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      A Crusade to Challenge the 2020 Election, Blessed by Church Leaders

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      Some evangelical pastors are hosting events dedicated to Trump’s election falsehoods and promoting the cause to their congregations.COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The 11 a.m. service at Church for All Nations, a large nondenominational evangelical church in Colorado’s second-largest city, began as such services usually do. The congregation of young families and older couples swayed and sang along to live music. Mark Cowart, the church’s senior pastor, delivered an update on a church mission project.Then Mr. Cowart turned the pulpit over to a guest speaker, William J. Federer.An evangelical commentator and one-time Republican congressional candidate, Mr. Federer led the congregation through an hourlong PowerPoint presentation based on his 2020 book, “Socialism — The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control.” Many congregants scribbled in the notebooks they had brought from home.“I believe God is pushing the world to a decision-making moment,” Mr. Federer said, building toward his conclusion. “We used to have national politicians that held back the floodgates of hell. The umbrella’s been ripped after Jan. 6, and now it’s raining down upon every one of us. We had politicians that were supposed to certify that — and instead they just accepted it. And, lo and behold, an anti-Christian spirit’s been released across the country and the world.”Evangelical churches have long been powerful vehicles for grass-roots activism and influence on the American right, mobilized around issues like abortion and gay marriage. Now, some of those churches have embraced a new cause: promoting Donald J. Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.In the 17 months since the presidential election, pastors at these churches have preached about fraudulent votes and vague claims of election meddling. They have opened their church doors to speakers promoting discredited theories about overturning President Joe Biden’s victory and lent a veneer of spiritual authority to activists who often wrap themselves in the language of Christian righteousness.For these church leaders, Trump’s narrative of the 2020 election has become a prominent strain in an apocalyptic vision of the left running amok.“What’s going on in our country right now with this recent election and the fraudulent nature of that?” Mr. Cowart, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, asked in a sermon last year. “What is going on?”It’s difficult to measure the extent of churches’ engagement in the issue. Research suggests that a small minority of evangelical pastors bring politics to the pulpit. “I think the vast majority of pastors realize there is not a lot of utility to being very political,” said Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor.The Church for All Nations in Colorado Springs. Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesStill, surveys show that the belief in a fraudulent election retains a firm hold on white evangelical churchgoers overall, Mr. Trump’s most loyal constituency in 2020. A poll released in November by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 60 percent of white evangelical respondents continued to believe that the election was stolen — a far higher share than other Christian groups of any race. That figure was roughly 40 percent for white Catholics, 19 percent for Hispanic Catholics and 18 percent for Black Protestants.Among evangelicals, “a high percentage seem to walk in lock step with Trump, the election conspiracies and the vigilante ‘taking back of America,’” said Rob Brendle, the lead pastor at Denver United Church, who recalled that when he criticized some Christians’ embrace of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in a sermon the Sunday after the riot, he lost about a hundred members of his congregation, which numbered around 1,500 before the pandemic.Rob Brendle, the lead pastor of Denver United Church, said that when he criticized the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol the Sunday after the riot, he lost about a hundred congregants.Kevin Moloney for the New York TimesHe thinks many fellow clergy may share that view. “I think the jury’s still out, but it’s not a fringe,” he said.Some of the national evangelical figures who supported Mr. Trump during his presidency and his 2020 campaign, like Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, separated themselves from his insistence that the election was stolen. Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham and the president of Samaritan’s Purse, equivocated. Writing on Facebook the month after the election, Mr. Graham acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory but said that when Mr. Trump claimed the election was rigged against him, “I tend to believe him.”Others embraced Mr. Trump’s claims or argued for the preservation of his rule in spite of his loss. Shortly after the election was called for Mr. Biden, Paula White, a Florida televangelist who served as the White House faith adviser during Mr. Trump’s presidency, led a prayer service in which she and others called upon God to overturn the election.Pastor Greg Locke of Global Vision Bible Church holding a service in his church’s parking lot in 2020.Brett Carlsen/Getty ImagesGreg Locke, a preacher who leads the Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, Tenn., spoke alongside Alex Jones of Infowars at a “Rally for Revival” demonstration in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack. Mr. Locke offered a prayer for the Proud Boys, the violent far-right group, and for Enrique Tarrio, the organization’s leader who has since been indicted on charges of conspiracy for his role in the Capitol insurrection.Mr. Locke — whose congregation is relatively small, but who claims a social media audience in the millions — is one of more than a dozen pastors who have appeared onstage at the ReAwaken America Tour: a traveling roadshow that has featured far-right Republican politicians, anti-vaccine activists, election conspiracists and Trumpworld personalities, including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a central figure in the effort to overturn the election in late 2020.Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn spoke at a ReAwaken America Tour event in Phoenix in January.Mark Peterson/ReduxThe event has drawn crowds of thousands of Trump supporters in nine states in the past year. All but one of the tour’s stops have been hosted by megachurches, and the tour is sponsored by a charismatic Christian media company.The performances wrap the narrative of election fraud in a megachurch atmosphere, complete with worship music and prayer, and have drawn criticism from some Christian clergy. When the tour came to a church in San Marcos, Calif., this month, a local Methodist minister denounced it as an “irreligious abomination” in an opinion essay.Smaller churches, meanwhile, have proven an important support network for the individual activists who now travel the country promoting the narrative of a stolen election.“Churches and bars, baby. That’s where it was happening in 1776,” wrote Douglas Frank, a high school math and science teacher in Ohio whose widely debunked analyses of the 2020 results have been influential with election conspiracists, in a Telegram post last month. So far this year, more than a third of the speeches he has promoted on his social media accounts have been hosted by churches or religious groups.Douglas Frank, a high school math teacher from Ohio with ties to former President Trump, presented his theories of election fraud to about 100 people in the Missouri State Capitol in January.David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated PressSeth Keshel, a former Army captain and military intelligence analyst who worked alongside Mr. Flynn in the weeks immediately after the election, is a popular draw with the same crowds. He attributed the prevalence of churches on the circuit to the instincts of local organizers.“Most conservatives are evangelicals and naturally think ‘church’ as a venue,” he wrote in an email. “There are some pastors more fired up about elections and liberty but not all.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More

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      The Growing Religious Fervor in the American Right

