Oh and bizarrely i just published a piece on my substack titled: “I don’t mind being broken” Needless to say, it sees the word broken from a very different perspective than the people you write of here.
This makes sense, and seems true. And as others have said, is depressing. Though I don’t personally know very many Trumpers, nor very many evangelicals, they have been very clear over the past few years that they want disruption. At the same time, if you watch much streaming television, as I do (admittedly too much), you’ll notice the word “disruption” is everywhere. It’s there in the real estate world, it is there in the business world, it’s everywhere. There’s a kind of gleeful quality about it. I’m a retired minister from a progressive denomination. When I left the church 10 years ago, I was sensing that there’s a kind of doomsday, end of the world, secret craving for a great cleansing afoot in the world. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t think it’s just the Christian evangelicals. Television is full of themes about breakage and the end of the world, or at least society, as we know it. Among my progressive friends I don’t know anybody who doesn’t think that we’re in for a Great Upheaval. And I don’t think this is just because the Trumpers are going to bring it about. I think Americans have a kind of Death Wish. Liberal religion has been talking for decades about how America is going to fall the way the Roman empire did. There is a longing beneath that. I don’t know what the longing is. Maybe everyone is just tired of the same old cycles and patterns over and over and over again. On the left, leaning side, we’re tired of unrelenting racism, misogyny, homophobia, capitalism, poverty, homelessness. I understand the emotional urge to just bring it all down and start over. I think individuals do that in relationships all the time. Maybe we’re just seeing that impulse at work on a cosmic scale. Perhaps the Christian evangelicals - the ones to the right- on the right are just framing it in a different way than the rest of us. But we too are adding wood to the fire.
Since you are a historian, maybe you’ll see this better than I but one of the most damming things that has happened in American religious history, was the explosion of dispensational theology and the Scofield reference Bible, which spread the perverted theology across the nation.
Jesus message in the gospels was that he was bringing the kingdom of God. He even taught his disciples to pray in good Jewish parallelism “Thy kingdom come i.e., Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” any number of theologians have shown how modern evangelicalism, ironically, with the best of intentions, distorted the biblical gospel. The gospel of Jesus dying only so that people can escape hell and go to heaven. . . somewhere out there, is a doctrine that smells like smoke, because it comes from the pit of hell!
Even more ironic, although, is the fact that the kingdom HAS been growing since Jesus planted the mustard seed. Although we look around us and see sin and misery and wars continue and people living in strife and fear, the contrast between the world we live in today, and the world of the first century cannot even be compared. Yes, the kingdom of God is coming and has been on a steady march since its inception.
As Isaiah affirmed so long ago, the people of his time would not even recognize the world that we live in today! And we, we have forgotten how much misery was in the world before Christ. No doubt we still have our fair share. The kingdom has not come in all of its fullness yet. As Daniel Martinovich writes in his Bible Prophecy About The Free World:
“They [Modern Westerners] have no concept of how the most powerful people in the world made policy and went to war based on the study of how the entrails of sacrificed animal fell on the ground. We are talking about the Roman Empire here, for pity’s sake. Half the world’s population were slaves. The average lifespan was half of what it is now. You served the king or you were dead. There was no such thing as free speech or property rights.”
Yes, despite all the pain, suffering and turmoil we both experience and see around us, the kingdom of God continues to come. One day, it will arrive in all of its fullness.
Diana, this is one of the most clarifying (and scarifying) explanations that I have come across. So much of evangelicalism is incomprehensible to this northern European whose spirituality has been shaped by a convergence of Lutheran-Orthodox-Celtic-Franciscan thought and practice. Thank you for your insights!
"They" will not break the system that is a major root of the problem---a manipulated capitalist economy that feeds those that want to retain their power over. That is their religion--and why the Mike Johnsons of the world cave in to a criminal that wants his job back.
Perhaps for additional insight into the mindset of the south a little book by historian C. Vann Woodward would help, "The Burden of Southern History," written circa 1960. It really helped me, an Ohioan college student, to understand that culture in a way I'd never before imagined. an nowadays "the south" encompasses` more than a geographic area, becoming much more a rural/urban divide.
I was blessed to have a father who was both a philosophy professor, and an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. I was never taught the "Southern Version of Christianity," and am glad of it. Even as a young girl I was appalled when I heard the dark religious interpretations of evangelicals. At college I got into a yelling match with a madman named Holy Hubert who was preaching on campus about death and sin and damnation. To see the power those views have gained today is truly disheartening. I will continue to fight it wherever I can. Thank you Diane for this moving piece.
