The Devil's Bargain-- Republican Religion

On Friday, Trump AG William Barr spoke at the Notre Dame Law School, decrying the ascendancy of secularism and vowing "to do all he can to assure continued religious freedom for Americans." More a political hack for the far right than an actual Attorney General, Barr babbled, incoherently to the students that "Among the militant secularism are many of the so-called progressives, but where is the progress? We are told we are living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system?"

Trudy Ring's piece for The Advocate puts the lie to the manufactured grievances Barr and the rest of the Trumpists are trying to stir up among religious-right voters. This weekend was the annual the Values Voters Summit-- nothing more than a GOP conclave-- and progressive evangelicals Vote Common Good went... and got kicked out by the Trump-oriented anti-Jesus Family Research Council.

It’s been said that it’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness-- and that’s what the progressive Christian group Vote Common Good aims to do at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit.

“We want to just be a small candle in the corner of what tends to be a pretty dark narrative,” Doug Pagitt, cochair and executive director of Vote Common Good, told The Advocate in an interview ahead of the event.

...The list of speakers at this year’s VVS, which opened Friday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., reads like a who’s who of homophobes, including FRC President Tony Perkins, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, current Congressman Louie Gohmert, International Religious Freedom Ambassador Sam Brownback (set to appear Saturday night with Trump), and many more. Anti-LGBTQ sentiment is, of course, not the only thing the conference is about-- there are sessions devoted to anti-abortion activism, opposing gun restrictions, resisting “socialism,” and other causes close to the religious right’s heart.

But Vote Common Good will be represented at the VVS to show there’s an alternative path for religious believers, including evangelical Christians-- they don’t have to be part of the Christian right, Pagitt said.

The word evangelical is often associated with conservative Christianity. One of its definitions in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual.” Another is “marked by militant or crusading zeal.” And evangelicalism is sometimes connected with Christian fundamentalism, a belief that everything in the Bible is to be taken literally.

But Pagitt, who describes himself as an evangelical pastor of a nondenominational church in Minneapolis, said there’s not a single agreed-upon definition of evangelicalism, although there are some general guidelines as to what it means. People who identify as evangelical, he said, tend to have a deeply personal sense of faith, organized around the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and use the Bible as a guide to living. What his faith has guided him to is a belief in inclusion, of love for all people, including LGBTQ people.

“For many of the people who are in this movement, it has been the fight to include gay and lesbian people in their churches that has pushed them,” he said.

He and Vote Common Good also break with the Christian right on a variety of other issues. The group opposes the criminalization of abortion and limitations on contraception. It supports political action to reduce environmental destruction, poverty, gun violence, and international conflicts. These are all part of the priorities Pagitt calls the “four P’s”-- people, poverty, peace, and the planet.

...At the Values Voter Summit, Pagitt is promoting his organization’s “Love-in-Politics Pledge,” which urges leaders to act with the kind of love described in the New Testament’s First Corinthians, which says in part, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

“It seems the opposite of what Donald Trump does in his life and his political positions,” Pagitt said.

The group doesn’t have a spot on the conference stage-- to obtain that, it would have to agree to a set of beliefs that Vote Common Good doesn’t endorse. So Pagitt and his colleagues will be spreading the word about the pledge in public spaces at the Omni. “We’ll do it with a wink and a smile,” he added, not by being disruptive.

Doug, in the den of the Beast

Maybe smiling is a no-no, because the Vote Common Good folks were kicked out of the event. Saturday, Pastor Pagitt wrote to Vote Common Good supporters that they went to the VVS "with a mission: Bring together Christians who are interested in elected officials who will lead in the way of love. And they kicked us out. The Family Research Council kicked us out because they are afraid. They’re threatened. When we engage in conversation with Christian voters, those people will realize that their values compel them to vote for the common good-- which means voting against Donald Trump and his allies, including the Family Research Council. They’re scared of losing support. We didn’t go to the Values Voter Summit with a mission of division or hate. We traveled to unite Christian voters behind our Love-in-Politics Pledge, calling on faith-full voters to support candidates who lead in the way of love. We are disappointed, but sadly not surprised, that the Family Research Council rejected our outreach. But we will persist. Our message of love resonates with Christians all across America. We know that when our movement opens up the conversation, others will join us."

Doug told me that he had requested a media pass last week, which had been turned down. They were told though that, with permission from the hotel, they could make recordings.  "When we arrived they changed that. They stopped up from recording ourselves in the hallway. We stopped recording. Then they came back 10 minutes later and said, 'we are revoking you participation and you must turn in your registration badge.' When we asked for the reason we were told, 'we don’t need to give you a reason. You need to turn in your badge and leave immediately or you will be escorted out by the city police.' Then we were told that we could not be in the part of the hotel where the conference was being held. We did as instructed after asking about a refund for our registration. We were told that we would have to email their office and request a refund."

Is that part of William Barr's Judeo-Christian moral system? They go mad when they hear this kind of thing-- which he wrote on Thursday in conjunction to Ralph Reed's upcoming book, Render to God and Trump-- from influential pastors like Doug Pagitt:

Ralph Reed has chosen Jesus’ statement to "Render to God what is God’s and to Cesar what is Cesar’s" for his argument calling Evangelical voter’s to support Trump. He should have however considered Jesus' other statement, "what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose their very soul."

Just as Reed has misread the "Render" passage-- it has nothing to do with giving blind allegiance to a President, so, I assume he would misread the "lose your very soul" quote.

Jesus was of course not referring to a an afterlife narrative of heaven or hell-- in fact Jesus never spoke of those dimensions.

Jesus was referring to losing the very sense of one’s self, losing touch with reality, losing, your own core self, becoming endlessly awash in the whims of the day.

And, that is precisely what Reed and the Right Wing religious fanatics he leads have done-- they have lost their souls, or some might say, "their minds."

I am reminded of the old joke about a stock trader who when he heard Jesus’ warning that you could gain the whole world and lose your soul responded by saying, "actually that’s a pretty great deal. Think about it, the entire world… for just one soul." It seems Reed has made that same calculation.

And, he is even willing to call his Christian fringe of followers to go down to the trading floor with him.

As it turns out Reed will not actually get the "whole world" in this trade. He will get a Tumpian, gold-plated, knock-off version of it. Because in the end, Trump will lose on November 3, 2020. And, as it turns out so will Ralph Reed and all the others who make this Devil’s bargain.