He’s got the biggest King James you’ve ever seen

He’s got the biggest King James you’ve ever seen June 28, 2016

• My Monday and now my Tuesday haven’t been cooperative writing-wise, but I’m hoping to finish up this week’s Nicolae post tomorrow.

Richard Land and Tony Suarez are among the evangelical “executives” attempting a Triple Lindy — flopping back after flip-flopping to support Donald Trump and his “evangelical executive advisory board.”

“Satanic baby-killers”? Check. “Holocaust”? Check. Pat Robertson fans sure do love to hear him play the old hits live.

James Dobson recently described Donald Trump as a “baby Christian.” As an evangelical kid of the ’80s, this has meant a pernicious earworm for me (and, yes, I’m Age-to-Age-ing myself here):

Brown Bannister turned that into such a sugary little toe-tapper that it takes a minute to notice the song’s toxic notion of spiritual maturity — which apparently consists of “daily devotions” and doctrinal correctness. The lyrics here rehash many an evangelical sermon on 1 Corinthians 3:2 and, like all of those sermons, it substitutes cultural and subcultural notions of “spiritual maturity” for what the rest of 1 Corinthians describes (hint: see chapter 13). The opposite of a “baby Christian” or a “fat little baby” isn’t doctrinal or devotional. “If we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.” Doctrine schmoctrine.

• I still don’t believe Dobson’s third-hand claim about Trump’s “born-again” conversion experience. Ebenezer Scrooge was born again. Zacchaeus was born again. Donald Trump still seems exactly like Donald Trump.

Here’s what it looked like when Zacchaeus (a wee little man with wee little fingers, too), “accepted a relationship with Jesus”: “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Dobson can get back to me when we hear something like that.

Show. Don't tell.
Show. Don’t tell.

News of any conversion, of course, raises the next question: Converted to what? According to Dobson, Trump was “converted” by televangelist and prosperity-gospel huckster Paula White. That’s impossible. Or maybe just redundant. Trump couldn’t be converted into a believer in the prosperity gospel because he already was one.

• Shane Bauer and Mother Jones went through a lot to bring us this story: “My four months as a private prison guard.” It’s long. Bookmark it and take it in chunks. But read the whole thing.

• There’s a ginormous, frighteningly deep sinkhole in SiberiaAnother one. (Via Katie Herzog at Grist, who explains what this has to do with climate change.)

 


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