashers upset that the people they brainwashed are getting brainwashed by someone else.

Oh. What a shock. Look. I'm surprised. See:
😐

I told someone awhile back that in my opinion a lot of the people in positions of influence don’t really understand or appreciate the danger of playing with the type of fire supporting or indulging the ideas that Trump represents brings with it.
It is not as big a leap to go from supporting prosecuting women for having an abortion to save their lives to getting the idea that Governor Abbott has a weak bloodline, due to being in a wheelchair, and should be removed so he is not a drain on the state resources better used for the betterment of the strong as those supporters seem to think.
Essentially they severely overestimate the control they wield over the leopard that will eventually eat their face.
- How the hell did I never know Greg Abbott uses a wheelchair
  
  Kind of makes his support for such hard right policies seem even more tone deaf doesn’t it? He is literally supporting something that it is not hard to see will come for him, and those like him.
- "They" created a monster and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
  
  And the chickens are flying around the monster, swooping and diving and pecking, and they created a monster but they didn't pay the extra $4.95 for the commemorative safety goggles, a decision they'll truly regret when they realize that the monster isn't a monster at all, it's a mirror they're thenmonster!s..... No the monster was behind the mirror but it's a leopard and it's eating their faces.

There you have it. They'll turn away from Jesus before they turn away from Trump.
There's something in the Bible about that, if I remember correctly... ahh here it is - 1 John 4:3:
And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
Who am I to argue with one of the 12 disciples?
- Disciples of Trump. That's who would.

Christianity has always been a very comfy place for the worst people.
- I'd just like to sit in on the closed door leadership meetings where they admit they think Paul masterfully hijacked the gospels and grew Christianity into a tool for oppression. Then watch as they divise ways to fuck over their own congregations.

To the modern right, Jesus was a beta cuck socialist. Healing the sick?? Loving thy neighbor?? Sounds like some LIBERAL BULLSHIT 😤 (my wife left me)
- I want that on a t-shirt. ‘Jesus was a beta cuck socialist’.

this has led him to conclude that American evangelical Christianity is now in crisis.
Just now you realized it just now.
- Better late than never I guess.

This is a perfect example of:
!leopardsatemyface@lemm.ee
!leopardsatemyface@reddthat.com

My grandmother was an amazing woman who devotes her life helping others. She was a nurse who also volunteered at old folks homes in her free time, and she donated to many good causes. She loved the teaching of Jesus. Her dad was a WWII vet, and she cared deeply about treating others with love and charity.
She passed away over a decade ago, and while I still don't like the idea that she's gone, I'm happy that she never had to see this all of this happening. She would have been absolutely crushed.
- Similar story with many of my family members, except it ends with them turning into hateful monsters in support of Trump.
  It's horrifying to watch a loved one embrace fascism.
- Sadly her being crushed might be the best case scenario. Imagine how crushed YOU would be if the propaganda weaseled its way to turning her into a trumper.
  I don’t mean to disrespect her memory though. Somebody that good who actually gives of themselves rather than just hanging up crosses and American flags, would probably be one of the millions who did not buy all the recent right wing crap.
  
  No disrespect taken. I'm sure she would agree if she could. Doing what people have been doing would have went against her core morals

I like the ones that don’t get crucified.

Trump is their messiah now.
- Literally too. I’ve seen Facebook posts from an evangelical ex girlfriend of vertical lens flares on Tump saying that he’s gods chosen one and it’s liked by a bunch of other evangelicals. They really do think he’s chosen by god.
  
  There used to be a subreddit about "Prayers to Trump" where people.would pray to him via Twitter for things.
  If Trump came out and said I am Jesus his supporters would all be we know.

Have they ever really liked Jesus?
Most of the Magats were always terrible people who never once lived like Jesus. Now they actually have someone's name to say who they model their lives after
- I recognize I'm insignificant in reality so let me just go ahead and adopt these beliefs that make me feel otherwise, that's better, ahhh sweet hatred.

They're just mad because Trump is horning in on their racket.

