'He wears the armor of God': evangelicals hail Trump's church photo op
The president’s appeal to his base amid protests was derided by some Christians. Others saw a victory in a world of evil
Matthew Teague in Fairhope, Alabama
'He wears the armor of God': evangelicals hail Trump's church photo op | US news | The Guardian
Wed 3 Jun 2020 11.00 BST Last modified on Wed 3 Jun 2020 18.07 BST
Donald Trump holds a Bible outside St John’s church across Lafayette Park from the White House on Monday. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/APNo one accuses Donald Trump of subtlety. When the US president raised a Bible overhead on Monday evening outside St John’s Episcopal church in Washington DC, the sign was unmistakable: an appeal to his white evangelical base for loyalty, as protests and riots roared across America.
Not every Christian answered the call. The Rev Gini Gerbasi, an Episcopal priest, said police used teargas to drive her and others from St John’s before Trump’s appearance. “They turned holy ground into a battleground,” she told Religion News Service.
But many of Trump’s evangelical supporters, far from Washingtons political stage, saw the move as a victory in a world rife with evil.
Bishop 'outraged' over Trump's church photo op during George Floyd protests
“My whole family was flabbergasted,” said Benjamin Horbowy, 37.
The Horbowys had gathered in Tallahassee, Florida, to watch live as Trump walked from the White House to St John’s. “My mother just shouted out, ‘God give him strength! He’s doing a Jericho walk!’”
A Jericho walk, in some evangelical circles, refers to the biblical book of Joshua, where God commanded the Israelites to walk seven times around the opposing city of Jericho, whose walls then came crashing down.
Horbowy already supported Trump politically – he heads the local chapter of a pro- Trump motorcycle club and is campaigning for a seat in Florida’s state senate – but when Trump lifted the Bible, Horbowy and his family felt overcome spiritually.
“My mother started crying. She comes from Pentecostal background, and she started speaking in tongues. I haven’t heard her speak in tongues in years,” he said. “I thought, look at my president! He’s establishing the Lord’s kingdom in the world.”
Did he feel that conflicted with the Gospel of John, where Jesus said “my kingdom is not of this world”?
“Well,” Horbowy said, “that’s a philosophical question.”
After watching Trump’s gesture, Horbowy changed his Facebook profile photo to one of Trump outside St John’s, with added rays of light emanating from the Bible. “It was the coolest thing he could do. What more could he do, wear blue jeans and ride in on a horse?” he said.
The catalyst for the protests was the killing of 46-year-old George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Asked about that, Horbowy said, “There’s a Bible verse that says we shouldn’t talk about evil things. We can just say, ‘There’s evil’ and move on.”
Protesters brutally dispersed ahead of Trump's photo opportunity with a Bible – videoHe couldn’t remember the exact verse, he said.
So how did devotees like Horbowy become such a potent force that Trump would signal them in his hour of need? One answer lies in their relationship with Trump. They have given him their fervent support at the ballot box and in turn they have seen a conservative takeover of the courts and an assault on reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights.
Their power and worldview is a culmination of trends that started decades ago, according to John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College and himself an evangelical Christian. “It’s rooted in fear,” he said.
In the 1980s, Fea said, several forces converged to alarm white Christians: a removal of official prayer and Bible readings from schools, an influx of immigrants from Asia and the Middle East, and the final desegregation of schools like Bob Jones University.
“So came the emergence of the Christian right,” Fea said.
Figures like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson started wielding political influence in a new way, followed today by a new generation that includes Franklin Graham and the Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s leading evangelical defenders.
“What seems to be missing in much of the coverage is that a group of protesters had tried to burn that church to the ground 24 hours earlier,” Jeffress said.
Jeffress sees no conflict between Trump’s behavior and the Bible he held up on Monday evening. “You mean, does he pretend to be perfectly pious?” he said. “No.”
Fea calls faith leaders like Jeffress “court evangelicals”.
“Trump has these people around him,” Fea said. “They’re telling him, ‘You need to get your evangelical base on board.
People once concerned with piety, Fea said, now crave “an exercise in pure political power”, and the Bible is no longer a spiritual weapon but an earthly one.
When Trump describes himself as a “law and order” president and holds aloft a Bible, he conflates which law he will enforce, and whose order will follow. In a short speech before the walk to St John’s, Trump said he would “dominate the streets”. That is the “kingdom in the world” Horbowy referenced.
“I believe it’s like Ephesians 6:10 through 19,” Horbowy said from Florida. “I believe this is a president who wears the full armor of God.”
But one of those verses – verse 12 – says explicitly that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood”, but against spiritual enemies.
“Well,” Horbowy said. “He’s fearless.”
Last edited by tomcat; 04-06-2020 at 05:41 AM.
Majestically enthroned amid the vulgar herd
I have been seeing that it's all George Soros funded.Originally Posted by misskit
No proof, rational or logical reason of course but it doesn't matter.
Someone posted somewhere that George Soros is funding the rioters, someone else saw it and repeated it, it is now a 'FACT!'.
FACT. Three Alleged Boogaloo Extremists Have Been Accused Of Trying To Incite A Riot At A Peaceful Protest
Las Vegas Prosecutors Say Boogaloo Boys Tried To Start Riot At Protest
Trump 'hires only the best people'...
Well one of those many, many former 'best people' has come out in an extraordinary rebuke, breaking silence to say Trump is a threat to America:
James Mattis Denounces Trump as Threat to Constitution - The Atlantic
Actually it's worth posting Mattis's statement in full. Emphasis is mine, but it's no less scathing and in the context of his silence to this point (and being criticized for it) speaks volumes:
IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH
I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
^ Trump response:
Trump responded on Twitter by calling Mattis "the world's most overrated General," adding: "I didn't like his 'leadership' style or much else about him, and many others agree, Glad he is gone!"
what a dik
This from the guy that some fete as a tough guy and devastating 'counter-puncher'.Originally Posted by nidhogg
Bullshit. Every time he reacts like a whiny petulant child.
Trump tried to vote with wrong address while railing against voter fraud | Donald Trump | The Guardian
Donald Trump has been railing against vote by mail for the past few months – falsely citing the potential for voter fraud, which is extremely rare. As it turns out, the president himself bungled the system.
Trump registered to vote in Florida last September under his White House address – 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, according to the Washington Post. But Florida does not allow people to register to vote without an in-state address, and one month later, Trump resubmitted his application with a Florida address and voted in the Republican primary.
On his registration form, Trump told Florida officials his legal residence was in Washington DC but on another day also said he was a “bona fide resident” of Palm Beach, Florida, home to his Mar-a-Lago Club, according to the public records reviewed by the Post.
Other voters have faced significant consequences for the same mistake. In fact, as some Democrats pointed out, the same issue is listed on White House website as voter fraud.
It's like a squealing schoolgirl: "I changed his nickname! That'll teach him!".
"Probably the only thing Barack Obama & I have in common is that we both had the honor of firing Jim Mattis, the world’s most overrated General. I asked for his letter of resignation, & felt great about it. His nickname was “Chaos”, which I didn’t like, & changed to “Mad Dog”..."
In Trumps own words. This really makes you aware how stupid he sounds.
You can hear the wheels ticking over in his head as he makes it up as he goes along.
Piers Morgan is an ass, but this interview with Rudy Giuliani is friggin hilarious!
The video is in the article
Piers Morgan and Rudy Giuliani argue over who sucks more
Donald J Trump, POTUS, is a cancer on American democracy,and their way of life
So what do you do with a malignant cancer ?..... you cut it out.
Who’s the surgeon ? The American electorate......cut deep.
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