American Evangelicals love Faustian bargains. The trade-off
with the world has been at the core of the movement since its post-WWII
inception. Bit by bit the movement has dismantled the theology and ethics of
the New Testament in order to seek power and influence.
Once ostensibly representing a force for social conservatism,
the movement has morphed into an almost exclusively Right-wing project. The two
concepts while often compatible are by no means interchangeable. The
Evangelical Movement taps into conservative and traditional feeling even while
it abandons the actual positions. While
they continually carry on about 'family values' the movement has both
ideologically (and in terms of practice) endorsed policies that undermine the
family. While it opposes sodomy, its embrace of divorce, feminism and its
continued support of Market Capitalism has continued to decimate conservative
and traditional notions of the family, its structure and how it is able to
function in society.
Now Evangelical leaders have chosen to meet with Mohammad bin
Salman the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. The regime has topped the Christian
Persecution directories for decades and is only superseded by a handful of nations
like North Korea. And yet Evangelicals don't really care.
They're now making Faustian bargains to support their
Faustian bargains. It's like serial liars. Once you start, you can't stop. You
have to start telling lies to cover up your lies. So it is with American
Evangelicalism.
In this case they have to support their president, the same
president whose leadership has accentuated the decline in social morality. Not
to suggest that previous presidents were moral people but Trump is unable to
even put on a show. The veneer has been stripped away. Vile, base and
degenerate this wicked man is continually praised by Evangelicals as the leader
they've been looking for, the man to support the policies of their movement.
Some have even drifted into near-messianic language with regard to him.
They are more than willing to overlook his sins, continued
defiance of God and lack of repentance even while they condemn the immorality
of their opponents. Their hypocrisy reeks to high heaven and I hope they enjoy
their moment in the sun because in a generation the backlash is going to be
fierce. The recent election of a sodomite governor in Colorado is but a
harbinger of this. Their movement has not turned the culture but rather
continues to drive the unbeliever toward sin and an absolute hostility to the
gospel... a thing Evangelicals have largely abandoned. And in the end the only
real change has occurred within the Evangelical movement itself. It only grows
more indistinguishable from the lost world.
Trump has thrown in with the bin Salman attempt to take over
Saudi Arabia. Due to its oil reserves the nation is strategic to say the least
but additionally bin Salman has moved Riyadh even closer to Tel Aviv, something
Evangelicals are very supportive of. Dispensational Theology which more or less
dominates the movement rejects the teaching of the New Testament and equates
the Kingdom of God with the Jewish state. They believe the precursor to the
millennium and the harbinger of the 'End Times' is found in the establishment
of Zionist Israel in 1948. This is in defiance of the teachings of the New
Testament and though the heretical theology has been largely discredited and
even dismantled, its key planks... that God has two people, the Jews and the
Church... continues. And though the schema has been demonstrated as false the
eschatological system, with the Rapture, Seven Year Tribulation, rebuilt Jewish
Temple and revived Roman Empire is retained.
Dominionist Theology has always been a core principle of
Evangelicalism's agenda but it has only grown more robust over the past
generation. There is a great deal of confusion about this and even many denials
but the principles (even when at times less then fully elaborated) have been
the foundation of the movement since its inception in the late 1940's and
1950's. It is antithetical to separatism and has worked to eliminate any hint
of the concept from American Protestantism. Though the propagandists for the
movement pretend that Fundamentalist and Pietist separatism is still a viable
force, the truth is Dominionist categories and assumptions now dominate and are
the orthodoxy of our day.
The theology, actually at odds with the Dispensational schema
is even taught by the many 'prophecy' and 'end times' teachers and growing
numbers of Evangelicals unable to reconcile the contradictions, fall back on
purely nationalistic impulses, which in many case are more 'in touch' with
their daily lives. This idolatrous solution to their theological dilemma has
driven many of them into being purely political animals, no longer concerned
with ethics and ideology but instead they are consumed by a quest for raw
power, a desire for pride and money in the bank.