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      Rituals of Christian worship have become embedded in conservative rallies, as praise music and prayer blend with political anger over vaccines and the 2020 election.They opened with an invocation, summoning God’s “hedge of thorns and fire” to protect each person in the dark Phoenix parking lot.They called for testimonies, passing the microphone to anyone with “inspirational words that they’d like to say on behalf of our J-6 political prisoners,” referring to people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, whom they were honoring a year later.Then, holding candles dripping wax, the few dozen who were gathered lifted their voices, a cappella, in a song treasured by millions of believers who sing it on Sundays and know its words by heart:Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeperLight in the darkness, my GodThat is who you are …This was not a church service. It was worship for a new kind of congregation: a right-wing political movement powered by divine purpose, whose adherents find spiritual sustenance in political action.The Christian right has been intertwined with American conservatism for decades, culminating in the Trump era. And elements of Christian culture have long been present at political rallies. But worship, a sacred act showing devotion to God expressed through movement, song or prayer, was largely reserved for church. Now, many believers are importing their worship of God, with all its intensity, emotion and ambitions, to their political life.At events across the United States, it is not unusual for participants to describe encountering the divine and feel they are doing their part to install God’s kingdom on earth. For them, right-wing political activity itself is becoming a holy act.These Christians are joining secular members of the right wing, including media-savvy opportunists and those touting disinformation. They represent a wide array of discontent, from opposing vaccine mandates to promoting election conspiracy theories. For many, pandemic restrictions that temporarily closed houses of worship accelerated their distrust of government and made churchgoing political.At a Trump rally in Michigan last weekend, a local evangelist offered a prayer that stated, “Father in heaven, we firmly believe that Donald Trump is the current and true president of the United States.” He prayed “in Jesus’ name” that precinct delegates at the upcoming Michigan Republican Party convention would support Trump-endorsed candidates, whose names he listed to the crowd. “In Jesus’ name,” the crowd cheered back.The infusion of explicitly religious fervor — much of it rooted in the charismatic tradition, which emphasizes the power of the Holy Spirit — into the right-wing movement is changing the atmosphere of events and rallies, many of which feature Christian symbols and rituals, especially praise music.With spiritual mission driving political ideals, the stakes of any conflict, whether over masks or school curriculums, can feel that much larger, and compromise can be even more difficult to achieve. Political ambitions come to be about defending God, pointing to a desire to build a nation that actively promotes a particular set of Christian beliefs.“What is refreshing for me is, this isn’t at all related to church, but we are talking about God,” said Patty Castillo Porter, who attended the Phoenix event. She is an accountant and officer with a local Republican committee to represent “the voice of the Grassroots/America First posse,” and said she loved meeting so many Christians at the rallies she attends to protest election results, border policy or Covid mandates.“Now God is relevant,” she said. “You name it, God is there, because people know you can’t trust your politicians, you can’t trust your sheriffs, you can’t trust law enforcement. The only one you can trust is God right now.”Religious music, prayer and symbols are often featured at political rallies like a November 2020 event in Atlanta in support of President Donald J. Trump.Dustin Chambers/BloombergPeople bowed their heads in prayer at a rally held by former President Trump in March in Commerce, Ga.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesThe parking-lot vigil was sponsored by a right-wing voter mobilization effort focused on dismantling election policy. Not everyone there knew the words to “Way Maker,” the contemporary Christian megahit. A few men, armed with guns and accompanied by a German shepherd, stood at the edge of the gathering, smoking and talking about what they were seeing on Infowars, a website that traffics in conspiracy theories. Others, many of whom attended charismatic or evangelical churches, sang along. The Intersection of Evangelicalism and U.S. PoliticsPolitical Rise: In the early 1970s, many evangelicals weren’t active in politics. Within a few years, they had reshaped elections for a generation.A Fervor in the American Right: Rituals of Christian worship have become embedded in conservative rallies, as praise music and prayer blend with political anger.The Pandemic: A wariness of the Covid-19 vaccine among evangelicals is not just about faith or a mistrust of science — it’s also political.Climate Change: In a conversation with The Times, an evangelical climate scientist reflected on the grimly politicized state of science.Trump’s Pull: To the outside observer, the relationship between white evangelicals and Donald J. Trump can seem mystifying.Worship elements embedded into these events are recognizably evangelical. There is prayer and proclamation, shared rituals and stories. Perhaps the most powerful element is music. The anthems of the contemporary evangelical church, many of which were written in just the last few years, are blending with rising political anger, becoming the soundtrack to a new fight.Religious music, prayer and symbols have been part of protest settings throughout American history, for diverging causes, including the civil rights movement. Music is personal, able to move listeners in ways sermons or speeches cannot. Singing unites people in body and mind, and creates a sense of being part of a story, a song, greater than yourself.The sheer dominance of worship music within 21st-century evangelical culture means that the genre has been used outside church settings by the contemporary left as well. “Way Maker,” for example, was sung at some demonstrations for racial justice in the summer of 2020.The use of music is now key to movement-building power on the right.Demonstrators at the trucker protest in Canada called on God to metaphorically topple the walls of Parliament, a biblical reference to the story of Jericho.James Park for The New York TimesMarchers looped around Parliament in Ottawa during the trucker rally to protest covid mandates.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesAt the protest that paralyzed the Canadian capital in February, a group of demonstrators belted out “I raise a hallelujah, my weapon is a melody” from a hit from the influential California label Bethel Music. Amid the honks of trucks, they called on God to metaphorically topple the walls of Parliament, recalling the biblical story of how God crumbled the walls of Jericho, and to end vaccine mandates.At a recent conference in Arizona promoting anti-vaccine messages and election conspiracy theories, organizers blasted “Fresh Wind,” from the global church Hillsong, and a rock-rap novelty song with a chorus that began “We will not comply.”A growing belief among conservative Christians is that the United States is on the cusp of a revival, one where spiritual and political change are bound together.“We are seeing a spiritual awakening taking place,” said Ché Ahn, the pastor of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, who became a hero to many when his church successfully sued Gov. Gavin Newsom of California for banning indoor worship during the pandemic. “Christians are becoming more involved, becoming activists. I think that is a good thing, because the church has been slumbering.”The explicit use of evangelical worship for partisan protest took root in the early pandemic lockdowns, notably after California banned indoor church services and singing. Sean Feucht, a worship leader from Northern California, ran a failed campaign for Congress in 2020, and then launched a series of outdoor events, titled “Let Us Worship,” to defy pandemic restrictions. Thousands of Christians flocked to his events, where prayer and singing took on a new valence of defiance.When Mr. Feucht staged a worship event on the National Mall last Sept. 11, Mr. Trump contributed a video in which he praised Mr. Feucht for “uniting citizens of all denominations and backgrounds to promote faith and freedom in America.” Even before the pandemic, he and other worship leaders were courted by Mr. Trump, who identified celebrities within the charismatic movement as natural allies.A “Let Us Worship” service, one of a series of events started by Sean Feucht to defy pandemic restrictions.  Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMr. Feucht performing at a service. At events like this, music can move listeners in ways that sermons or speeches cannot. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesSince the fall, rallies and protests against Covid restrictions have expanded to include other conservative causes. On the San Diego waterfront in January, local activists who opposed vaccine and mask mandates held a worship protest called “Freedom Revival,” which combined Christian music with conservative speakers and booths promoting gun ownership and ballot initiatives that opposed medical mandates.Shaun Frederickson, one of the organizers, who has resisted the San Diego municipal government’s Covid response and called it “propaganda,” said it was wrong to understand the event simply as protesting Covid-related mandates. It was about something deeper, he said in an interview: the idea that Christian morality is the necessary foundation for governance in a free republic.