On the morning after, with more results still to come in, so far the most important takeaway from the midterm elections is that Donald Trump keeps hurting the Republican Party, whose soul he has eaten, and this is grounds for…
The dangerous worldview of Republican election deniers
Around elections, we often hear variations of the claim that “democracy itself is on the ballot.” Because this declaration is, in some sense, a truism, it’s easy to nod and dismiss its concrete claims. But in the current context, this…
Former RNC head calls new DeSantis ad ‘ass-backwards blasphemy’
A new video ad released by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is “some of the most ass-backwards blasphemy I’ve ever heard in my life, and one of the dumbest political ads you could ever make,” a seminary educated former head of…
When lying becomes a virtue
Is lying wrong? The question would have seemed impossible even 50 years ago. Now, the ninth commandment becomes expendable: “You shall not bear false witness.” If, as philosophers insist, we live in a post-truth age, we also live in the…
Should ‘real’ Christians really vote Republican today?
Numerous conservative pastors and commentators have declared to their flocks that true Christians must vote Republican if they are faithful. Chief among those is Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who told a conservative political action group this…
Bigotry is Donald Trump’s biggest moral failure
Donald Trump was publicly accused of bigotry in a lawsuit almost a half century ago. In response, the former president’s first open denial of racism ever to appear in The New York Times came on Oct. 16, 1973. He was responding to…
‘To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance’: Responding to the rising tide of antisemitism
On Aug. 18, 1790, President George Washington wrote a letter to the Hebrew congregation of Newport, R.I. Washington was responding to a letter from Moses Seixas, warden of the Congregation Yeshuat Israel of Newport. In his letter, Seixas had expressed…
How Trump’s latest comments on Israel align with evangelical Zionism
Donald Trump is in the news again making negative statements about American Jews while flattering his evangelical fanbase. In my piece last week, I wrote about how the dispensationalist obsession with the end times led evangelicals to embrace the Christian Zionist…
SBC president appears on ’60 Minutes,’ tells Anderson Cooper he couldn’t be a good Christian and Southern Baptist as a gay man
The president of the Southern Baptist Convention sat for an interview with an openly gay journalist and told him on national TV Oct. 9 that he could not be a good Christian and Southern Baptist. On the CBS program “60…