The Christian Right—An Autopsy

by Don Clasen

Aug. 18, 2016

It’s a humiliating thing to watch Christian Right pastors sinking so low as to break their philosophical backs doing somersaults to justify their support of Donald Trump for President. One person in particular, I think it was Dobson, referred to him as a “baby Christian.”

I’m willing to concede he’s certainly a baby but I refuse to be that non-judgmental. If he’s a Christian at any level then I’m St. Francis of Assisi. What Donald J. Trump is like is a walking, talking, living test for the Church. He is also an illustration of  how pathetic our understanding is of two things we so pride ourselves as experts on–discerning character and the role of attitudes in the development of it.

What have we been hearing from leaders in the Christian Right for decades now to justify this obsession with changing the world through politics of all things? One of the big ones was that we needed men of character and integrity in higher office. That would be great if it weren’t for one inconvenient truth, and that is these are the last days, a time termed in the New Testament as “perilous” precisely because so many men will not have good moral character in those days (II Tim 3:1).

The big question is why, and the fact that the Church cannot explain this is a big reason why these are the last days. We have failed, not because we’ve “left government to the secularists” but because we don’t understand what is wrong with the world, why it’s falling apart, and how to be an effective witness against it.

My Own Evolution

Quite frankly, I don’t know of a public figure more reprobate than Donald Trump, and this is the horse in the race, with zero experience in government no less, we want to back?! Do I need to explain myself any further? Isn’t it clear a watching world has already figured us out?

I was once something of a charter member of the Christian Right, not in the sense of being deeply involved in it but being rather one of its earliest members dating back to the late 1970s. In retrospect I believe now that it was a movement at least partly the brainchild of the CIA which was getting a real grilling at the time. Frank Church and his Senate committee were really exposing the Agency’s dirty deeds and were coming close to fulfilling Kennedy’s threat to shatter the organization into a thousand pieces. The right wing AM radio phenomenon was definitely a part of this Tory attempt to come roaring back and mobilizing the potential of the masses in the pews was a part of the plan as well.

I had a theology mentor in my early 30s I call Harry the Engineer who unduly influenced me politically. Harry Conn was a very impressive intellect and something of an amateur scholar on the subject of the Atonement of Christ. He had 250 books on the subject alone in his library even though his main identity was as a world-renown mechanical engineer. Harry though, was also a rabid right-winger and such a dominant personality that I pretty much accepted his political thinking as being “more Christian” as well.

I began to recover from this philosophy’s spell probably in the late 1990s when I began to realize how much I was being lied to by right wing radio. In the Midwest where I was at the time, right wing talk was the only kind of programming available but I could tell eventually how much emotional button-pushing, manipulation and lack of analysis was being downloaded into my head on a daily basis.

9-11 Really Sealed It

Nevertheless I still voted Republican in the 2000 election though it was certainly my last time. On the morning of 9-11 I remember watching the burning towers, feeling my heart sink and thinking to myself that the Bush family was up to its old tricks again. Little did I know at the time that Israel was the biggest mastermind behind this seminal event ushering in the War on Terror era, nor of how bad things would get thereafter. Just weeks after being mystified by the re-election of the Bush-Cheney terror train in 2004 I got my first revelation on how America was the Great Babylon of Revelation 16-18 and that this was the key to unlocking the prophecies about the last days.

Today I would characterize myself as a moderate liberal, probably more in a Kennedy-esque or New Deal cast. I certainly am no doctrinaire “progressive” and retain a lot of conservative stances on issues, especially regarding the Second Amendment, the death penalty, nation-state sovereignty, immigration policy and even sex-based issues. I just no longer consider them the most important ones in my mind. The big players in politics only care about two things–money and power, with the first enabling the accumulation of the second. They use fringe issues on the left and the right to manipulate both sides while they go about to break our back, strip-mining us for everything we’ve got of value.

I have given a lot of thought to the obsession of the American Church with politics since then and want to present in this essay a short analysis as to what I think went wrong and why. This one characteristic has defined the Church’s image in the public eye more than anything else and is why we are so passionately hated by our society today. It has been a disaster of Biblical proportions that I do not think can be stopped until its tragedy (an apostate Christianity) is fully played out.

Point By Point

The following is just a partial list of what is wrong with the Church’s approach towards politics. Specifically:

1. The Christian Right is a phenomenon that reflects the Church’s contempt for the Word of God.

This might seem like a harsh accusation given the endless amount of Bible exposition that goes on through Christian radio alone but we have to be “Biblical” about this if you will.

