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      Jerry Falwell Jr. and the Misery of American Evangelicals

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      It could not have come at a worse time. President Donald Trump has promoted himself as the ultimate protector of American Christianity — against the subversive invasion of Muslims, against the equally subversive threat of atheism, against the destructive forces of secularism. According to recent polls, almost 60% of evangelicals still support Trump, no matter what.

      Trump owes his popularity among evangelicals to a large extent to the fervent endorsement he has received from evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell Jr. Falwell is the heir to his father’s evangelical empire that includes Liberty University in Virginia, a fundamentalist school which, among other things, explicitly forbids sexual relations “outside of a biblically-ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman.”

      Evangelical Blues, or How Supporting Trump Discredits Christianity

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      Apparently, the ordinance applies only to students, not to the university’s president. As has recently been reported by several reliable news outlets, Jerry Falwell Jr.’s wife entertained an extra-marital sexual relationship for several years with a former pool boy, apparently with full knowledge and endorsement by her husband, who reportedly indulged in watching the pair have sex.

      Falwell has finally agreed to resign from the presidency of the university. But as a good Christian, he still expects to get more than a $10-million severance package for services rendered, such as severely tarnishing the reputation of Liberty University.

      Persecuted Minority

      Evangelicals justify their support for Donald Trump by charging that they have increasingly become the target of ridicule and derision, their faith dragged through the mud, their values mocked and derided. Over the past several decades, American evangelicals have increasingly seen themselves as a beleaguered, even persecuted minority, threatened with cultural extinction.  

      There are good reasons for both why evangelicals become the target of mockery and derision and why they feel persecuted and oppressed. Take the question of evolution, one of the defining issues in what came to be known as the culture wars of the last decades of the 20th century. According to a Gallup poll, in 2017, almost four out of 10 American adults said they believed that God created humans at some point during the past 10,000 years or so (aka Young Earth Creationism).

      This in itself is a remarkable finding, which makes most Europeans shake their heads in disbelief. One would think evangelicals relish these numbers. Yet the opposite is the case, and for good reason. The 2017 findings marked the lowest point in the belief in creationism since the early 1980s when Gallup first posed the question.

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      For evangelicals, this is just one more piece of evidence for the creeping advance of secular humanism, which they believe is destroying the very fabric of American society. In fact, when evangelicals look around, they have a strong sense that they are in the wrong movie. In a recent Pew poll, 55% of evangelicals supported the view that homosexuality should be discouraged. At the same time, the American Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had a fundamental right to marry. Almost two-thirds of evangelicals believe that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. At the same time, the vast majority of Americans agree that Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court case that established the legality of abortion in the United States, should be upheld, albeit modified. Each of these cases, and others, such as the question of school prayer, have increased the sense of alienation many evangelicals feel with regard to the direction American society has taken over the past several decades.

      Once considered the mainstay of American society, evangelicals have increasingly been pushed to the margins, as reflected in a recent survey by the Christian pollster Barna. In 2016, Barna found that a growing number of Americans associated Christianity with extremism. For instance, more than 80% percent of respondents thought that refusing to serve somebody because their lifestyle conflicted with their belief — such as the case of a bakery refusing to provide a wedding cake to a gay couple — constituted extremism.

      More than 50% considered it extremist to demonstrate outside of an organization — such as Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions among a range of services — they consider immoral. Even trying to spread the Gospel and convert non-believers was considered an act of extremism.

      To make matters even worse, recent polls found that young evangelicals had apparently been infected with the “liberal bug.” In 2017, in a Pew poll, millennial evangelicals showed considerable support for a stronger state and more public services as well as agreeing with the notion that government aid did more good than harm. To top it off, a slim majority thought that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

      Even at Liberty University, young evangelicals have started to realize that life today is more complex and challenging than a simplistic view of reality based on a book composed a long time ago might allow for. And with COVID-19, there is no doubt that support for a strong state is going to increase even more, among the general public and among evangelicals alike.

      The Ultimate Huckster

      Under the circumstances, the public scandal surrounding the former president of Liberty University is even more devastating for a community that already feels under siege. His behavior cannot but confirm the impression, created by numerous cases in the past, that those who constantly wear their Christianity on their sleeve are nothing but a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites who consider themselves exempt from the strict rules they impose on others. It certainly reaffirms the impression that televangelists are modern-day snake oil salesmen, grifters and hucksters taking advantage of the naiveté of their victims.

      Some readers might still remember Jim and Tammy Bakker, of “Praise the Lord,” who transformed televangelism into the high art of getting their followers to support their opulent life style. Or Jimmy Swaggart, who managed to have himself caught more than once in the company of a prostitute. Ironically enough, this did not prevent him from broadcasting his message from a place called Family Worship Center.

