Kill Your Neighbour - Go and Do Likewise

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/daniel-penny-vigilante-racist-jesus-good-samaritan.html

In the flurry of recent news this story has already been all but forgotten. Daniel Penny received some additional press when (after his acquittal) the then Vice-President-elect JD Vance invited him to a football game.

The Right and the Christian Right both want to celebrate this man, his deed, and a larger ethos of violence. This was only a harbinger of what is to come.

At the time I flagged this article from the so-called Christian Post. This sort of twisted thinking has all but taken over it seems and in the two months since this story first appeared, we've seen countless examples like it.

In the tortured reasoning of Jerry Newcombe (heir to the mantle of D James Kennedy), somehow Penny's killing of a man on the subway is comparable to the Good Samaritan. It's one thing to suggest the man was a danger and had to be subdued - which is not universally agreed upon by the witnesses. It's something else to say killing him was justified. But, what we see with Newcombe and the Trump cult is a celebration of the deed, of the violence. I expect such from the fascist ethos of Trumpism. I would like to say that I would expect more from Evangelicals and ostensibly Reformed people like Newcombe. But that would be asking too much. Penny is on the record. He is unrepentant and 'would do it again'.

That's sobering. What a lack of reflection and conscience. You would think at the very least he would wish that there could have been some way he could have restrained the guy without actually killing him. You would think that would be weighing on him, replaying in his mind. Seemingly the only concern for Evangelicals like Newcombe is that Penny had to endure the 'anguish' of the trial.

Somehow helping the stranger and showing mercy to an enemy is transformed into killing someone - and then taking a victory lap, effectively glorying in the deed. It was (Newcombe seems to argue) an act of charity - something in keeping with the spirit of Mother Teresa.

Did he even bother to read his own article before he published it? Does he not realize how deranged and sick this is? I read this and I can only conclude that Newcombe and the larger movement he is part of (and its increasing overlap with the Trump cult) is simply under judgment. This essay published on The Christian Post (edited by Richard Land) is not an expression of Christian thought but of a seared conscience. It is sobering to say the least.