What I am referring to are the words of Jesus Himself Who straightly warned us about these times that we are living in to “watch and pray,” for “as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth” (Lu 21:35). This is because it would be a time of great deception (Mt 24:4,5,11,24). The Apostle Paul used even stronger language, describing it as a time of “strong delusion” (II Thess 2:11). Although people would be going on with all the normal activities of life (eating, drinking, marrying–Mt 24:38), they will still know that something is terribly wrong with what is going on in the world in those days.

What they won’t understand is where it is coming from. As I have tried to demonstrate in these articles, much of the damage is being done by the obsessive philosophy of Talmudism having replaced the Christian/Enlightenment (or just plain common sense) paradigm of reality in our day. Even the spread of outright Satanism of late had a path paved by elite Masonic circles who see themselves as disciples of the ever-devolving Pharisees. It all began when certain influential leaders of the medieval Church allowed in the Kabbalah and it spread into elitist secret societies from there.

Now Christians can take the “Preterist” view of these words of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse (that it refers only to the days of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD) all they want. But the language Jesus used was apocalyptic (wars, distress of nations (“men’s hearts failing them for fear” of the things coming upon the [whole] earth–Lu 21:26), birth pangs, false prophets, wheat and tares, betrayals, enemies from within one’s own family, “Abomination of Desolation,” etc,). It was also futuristic way beyond 70 AD (descriptions of the Second Coming, etc.—Mt 24:29,30). Preterism has at least partly fueled the Dominionist movement that the Christian Right operates under but it is a hermeneutic that time and circumstance is just rendering ridiculous. If people can’t see that these are “apocalyptic” times in which we are living then I don’t know what to do for them. It is simply a contempt for the Word of God by any reasonable interpretation.

Thus, what has been the battle cry of the Church these last four decades? “Take back America for Christ!” “Rebuild the family!” “We need political leaders of character,” etc. It’s the language of hyper-optimistic Post-Millennialism and Dominionism. Under Post-Millennial eschatological theory, the Church so renovates the world as to bring about a Golden Age at the end of which Christ returns as the capstone of the process.

It’s pure delusion and presumption, and an un-commanded mandate. I call it the default eschatology of the Christian Right, a long-term plan to rebuild society starting with the family as its foundation that also plays right into the superficial ecumenical dream of Roman Catholicism. While family ministry bears a lot of good fruit, what kind of a long-term plan is this when there’s going to be betrayal within families (Mk 13:12; Lu 21:16,17), with true believers being hauled off to internment camps?

The rejoinder to this is at least two fold. One is, “Well you gotta have hope. You have to believe there’s a future or you can’t plan for anything.” Fair enough, but any participation of the Church in politics should be in terms of a witness and a warning to the world of where they’re headed. Yet paradoxically it should be coupled with righteous and practical solutions to society’s problems that would promote stability and normalcy and bear a good witness of Christ to the world.[i] Instead we take a very purist and adversarial stance that smacks in their eyes of an attempt to impose a theocratic model on American government and a preoccupation with wedge issues.

Second is the rejoinder, “Well, we do have ‘apocalyptic people’ in the Church and they usually embarrass us by their false predictions and their ‘sky is falling’ thinking.” True, but these people are usually preoccupied with the Rapture (or survivalism) instead of completing the Great Commission that hits its climax during the last great harvest (Rev 7:9). Politically these “prophecy people” look upon the signs as more curiosities than problems needing solutions since they’ll be “Raptured out.” At the most they look upon politics in the usual lazy Evangelical mindset of knee-jerk conservatism and that the US and Israel are “holding back the darkness” as best they can. Yet as I argue in my book, it’s the US and Israel that are the biggest source of the darkness of our time! Some kind of witness that is.

2. The Christian Right romanticizes the past, especially American history, and adopts an ultra-conservative, even reactionary and nostalgic agenda.

I call this the “Leave It To Beaver” syndrome, a longing for a past America with lots of shallow spirituality but plenty of God-fearing, God-acknowledging “church-goers” everywhere. This is a superficial answer to society’s problems, insisting on a return to prayer in schools and the like, as if religious periods in human history haven’t been characterized at times by some of the greatest fanaticism and barbarity.

I nearly fell off my chair when I heard that a Barna study found out that the #1 consideration people have in choosing a church nowadays is…what else? Parking! How’s that for heavy-duty, burn-me-at-the-stake conviction? But that’s what you get when your goal is to get people “churched” so you can mobilize them for the oligarchs’ agenda.