Wow, it is something. I'm just proud of my church community. I can't understand how they think they are following Jesus!!! Unless their Jesus is Trump. Lord, help us.
Diana, you have hit the nail on more than one head with this post and its observations. My 83- and 82-year-old parents are Trump supporters and more than once I have heard them say something along the lines that "the system needs to be broken." The influence of Southern Religion is also spot on. My father is a big believer in pre-millennial dispensationalism, which fits the "misery" theme. For the last 35 years he's listened beginning with Limbaugh and then Fox News. He will vote for Trump again. As I've read this piece, I'm wondering if they want to "tear it all down." "break the system." I've wondered if they've considered what that will mean for their children and grandchildren. I continually give thanks God worked in my life to rescue me from the misery of evangelicalism/fundamentalism. I continue to struggle with how to articulate a new theology of hope for my parishioners in SE PA.
Such brilliant truths revealed, examined and illustrated. Thank you very much - I have heard this OVER and OVER and OVER for the past weeks..."I don't understand!" May everyone who feels this alienation flow toward a kind of unity - there are many of us in this boat. Let the healing begin, as I read below.
Diana, you are so right and so was Flannery. How on earth could she see how Christ-haunted the south was in the 50s and early 60s? And now the de facto civil Christianity that covers this country like a dense fog is blood-soaked evangelical. I grew up Methodist in the south. The only other denominations around were Presbyterians and Baptists, and in the minds of most people they were all the same. Never mind that many mainline clergy had completed M. Div. degrees at Emory, Duke, Vanderbilt, or Columbia. Their polite sermons were no match for the power of TV and radio preachers and "Christian" bookstores. Individualistic altar-calling evangelicalism was in the air we breathed. I often wonder if the mainline denominations and their seminaries could have done anything to counter the influence of the fundamentalist evangelicalism.
It is only because of your coverage of a huge array of topics and this one in specific that I realized I was/am a victim (?) of an evangelical dominant church.
So incredibly helpful
This finally makes it start to make sense to me. Thank you.
Oh and bizarrely i just published a piece on my substack titled: “I don’t mind being broken” Needless to say, it sees the word broken from a very different perspective than the people you write of here.
This makes sense, and seems true. And as others have said, is depressing. Though I don’t personally know very many Trumpers, nor very many evangelicals, they have been very clear over the past few years that they want disruption. At the same time, if you watch much streaming television, as I do (admittedly too much), you’ll notice the word “disruption” is everywhere. It’s there in the real estate world, it is there in the business world, it’s everywhere. There’s a kind of gleeful quality about it. I’m a retired minister from a progressive denomination. When I left the church 10 years ago, I was sensing that there’s a kind of doomsday, end of the world, secret craving for a great cleansing afoot in the world. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t think it’s just the Christian evangelicals. Television is full of themes about breakage and the end of the world, or at least society, as we know it. Among my progressive friends I don’t know anybody who doesn’t think that we’re in for a Great Upheaval. And I don’t think this is just because the Trumpers are going to bring it about. I think Americans have a kind of Death Wish. Liberal religion has been talking for decades about how America is going to fall the way the Roman empire did. There is a longing beneath that. I don’t know what the longing is. Maybe everyone is just tired of the same old cycles and patterns over and over and over again. On the left, leaning side, we’re tired of unrelenting racism, misogyny, homophobia, capitalism, poverty, homelessness. I understand the emotional urge to just bring it all down and start over. I think individuals do that in relationships all the time. Maybe we’re just seeing that impulse at work on a cosmic scale. Perhaps the Christian evangelicals - the ones to the right- on the right are just framing it in a different way than the rest of us. But we too are adding wood to the fire.
This is eye opening and deeply disturbing
Since you are a historian, maybe you’ll see this better than I but one of the most damming things that has happened in American religious history, was the explosion of dispensational theology and the Scofield reference Bible, which spread the perverted theology across the nation.
Jesus message in the gospels was that he was bringing the kingdom of God. He even taught his disciples to pray in good Jewish parallelism “Thy kingdom come i.e., Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” any number of theologians have shown how modern evangelicalism, ironically, with the best of intentions, distorted the biblical gospel. The gospel of Jesus dying only so that people can escape hell and go to heaven. . . somewhere out there, is a doctrine that smells like smoke, because it comes from the pit of hell!