“Christians are the ones that are responsible for granting you and myself the right and authority over government,” he said. “Our motivation with the worship was to entertain people that need to be entertained, while we are going to hit them heavy with truth.”At the revival, as worship music played gently, Mr. Frederickson, in a cardigan and cuffed skinny jeans, urged the crowd to not believe “the lie” of the separation of church and state.Among the speakers was Heidi St. John, a home-schooling advocate running for Congress in Washington State. She praised Moses’ mother — “she did not comply!” — and exhorted people to leave their churches if their pastors were too politically “timid.”Mr. Ahn, the pastor, who also spoke at the event, said he did not see it simply as a worship service or a political rally. “It is both,” he said. “My understanding of Jesus’ kingdom is that he is Lord, not just over the church, but every aspect of society. That means family, education, arts, entertainment, business for sure, and government.”Worship is increasingly becoming a central feature of right-wing events not aimed at exclusively Christian audiences.ReAwaken America events, hosted by an Oklahoma talk-show personality and entrepreneur, are touted as gatherings of “truth-seekers” who oppose pandemic precautions, believe that the 2020 election was stolen, distrust Black Lives Matter and want to explore “what really happened” on Jan. 6. Most of the events are hosted by large churches, and the primary sponsor is Charisma News, a media outlet serving charismatic Christians.In February, a ReAwaken event at Trinity Gospel Temple in Canton, Ohio, opened with a set of worship music from Melody Noel Altavilla, a songwriter and worship leader at Influence Church in Anaheim, Calif. “Your presence fills the temple when we worship you,” Ms. Altavilla sang. The music soared in the darkened sanctuary.In an interview, Ms. Altavilla said she was excited to be asked to perform because it was a chance to “create space for God” at a secular event.She said she felt increasingly called to political action as part of her duty as a Christian. She recalled a biblical account in which men singing and praying went ahead of the Israelite army into battle. “Imagine if the armies in the Old Testament said, ‘No, Lord, this is too political, the worshipers can’t go out in front of the soldiers,’” she said.Compared with 2016, Trump rallies are taking on the feel of worship events, from the stage to the audience. When Mr. Trump held his first rally of the year in Florence, Ariz., in January, he descended via helicopter into a jubilant crowd.People on a highway bridge in Yavapai County, Ariz., cheered a cross-country demonstration by truckers and other motorists in February against pandemic measures.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesA rally held by former President Trump in March in Georgia. Support for Mr. Trump brought together charismatic Christians, media-savvy opportunists and secular believers of disinformation. Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“I lay the key of David upon you,” Anthony Kern, a candidate for the Arizona State Senate who was photographed on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, 2021, proclaimed to the crowd from the stage, paraphrasing a biblical passage about power given by God. “That means the governmental authority is upon you, men and women.”Standing in the crowd, Kathy Stainbrook closed her eyes and raised her arms high in worship. She had come from Shasta County, Calif., with a group of Christian women involved in the Shasta County Freedom Coalition, a collection of right-wing groups that has included a militia, according to its website, and has supported an effort to recall a Republican county supervisor. The coalition also promotes “biblical citizenship” classes.A friend of Ms. Stainbrook’s, Tami Jackson, who was also in the crowd, said she had come to see politics as an inherently spiritual struggle.She said she wanted to be a part of “staking claim” to what God was doing. “This is a Jesus movement,” Ms. Jackson said. “I believe God removed Donald for a time, so the church would wake up and have confidence in itself again to take our country back.”If Americans would repent of Covid policies and critical race theory and abortion, Ms. Stainbrook said, God would bless future generations for good. She recalled lyrics in a song by Kari Jobe, “The Blessing”: “May his favor be upon you, and a thousand generations.”“How did Paul and Barnabas escape jail?” Ms. Stainbrook said, referring to an account in the Acts of the Apostles. “They just worshiped, and chains fell off and the doors fell open.”Her words were drowned out by shouts of “Hallelujah” around her. More

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      Putting 'Jesus' on Your Bus Isn't Faith

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      On Thursday, I saw tweets featuring the debut of a campaign bus for Kandiss Taylor, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia. It is emblazoned with what is evidently her platform: “Jesus, Guns, Babies.” That’s it. No further explanation needed, or perhaps more accurately, no further explanation given.A lot of people mocked the bus online, seeing as “Jesus, Guns, Babies” doesn’t exactly make, you know, sense on its own (a friend joked that it sounded like Jesus was heaving babies out of a cannon).Polling at 3 percent, Taylor’s not a major factor in the race, but I am fascinated by what she represents. She is an example of how a lot of the biggest things that spark polarization in this country are performative. It reminds me of being at a big game. We wave our giant foam hands and chant the cheers without really having any idea what we’re saying or why we’re saying it.This is what our politics has become: We’re often just fans of a party — or even a religion — not believers in actual tenets.As someone who has covered politics, I can appreciate the brutal simplicity of Taylor’s messaging. But as a Christian, I’m … depressed by it. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the savior of all, who was born to the Virgin Mary and suffered and died on the cross at Calvary for the sake of the sins of humanity. I believe he then rose from the grave, and as the Nicene Creed, an ancient statement of faith, puts it, he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.I believe that as much as I believe that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. I read the Bible regularly (from Genesis to Revelation to the Acts of the Apostles, my favorite book of the Bible) and I think a lot about my faith and its role in my life. Suffice it to say, faith is hard — faith in the unseen, faith in something that encourages you to act against your first instinct, faith that, no matter what you want to do, tells you what you should do instead.It is not hard to be a Christian in America since the majority of Americans identify as Christian and virtually every public institution bends over backward for us. But it is hard to live a Christian life — to exist as a person who has a belief in an eternal savior but spends a lot of time wondering what that really means.Putting the word “Jesus” on a campaign bus is not hard. And it is not an exercise in faith. No one can learn anything about Jesus Christ from that campaign bus.Some will see the word and pump their fist in agreement with what they perceive it to mean — the equivalent of putting a “Go Blue” sticker on your bumper or waving a Red Sox flag at a baseball game. Others will shake their heads, and both sides wind up pushed further apart for no reason whatsoever except that performative religiosity is polarizing. Either you’re in the club, or you’re not. In the Republican primary in Georgia, religious faith — the faith I share, or at least, I might share — evidently isn’t meant to be followed or abided by or lived or rejected or challenged. Instead, it’s a cudgel, waved at passers-by.Sloganeering is not new to politics, of course. Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election in 1916 with the line, “He kept us out of war.” And while the claim eventually turned false, it was at least a clear argument. More recent presidential campaigns have relied on slogans that seem more illusory, the ideas compressed and minimized into phrases that act more as talismans than as promises — Jesse Jackson’s “Keep hope alive” or Barack Obama’s “Yes we can.”Performative religiosity is just as old hat. Few people were more adept at understanding the power of displaying belief for political reasons than Donald Trump. In 2016, Trump said, “Nobody reads the Bible more than me,” and he accused Secretary of State John Kerry of having never read it. It was like the time he told the MSNBC host Chris Matthews that women who have abortions should receive “some form of punishment,” a viewpoint that even anti-abortion groups resisted.The Bible is the story of people being people — at their best, worst and most mindbendingly irritating (see: Aaron and the golden calf.) Saying “nobody reads the Bible more than me” doesn’t tell me if you’ve grappled with the Psalms or contemplated your own sins or spent a dark night of the soul wondering what God thinks of you.Did any of us think it was possible that Trump had wrestled with such questions? No matter. It’s enough to flash a cultural symbol for being “the right kind of Christian.” And you certainly don’t need to prove your knowledge of Scripture or your adherence to the actual faith painstakingly described in it. It’s a posture we all recognize and understand, but it’s ultimately meaningless outside of weak political hand waving.But somehow, Taylor and her bus seem like a new nadir. A campaign based entirely on “Jesus, Guns, Babies” sounds like a parody, like what a TV writer would think a Georgia Republican voter wants — a little too on the nose.With that list, she’s not even pretending to have read Scripture or to have engaged with Christianity in any way. She’s got three words, and that’s all she thinks she owes voters. She’s on Team Jesus. She’s even got the bus ready. In a way, it’s so honest about how dumb our political process has become — how crass and empty — that I almost admire it.I’m reminded of Matthew 6:5-6, in which Jesus explains to his disciples how to pray, telling them that there is no need to do so publicly, showing off their religious devotion for the purpose of garnering attention (or polarizing the people around them). Christ tells them: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. Truly I tell you, they already have their full reward. But when you pray, go into your inner room, shut your door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” And, I would guess (but never assume), that these instructions include “Don’t put Jesus’ name on a campaign bus.” More

