The Christian faith battle between the Right and the Left is on full display in this year’s election cycle.
In Texas, James Talerico has made claims that his drive into the public square comes from his Christian faith. This motivation is nothing new, as the Republican Party has made this claim for the last 50 years. The political and evangelical right wing has brought in billions of dollars in political fundraising, helped numerous evangelical pastors sell books and packed megachurches. This was done under the idea that the Bible and Jesus really hate abortion and same-sex marriage.
It was a simple formula with easy targets, along with the benefit of blaming all the ills of America on the feminist movement. The evangelical logic always has been that once women decided to find agency in the boardroom, the classroom and the bedroom, gays appeared everywhere and divorce became rampant. Then came MTV, Madonna, Howard Stern and eventually the emasculation of the next generation.
Nathaniel Manderson
This also allowed any leader of the Republican evangelical leadership never to look in the mirror. In evangelical theology, Christ never speaks to any sins found in the wealthy, white, heterosexual community. Greed can’t ever be a problem, or misogyny, or violence, war or anything that could be interpreted as a sin found within this holy group of evangelicals.
The argument and demonization culminated in the evangelical connection to President Donald Trump, a man who is more an example of the Seven Deadly Sins than the Sermon on the Mount.
However, the American tide may be turning away from the evangelical shoreline, which is disconcerting to those who sold their souls to Trump. Their desperation is shown in their hateful rhetoric against a man cloaked in his Christian faith like James Talarico.
The political Christian Left has put forward a few politicians of late, but the evangelical movement felt confident they could defeat them because many of these candidates came from the Black Church. The evangelical movement never truly respected the Black Church.
In Talarico, the Christian Left has someone who could gain significant political power, and he is white, which evangelical leadership considers a problem. That’s why he’s a threat.
American Christians face a choice: Shall the faithful continue with a theology that vilifies all those who are not wealthy, heterosexual white men or should the faithful follow those fighting for the foreigner, the poor, the sick, the unwanted and the rejected?
The evangelical movement got it backward. They attack all those outside their walls and praise all those within the church walls.
There is a biblical metaphor where the sword is a “sword of the Spirit,” used to counter religious falsehood. This falsehood has been represented by the evangelical movement for the last 50 years. Another biblical weapon is a shield, or the “shield of faith,” as a protector against the evils of oppression and the sinful nature of the world.
Now is the right time to choose the side that protects the oppressed and condemns the righteous.
Nathaniel Manderson lives in Danvers, Mass. He was educated at a conservative seminary, trained as a minister, ordained through the American Baptist Churches USA and guided by liberal ideals. He has been a pastor, a career counselor, an academic adviser, a high school teacher and an advocate for first-generation and low-income students, along with being a paper delivery man, a construction worker, a FedEx package handler, Amazon driver and hospice chaplain.