Even more ironic, although, is the fact that the kingdom HAS been growing since Jesus planted the mustard seed. Although we look around us and see sin and misery and wars continue and people living in strife and fear, the contrast between the world we live in today, and the world of the first century cannot even be compared. Yes, the kingdom of God is coming and has been on a steady march since its inception.
As Isaiah affirmed so long ago, the people of his time would not even recognize the world that we live in today! And we, we have forgotten how much misery was in the world before Christ. No doubt we still have our fair share. The kingdom has not come in all of its fullness yet. As Daniel Martinovich writes in his Bible Prophecy About The Free World:
“They [Modern Westerners] have no concept of how the most powerful people in the world made policy and went to war based on the study of how the entrails of sacrificed animal fell on the ground. We are talking about the Roman Empire here, for pity’s sake. Half the world’s population were slaves. The average lifespan was half of what it is now. You served the king or you were dead. There was no such thing as free speech or property rights.”
Yes, despite all the pain, suffering and turmoil we both experience and see around us, the kingdom of God continues to come. One day, it will arrive in all of its fullness.
Diana, this is one of the most clarifying (and scarifying) explanations that I have come across. So much of evangelicalism is incomprehensible to this northern European whose spirituality has been shaped by a convergence of Lutheran-Orthodox-Celtic-Franciscan thought and practice. Thank you for your insights!
"They" will not break the system that is a major root of the problem---a manipulated capitalist economy that feeds those that want to retain their power over. That is their religion--and why the Mike Johnsons of the world cave in to a criminal that wants his job back.
Perhaps for additional insight into the mindset of the south a little book by historian C. Vann Woodward would help, "The Burden of Southern History," written circa 1960. It really helped me, an Ohioan college student, to understand that culture in a way I'd never before imagined. an nowadays "the south" encompasses` more than a geographic area, becoming much more a rural/urban divide.
I was blessed to have a father who was both a philosophy professor, and an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. I was never taught the "Southern Version of Christianity," and am glad of it. Even as a young girl I was appalled when I heard the dark religious interpretations of evangelicals. At college I got into a yelling match with a madman named Holy Hubert who was preaching on campus about death and sin and damnation. To see the power those views have gained today is truly disheartening. I will continue to fight it wherever I can. Thank you Diane for this moving piece.
This actually makes sense when I consider some of the Trumpers I know.
Wow, it is something. I'm just proud of my church community. I can't understand how they think they are following Jesus!!! Unless their Jesus is Trump. Lord, help us.
Diana, you have hit the nail on more than one head with this post and its observations. My 83- and 82-year-old parents are Trump supporters and more than once I have heard them say something along the lines that "the system needs to be broken." The influence of Southern Religion is also spot on. My father is a big believer in pre-millennial dispensationalism, which fits the "misery" theme. For the last 35 years he's listened beginning with Limbaugh and then Fox News. He will vote for Trump again. As I've read this piece, I'm wondering if they want to "tear it all down." "break the system." I've wondered if they've considered what that will mean for their children and grandchildren. I continually give thanks God worked in my life to rescue me from the misery of evangelicalism/fundamentalism. I continue to struggle with how to articulate a new theology of hope for my parishioners in SE PA.
Such brilliant truths revealed, examined and illustrated. Thank you very much - I have heard this OVER and OVER and OVER for the past weeks..."I don't understand!" May everyone who feels this alienation flow toward a kind of unity - there are many of us in this boat. Let the healing begin, as I read below.
Diana, you are so right and so was Flannery. How on earth could she see how Christ-haunted the south was in the 50s and early 60s? And now the de facto civil Christianity that covers this country like a dense fog is blood-soaked evangelical. I grew up Methodist in the south. The only other denominations around were Presbyterians and Baptists, and in the minds of most people they were all the same. Never mind that many mainline clergy had completed M. Div. degrees at Emory, Duke, Vanderbilt, or Columbia. Their polite sermons were no match for the power of TV and radio preachers and "Christian" bookstores. Individualistic altar-calling evangelicalism was in the air we breathed. I often wonder if the mainline denominations and their seminaries could have done anything to counter the influence of the fundamentalist evangelicalism.
It is only because of your coverage of a huge array of topics and this one in specific that I realized I was/am a victim (?) of an evangelical dominant church.
And now the healing begins