Daddy, Where Do Atheists Come From?

Pence And Mother by Nancy Ohanian

On Friday evening USAToday published an irony-tinged headline by Maureen Groppe, Vice President Mike Pence quotes Bible in response to being called 'Christian supremacist'. An uncomplimentary book which comes out Tuesday, The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence, asserts that Pence is "the most successful Christian supremacist in American history" and that he is already, for all intents and purposes a replacement president that many inside the GOP establishment are eager to see ascend to the throne, very much prepared to "fashion a nation more pleasing to his god and corporate sponsors." Evangelical grifter Franklin Graham has urged his followers to pray that God puts a "hedge of protection" around Pence and Mother, after reading a basically complimentary NY Times review of which Graham said he's "never heard such hatred poured out against such a good man."

Last April Frank Schaeffer was already warning his readers about Pence: When Trump Falls, Here's How The White Evangelical Leadership Will Explain And Profit From His Fall. "Trump," he wrote, "has a lifetime of criminal activity to hide. The dumbest thing he ever did was run for president. He’s going down. How will the white evangelical leaders that talked their followers into voting for Trump explain this, then come out winners? Trump broke the number one rule of con-artists and grifters: never attract attention to yourself. But according to his evangelical backers this too-- Trump’s ego-driven stupidity-- is going to be 'used by God.'Trump now has real reason to be afraid. He’s has spent his whole career in the company of cons and crooks (that includes his new evangelical leader pals like the con-artist Pat Robertson). Now the law is coming and he’s waking up to the fact that being president is the worst decision he ever made." But the evangelical elite see something even more up their alley coming down the road-- the Christian supremicist from Indiana. Schaeffer:

If Trump’s impeached the presidency will fall to the pro-theocracy crank Mike Pence. He’s just the kind of Reconstructionist theocrat the religious right has always really wanted in the Oval Office: an evangelical gay-hating, woman-belittling family man with a safe checklist of Wall Street/Republican/NRA/pro-white/pro-Israel/white oligarch beliefs.

White evangelicals came to believe in Trump as indispensable to God’s providence. They bought into Trump using analogies to King David (who slept around a lot, too). They invented a new theological core belief that Trump’s against-the-odds victories meant that God chose him to battle for evangelicals’ religious liberties.

That view can be crafted into a new theological revelation and direction by face-saving evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., if and when Trump falls. Here’s what they will say: Trump’s fall is all part of God unveiling HIS REAL PLAN!

This new plan will be sold by the likes of Falwell, Franklin Graham and Jeffress, as the chance to reestablish moral order (no more having to explain a porn-president) and to replace Trump with a fellow religious true believer, born-again conservative-- Mike-Theocracy-Is-Great-Pence.

This new divine intervention will explain why evangelicals (after a bitter fight and “Deep State” accusations) will lie down and accept Trump’s fall as “God’s will.” It will be claimed by people like the con-artist Ralph Reed, that this was God’s plan all along, an updated version much like the updated versions of the End Times scenarios evangelicals trot out to explain why, in fact, Jesus didn’t come back as predicted last time… but will now…

To get a true believer, who doesn’t pay off porn stars but will ban all abortions, gay marriage and transgender rights, and will keep blacks in their “place,” loves the NRA and will persecute brown minorities, and wants to hang gays, and defends the “religious liberty” to discriminate against gays and women, into the White House, is, clearly, what God intended all along.

And in June, John Pavlovitz took it a step further, pointing out that these disgraceful fake Christians are turning America into a nation of atheists. Like Schaeffer, he grew in in the Church and eventually became pastor at a Charlotte megachurch. The tragedy of someone on the wrong side of the line between the saved and the damned was palpable in his life. "In light of this supposed truth, the heart of the faith (I was told), was to live in a way that reflected the character and love of Jesus so vividly, so beautifully, that others were compelled to follow after him; that a Christian’s living testimony might be the catalyst for someone’s conversion. The Bible called it 'making disciples' and it was the heart of our tradition. As the venerable hymn declared, we Jesus people were to be known by our love. What a difference a couple of decades make." [Not to mention an election.] Today, he continued "the Christianity prevalent in so much of America right now isn’t just failing to draw others to Christ, it is actively repelling them from him. By operating in a way that is in full opposition to the life and ministry of Jesus-- it is understandably producing people fully opposed to the faith that bears his name."

In record numbers, the Conservative American Church is consistently and surely making Atheists-- or at the very least it is making former Christians; people who no longer consider organized religion an option because the Jesus they recognize is absent. With its sky-is-falling hand-wringing, its political bed-making, and its constant venom toward diversity, it is giving people no alternative but to conclude, that based on the evidence of people professing to be Godly-- that God is of little use. In fact, this God may be toxic.

And that’s the greatest irony of it all; that the very Evangelicals who’ve spent that last 50 years in this country demonizing those who reject Jesus-- are now the single most compelling reason for them to do so. They are giving people who suspect that all Christians are self-righteous, hateful hypocrites, all the evidence they need. The Church is confirming the outside world’s most dire suspicions about itself.

These people aren’t stupid. They realize that bigotry, even when it is wrapped in religion or justified by the Bible or spoken from a pulpit is still bigotry. They can smell the putrid stench of phony religion from a mile away-- and this version of the Church, frankly reeks of it. People are steering clear in droves, choosing to find meaning and community and something that resembles love outside its gatherings.

With every persecution of the LGBTQ community, with every unprovoked attack on Muslims, with every planet-wrecking decision, with every regressive civil rights move-- the flight from Christianity continues. Meanwhile the celebrity preachers and professional Christians publicly beat their breasts about the multitudes walking away from God, oblivious to the fact that they are the impetus for the exodus.

And one day soon, these same religious folks will look around, lamenting the empty buildings and the irrelevance of the Church and a world that has no use for it, and they’ll wonder how this happened. They’ll blame a corrupt culture, or the liberal media, or a rejection of Biblical values, or the devil himself-- but it will be none of those things.

No, the reason the Church soon will be teetering on the verge of extinction and irrelevance, will be because those entrusted to perpetuate the love of Jesus in the world, lost the plot so horribly, and gave the world no other option but to look elsewhere for goodness and purpose and truth.

Soon these Evangelicals will ask why so much of America has rejected Jesus, and we will remind them of these days, and assure them that they have not rejected Jesus at all-- they just found no evidence of him in their Church or in them.