The Christianity Today editorial's effect

[intrepidity]

There's a WaPo opinion piece today: "Why Christianity Today’s call for Trump’s ouster might not matter"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/20/major-evangelical-outlet-supports-impeachment-it-might-not-matter/

I thought, oh no, how could it not matter? I mean, just imagine if *just* the readership of CT stayed home on election day. That would be felt, wouldn't it?

But the WaPo article failed to make a strong case supporting their article title. In fact, below are the final three paragraphs of the article; these are the only parts of the piece that even suggest there might not be a mighty backlash, and it is very weak sauce indeed.

The WaPo piece actually makes a strong case that the CT editorial is going to leave a mark, a big fat red stinking mark on the orange 'peach.

And *that* is the gospel (="good news" ) for today!

We have no doubt that the evangelical operators who long ago cast aside faith and morality in favor of access to power are not going to be jolted out of their religious coma by an editorial. The evangelicals who view Trump as a bully of their own, a leader who justifies their grievances and normalizes racist and xenophobic rhetoric, will ignore CT’s admonitions and indeed vilify the publication. However, this should not minimize the importance of declaring that the emperor (both Trump and his idolaters) has no clothes. The public condemnation of Trump might at least begin a discussion among evangelicals about whether they have damaged their own religious values and credibility.

If CT sparks at least some soul-searching and prompts some Trump cultists to reevaluate their Faustian bargain, the publication would have made a major contribution both to faith and to the country. After all, it is not merely that evangelicals have kept in power a corrupt, disloyal and immoral president, but in that in doing so they have stained the reputation of “values voters."

A crack in Trump’s evangelical wall of defense that has the potential to split off even a small number of Trump supporters has the potential to deprive Trump of another term. One can only imagine the fury raining down on CT’s owners and editors. They have shown real courage here. We hope that their courage is contagious.

[bitterross]

1. It won't matter.

They have become people who feel the ends justify the means. They became that sort of people a long time ago. Don't expect them to wake up and admit they were wrong. They can just ask for forgiveness after all. Their god will forgive them, they are certain, because they were acting on their god's mission.

[dweller]

2. John 11:35

n/t

smfh

✌🏼

[Girard442]

3. It's not the first time Evangelicals have admired a strong charismatic leader.

Racial pride was a strong factor. While on page three of the Alabama Baptist the editor was praising an association for having “the purest Nordic blood among a larger proportion of its people than in any other county in the state,” on page six of the same issue M. E. Dodd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was giving a lengthy defense of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. While Jews “were not to be blamed for the intelligence and strength, so characteristic of their race, which put them forward,” Dodd said that they were using influential positions gained by these characteristics “for self-aggrandizement to the injury of the German people.” Baptists of America, North and South, might well identify with talk of restraining a race that was “‘destructive by nature,” according to a German Baptist quoted by Charles Clayton Morrison in The Christian Century (August 22, 1934).

https://www.religion-online.org/article/how-baptists-assessed-hitler/

[intrepidity]

4. Sure. But CT saying Trump should be removed will have an effect

No doubt he'll attack the magazine and many subscribers/readers will stay onboard Trump.

But imho there will be many, many more who feel relief that CT finally said what they felt in their gut.

It's no accident that believers are likened to sheep repeatedly in the Bible. CT has now given them permission to break with Trump.