In revering Trump, the religious right has laid bare its hypocrisy

The evangelical fortress around the president can look like a problem, but progressives can use that heresy to fight opponents

By
Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff
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Samuel G Freedman for the UK Guardian

The annual anachronism known as the National Prayer Breakfast attracted its usual array of clergy, military, and political leaders in Washington on 7 February. Most prominent of all, of course, was Donald Trump, who used the de facto pulpit to call for outlawing abortion, among other positions dear to the Religious Right.

Yet the presidential comment that most typified all that has gone morally haywire with the supposedly moral majority came when Trump praised the “abolition of civil rights”. You can consider that statement an innocent, if embarrassing, misreading of the Teleprompter. Or you can hear it as a Freudian slip.

As inspired by the Reverend Billy Graham and originated by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, the National Prayer Breakfast served two consensual, almost anodyne purposes. It epitomized the moderate, mid-century civil religion that preached that an American was a better citizen for believing in God and going, at least occasionally, to church or synagogue. And amid the Cold War, American leaders insistently portrayed their nation’s collective faith confronting what was routinely called “godless Communism”.



In fact, the greatest application of religion in the public square during the 1950s and 1960s occurred in pursuit of a liberal goal: civil rights.

read more at the UK Guardian

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2 COMMENTS

  2. Consider the hypocrisy of the Gettysburg Address in November, 1863 by Dishonest Abe. He was about half way through the massive illegal destruction and plunder of the South under the phony ruse of eliminating slavery when not only was it “legal”, New York had been built by black slave labor. The bullies in the North had imposed a 40% sales tax on the South but he didn’t mention that in this famous collection of words. This war was, like most wars, about a five letter obscene word MONEY. Not one word in the Constitution Dishonest Abe recited in his meaningless oath gave him the authority to kill upwards of 1 million and plunder over half the country for the purpose of “holding the Union together.”
    Instead he could have said, “Go you will be back in 20 years and we will welcome you back”. Wouldn’t this have been the Christian way to solve the problem? How would you like to pay a 40% sales tax to enrich the rich scoundrels in the cesspool New York then? I grew up idolizing Dishonest Abe but changed my mind after living in Georgia for over 50 years. Lincoln is not the Saint portrayed in lying history books but a garden variety tyrant. Slavery was not technically eliminated until the 14th Amendment yet today aren’t we all “slaves” to government? Most of us work about half our lives just to pay taxes to all levels of government while the whores in Congress give our hard earned money to Israel and many other countries.

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