Evangelicals are fundamentalists; they believe every letter, word, and paragraph in the Bible is the word of God, and calling the stories in the Bible parables is akin to blasphemy. Faith requires you to believe that the “word” is inspired and penned by God. Scientific proof of the age of the Universe and Earth falls on deaf ears. When secularism questions miracles like the parting of the Red Sea or raising the dead, they are met with a familiar refrain I have heard my entire life. Anyone raised in a Baptist, Holiness, or Evangelical church has either used or listened to the phrase that ends all queries; ‘You don’t understand because you are of the world.’ That thinking is precisely why church attendance and faith are waning in America.
Current evangelism in America is discussed and defended in the same way conspiracies are used to deny the obvious. Unlike when man first understood the horizon meant the earth was round, MAGA evangelicals have sailed into the horizon with discontent, degradation, and cruelty and have flattened their brains to the truth. Their messiah-like figure is Donald Trump. MAGA erected a golden image of him, ignored his exploitation of the Bible, applauded his cruel treatment of the stranger, and defamed his rape victim, spurring his supporters to threaten her with further sexual assault. When confronted by obvious hypocrisy, they will point to imperfect characters in the Bible. They first invoked the story of Cyrus the Great, who liberated the Jews but professed not to believe in the God of the Bible, and when challenged, switched their comparisons to King David.
First, let me confess I am and will always be a believer because the idea of God has been ingrained in me since birth, like many of us. Whether it be fear, family loyalties, or, in some instances—just in case, my faith in God is a part of my being now and forever. I hesitated in writing this piece, knowing the backlash from friends and family would be swift and unforgiving (a contradiction in itself). The questions we have as young children, teens, and adults about the described wonders of God go unanswered for most of our lives. The religion I understood as a child at the feet of my great-grandmother gave me an example of feeding the homeless men who would gather in the alley behind my Washington, DC, home—making a makeshift bed on the living room floor for my uncle and his buddies who had too much to drink after work.
Every black neighborhood of my generation had a community mother who would invite kids and feed those who did not get enough to eat at home. When necessary, they would spank our behinds. Every element of society that exists today existed then. Gays, lesbians, transexuals, homelessness, and immigrants are not a newly discovered phenomenon. I remember my friends and I pointing and laughing at gay men and boys ‘switching’ their hips as they walked by. My granny humanized them, saying, ‘Don’t laugh; they have angels in their back pockets.’ Today’s MAGA evangelicals have become a horde of cruel behaviorists swallowed by a pseudo-religion. Unlike Jonah and the Big Fish, repentance and forgiveness by MAGA are seen as weakness and cruelty as virtue. Of course, they would say you don’t understand because you are of the world.
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