Christians, Is This Who We Really Are?

Our concern about the meaning of the Christian faith as it addresses the world continues.

Consider the face put on Christianity this Easter. Very few congregations held traditional services on this the central Christian festival. There was, I regret, a smattering of public services in which the devout ignored calls for social distancing. I hesitate to judge whether this activity flowed from authentic faith or was only thumbing the nose at the nation and its safety. Throughout the country, worship took place in empty sanctuaries while the services were streamed on TV and watched by the faithful.

President Trump, who rarely puts a foot in any church, watched the streamed service of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Trump has often expressed his admiration for its pastor, Robert Jeffress. I have to wonder if Jeffress really defines what it means to be Christian or if he badly misrepresents its heart. At least the President seems to believe that Jeffress has it right. So let’s take a look at what Jeffress has said about the nature of the faith as he has reflected on serious issues facing the nation.

Jeffress supported Governor Rick Perry in the Republican primaries for the 2012 presidential nomination. On October 7, 2011, he introduced Perry at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC, by indicating that one of Perry's rivals, Mitt Romney, is “opposed to Christianity.” According to Jeffress, “Romney's Mormonism contradicts the teachings of Jesus."

Jeffress further held that the teachings of Judaism, Islam and Hinduism reject "the truth of Christ", and that their adherents will go to hell if they do not accept him. Jeffress had earlier referred to Roman Catholicism as a "Satanic cult.”

Certainly while Jeffress is entitled to define what it means to be a Christian, to use this distortion as a political weapon is a travesty. I believe Jeffress seriously misrepresents Jesus. He managed to ignore Romney’s false religious commitment however, when he finally endorsed him in the 2012 Republican primary. If Romney belonged to a non-Christian cult, even so he was far superior to Barack Obama who according to Donald Trump, was probably not even an American.

In November 4, 2012, the Sunday before the 2012 election, here is what Jeffress had to say about President Obama.

“I want you to hear me tonight, I am not saying that President Obama is the Antichrist, I am not saying that at all. One reason I know he's not the Antichrist is the Antichrist is going to have much higher poll numbers when he comes. President Obama is not the Antichrist. But what I am saying is this: the course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist."

An outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, Jeffress has described such marriages as being "counterfeit.” In 2008 in his sermon "Gay Is Not OK he said, “It (homosexuality)is so degrading that it is beyond description. And it is their filthy behavior that explains why they are so much more prone to disease.”

His 2016 support of Trump was full-throated. And there he was, representing Christians at Trump’s inauguration. In September 2019, after the impeachment inquiry had been announced, Jeffress declared on Fox News:

“I have never seen the Evangelical Christians more angry over any issue than this attempt to illegitimately remove this President from office, overturn the 2016 election, and negate the votes of millions of Evangelicals in the process. They know the only impeachable offense that President Trump has committed was beating Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s the unpardonable sin for which the Democrats will never forgive him. If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office, it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this nation from which our country will never heal.”
• There is much more. Jeffress Is entitled to his take on religion, but my concern focuses on an American President who endorses what the pastor believes without reservation. A President who assigns to hell the majority of America’s citizens is morally unfit to lead them. If at any point Trump has rejected the bigotry Jeffress continues to spew, he has failed to make it clear.
• Apart from what Trump believes about all those who are eternally damned because they have not accepted Jesus, the distorting of the Christian faith by Jeffress and his followers is disastrous. If this is what Christianity is really about, thoughtful people should separate themselves from it without delay. Perhaps that is really what Trump believes, or as I suspect, he is simply using this minister as bait to attract evangelicals. Jeffress’ distortion and Trump’s acquiescence is one of the Christian faith’s more serious misrepresentations.