Megachurch pastor Rodney Howard-Browne came to the United States some three decades ago from South Africa, bringing his brand of evangelical Christianity, referred to as “Holy Laughter.” It’s a version of the religion in which one laughs a lot, and in doing so gets closer to God.
Back in the summer of 2017, Howard-Browne posted this image to his Instagram.
The caption read:
Yesterday was very surreal for @ahowardbrowne & I. 30 years ago we came from South Africa to America as missionaries. Yesterday I was asked by @paulamichellewhite to pray over our 45th President - what a humbling moment standing in the Oval Office - laying hands and praying for our President - Supernatural Wisdom, Guidance and Protection - who could ever even imagine - wow - we are going to see another great spiritual awakening #ovaloffice #westwing #whitehouse#washingtondc
Lay those hands on him! Maybe Rodney was trying to get all of Instagram to begin uncontrollably laughing that “Holy Laughter”? Well, Howard-Browne wasn’t feeling particularly humble today. After seeing that the New Zealand mosque mass murder suspect allegedly wrote a manifesto professing his admiration and love for white supremacy, Donald Trump, and Donald Trump’s white supremacy, Howard-Browne tweeted this out.
“False flag” refers to covert operations intended to hide the true actor behind a given action, giving the appearance that a different and specific group or individual particular party is responsible for it rather than the one that actually is. In this case, a white supremacist attack on Muslims is claimed to be the responsibility of Muslims themselves as a covert attack on white supremacists themselves.
Howard-Browne’s thoughts on this matter are not his alone. Evangelical communities across the United States have really abandoned some of the most basic Christian doctrine in order to promote a white supremacist version of Christianity. So while many evangelicals would bristle at the concept of “false flag” conspiracy theory, they seem to be fine with supporting the people that float this kind of super-charged misinformation.
Offensive conspiracy theory isn’t just for the evangelicals; it’s also for people like Rush Limbaugh. If you forgot how large a waste of space Limbaugh was, never fear: As Media Matters points out, even bag-of-putrid-air Limbaugh is pushing this garbage-fire narrative today.
Limbaugh: The idea that there is far more crazed right-wing terrorism in America than there is any other kind is nothing more than a media narrative manufactured out of whole cloth, and it's just waiting for events like this to take place, and this is what happens, folks. I don't know, you probably get up and you see this news story and you just -- in addition to all of the emotion you have over the sheer shock, terror, and horror of it all, then you realize you're going to face a whole day of the politicization of it. You realize you're going to face a whole day of Donald Trump being blamed for it, or you being blamed for it, or things you believe in being blamed for it.
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There's an ongoing theory that the shooter himself may in fact be a leftist who writes the manifesto and then goes out and performs the deed purposely to smear his political enemies, knowing he's going to get shot in the process.
All you need to do is listen to Rush Limbaugh and Rodney Howard-Browne talk for a few minutes to realize that there is nothing particularly supreme about them. The most tragic and grotesque thing about all of this is that all the hatred and betrayal of fundamental Christian values is in service of a man who wouldn’t cross the street to pee on an evangelical if they were on fire.