When Robert Jeffress spoke at the GOP Midterm Convention in Dallas Sept. 10, he was selling old evangelical fear.
He attacked James Talarico, the Texas Democratic nominee for U.S. senator, as “blasphemous” and “evil.”
He declared Talarico’s beliefs “not beliefs that any true Christian could support ever.”
I’ve never seen a preacher so afraid of a Presbyterian seminarian.
Rodney Kennedy
Scared preachers can’t think right. If there was any doubt Jeffress is not only wrong, but yes, plain stupid, listen to his worshipful attributions of President Donald Trump: “We know that deep down, God has given every leader, including our great President Donald Trump — he’s given Donald Trump not just the right, but the responsibility, to protect our nation from evildoers, whether they come from without or within our own country.”
Likewise, what Jeffress says about Talarico is not only wrong but also stupid. He already had completely taken leave of all Christian sensibilities with statements like the following: Trump is “the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-Israel, pro-conservative judiciary president we have ever had” and “if the left ever regains control of this country again, our nation is finished.”
Earlier, he stupidly declared all Democrats worship the pagan god Moloch, mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures as allowing child sacrifice. “The God of the Bible doesn’t sanction the killing of millions and millions of children in the womb. I think the god they are worshiping is the god of their own imagination.”
Last week, in his speech at “Trumpapalooza,” Jeffress again called Democrats “advocates for evil.”
“There’s a difference between falling into sin and being an advocate for sin, an advocate for evil,” he said. “And ladies and gentlemen, the Democrat Party are advocates for evil. They are advocates for sin. And we need to call it that way.”
Jeffress has made an entire career peddling the false claim America was born as a Christian nation. He should dress in a red, white and blue suit while his choir sings “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as he enters his pulpit. He has a lot of nerve calling Talarico “blasphemous.”
Jeffress has gleefully accepted the devil’s easiest temptation of earthly power. He seems to be caught up in his Fox News persona of the celebrity preacher, but he is entrapped in a world far more complex than his simple-minded dualism can absorb. He seems to appear at Trump’s side in every gold-gilded Oval Office photo of Trump with evangelical preachers — a veritable fraternity of weak-minded sycophants.
The verdict is in. Everyone who keeps up knows Jeffress has been identified plainly. He is “Trump’s prophet.” He is, as historian John Fea says, among the “court evangelicals” who serve political power to curry favor with the president.
Jeffress is no Christian of any substance. I don’t question his sincerity. I question his version of Christianity because it is not shaped by the gospel. Jeffress is the anti-Christian in every word of condemnation he utters.
Related:
Robert Jeffress, apostate | Analysis by Mara Richards Bim
Why James Talarico is correct when he says God is nonbinary | Opinion by Robert Sellers