      Swaggart and the Bakkers have found a worthy successor in the evangelical game of duping the rubes — Becki Falwell. According to The New York Times, Jerry Falwell Jr.’s wife served on the advisory board of Women for Trump, where she promoted — you would struggle to make this up — family values.

      And yet, Jimmy Swaggart is still out there, polluting the airwaves. No doubt, Jerry Falwell Jr. will publicly atone for his transgressions, asking his loyal followers (and Jesus) to forgive and reinstall him as one of the guiding lights of American Christianity, while at the same time enjoying his millions in compensation. No wonder a large majority of evangelicals will vote for Trump in November.

      Blatant hypocrisy and outright depravity have never prevented evangelicals from doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord: voting for a man who is proud to grab any woman he desires as long as he pays lip service to protecting America’s most oppressed and persecuted minority. He is the ultimate huckster, much better than Swaggart, Falwell Jr. and all the others. After all, Trump has perfected the art of the deal — a great deal for him and his toadies, a raw deal for the rest of America.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Three Years On, Still No Accountability for Our Son’s Death

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      Three years ago today, we suffered the most painful experience a family can endure. Our son Christopher Allen was murdered on the other side of the world, reporting on the civil conflict in South Sudan. A freelance journalist and dual US-UK citizen, Chris was only 26 years old and had a bright future ahead of him — a future that was taken from him, from us and from those whose stories he was so intent on telling the world.

      On August 26, 2017, our lives changed irrevocably. Now, the pursuit of justice for Chris would become a central part of our existence. Our hearts were broken and, in addition to experiencing insurmountable grief, we found our family facing an uphill battle not only with the South Sudanese but also with Chris’ own governments in Washington and London, as well as with the United Nations.

      No Justice

      These are the very democratic institutions that are meant to protect journalists and press freedom, that are meant to fight injustice and ensure accountability for unspeakable crimes. Yet they have failed to act meaningfully to support us or help secure justice for Chris’ killing. Everything that is meant to be set into motion when a tragedy like this occurs simply did not happen — at least not without a fight from our side. Now, three years on, there has still been no investigation and no justice. We still lack even basic answers about what happened to Chris.

      Chris developed his craft as a journalist in Ukraine, where he lived and worked from April 2014 and from there embarked on a new challenge. In August 2017, he traveled to South Sudan to cover the country’s under-reported civil war, embedding with the SPLA-IO, a rebel faction attempting to overthrow the established government in Juba.

      Chris had embedded with the soldiers for more than three weeks, listening to the stories of their lives, their losses, motivations and fears before being targeted by government forces during a battle in Kaya, near South Sudan’s border with Uganda. We spoke with Chris the night before he was killed. The company was moving out that evening to walk through miles of bush to capture munition supplies.

      We urged Chris not to go, to write a piece that covered the embed to date, to share with his readers the pain the families of these men suffered at the hand of those in power. But he insisted that the story of preparing for battle was incomplete. Chris’ dedication to his journalism was absolute — he felt he must bear witness to the battle. He said to us that he “had to see it through.” Our son looked for the truth at all costs.

      As his parents, it is daunting and painful to recount this. Just as Chris sought the truth of the tragedies and difficulties of others, we have been working to establish the truth of the circumstances of his killing every day for three full years. Yet the very governments and institutions whose duty it is to help us find the truth have failed to support us at every key juncture over the past three years.

      Based on evidence uncovered through journalistic investigations in the absence of any official inquiry, we know that Chris was killed by a member of the South Sudanese armed forces and that his killing and the treatment of his body post-mortem are likely to constitute war crimes. With support from a legal team as well as campaigners at Reporters Without Borders, we have tenaciously sought an independent criminal investigation from the South Sudanese and US authorities.

      We Must See This Through

      In our deep desire to secure justice and accountability for the wrongful killing of our son, a civilian and journalist armed only with a camera, and to remind states that they cannot suppress press freedom by killing journalists with impunity, we will continue to demand a meaningful investigation and justice. Like Chris, we must see this through.  

      Despite our intense efforts, the US and UK governments and the United Nations have still failed to act meaningfully to help us find answers or justice, and in some cases have not responded at all. This is in sharp contrast to their publicly stated commitments to freedom of expression. The lesson we have learned over these past three painful years is that too often, these bodies cannot be taken at their word, and must very actively be held to account.

      We persevere in our fight for justice not only for our son, but for all journalists taking tremendous risks to get out the truth from dangerous places around the world. Every case of impunity leaves the door open for further attacks on journalists and emboldens those who wish to use violence to silence public interest reporting. In contrast, every case in which justice is achieved sends a powerful signal that violence against journalists will not be tolerated anywhere and that those who commit such atrocious acts will pay the price. This, in turn, serves to deter violence and protect journalists everywhere.