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      White Evangelicals Shun Morality for Power

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      Evangelical Christians castigated Bill Clinton in wake of his “improper relationship” with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He had sinned. He would be stoned.Franklin Graham, the evangelical minister, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 1998 that Clinton’s “extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family,” and that “private conduct does have public consequences.”He concluded:“Mr. Clinton’s sin can be forgiven, but he must start by admitting to it and refraining from legalistic doublespeak. According to the Scripture, the president did not have an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with Monica Lewinsky — he committed adultery. He didn’t ‘mislead’ his wife and us — he lied. Acknowledgment must be coupled with genuine remorse. A repentant spirit that says, ‘I’m sorry. I was wrong. I won’t do it again. I ask for your forgiveness,’ would go a long way toward personal and national healing.”But Mr. Graham never demanded the same of Donald Trump. To the contrary, he became one of Trump’s biggest defenders.When a tape was released during the 2016 campaign of Trump bragging years earlier about sexually assaulting women, Graham revealed his true motives: It wasn’t religious piety, but rather raw politics.He wrote on Facebook that Trump’s “crude comments” could not be defended, “but the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended.” He continued, “The most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court.”The Supreme Court represents a more lasting power than the presidency, a way to lock in an ideology beyond the reach of election cycles and changing demographics at least for a generation.In an interview with Axios on HBO in 2018, Graham said of his support of Trump, “I never said he was the best example of the Christian faith. He defends the faith. And I appreciate that very much.”The courts are central to that supposed defense, in Graham’s calculation.Case in point, his rigid defense of Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused by Christine Blasey Ford of cornering her in a bedroom at a 1982 house party. Graham dismissed the allegations as “not relevant” and said of the episode:Well, there wasn’t a crime that was committed. These are two teenagers, and it’s obvious that she said no and he respected it and walked away — if that’s the case, but he says he didn’t do it. He just flat out says that’s just not true. Regardless if it was true, these are two teenagers and she said no and he respected that, so I don’t know what the issue is. This is just an attempt to smear his name, that’s all.The hypocrisy of white evangelicals, taken into full context, shouldn’t have been shocking, I suppose, but as a person who grew up in the church (although I’m not a religious person anymore), it was still disappointing.I had grown up hearing from pulpits that it was the world that changed, not God’s word. The word was like a rock. A lie was a lie, yesterday, today and tomorrow, no matter who told it.I had hoped that there were more white evangelicals who embraced the same teachings, who would not abide by the message the Grahams of the world were advancing, who would stand on principle.But I was wrong. A report for the Pew Research Center published last week found that, contrary to an onslaught of press coverage about evangelicals who had left the church, disgusted by its embrace of the president, “There is solid evidence that white Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than white Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020.”That’s right, the lying, philandering, thrice-married Trump, who has been accused by dozens of women of sexual misconduct or assault, may actually have grown the ranks of white evangelicals rather than shrunk them.To get some perspective on this, I reached out to an expert, Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies and Africana studies and the chair of the religious studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the author of the recently released book “White Evangelical Racism.”As Professor Butler told me, the reason that some people might be surprised by these findings is that “they believed the hype.” For years, evangelicals had claimed that they were upholding morality and fighting injustice. But what the movement has really been since the 1970s, said Butler, is “a political arm of the Republican Party.” As Butler put it, evangelicals now “use moral issues as a wedge to get political power.”Butler concluded, “We need to quit coddling evangelicals and allowing them to use these moral issues to hide behind, because it’s very clear that that’s not what the issue is. The issue is that they believe in anti-vaxxing, they believe in racism, they believe in anti-immigration, they believe that only Republicans should run the country and they believe in white supremacy.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      The Trump Prophets Regroup

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      When you are in the business of prophecy, what do you do when prophecy fails?This spring, the media mogul Stephen E. Strang made an unusual apology to readers in the pages of his glossy magazine.Mr. Strang presides over a multimillion-dollar Pentecostal publishing empire, Charisma Media, which includes a daily news site, podcasts, a mobile app and blockbuster books. At 70, he is a C.E.O., publisher and seasoned author in his own right. Despite all that, Mr. Strang worried something had gone awry.“I’ve never been a prophet,” he wrote in a pleading March editor’s note. “But there were a number of prophets who were very certain that Trump would be elected.”This had not come to pass. Mr. Strang continued, “I hope that you’ll give me the grace — and Charisma Media the grace — of missing this, in a manner of speaking.”Over the past five years, he had hitched his professional fate to the Trump presidency, in a particularly cosmic way: promoting, almost daily, the claim that Trump’s rise to power was predestined by God. Interviewed in Mr. Strang’s various platforms, a rotating cast of religious leaders spoke with mystic authority on this subject.Where secular pundits were blindsided by Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory, the prophets of Charisma had been right. And they predicted another sweeping victory for Mr. Trump in 2020. For Mr. Strang, the last year presented the following question: When you are in the business of prophecy, what do you do when prophecy fails?Mr. Strang reflected on this question in a series of interviews last month.He mused, “God has plans and purposes we don’t understand.”This month, Mr. Strang will release his first post-election book, titled “God and Cancel Culture.” The text does not dwell long on questions of prophecy, failed or otherwise. Instead, it skips into the pandemic political zeitgeist, approvingly featuring vaccine skeptics like Stella Immanuel and megachurch pastors who defied lockdowns. The election conspiracist and pillow salesman Mike Lindell does the introduction.Mr. Strang seems to have discovered that one way to handle being publicly wrong is to change the subject and to pray readers stick around.Beyond the spiritual test of unrealized prophecies, there are very earthly stakes here: Under Mr. Strang’s stewardship, Charisma had grown from a church magazine to a multipronged institution with a slew of New York Times best sellers, millions of podcast downloads and a remaining foothold in print media, with a circulation of 75,000 for its top magazine. It is widely regarded as the flagship publication of the fast-growing Pentecostal world, which numbers over 10 million in the United States. With its mash-up of political and prophetic themes, Charisma had tapped a sizable market and electoral force. In 2019, one poll found that more than half of white Pentecostals believed Mr. Trump to be divinely anointed, with additional research pointing to the importance of so-called prophecy voters in the 2016 election.In his new book, Mr. Strang mentions the former president only in passing, with far more attention going to topics such as the coming Antichrist and loathed government overlords seeking to stamp out religion wholesale.Mr. Strang summed it up, “The fact is there are people who want to cancel Christianity.”“Christians and other conservatives need to wake up and stand up,” Mr. Strang said in an interview. “It says that right on the cover of the book.”The supernatural and mass media have long been fused in the story of Pentecostalism. In 1900s Los Angeles, Aimee Semple McPherson broadcast news-style reports of miracles and prophetic words over her own radio station in Echo Park. Oral Roberts conducted healing crusades through the TV screen. The duo Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker mastered the flashy style of prime time talk shows.Mr. Strang’s journalism career began in Florida as a rookie reporter at The Sentinel Star, where he covered more mundane topics like police and town hall meetings. In 1975, Mr. Strang founded Charisma, then a small periodical put out by Calvary Assembly of God, a congregation in the Orlando area that he attended with his wife. Mr. Strang bought the magazine from the parent church in 1981 and dove into religious publishing.In time, Charisma prospered. The editorial voice had the sunny boosterism of a hometown newspaper, covering the personalities of the Pentecostal world, an audience that Mr. Strang believed was woefully underserved. While competitors such as Christianity Today courted the buttoned-up elite of American evangelicalism, Charisma cornered a niche market of what are called charismatic Christians, set apart by their interest in gifts of the spirit, including things like healings, speaking in tongues and modern-day prophecy. Mr. Strang eschewed matters of stuffy dogma for eye-popping tales about the Holy Spirit moving through current events. Editorial meetings would focus on looking for what one former employee called “the spiritual heat” behind the headlines of the day.