The way this plays out is the Church opting for that party deemed most “conservative”—the Republicans—a party aligned today with Wall Street, fundamentalist capitalism, unbelievable inequality, tearing up the social safety net, war mongering, black ops, organized crime, Tories, the CIA and the like. Although Church people decry the “far left” social agenda of the liberals (a cultural battle we have soundly lost anyway), the truth is that both parties have been corrupted by Wall Street.

All Christians have gotten from Republican Presidents who appoint Supreme Court judges is a refusal to strike down Roe v. Wade, plenty of pro-Wall Street rulings (especially the Citizens United decision to allow unlimited amounts of money into elections) and a court of three Jews and six Catholics! Not one seat is filled by a Protestant anymore in “take it back for Christ” America, so powerful is the Israel Lobby in Washington. Truly we are a Tower of Babel to the world.

While the Reagan Revolution and supply-side economics have devastated the distribution of wealth since 1980, much of the cultural demise goes back to the Kennedy assassination in 1963 when the right wing succeeded in a coup d’etat that has never been brought to justice. Ever since, the country has been set on a steady, aggressive course of right wing, New Deal-destroying extremism. The only wrenching to the left has been in the area of Identity politics which I agree, is largely destructive of our sense of common collective citizenship.

Today despite the hysterical protestations of the right, Barak Obama (except on social issues) can be placed on the political spectrum as slightly to the right of Dwight D. Eisenhower! When you point these things out to Christians they make light of it as “materialistic concerns.” Unfortunately God counts it a major problem of the last days and one that is grievous to His ears (James 5:1-6).

It wasn’t always this way. A hundred years ago Christians were much more respected by the American public than they are today. William Jennings Bryan, one of the most famous preachers of the time was a prominent populist and very popular with the American public for his stance against the banks, railroads and the trusts. He rose to become Secretary of State and resigned when Wilson reneged on his pledge to keep us out of World War I after being blackmailed by Zionist Jews.[ii]

3. The Christian Right is obsessed with sex-based political issues.

Whether it was Francis Schaeffer who decided abortion was the most important hill to die on or whether it was cooked up as a wedge issue by some New World Order agent up the pyramid, sex-based political issues are the things Christians are now most known for. Their loyalties can be “easily moved” as Netanyahu has put it whenever such issues (abortion, sexual identity, abstinence, stem cells, etc.) are mentioned.

As legitimate as these issues are, real political pros know that what matters most to the big players are the economy—how it’s run and who controls it—and matters of war and peace (with the latter issue directly tied into the money to be made with war).

Aside from burnishing our reputation for being known as sexual killjoys, such issues easily play right into the divide-and-conquer strategy of the “big boys.” As such, the world wants to know why we don’t care more about bombing innocent people after they’re born as much as before. Sexual identity obsessions are making the United States the laughing stock of the world, but that’s the effect of Jewish sexual revolutionaries tearing everything down for you. If we framed the issue that way we might make a dent in the public’s consciousness.

I should write an article someday called “The Idol of Abortion.” Christians confidently proclaim that life begins at birth but can one call a fertilized egg a human life? It has the potential to become one just like an egg has the potential to become a chicken but at what point does that occur? In Jewish anthropology they assume that a human doesn’t get a soul until it takes its first breath (nephesh). Perhaps that’s one stance I can agree with them on.

The truth is though, no one knows. When a fetus dies does it go to heaven? What happens to it? No one really knows but we are willing to take a very speculative issue and force our conscience on others. While it’s a tragedy that any woman would want to kill a growing life inside of her, all the same our obsession with this subject comes across to them as “shoving our religion down their throat.”

4. The Christian Right has a reputation for being a divisive sector of society rather than a peacemaker one.

Speaking of “shoving our religion down people’s throat”! Christians in politics are seen as one of the most socially regressive groups out there. We are seen, fairly or not as obsessed with turning the country into some version of a theocracy. I call this “cultural Christianity” as opposed to spiritual Christianity. The world also tends to think of it as “white man’s religion,” rightly or wrongly. At a time when we should be focused on bringing in a great harvest of every “nation, kindred, people and tongue” (Rev 7:9), we are bogged down trying to defend the often-disreputable record of European colonial heritage.

Our approach is all wrong. If we want to get involved in politics we should be focusing on building a reputation for being but one sector of a pluralistic democracy. And one that is the most level-headed, fair-minded, practical, reasonable, reliable, stable, creative and innovative of all. We should be eager to compromise and work with the rest of the society for the best outcomes for the country as a whole instead of imposing a very purist, “take a stand for Jesus” attitude. Politics is not about religious convictions. It is practical solutions to collective social problems.

