The White Evangelical community comprises the largest faction of the republican President Donald Trump’s base of voters at about 35%, and their loyalty has been cult-like. There is nothing that anyone can say about the president, that will convince them that he hasn’t been sent from God. Their Rapture/ end-times theology is widely accepted as their reality and it is widely disseminated in the Evangelical/ fundamentalist community. This is mostly a US phenomenon.
As per a 5/15/2018 Quartz report, “Trump’s foreign policy looks a lot like Rapture Christians’ plan to welcome the apocalypse” by Heather Timmons, “While Trump’s alleged adulterous affairs and irreverent style might make him seem an unlikely vessel for Christian prophesy, he has been compared in evangelical circles to King Cyrus the Great, an ancient Persian king who predicted the Jews’ return to Jerusalem. In March, Benjamin Netanyahu made the comparison, and Pirro did the same on Fox News.”
“Christian evangelicals “don’t like Trump because they think he is holy,” explains Ziegler. “They like him because they think he’s God’s tool.”
See: Is Mike Pompeo Meshing His Rapture Believing Faith With Developing Foreign Policy Goals?
As per a 11/13/ 2018 Religion News Service report, “A lot of white evangelical voters aren’t evangelicals” by Mark Silk, ” According to the exit polls, 26 percent of the electorate in last week’s midterms consisted of white evangelicals. Yet white evangelicals make up just 15.3 percent of the U.S. adult population, according to PRRI’s widely used survey data. What gives?”“Apparently, the Baptist and Pentecostal and non-denominational Christian faithful turned out to vote Republican in disproportionate droves. As Faith and Freedom Coalition chairman Ralph Reed, who’s in the business of boosting evangelical turnout, told a National Press Club audience, “We had an astonishing level of evangelical voters cast their ballots.”
“But appearances can be deceiving, and in this case they are. That’s because a lot of the voters identified as white evangelicals weren’t Baptists, Pentecostals and non-denominational Christians. They were mainline Protestants and Catholics.”
People who have known Mr. Barr for years are shocked as to the degree that he appears to be covering for President Trump instead of honoring his oath of office to protect this country and its peoples. There are numerous reports indicating that he’s a practicing devout Catholic who’s very conservative in his views, and he has been a long standing member of the conservative Catholic organization, “the Knights of Columbus.” I’m wondering if he is also believing that God has sent President Trump as a tool to promote their interests and causes. there are evangelicalized” white Catholics.
Two reputable well known legal minds, Laurence Tribe and Neal Katyal have indicated that they are having a hard time coming to grips to explain his puzzling behaviors over his handling of the 3/22/2019 FBI’s final report pertaining to its Trump-Russia probe led by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller III. Mr. Barr’s actions appear to reflect a bias towards protecting President Trump from harm versus representing the peoples’ interests. Here are their tweets reflecting their concerns:
Yes. Barr’s foot-dragging is inexcusable. Why he decided to become a lackey for this corrupt bully of a president is just beyond comprehension. When I worked with him years ago, he seemed to be a man of integrity. Now he’s willingly harming America and the rule of law.
This is absurd. Barr has had 13 days to go to court &ask to have the grand jury material released, as Jaworski did in Watergate (+other sp prosecutors). He hasn’t even bothered. That laconic pace poorly contrasts with his clearing of Donald Trump of obstruction charges in 48 hrs.
On 12/10/2018, Rob Boston of the (Americans United) au.org/blog penned the following report “William Barr Wants To Bring ‘God’s Law’ To America”
Excerpts:
“Some older statements by Barr are equally troubling. Barr, who served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush from November of 1991 until the end of Bush’s presidency early in 1993, gave at least 2 speeches in 1992 during which he attacked church-state separation and secular government.”
“Addressing a conference of governors on juvenile crime in Milwaukee on April 1, 1992, Barr blasted public schools for no longer providing moral instruction. He asserted that public schools had undergone a “moral lobotomy” and blamed it on “extremist notions of separation of church and state.”
“About six months later, Barr struck again. During an Oct. 6, 1992, speech in Washington, D.C., to the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a traditionalist Catholic group, Barr called for the imposition of “God’s law” in America.”
“To the extent that a society’s moral culture is based on God’s law, it’ll guide men toward the best possible life,” Barr said. He also attacked “modern secularists” for supposedly ushering in cultural decline, remarking, “The secularists of today are clearly fanatics.”
Once out of office, Barr continued promoting these themes. In a 1995 essay he penned titled “Legal Issues In A New Political Order,” Barr asserted, “Traditional Judeo-Christian doctrine maintains that there’s a transcendent moral order with objective standards of right and wrong that exists independent of man’s will. This transcendent order flows from God’s eternal law – the divine will by which the whole of creation is ordered.”
In the essay, Barr blamed the alleged moral decline of America on the rights movements of the 1960s, asserting that “a steady and mounting assault on traditional values” spawned “soaring juvenile crime, widespread drug addiction and skyrocketing venereal diseases.”
“Elsewhere in the essay, Barr bemoaned no-fault divorce laws, legal abortion and laws designed to “restrain sexual immorality, obscenity or euthanasia.” He also attacked the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lee v. Weisman, a 1992 ruling that upheld the high court’s decisions from 1962 and ’63 barring public schools from compelling children to take part in prayer and worship.”
“(I should note that Barr’s paper, originally published in Catholic Lawyer, is poor scholarship. It contains a fake quote by James Madison lauding the Ten Commandments.)”
So what’s Barr’s answer to all of this? He proposed that Catholic education is the solution – and that you pay for it.
“From a legal standpoint, our initial focus should be on education and efforts to strengthen and finance education,” observed Barr. “This means vouchers at the state level and ultimately at the federal level to support parental choice in education. We should press at every turn for the inclusion of religious institutions.”
Barr seems to be uncomfortable with things like secular government, church-state separation, religious pluralism and indeed the realities of modern life. He’ll face confirmation hearings in the Senate. In light of his alarming past statements, members need to ask some tough questions.
Link: Evangelicals Have Out-Size Influence In President’s Crafting Of US Foreign Policy
Gronda Morin 