“We didn’t want to become the kind of boring publications many ‘religious’ journals are,” Mr. Strang wrote in an early editor’s note. “That is why we went first class with this publication.”In time, he surpassed competing publications. With a slick and dependable product, Mr. Strang unified diverse groups who might otherwise squabble over doctrine or not attend the same kinds of churches at all.“Strang became the ultimate Pentecostal businessman,” said John Fea, a historian of evangelicalism at Messiah University. “At Charisma, he fused the marketplace, faith and entrepreneurship.”Mr. Strang’s project stretched to include a book imprint, several spinoff magazines and educational materials for religious schools. By 2000, the company had expanded to a plush $7.5 million, 67,000-square foot headquarters outside Orlando. At the time, The Orlando Sentinel reported that the company employed about 200 people and expected revenue that year of $30 million.Yet the internet upended the world of publishing. By 2015, when Mr. Trump began his quest for the White House, Charisma, like much of the media industry, was dealing with declines in print advertising, revenue and circulation.Mr. Strang did not initially support Mr. Trump’s candidacy, but once the nomination had been clinched, a new theme rippled through the pages of Charisma: Mr. Trump was not just some ally of political convenience, he was anointed by God.In the months to come, the pages and airwaves of Charisma featured a range of religious leaders and lay people telling of a Trump victory. Each claimed that God had revealed — in dreams, visions or ethereal signs — that Mr. Trump would take the presidency. There was, for example: Jeremiah Johnson, a youthful seer from Florida (“a relatively young man but has remarkably accurate prophetic gifts”); Kim Clement, a onetime heroin user from South Africa (“he reveals the heartbeat of God”); and Frank Amedia, a Jew-turned-evangelical preacher with a penchant for spiritual warfare (“known for his bold and accurate prophetic words”).At this time, Charisma’s staff was producing 15 stories a day, many related to the election. (Typical headlines read: “Prophecy: God Sent Donald Trump to Wage War Against Destructive Spirits” or “Prophecy: Donald Trump Is Unstoppable Because the Lord Is Unstoppable.”)“Running stories about politics got clicks. And stories about prophetic words also got clicks,” Taylor Berglund, a former editor at Charisma, said. “So you combine these two and you had the most popular articles on the site.”Monthly readership of the Charisma website rose to somewhere between two and three million, Mr. Berglund said. “There was a real incentive to keep posting like that,” he said.Leah Payne, a scholar of religion at Portland Seminary, said there has long been “a real appetite in the Pentecostal community” for the kinds of prophecies that took off at Charisma during those months, delivered by people “who believe that the Holy Spirit can and does give anyone special insight into the future.”As the polls closed in November 2016, most mainstream news outlets scrambled to explain how projections for a big Hillary Clinton victory had been so off. But Mr. Strang felt vindicated.“Those prophecies may have sounded ridiculous,” he wrote later, “but Trump was elected, just as the prophets had said.”In the next months, the Trump administration brought a cohort of Pentecostal leaders closer to the halls of power than ever before. Mr. Strang’s longtime acquaintance Paula White, a televangelist from Florida, became a spiritual adviser to Mr. Trump. At one point, the president was pictured smiling and holding Mr. Strang’s 2017 book, “God and Donald Trump.”Advocacy groups that monitor the religious right tracked Charisma’s influence with alarm, concerned about the combination of divisive politics with divine prophecy. Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at Right Wing Watch, called Mr. Strang’s work harmful “pro-Trump propagandizing” because it cast political battles as holy wars. “This extreme demonization of one’s political opponents is toxic to our political culture,” Mr. Montgomery said.Mr. Strang’s boosters and critics often portray the company as a large and influential entity, and by most available metrics it does command a relatively large audience for a religious publisher. But Charisma’s staff appears to have shrunk since the early 2000s, when The Sentinel reported that the company employed 200. According to former staff members, in 2020 there were about 60 employees, with fewer than 10 in editorial. Charisma disputed those figures but declined to provide any information about its finances or number of employees.And for all of his hagiographic overtures, Mr. Strang’s love for Mr. Trump appears to always have been lopsidedly unrequited. The two met only once, for a brief interview in Florida.“I was never on the inside circle,” Mr. Strang said. “I went to the White House zero times.”Still, he remained a dutiful fan. Mr. Strang wrote three more glowing books about the president, including “God, Donald Trump and the 2020 Election.” In one chapter, the book explored the possibility that Mr. Trump could lose, but it came down squarely on the side of a preordained victory.And so, on Election Day 2020, Mr. Strang flew to Texas to appear on the livestream of one of his friends, the televangelist Kenneth Copeland.As exit polls were trickling in, Mr. Strang donned a red MAGA hat and beamed at the camera. “I believe Trump is going to win,” he told viewers. “The prophets have been saying that.”The next morning, Mr. Strang was surprised to find that, though ballots were still being tallied, a Biden victory seemed likely, and he would not accept the outcome for some time. He instructed his readers to ignore the mainstream media and fortify themselves in prayer.“I was feeling we were in a fairly serious place,” Mr. Strang said. “The Christian community I serve was actually kind of depressed.”Charisma did not recognize Mr. Biden as president-elect until after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and the congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.In the interim, Charisma gave a platform both to people who questioned the results and those who accepted that Mr. Biden was the president-elect. It also waded through a related challenge: the prickly question of what to do with all the failed divine predictions Charisma had published.Mr. Strang interviewed repentant prophets, such as Mr. Johnson, who shut his ministry after Mr. Trump was not re-elected. Mr. Strang also highlighted prophets who refused to budge, and he parroted Mr. Trump’s howls on Twitter about a stolen election. (“I personally do believe the election was stolen,” Mr. Strang said.)After the events of Jan. 6, Mr. Strang did condemn the violence in Washington in forthright language. At the same time he featured leaders who attended and heralded the gathering as a “prophetic breakthrough.”When a Charisma contributor named Michael Brown organized an open letter calling for firmer standards on prophecies (“We really had egg on our faces,” Mr. Brown recalled in a phone interview), Mr. Strang endorsed and published the plea at Charisma. But Mr. Strang also said his overall editorial approach wouldn’t change much at all. “No,” he said. “We won’t back off from the prophets.”His oft-repeated defense, in discussing the election fallout, is that he was simply doing his job, presenting alternate views.“We quoted other people,” Mr. Strang said. “I’m not a preacher. I’m a journalist.”Mr. Strang built Charisma from the ground up, he also likes to say, and will run it as he pleases. “I don’t have to answer to anybody. I don’t have a boss. I answer to God,” he said. “And I answer to Uncle Sam, you know, with the I.R.S.”Yet with division still lingering in the prophecy crowd, Mr. Strang ultimately seems to have decided to sidestep the question of 2020 and what was stolen or divinely ordained and simply to move on to boogeymen the whole family can agree on: the new administration, virus health mandates, what he has cast as liberal cultural censorship of conservative views and, most broadly, society’s diabolical scheme against Christianity.Mr. Strang’s new book was given a fitting debut at a megachurch rally in Michigan in late August, which was in part sponsored by Charisma and featured a lineup of conservative personalities who decried state health mandates over the course of the weekend.Trump flags billowed outside next to QAnon merchandise, and top billing went to MAGA stalwarts like Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. Mr. Strang plugged his book onstage, speaking to an audience of several thousand, and sold copies in the foyer.In an email exchange afterward, Mr. Strang ventured a cheery, if tentative, prediction of his own: He might have another hit.“I signed books all afternoon,” he typed. “People tell me I’ve hit a chord.” More

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      Will Christian America Withstand the Pull of QAnon?