      We ask that a bright light be shed on the circumstance of Christopher’s killing. We call on governments and institutions to hold the South Sudanese military accountable for the wrongful death of our son. A transparent investigation is the first step. Accountability and justice for Chris must follow. By demanding accountability for our son’s killing, we hope to create a safer world for journalists and bolster press freedom everywhere.

      We must see this through. 

      *[Joyce Krajian and John Allen are the parents of Christopher Allen.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Melania Trump taped making derogatory remarks about Donald and Ivanka – report

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      Melania Trump will speak at the Republican national convention on Tuesday night, in the shadow of an extraordinary report that she was taped making derogatory comments about her husband’s adult children and even Donald Trump himself.On Monday the media reporter Yashar Ali cited unnamed sources in reporting that Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and adviser, “taped the first lady” and plans to share the remarks in her book.They include “harsh comments about Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter and a senior adviser”, Ali wrote.Melania & Me is out on 1 September.The US continues to digest the publication, by the Washington Post, of tapes of Donald Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, calling the president “cruel” and criticizing his character and behavior.Those tapes were made surreptitiously but legally by Mary L Trump, the president’s niece, who released a bestselling book in July, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.Simon & Schuster published Mary Trump’s book and one by John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. It will publish Melania & Me.In publicity material, the publisher says Wolkoff, a long-term friend of Melania Trump “was recruited to help produce the 58th presidential inaugu­ration and to become the first lady’s trusted adviser”.“… Then it all fell apart when she was made the scapegoat for inauguration finance irregularities. Melania could have defended her innocent friend and confidant, but she stood by her man, knowing full well who was really to blame. The betrayal nearly destroyed Wolkoff.”Fundraising for Trump’s inauguration has been the subject of investigations by the special counsel and authorities in New York, New Jersey and the District of Columbia, which alleged fundraising was used to enrich Trump family members.The White House did not immediately comment on reports about Wolkoff’s book but last weekend, responding to his sister’s comments, the president indicated he has grown used to such news.“Every day it’s something else,” Trump said. “Who cares?”Evidently, publishing companies do. Melania & Me is the latest in a stream of tell-alls due out before the election in November. The former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former campaign aide Rick Gates – both convicted in cases arising from the work of special counsel Robert Mueller, Gates a figure in the inauguration case – have books on the way. So does the former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.HR McMaster, national security adviser before Bolton, has a memoir coming out this month. The Watergate reporter Bob Woodward also has a new Trump book coming.Melania has been the subject of previous books including Free, Melania by Kate Bennett and Melania: The Art of Her Deal by Mary Jordan.From Wolkoff, Simon & Schuster promises a “candid and emotional memoir” which will answer questions about many of the most scandalous and salacious moments of the Trump presidency. Among them: “How did Melania react to the Access Hollywood tape” – in which Donald Trump infamously boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy” – “and her husband’s affair with Stormy Daniels”, which Trump denies but which remains a cause of legal trouble and political jeopardy.“Does she get along well with Ivanka?” the publisher asks. “Why did she wear that jacket with ‘I really don’t care, do u?’ printed on the back? Is Melania happy being first lady?“And what really happened with the inauguration’s funding of $107m? Wolkoff has some ideas …” More

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      in US Politics

      A disputed election, a constitutional crisis, polarisation … welcome to 1876

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      As Donald Trump warns inaccurately of voter fraud and polls show the unpopular president staying within touching distance of Democrat Joe Biden, the prospect of an unresolved US election draws horribly near, especially as the impact of the coronavirus is widely seen as likely to delay a result by days, if not weeks.Across the political spectrum, pundits are predicting what may happen should Trump refuse to surrender power. The speculation is tantalising but the short answer is that nobody has a clue.History does provide some sort of guide. There have been inconclusive US elections before. They were resolved, but not by any constitutional mechanism and the consequences of such brutal political contests have been severe indeed.In 2000, the supreme court decided a disputed Florida result and put a Republican, George W Bush, in the White House instead of the Democrat Al Gore. Though of course the justices could not know it, they had put America on the road to war in Iraq, economic crisis, the rise of the evangelical right and a deepening political divide.That case is well within living memory. But an election much further back produced even more damaging results.The campaign of 1876 ended with the electoral college in the balance as three states were disputed. Out of deadlock, eventually, came a political deal, giving the Republican Rutherford Hayes the presidency at the expense of Samuel Tilden, who like Gore, and indeed Hillary Clinton in 2016, won the popular vote.Tilden’s compensation was that his party, the Democrats, were allowed to put an end to Reconstruction, the process by which the victors in the civil war abolished slavery and sought to ensure the rights of black Americans, via the 13th, 14th and 15th constitutional amendments.The awful result was Jim Crow, the system of white supremacy and segregation which lasted well into the 20th century and whose legacy remains crushingly strong in a country now gripped by protests against police brutality and for systemic reform.Eric Foner, now retired from Columbia University, is America’s pre-eminent historian of the civil war, slavery and Reconstruction, a prize-winner many times over. He told the Guardian the US of 2020 is not prepared for what may be around the corner.“In 1877 there were three states, Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana, where two different sets of returns were sent up, one by the Democrats, one by the Republicans, each claiming to have carried the state.“There was no established mechanism and in fact, in the end, we went around the constitution, or beyond the constitution, or ignored the constitution. It was settled by an extralegal body called the Electoral Commission, which was established by Congress to decide who won.” More