I... hm. I don't know what to say here, except I swear this is a case where the onion has literally written an article about this exact thing occurring. The onion has gone from being believable, to being prophetic. Amazing.
- "The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such coup was The Onion’s scoop revealing that a former president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home’s basement three years before it even happened. footnote 2"
  
  March 2003

They were always gonna come for the priests and pastors next, the very second they step off the playbook.
- I have always been surprised that the Catholic Bishops have been so willing to align, politically, with the evangelicals on this issue. They haven't historically gotten along well. And the evangelicals were agnostic about abortion, until they realized all the money they could raise by embracing the bans.
  If the end-game for this is turning the country (or even the red states) into a theocracy, Catholics are going to find themselves excluded again. Some evangelicals don't even think they count as Christian. And nobody else is going to have sympathy for them, when the ruling class imposes their belief systems on Catholics, because it's exactly what the Catholic Bishops have been doing to other groups through their support of extreme abortion bans.
  
  The chatolic diaconese in the US is as far as I've heard extremists and the Vatican seems to have trouble reining them in.
  
  I hope so. Can they hate on people for something they chose for once? Damn
- Nah there will always be plenty of bigoted pastors, churches, and congregations for these people.
  This may cause (another) split amongst Christians, but there's no way they give up religion entirely. It's far too useful to them as a tool of control and indoctrination.
  
  Watch it split into Trumpanalty

Where were they the last 8 years?

There was actually a study that compared Donald Trump to the biblical Antichrist and the similarities were startling. One of the ones that really fucked with me was how it said that when he shows up, the antichrist, the rivers will be joined to the Lakes, Mar-A-Lago literally means River to Lake.
- Imagine you are an ancient prophet writing about the end times, and you go to describe the actual damn antichrist, and the best you can come up with is a translation of what the antichrist's property name meant with zero context lmao.
  
  There were actually several others but that was the one that seen the most eyebrow raising because it was a case of "What are the odds?"
- It translates to "Sea-to-Lake"

The leopards are coming from inside the house!

ok who here is actually surprised by this.
- Not at all, but even if they were already rejecting their religion’s teachings and following their political bullshit in every practical sense, it’s still a bit sobering to know that when they actually read their Bible (or have it read to them) they see the central peace & forgiveness & sacrifice guy as a liberal talking-point “other.”

This is /leopardatemyface material.

Pick and choose!
Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
John 8:44 You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Matthew 24:1-51 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray….
Luke 21:8 And he said, “See that you are not led astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is at hand!’ Do not go after them.
Matthew 7:13-14 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
Romans 16:18 For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive
2 Corinthians 11:14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.
- This would only work if they read the Bible.
  
  They’re too busy thumping it to actually read it.
  
  That's a pretty unfair requirement. First they have to learn to read and then they have to read the Bible too!

All those “snakes in the grass”

"No, no, you're supposed to show you believe they're weak in what you do, but claim you believe otherwise! Do you even cognitive dissonance, bro?"

They are building a new religion around trump by co-opting the existing religious infrastructure. This could split the Church again.
If it didn't have such scary societal impacts it would actually be fun watching them destroy each other. Unfortunately, their war is going to take out a lot of marginalized groups.

Your 2000 year old cult that you say if full of love and forgiveness but has generally been used to stir hatred, abuse kids, and hoard incalculable amounts of money has been replaced with a new up-and-coming cult that skips the obligation to forgive and replaces it with hatred and retribution and even more grift. Congratulations.

You're Christian, right? You're supposed to follow the teachings of Christ! It's literally in the name!
- Christ means “messiah/anointed one” these people are following, in their eyes, the new one and he ain’t called Jesus. Seriously these fucking people are literally worshipping mr Orange.

Doubt. I doubt these stories are being reported to him. He has been a Cassandra for years to the point that he lost his job and now he presents a bunch of anecdotal stories that can't be verified.
Sure Christianity hasn't exactly needed Christ since the beginning but the specific claims in this article I do not believe.
- That doesn’t sound very unbelievable to me. It’s not a direct quote and it very much sounds like the sentiment that I hear from evangelicals that I’m acquainted with.
  
  Even if it happened it is hearsay twice removed with someone with a motivation to lie.
  Where did it happen? What church? Who said it?
- Back in 1996 a psychopath killed an innocent old woman with a bomb. Because he claimed to be 'anti-abortion' he was protected by various 'Christian' groups.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph
  
  I am only addressing one particular claim.