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      The scandals, jagged-edged judgmentalism and culture war mentality that have enveloped significant parts of American Christendom over the last several years, including the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, have conditioned many of us to expect the worst. Which is why the annual meeting of the convention this week was such a pleasant surprise.The convention’s newly elected president, the Rev. Ed Litton, barely defeated the Rev. Mike Stone, the choice of the denomination’s insurgent right. Mr. Litton, a soft-spoken pastor in Alabama who is very conservative theologically, has made racial reconciliation a hallmark of his ministry and has said that he will make institutional accountability and care for survivors of sexual abuse priorities during his two-year term.“My goal is to build bridges and not walls,” Mr. Litton said at a news conference after his victory, pointedly setting himself apart from his main challenger. But those bridges won’t be easy to build.Tensions in the convention are as high as they’ve been in decades; it is a deeply fractured denomination marked by fierce infighting. The Conservative Baptist Network, which Mr. Stone is part of, was formed in 2020 to stop what it considers the convention’s drift toward liberalism on matters of culture and theology.Ruth Graham and Elizabeth Dias of The Times describe the individuals in the Conservative Baptist Network as “part of an ultraconservative populist uprising of pastors” who want to “take the ship.” They are zealous, inflamed, uncompromising and eager for a fight. They nearly succeeded this time. And they’re not going away anytime soon.They view as a temporary setback the defeat of Mr. Stone, who came within an eyelash of winning even after allegations by the Rev. Russell Moore, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, that Mr. Stone blocked investigations of sexual abuse at Southern Baptist churches and engaged in a broader campaign of intimidation. (Mr. Stone has denied the charges.)True to this moment, the issues dividing the convention are more political than theological. What preoccupies the denomination’s right wing right now is critical race theory, whose intellectual origins go back several decades, and which contends that racism is not simply a product of individual bigotry but embedded throughout American society. As The Times put it, “the concept argues that historical patterns of racism are ingrained in law and other modern institutions, and that the legacies of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow still create an uneven playing field for Black people and other people of color.”What upset many members of the Conservative Baptist Network was a nonbinding 2019 resolution approved at the convention’s annual meeting stating that critical race theory and intersectionality could be employed as “analytical tools” — all the while acknowledging that their insights could be subject to misuse and only on the condition that they be “subordinate to Scripture” and don’t serve as “transcendent ideological frameworks.”Late last year, the Rev. J.D. Greear, who preceded Mr. Litton as president, tweeted that while critical race theory as an ideological framework is incompatible with the Bible, “some in our ranks inappropriately use the label of ‘CRT!’ to avoid legitimate questions or as a cudgel to dismiss any discussion of discrimination. Many cannot even define what C.R.T. is. If we in the S.B.C. had shown as much sorrow for the painful legacy that sin has left as we show passion to decry C.R.T., we probably wouldn’t be in this mess.” (The Southern Baptist Convention was created as a result of a split with northern Baptists over slavery. In 1995, the convention voted to “repent of racism of which we have been guilty.”) In his farewell address as president last week, Mr. Greear warned against “an S.B.C. that spends more energy decrying things like C.R.T. than they have of the devastating consequences of racial discrimination.” And another former president of the convention, the Rev. James Merritt, said, “I want to say this bluntly and plainly: if some people were as passionate about the Gospel as they were critical race theory, we’d win this world for Christ tomorrow.”Even if you believe, as I do, that some interpretations of critical race theory have problematic, illiberal elements to them, it is hardly in danger of taking hold in the 47,000-plus congregations in the convention, which is more theologically and politically conservative than most denominations. What is ripping through many Southern Baptist churches these days — and it’s not confined to Southern Baptist churches — is a topic that went unmentioned at the annual convention last week: QAnon conspiracy theories.Dr. Moore, who was an influential figure in the Southern Baptist Convention until he split with the denomination just a few weeks ago, told Axios, “I’m talking literally every day to pastors, of virtually every denomination, who are exhausted by these theories blowing through their churches or communities.” He said that for many, QAnon is “taking on all the characteristics of a cult.”Bill Haslam, the former two-term Republican governor of Tennessee, a Presbyterian and the author of “Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square,” put it this way in a recent interview with The Atlantic:I have heard enough pastors who are saying they cannot believe the growth of the QAnon theory in their churches. Their churches had become battlegrounds over things that they never thought they would be. It’s not so much the pastors preaching that from pulpits — although I’m certain there’s some of that — but more people in the congregation who have become convinced that theories are reflective of their Christian faith.According to a recent poll by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, nearly a third of white evangelical Christian Republicans — 31 percent — believe in the accuracy of the QAnon claim that “Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.” White evangelicals are far more likely to embrace conspiracy theories than nonwhite evangelicals. Yet there have been no statements or resolutions by the Southern Baptist Convention calling QAnon “incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message,” which six S.B.C. seminary presidents said about critical race theory and “any version of critical theory” late last year. Too many Southern Baptist leaders, facing all sorts of internal problems and dangers, would rather divert attention and judgment to the world outside their walls. This is not quite what Jesus had in mind.The drama playing out within the convention is representative of the wider struggle within American Christianity. None of us can fully escape the downsides and the dark sides of our communities and our culture. The question is whether those who profess to be followers of Jesus show more of a capacity than they have recently to rise above them, to be self-critical instead of simply critical of others, to shine light into our own dark corners, even to add touches of grace and empathy in harsh and angry times.That happens now and then, here and there, and when it does, it can be an incandescent witness. But the painful truth is it doesn’t happen nearly enough, and in fact the Christian faith has far too often become a weapon in the arsenal of those who worship at the altar of politics.Rather than standing up for the victims of sexual abuse, their reflex has been to defend the institutions that cover up the abuse. Countless people who profess to be Christians are having their moral sensibilities shaped more by Tucker Carlson’s nightly monologues than by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.Perhaps without quite knowing it, many of those who most loudly proclaim the “pre-eminence of Christ” have turned him into a means to an end, a cruel, ugly and unforgiving end. And this, too, is not quite what Jesus had in mind.Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner), a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations, is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump Ignites a War Within the Church