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      in US Politics

      The People, No review: elites, anti-populism and how progressive promise is squandered

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      Thomas Frank has a simple thesis: populism has been mischaracterized by its enemies, since its birth at the end of the 19th century, as a “one-word evocation of the logic of the mob”.In our own time, it has been skewered as “the secret weapon” behind the wildly unlikely selection of Donald Trump as president.The Guardian contributor and author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? points out that Trump’s triumph was only made possible by an “anti-populist instrument from long ago”, the electoral college. “But that irony quickly receded into the background.”As a president whose policies have almost exclusively benefitted the top 1%, with vast tax cuts for the rich and – at the moment – not one more cent from Trump’s Senate allies for the economic victims of the pandemic, our benighted leader is actually the pure opposite of a true populist.Frank writes that populism has been continuously misidentified by elites, so much so that the liberal Center for American Progress made an extremely unusual alliance with the rightwing American Enterprise Institute to co-author a report denouncing “authoritarian populism”.True populists advanced the rights and needs, the interests and welfare of the peopleTrue populists, Frank writes, the adherents of the People’s Party who adopted the word in 1891, were those who supported “a specific list of reforms designed to take power away from ‘the plutocrats’” while advancing the “rights and needs, the interests and welfare of the people”.They were protesting “unbearable debt, monopoly and corruption … forcing the country to acknowledge that ordinary Americans who were just as worthy as bankers or railroad barons were being ruined by an economic system that in fact answered to no moral laws.”Which of course is a perfect description of the version of American capitalism which reigns unfettered today.Frank bows to no one in his determination to highlight “racist, rightwing demagogues and figuring out what can be done to defeat them”. Opponents of the right, he writes, “should be claiming the high ground of populism, not ceding it to guys like Donald Trump”. He proclaims himself “flabbergasted anew every time I see the word abused in this way. How does it help reformers … to deliberately devalue the coinage of the American reform tradition?”Denunciations of populism come “from a long tradition of pessimism about popular sovereignty and democratic participation”, a “tradition of quasi-aristocratic scorn” that has “allowed the paranoid right to flower so abundantly”. Anti-populism’s “most toxic ingredient”, Frank writes, is “a highbrow contempt for ordinary Americans”.He has particular contempt for experts, including most of the academic establishment. “Millions of foundation dollars have been invested”, he writes, to promote the canard that populism is a “threat to liberal democracy … Your daily paper, if your town still has one, almost certainly throws he word ‘populist’ at racist demagogue and pro-labor liberals alike”.“Populism,” he adds, “was about mass enlightenment, not the empowerment of a clique of foundation favorites or Ivy League grads.”These are the people he holds responsible for failing to prosecute any bankers after the housing bubble fiasco, negotiating “disastrous trade agreements” and “prosecuting stupid wars”.The best argument Frank makes for populism lies in the record of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who he correctly identifies as “the most consequential president of the 20th century”, a leader who didn’t “merely talk in a populist way”, but delivered.“FDR bailed out farmers and homeowners, he protected unions, he pulled the teeth of the Wall Street wolves, he smashed oligopolies, he took America off the gold standard and … he was roundly condemned by the nation’s respectables as the most dangerous demagogue of them all, a sort of one man mob-rule.”For modern progressives, Roosevelt’s attacks against Wall Street have the greatest resonance. In 1936 he declared: “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob … Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.”According to Frank, “painful though it may be for liberals to acknowledge nowadays, it was Roosevelt’s willingness to disregard elites” that revived America after the Great Depression.Frank also offers a strong section on Martin Luther King Jr’s understanding of the populism of the 1890s and how Southern plutocrats helped to destroy it, enacting laws “that made it a crime for negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level”. The poor white man was given “a psychological bird that told him no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow.” More