And as Israeli politics have continually turned to the Right,
as they began to do in the 1970's, the Zionist state has only become more precious
and closely allied to US Evangelicals. The fascistic policies of Likud and in
particular Netanyahu have been championed and even underwritten by American
Evangelicals. The blood of Palestine lies in no small part at the door of
American Evangelicalism which continues to bankroll the Settler movement and
pushes Washington to provide military and diplomatic support to Tel Aviv.
Returning to the Arabian peninsula, the bin Salman regime is
viewed by some as modernising and it has loosened up on a few of the
restrictive and repressive policies of the Saudi Kingdom. From allowing women
to drive to permitting 'wrestling'/entertainment events, the Saudi kingdom of
today (and tomorrow) looks ready to break with the past.
Some will use these arguments as an excuse to support the
regime. They're playing the long game and taking the long view, believing that
pushing for liberalisation will eventually lead to the complete transformation
of the regime. Others see bin Salman as monstrous, a nascent dictator already
dripping in blood. His policies while more in line with Western hopes for the
country are certain to lead to social strife and increased bloodshed and indeed
already have in the form of political purges and murder.
The Evangelical and Right's support of bin Salman is ironic
on several levels. Such policies of detente and Realpolitik were criticised in
the past as amoral, even immoral, as pragmatism trumping ideology.
And given the way in which US Evangelicals have aggressively
pushed Washington into supporting their policies vis-à-vis Turkey and Pakistan,
it's truly strange that they would cozy up to bin Salman who leads a regime
that has not virtually but absolutely outlawed Christianity.
It's also ironic that historically the US has in many cases
supported Islamist regimes and has effectively worked to undermine
secularisation. There are some specific exceptions, especially when nationalist
secularism allies with Washington. But generally speaking the US fears such
movements and if they are to be accepted it's usually because these nations are
run by authoritarian strongmen that can be relied upon.
The US fears nationalist populism in places like Egypt and
potentially in Saudi Arabia and thus many believe the authoritarian but
West-friendly bin Salman is the best fit.
But this opens the door to an array of larger considerations.
On a basic level it must be asked, why are Evangelicals supporting bin Salman?
It comes down to their support for Trump and for Israel. Trump is embattled on
several fronts one of them being his support for bin Salman who is now under
international pressure due to the Khashoggi murder. Evangelicals have
essentially declared they stand by Trump and thus by bin Salman.
They support him because of his friendliness toward Israel
and finally they support him because bin Salman advocates the confrontation
with Iran, a regional conflict that at present is focused on Yemen. The Houthis
are considered to be allies or proxies of Iran and thus the US supports the
Saudi war which has decimated the country and created a severe humanitarian
disaster.
Once again Evangelicals are dripping in blood as their tacit
support of bin Salman translates into an endorsement of the brutal and
senseless war in which thousands have died and tens of thousands more risk
famine and starvation. Once again we can only say... shame on American
Evangelicals.
Dispensational Theology is not only an error that rejects New
Testament teaching, the Judaizing system wed to Dominionist Evangelicalism has
led to support for militarism and war. It has played no small part in the
Evangelical apostasy.
This apostasy has transformed the faith into a quest for
political power and avarice. It has permitted and even encouraged Christians to
sign on to geopolitical murder and theft. The bin Salman meeting accentuates
this and puts the impulse on display. The movement once pretended to stand for
something. But now as it supports fornicators, thieves and murderers what does
it have left?
Truly in every way the Christian Right has ceased to be
principled. It is an opportunistic political bloc... There's nothing Christian
about it. There never really was but even the ostensible Christianity has taken
a back seat.
They have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof.
From such turn away. American Evangelicalism has become the same whore pseudo-Church
that Rome represented in the past. The false church has gone through multiple
series of divisions but isn't it ironic (even poetic) that the disparate parts
seem to be re-coalescing? Evangelicals and Catholics together indeed. What is
becoming painfully clear is that most Evangelicals don't even know what a
Christian is anymore and the surveys only bear this out. That's another topic
for another time. We live in a dark and frightful era, an ominous epoch in
which the Church is everywhere, but seemingly nowhere. Where is the witness to
the truth? Sometimes it seems as if it has all but disappeared. Were there not
historical precedents for this one could almost despair. But God's Word and
promises stand sure and we hope that out of this apostasy an awakening will
occur even if but a mustard seed.