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Ignites a War Within the ChurchAfter a week of Trumpist mayhem, white evangelicals wrestle with what they’ve become.Opinion ColumnistJan. 14, 2021, 4:18 p.m. ETTrump supporters brought a cross to pray outside the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to ratify Joe Biden’s electoral victory last week.Credit…Win Mcnamee/Getty Images“Over the last 72 hours, I have received multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry. I have been labeled a coward, sellout, a traitor to the Holy Spirit, and cussed out at least 500 times.”This is the beginning of a Facebook post from Sunday by the conservative preacher Jeremiah Johnson. On Jan. 7, the day after the storming of the Capitol, Johnson had issued a public apology, asserting that God removed Donald Trump from office because of his pride and arrogance, and to humble those, like Johnson, who had fervently supported him.The response was swift and vicious. As he put it in that later Facebook post, “I have been flabbergasted at the barrage of continued conspiracy theories being sent every minute our way and the pure hatred being unleashed. To my great heartache, I’m convinced parts of the prophetic/charismatic movement are far SICKER than I could have ever dreamed of.”This is what is happening inside evangelical Christianity and within conservatism right now. As a conservative Christian friend of mine put it, there is strife within every family, within every congregation, and it may take generations to recover.On the one hand, there are those who are doubling down on their Trump fanaticism and their delusion that a Biden presidency will destroy America.“I rebuke the news in the name of Jesus. We ask that this false garbage come to an end,” the conservative pastor Tim Remington preached from the pulpit in Idaho on Sunday. “It’s the lies, communism, socialism.”The violent Know-Nothingism, which has always coursed through American history, is once again a torrent, threatening more violence in the days ahead.On the other hand, many Trump supporters have been shaken to the core by the sight of a sacrilegious mob blasting Christian pop music and chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” There have been defections and second thoughts. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who delivered a prayer at the Trump inaugural, told his congregation Sunday, “We must all repent, even the church needs to repent.”The Trump-supporting Texas pastor John Hagee declared: “This was an assault on law. Attacking the Capitol was not patriotism, it was anarchy.”After staying basically level for four years, Trump’s approval ratings dropped roughly 10 points across several polls in a week. The most popular piece on the Christianity Today website is headlined, “We Worship With the Magi, Not MAGA.” In the world of secular conservatism, The Wall Street Journal editorial page called on Trump to resign. Addressing Trump supporters, the conservative talk show host Erick Erickson wrote, “Everything — from the storming of the Capitol to people getting killed to social networks banning you to corporations not giving you money — everything is a logical consequence of you people lying relentlessly for two months and taking advantage of American patriots.”One core feature of Trumpism is that it forces you to betray every other commitment you might have: to the truth, moral character, the Sermon on the Mount, conservative principles, the Constitution. In defeat, some people are finally not willing to sacrifice all else on Trump’s altar.The split we are seeing is not theological or philosophical. It’s a division between those who have become detached from reality and those who, however right wing, are still in the real world.Hence, it’s not an argument. You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts. You can’t have an argument with people who are deranged by the euphoric rage of what Erich Fromm called group narcissism — the thoughtless roar of those who believe their superior group is being polluted by alien groups.It’s a pure power struggle. The weapons in this struggle are intimidation, verbal assault, death threats and violence, real and rhetorical. The fantasyland mobbists have an advantage because they relish using these weapons, while their fellow Christians just want to lead their lives.The problem is, how do you go about reattaching people to reality?David French, the conservative Christian writer who fought in the Iraq war, says the way to build a sane G.O.P. is to borrow a page from the counterinsurgency handbook: Separate the insurgents from the population.That means prosecuting the rioters, impeaching the president and not tolerating cyberterrorism within a community or congregation.Others have to be reminded of the basic rules for perceiving reality. They have to be reminded that all truth is God’s truth; that inquiry strengthens faith, that it is narcissistic self-idolatry to think you can create your own truth based on what you “feel.” There will probably have to be pastors and local leaders who model and admire evidence-based reasoning, wrestling with ideas.On the left, leaders and organizations have arisen to champion open inquiry, to stand up to the cancel mobs. They have begun to shift the norms.The problem on the right is vastly worse. But we have seen that unreason is a voracious beast. If it is not confronted, it devours not only your party, but also your nation and your church.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cristianos evangélicos blancos y extremismo pro-Trump

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutliveLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsFar-Right SymbolsPartidarios del presidente Trump irrumpieron en el edificio del Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein para The Washington Post vía Getty ImagesSkip to contentSkip to site index‘Estamos en una lucha del bien contra el mal’: cómo los cristianos evangélicos blancos se fusionaron con el extremismo de TrumpUna potente mezcla de agravio y fervor religioso ha impulsado el apoyo entre los leales a Trump, muchos de los cuales se describen como parte de una especie de guerra santa.Partidarios del presidente Trump irrumpieron en el edificio del Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein para The Washington Post vía Getty ImagesSupported byContinue reading the main storyElizabeth Dias y 13 de enero de 2021 a las 18:59 ETRead in EnglishWASHINGTON — Antes de que los miembros autoproclamados del grupo de extrema derecha Proud Boys marcharan hacia el Capitolio de Estados Unidos el 6 de enero, se detuvieron para arrodillarse en la calle y rezar en el nombre de Jesús.El grupo, cuyos participantes han adoptado posturas misóginas y antiinmigrantes, oró para que Dios trajera “reforma y renacimiento”. Dieron gracias por “la maravillosa nación en la que todos tenemos la bendición de vivir”. Le pidieron a Dios la restauración de su “sistema de valores” y el “valor y la fuerza para representarte y representar bien nuestra cultura”. Además, invocaron la protección divina para lo que estaba por venir.Luego se pusieron de pie. Con un megáfono, el líder del grupo declaró que los medios de comunicación debían “quitarse de mi maldito camino”. Después procedieron a caminar hacia el Capitolio.La presencia de rituales, lenguaje y símbolos cristianos fue inconfundible el miércoles 6 de enero en Washington. Había una pancarta de una campaña presidencial en broma para “Jesús 2020” de color azul y rojo; un parche que decía “Armadura de Dios” en el uniforme camuflado de un hombre; y una cruz blanca que declaraba, en mayúscula, “TRUMP GANÓ”. Todo esto intercalado con alusiones a las teorías de conspiración de QAnon, banderas confederadas y camisetas con mensajes antisemitas.La mezcla de referencias culturales y las personas que las portaban, dejaron en evidencia un fenómeno que se ha estado gestando por años: que los rincones más extremos de apoyo al presidente Donald Trump se han vuelto inseparables de algunas partes del poder evangélico blanco en Estados Unidos. En lugar de tener vertientes de apoyo completamente separadas, estos grupos se han mezclado entre sí cada vez más.Esta potente mezcla de rencor y fervor religioso le ha dado un enorme impulso al apoyo proveniente de un amplio grupo de partidarios de Trump, muchos de los cuales se describen a sí mismos como participantes de una especie de guerra santa, según entrevistas. Y muchos de ellos, inmersos en mentiras sobre las elecciones presidenciales y ahora sobre los mismos disturbios, dijeron que las consecuencias de los eventos del 6 de enero solo han alimentado un sentido más profundo de victimismo y de sentirse incomprendidos.Lindsay French, una cristiana evangélica de 40 años de Texas, decidió ir a Washington luego de recibir lo que denominó como una señal tipo “zarza ardiente” de Dios para participar en el evento, tras las peticiones de su pastor a los feligreses de “detener el robo”.“Estamos en una lucha del bien contra el mal, de la oscuridad contra la luz”, dijo, y declaró que se estaba alzando como la reina Ester, la heroína bíblica que salvó a su pueblo de la muerte.“Estamos cansados de que nos retraten como si fuéramos personas horribles”, dijo, reconociendo que hubo algo de violencia, pero insistiendo en la mentira de que Antifa fue responsable de esos actos.Los partidarios de Trump se reunieron cerca del Capitolio durante la manifestación “Detener el robo” la semana pasada en Washington, D.C.Credit…Selcuk Acar/NurPhoto vía Getty ImagesLos partidarios de Trump invocaron a Dios la semana pasada, mientras avanzaban al Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Stephanie Keith/ReutersComo muchos republicanos en el Congreso, algunos líderes evangélicos que han apoyado de gran manera a Trump se distanciaron a ellos y a su fe de los insurrectos. Robert Jeffress, pastor de la megaiglesia First Baptist Dallas, tachó la violencia de “anarquía”. El asedio al Capitolio “no tiene nada que ver con el cristianismo”, dijo. “Nuestro apoyo al presidente Trump se basó en sus políticas”.Sin embargo, los críticos afirman que ya es demasiado tarde para intentar separar la cultura cristiana conservadora blanca que ayudó a impulsar a Trump al poder de la violencia de la semana pasada en Washington.