Christians could stand for their principles, make their arguments and then respect the decision of the populace, unlike the attitude of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. We could work with and pray for elected leaders that God would guide them and check any tendencies to extreme, foolish decisions. Instead, we have a reputation for being divisive and hostile to the majority of the populace when it comes to politics.

The hysterical rants and deployment of opinion surveys to pressure the government by Jay Sekulow for instance (whom I assume to be an Israeli agent) is typical of such “ministries.” The dreams and visions I have heard about President Obama alone have been downright lurid at times coming from “respected” Christian leaders.

Politics you could define as “practical solutions to collective social problems.” While we decry the theoretical dangers of majority rule, we’re forgetting that democracy has a very important function in training every citizen to participate and take responsibility for self-determination in our collective identity. Civil government is a very important institution and ordained by God (Rom 13) simply because not everyone is an angel (I Tim 1:9,10).

When Ronald Reagan campaigned on the harebrained idea that government itself was the problem and that’s why he wanted to be President, he made a fool of all those who were backing him. The fact that he chose Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town where three civil rights workers were murdered by the KKK in 1964 to announce his candidacy was a breathtaking dog whistle and act of mockery of the Founding Fathers’ beginnings in Philadelphia, PA. Corrupt government may be a problem, too much or too little government may be a problem, but government itself is not the problem. Its basic role is to act as referee between all the other institutions that make up a culture. Right-wingers however can never get enough of “drowning government in a bathtub” as Grover Norquist so classily put it. Criminals love de-regulation and no party attracts them like the Republicans.

The whole concept of restoring Christian government is likewise a heresy. The Puritans who came up with it were operating from an Old Testament/national covenant model that had more in common with the Pharisees than the Gospel, and it shows. Jesus never envisioned a theocracy anywhere and forever put government in a secular framework when He said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mk 12:17).

This is so because there are “few that be saved” (Lu 13:23) and government must represent all the people in a country. To repeat fatuous yet high-sounding mantras like, “The Kingdom of God is not a democracy” doesn’t wash, simply because it’s only here in the Spirit for now. Not until the King comes back and reigns out of Jerusalem for a thousand years will democracy have served its usefulness (Jn 18:36; Zech 14:16; Rev 20:4).

Likewise, for Christians to continually slam the social welfare programs of people like Bernie Sanders in favor of stark, bare-bones austerity is just stupid. The Church simply cannot handle the cost of social welfare by itself. Before the New Deal the elderly in the US were literally dying in the streets. Is it any wonder the world hates our Scrooge-like attitudes while giving the farm away to warmongers and billionaire welfare queens?

And why wouldn’t the public hate taxes now? They never get anything out of them! They’re all given away to the rich in tax breaks for wealth they largely owe to the back-breaking efforts of the working people of America. Living on the public dole works fine for them, and God made known how He feels about it in James 5.

At the same time the Scandinavian countries with their democratic socialism consistently rank the highest in every world happiness survey ever taken. When Michael Moore came out with an incredibly insightful documentary about this called Where To Invade Next, Christians and right-wingers sniffed at it because it’s Michael Moore. But it’s a devastating indictment of how ideas that America once originated have been picked up around the world and adopted with amazing results. For more on all this, I encourage you to consult my free chapter on how the US economy really works.

5. The Christian Right idolizes Israel.

I have written a lot on this subject. In fact, most of this blog is dedicated to the prophetic focus on and fate of this little nation built upon hard-core Judaism. What I said in the beginning about not knowing what’s wrong with the world today largely revolves around this looming showdown, this grand finale of the age-old battle of Jesus Christ with the Pharisees. We of all people ought to understand what Judaism is but we have done the opposite—endorsed and enabled this delinquency and not effectively stood against it.

At a time when even American Jews are becoming evermore embarrassed by Israel, the Church keeps proving to be some of the most slavish Zionists of all. For those not too familiar with the subtlety of the subject I would recommend they access these articles here:  “The Church’s Idolatry of Israel,” “Is The Problem Anti-Semitism or Anti-Gentilism?”, and “The Oscar Goes to ISIS.”

I could go on forever about this subject. These are just a few thoughts to chew on. Perhaps just an introduction.

[i] The supply-side economic policies that started under Reagan have created more family instability and stresses than any other single factor for instance. E.g. “Reagan Revolution Home To Roost—In Charts,” by David Cay Johnston.
[ii] “Jews Blackmailed Wilson Into World War I,” by Nathanael Kapner. Nathanael was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and became a true convert to the Messiah.