The clear moral challenge posed by the Trump administration’s recently reversed policy of separating innocent children from their asylum-seeking parents is dividing the world of evangelical Christians.
While evangelicals make up a large proportion of Trump’s base, primarily because of the president’s support of their anti-abortion agenda, at least some Christians are beginning to chafe at the cognitive dissonance that comes from spouting “pro-life” and “family values” slogans exhorting the sanctity of the lives of unborn fetuses while simultaneously tearing families apart and destroying the lives of children who have already been born.
Bishop Talbert Swan, head of the Pentecostal Nova Scotia Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the Church Of God In Christ in Canada, called out the hypocrisy of the so-called Christians who preach a gospel lacking the love and empathy that is the essence of Jesus’ teachings in the most vehement manner possible today with the kind of tweet you’d never expect from a leading religious figure.
Frankly, if heaven is going to be full of American evangelicals, I’ll take my chances on hell.
— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) June 22, 2018
Bishop Talbert didn’t just send that message out of thin air. He backed up his reaction to the heretical messages being spread by some of his American counterparts with a clear reference to the differences in Christ’s teachings and behavior and what the primarily white Protestant Republicans have been promulgating.
How we know Jesus wasn’t a white evangelical Republican:
•Jesus fed hungry multitudes/free food
•Jesus healed the sick/free healthcare
•Jesus sat with little children/free daycare
•Jesus taught his disciples/free education
•Jesus forgave a dying thief/“soft on crime” pic.twitter.com/fTrL7XYpsJ
— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) June 22, 2018
Jesus never spoke a word about abortion in any of the Gospels.
Jesus spoke volumes about how 2 treat the poor, children, refugees, sick, & imprisoned in all the Gospels.
How do you formulate theology on the former while being antithetical to everything Jesus said on the latter?
— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) June 22, 2018
The answer to the Bishop’s rhetorical question is, of course, that you can’t reconcile the disparate messages without violating the basic principles on which all Christian-based religions are founded.
When American evangelicals pervert their doctrines to the point that a Pentecostal Bishop would rather go to hell than spend time in heaven with them (making the dubious assumption that they’d get past the gates after demonstrating their hateful attitudes), you know that the theories that Donald Trump is indeed the Anti-Christ are not so far-fetched after all.
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