“No se puede entender lo que pasó hoy sin lidiar con el nacionalismo cristiano”, señaló el 6 de enero Andrew Whitehead, sociólogo de la Universidad de Indiana-Purdue en Indianápolis, y agregó que los movimientos evangélicos blancos han al menos tolerado el extremismo de ultraderecha, desde mucho antes de Trump. “Ellos proporcionaron los fundamentos políticos y teológicos de esto, lo que ha permitido que reine la anarquía”.En un video publicado en Facebook, grabado en Washington la noche del 4 de enero, Greg Locke, un pastor de Tennessee, se refirió a sí mismo como parte del “regimiento de túnicas negras”, una referencia al clero estadounidense que participó de manera activa en la Revolución estadounidense. En un mitin la noche siguiente, Locke predicó a una multitud de partidarios de Trump en Freedom Plaza, y predijo “no solo un Gran Despertar, sino el mayor despertar que jamás hayamos visto”.Los disturbios del 6 de enero, causados por una multitud en su gran mayoría blanca, también ilustraron la división racial en el cristianismo estadounidense.Capitol Riot FalloutLatest UpdatesUpdated 13 de enero de 2021 a las 21:36 ETMore arrests are made in connection with Capitol attack, as lawmakers demand answers.Speaker Pelosi wants heavy fines for lawmakers who refuse to pass through House metal detectors.A Proud Boys supporter threatened violence against the Rev. Raphael Warnock, prosecutors said.Horas antes del ataque al Capitolio, el reverendo Raphael Warnock de la Iglesia Bautista Ebenezer en Atlanta, había sido elegido para el Senado de Estados Unidos después de que muchos cristianos blancos conservadores intentaran retratarlo como un radical peligroso, aunque su campaña estuvo fundamentada en la visión moral tradicional de la iglesia negra. Por años, muchos cristianos negros les han advertido a los creyentes blancos que la retórica racial de Trump iba a terminar mal.“Nuestras quejas no han sido escuchadas”, afirmó Jemar Tisby, presidente de un colectivo cristiano negro llamado The Witness (el testigo).“Este es el auténtico cristianismo blanco estadounidense”, dijo sobre los eventos del 6 de enero. “El desafío que tienen los cristianos blancos de Estados Unidos es examinar lo que han forjado en materia religiosa”.Dentro del Capitolio, los senadores que se opusieron a los resultados de las elecciones fueron algunos de los cristianos conversadores más notorios del Partido Republicano, como Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley y Cindy Hyde-Smith.Los frutos de la alianza entre grupos de extrema derecha —cristianos y otros— fueron evidentes el 6 de enero, antes de que comenzaran los disturbios, cuando miles de partidarios de Trump se reunieron para protestar la certificación de los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales, en las que Joe Biden derrotó de manera definitiva a Trump, incluso tras los intentos para desacreditar la votación. Muchos de los asistentes eran evangélicos blancos que se sintieron llamados a viajar cientos de kilómetros desde sus hogares hasta Washington.Oren Orr, de 31 años, un arboricultor de Robbinsville, Carolina del Norte, donde va a la Iglesia Bautista Santeetlah, alquiló un automóvil para conducir hasta Washington. Llevaba su bandera estadounidense justo debajo de los oficiales en las gradas, y su esposa tenía una bandera cristiana. Trump podría ser el último presidente en creer en Jesús, dijo. (Biden habla a menudo sobre su fe católica de toda la vida y, a diferencia de Trump, asiste con frecuencia a los servicios religiosos).Orr dijo que trajo un bastón y una pistola Taser a Washington, pero no los sacó. “Sé que el Señor me respalda sin importar lo que pase”, dijo.En cuanto a la amplia evidencia de que muchos en la multitud eran racistas, Orr dijo: “Nos llaman supremacistas blancos y todo esto. Tengo muchos amigos de color. Algunos de mis mejores amigos son de México”..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cs27wo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cs27wo{padding:20px;}}.css-1cs27wo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House has begun proceedings on an article of impeachment. It accuses the president of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.La propagación de mentiras sobre la integridad de las elecciones —y ahora también sobre la raíz de los disturbios del 6 de enero— se ha infiltrado profundamente en los círculos cristianos conservadores. Las creencias evangélicas apocalípticas sobre el fin del mundo y el inminente juicio divino se confunden con las teorías de conspiración de QAnon que afirman de manera falsa que el país está dominado por burócratas y pedófilos del “Estado profundo”.Abigail Spaulding, madre de 15 hijos y ama de casa que viajó al mitin junto con amigos de su iglesia en Carolina del Sur, rompió en llanto mientras hablaba del temor que sentía por sus hijos bajo un gobierno de Biden. Dijo que su esposo les había explicado a sus hijos que cuando Biden sea juramentado como presidente, “ellos pueden tomar la Biblia, llamarla discurso de odio y desecharla”. Spaulding tenía otras preocupaciones sobre Biden, extraídas de Facebook y Twitter, todas falsas.La religión estaba en la mente de muchos de quienes se reunieron en Washington la semana pasada para apoyar al presidente Trump.Credit…Kenny Holston para The New York TimesEn Kalamazoo, Michigan, Laura Kloosterman, de 34 años, asistió a misa el 6 de enero y oró para que el Congreso se negara a certificar la victoria de Biden. Había leído denuncias en línea sobre máquinas de votación defectuosas que le quitaron votos a Trump. No hay pruebas de estas afirmaciones, las cuales han sido promovidas en línea por Trump y otras figuras de la derecha.Kloosterman sigue al escritor evangélico y presentador de radio Eric Metaxas, quien ha afirmado en repetidas oportunidades que los resultados de las elecciones fueron fraudulentos. Metaxas, quien golpeó a un manifestante frente a la Casa Blanca el verano pasado, le dijo a Trump en una entrevista a finales de noviembre que estaría “feliz de morir en esta batalla”, durante una conversación sobre los intentos de revertir los resultados electorales. “Dios está con nosotros”, agregó.Otros simpatizantes del presidente llevan meses sembrando dudas entre los cristianos sobre un fraude. Estas creencias falsas han forjado conexiones aún más fuertes entre los evangélicos blancos y figuras conservadoras.Un grupo llamado Marcha de Jericó, que ha encabezado una serie de manifestaciones a favor de la “integridad electoral”, realizó cinco días de eventos en Washington que culminaron el miércoles. El mes pasado, el grupo, que incluía oradores como Metaxas y Michael T. Flynn, exasesor de seguridad nacional de Trump, marchó alrededor del Capitolio siete veces, modelando su protesta en una batalla bíblica en la que los israelitas marcharon alrededor de la ciudad de Jericó hasta que sus muros se derrumbaron, dejando que sus ejércitos tomasen la ciudad.A principios de esta semana, cuando Enrique Tarrio, el líder de los Proud Boys, fue arrestado en Washington bajo sospecha de quemar una pancarta de Black Lives Matter arrancada de una histórica iglesia negra, sus partidarios recaudaron más de 100.000 dólares para su defensa legal en una plataforma de recaudación de fondos cristiana llamada GiveSendGo.“Mucha gente no está de acuerdo con que GiveSendGo permita campañas para personas o causas con las que ellos personalmente no están de acuerdo, al igual que la gente no está de acuerdo con la forma en que Jesús mostró amor a los ‘pecadores de la sociedad’”, dijo el cofundador de la plataforma, Jacob Wells. “Elegimos no tomar partido en absoluto y eso hace que muchos de los dos lados nos odien”.Desde los disturbios, muchos de los simpatizantes de esta causa afirmaron que estaban enfurecidos por la remoción de Trump y otros de redes sociales como Twitter, y la desactivación del recién llegado sitio conservador de redes sociales Parler. Lo ven como parte de una conspiración más grande para silenciar al cristianismo. Están en la búsqueda de la manera para garantizar que sus voces sean escuchadas.Adam Phillips, un contratista de 44 años de Robbinsville, Carolina del Norte, tenía trabajo y no pudo ir a Washington el 6 de enero —“El Señor no lo consideró apropiado”, comentó— pero sí asistió a dos manifestaciones desde noviembre, la marcha “Detengan el robo” y la marcha MAGA del millón.“Desde hace tiempo es evidente que los cristianos están bajo la represión y el escrutinio de todos”, dijo. “Todas las cosas sobre las que se fundó el país están bajo ataque, están tratando de eliminar el nombre de Dios de todo, en especial el nombre de Jesús”.Elizabeth Dias reportó desde Washington y Ruth Graham desde Warner, Nueva Hampshire.Elizabeth Dias cubre fe y política desde Washington. Antes cubrió temas similares para la revista Time. @elizabethjdiasRuth Graham es una corresponsal nacional que cubre la religión, la fe y los valores. Anteriormente reportó sobre religión para Slate. @publicroadAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More