The enemy of democracy is ignorance

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-enemy-of-democracy-is-ignorance.html

https://bookshop.org/p/books/jesus-and-john-wayne-how-white-evangelicals-corrupted-a-faith-and-fractured-a-nation-kristin-kobes-du-mez/15266414?ean=9781631499050

Jesus and John Wayne, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

The book has been out since 2019, but it is an excellent "revisionist" history of the political plunge taken by Evangelical Christians in the United States since Reagan embraced them while running against a true Evangelical, Jimmy Carter, in 1980. Carter was a true Evangelical, a Georgia Southern Baptist whose doctrine and theology reflected the core values of the Christian gospel, and influenced his politics. And when I say "influenced his politics," I mean that Carter always took the path of compassion, putting the needs of people ahead of his own personal preferences when it came to practicing "righteousness," believing that when Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself," he meant it.

The political brand of Evangelical Christianity that has emerged from the influence of a core group of powerful Christian "leaders" as diverse as Jerry Falwell, Sr., Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Franklin Graham has abandoned Christian theology and doctrine in exchange for the ability to get things done using political power instead of the Holy Spirit's power, and to fight a "culture war" rather than fulfill an evangelistic mission and purpose. It is a cult, by Evangelicalism's own definition, a sinister religion with a set of religious practices that may be drawn from Christian tradition, but which deny the core beliefs of Christianity and a group drawn to the personality and attracted to the person of a leader whose core beliefs are a deviation from Biblical truth.

You can be one or the other. It is not possible to be both.

[FemDemERA]

1. Thank you for the share

Adding to my list of books to look up in the Libby app.