God save us from "Christians" who think like Jerry Falwell, Jr.

One of the plaguing questions about Donald Trump's election has been:   Why do the evangelical Christians support Trump?    With his celebrated immoral life style, his cheating in business, his lack of charity, his saying he's never asked for forgiveness for anything -- why do they choose to have any association with him -- other than to save his soul, which none of them apparently seems to care one fig for attempting?

No, it's what he can do for them, namely appoint conservative judges, including the two he has already put on the Supreme Court, in the hope that they will overturn Roe vs Wade, and outlaw abortions and gay marriage.

Here's some insight from the son of famed evangelist Jerry Falwell, Jerry Falwell, Jr., who is president of Liberty University, the Christian college founded by his father.   These quotes are from an article in Slate.

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"The Ugly Nihilism of Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s 

Comments About Trump"

 by Laura Bennett

"Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed Donald Trump early, before the 2016 Iowa caucus, and in the years since, he’s become one of the president’s most ardent evangelical defenders. The Liberty University president blamed a Republican establishment “conspiracy” for the leak of the Access Hollywood tapes and appeared on CNN to assure viewers that Trump was a “changed man.” He later praised the president’s response to the racist rally in Charlottesville, said Trump wouldn’t need to apologize publicly for any extramarital affairs, and defended family separation at the border as “tough love”. . .

". . . [T]he Washington Post ran an interview [in which] Falwell . . . speculated that it may be immoral for other evangelical leaders to not support Trump. He said the midterm elections somehow proved 'the American people are happy with the direction the country is headed.'   And he also offered one of the tidiest articulations of the contortions that evangelical Trump supporters have had to make in order to stand by their man.  [What follows is Falwell, Jr.'s view:]

"'There’s two kingdoms. . . the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you’d like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what’s best for your country. Think about it. Why have Americans been able to do more to help people in need around the world than any other country in history? It’s because of free enterprise, freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurism and wealth. A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume. It’s just common sense to me.'

[Note that Falwell does not consider that "what's best for the country" might be to encourage us as a nation to "treat other nations as we'd like to be treated."   Apparently in the "heavenly kingdom," there is love, compassion, sharing, cooperation, caring, giving;    whereas the earthly kingdom is about competition, power, winning, and trampling over those who have less, are weaker, who need help.]

"Falwell’s dismissal of the poor was quickly pilloried by critics, some of whom observed that Jesus pointedly praised the small offering of a “poor widow” in contrast to the donations of the rich. Others noted that low-income communities have massive collective purchasing power and that—until recently, anyway—it was their spending that drove the American economy.

"Like most of Trump’s evangelical supporters, Falwell has never tried to claim that Trump is a good person. But it’s helpful to see his argument for why that doesn’t matter. The idea of dividing God’s sovereignty into 'two kingdoms' comes from the 16-century reformer Martin Luther, and it generally refers to a kind of separation between church and state: the idea that spiritual righteousness and civil righteousness are two different things . . . .  In more extreme versions, however, the doctrine is used to dismiss the prospect that individual morality is relevant to the ruling of the state.  As Falwell put it, 'Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome.' And it’s a 'distortion,' he said, to imagine that the country as a whole should love its neighbors and help the poor just because Jesus told individuals to do so. . . .

". . . .  [This view] puts him at odds with his own institution, Liberty University, . . .[whose] mission statement [includes] ". . .  sensitivity to the needs of others [and] social responsibility.” . . .

"At one point, reporter Joe Heim asked Falwell whether there is anything Trump could do that would endanger his support from Falwell and other evangelical leaders. He answered, simply, 'No.'   His explanation was a textbook piece of circular reasoning: Trump wants what’s best for the country, therefore anything he does is good for the country. There’s something almost sad about seeing this kind of idolatry articulated so clearly. In a kind of backhanded insult to his supporters, Trump himself once said that he could 'stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody' without losing his base. It’s rare to see a prominent supporter essentially admit that this was true."

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This Slate article does not go into analysis of what may be the more practical aspects of Falwell's explanation -- which, I have to admit, is pretty extreme in its bald, bold candor.   I think most evangelicals would have attempted to give something more of a dressed up version of "ends justify the means," usually expressed as something like:  "God sometimes uses bad people to accomplish good things" -- rather than, as Falwell seems to do -- to dismiss as unimportant whether government leaders have values and ideals for their country.

If Nelson Mandella had followed Falwell, Jr.'s brand of Christianity, South Africa would still be stuck in apartheid.   The United States would still have slavery.

But Falwell just lays it out there:   a complete separation of church and state -- of the spiritual and the civil -- without even any idealism that spirituality and goodness might influence our civic, community life.

Don't misunderstand.  I do not take the position that Christianity -- or religion, in general, for that matter -- is the only source of goodness, compassion, and charity.   Democracy itself is a big step toward treating other people as we would want to be treated.

Let's take it one step further and ask:    Does Falwell put any value on democracy itself?   Or would he be satisfied with a dictatorship, as long as the dictator decreed policies that Falwell himself wanted?    Would he give up freedom as long as he could have his way on abortion and gay marriage?   I'm inclined to think the answer is yes, although I doubt he would be very comfortable with that admission.

Now I understand the "nihilism" in the author's choice of title.   It's a pretty sad commentary on goodness and on Christianity, in my opinion.   Falwell, Jr. is saying that Jesus' social gospel -- essentially the "golden rule" -- has no place at a community level;  it's only for individuals.   He seems to think there's no point in applying compassion and caring at the community level -- or even the democratic principle of letting the people decide?

Frankly, I'd rather live in a community of compassionate, sharing people than in a community of rich people.

Ralph