Posted on 04/15/2020 11:34:10 PM PDT by robowombat
Appearing as a guest on Sunday's AM Joy to discuss white evangelical Christians who steadfastly support President Donald Trump, former CNN contributor and religion expert Reza Aslan likened pro-Trump white evangelical Christians to a "doomsday cult" after recalling that there have been a limited number of pastors who have tried to illegally hold services with parishioners in defiance of the pandemic.
At 11:28 a.m. Eastern, after playing a clip of the Reverend Robert Jeffress explaining why he was supporting Trump from 2016, citing his stand against abortion, host Joy Reid posed:
JOY REID: Abortion is the key to support for Donald Trump, and the fact that he'll nominate judges who may overturn Roe V. Wade, that's the sort of core of the support. Is it as simple as that? Or is there more sort of a also, you know, the tide of the country turning toward black and brown folks? Is it all of that or one more than the other? Aslan -- who was notably fired as a CNN contributor a couple of years ago after posting an inflammatory tweet calling President Trump a "piece of s**t" -- began by arguing that the abortion issue accounts for a substantial amount of Trump's support, but then also implicated race:
REZA ASLAN: But I don't think that we should pretend that the white part of the sentence doesn't matter -- 67 percent of evangelicals of color voted for Hillary Clinton. These are people who more or less believe the same thing -- hold the same theology -- but just have a different skin tone. I think -- there was this wonderful article in Christianity Today not long after the election that said that white evangelicals acted more white than evangelical. … So race unquestionably played a part in it. He then claimed that white evangelicals are behaving like a "cult" because of a perception of being on the losing end of "the culture wars."
ASLAN: Trump's evangelical supporters have started to seem like a kind of cult -- a deeply insular group that's bound together by this extreme devotion to a charismatic leader. And what I'm really worried about now with this pandemic is what allows a cult to truly thrive is a sense of siege. This worked in 2016 because Donald Trump told them that, you know, Democrats are out to destroy churches and kill babies and take away their guns, and that worked, but now we are literally experiencing a sense of siege. The liberal religious scholar then applied the term "doomsday cult" as he continued:
ASLAN: And so this backlash that you're seeing from a lot of pastors in places like Louisiana or Kansas, Kentucky, across the country, frankly, to try to prove something by forcibly having these in-person services defying the authorities -- defying medical advice in order to make some kind of point about their support for Donald Trump -- this is the kind of behavior -- this cult-like behavior that can lead to -- as Jim (Wallis) said -- to the deaths of thousands of people. It's no longer just a cult of personality -- I don't think we can call it that anymore -- it's now becoming a doomsday cult. Host Reid agreed: "Yeah, it's terrifying."
I forgot to add.
Because racism.
Well...fine. I don’t mind people thinking me proclaiming Jesus as my savior as being in a “cult”. I think Muslims are in one. So we’re even. As far as it being a “doomsday” cult, I am fine with that, too. This world is a retched, evil, fallen place which has a finite limit. I would be proud and hopeful to include and view Trump as part of our cult.
Well, in one way, he is correct - Jesus Christ is a charismatic cult leader - as well as our Lord and Savior.
People like Reza have no faith, and without it, they cannot begin to understand what true faith is in Christians.
I am so tired of this.
Bkmk
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