Evangelical Pastor Goes Ballistic on Trump
You may have already seen it. It’s all over Youtube. Pastor Loren Livingston of Central Church of God in Charlotte, North Carolina, preaches a powerful sermon against Donald Trump, MAGA politics mixed with Christianity, and the new Bible that Trump is selling that contains the US Constitution. Go to Youtube, if you haven’t already, and watch the whole sermon.
This is the evangelicalism I grew up in: Pentecostal, other-worldly, spiritual to the core, ambivalent about politics, prophetic and critical toward all political parties and ideologies and politicians. And where the pastor could say almost anything from the pulpit if he had the gravitas for it and if he said it “under the anointing.”
Now, that is not to say the evangelicalism I grew up in didn’t care about civics, government, world affairs, politics. We did. But if anyone put that concern alongside or above concern for Jesus and the gospel, he or she would be corrected, possibly even from the pulpit.
Why does Pastor Livingston call the Trump Bible blasphemous? Because the almost last verse of the Bible says let anyone who adds to these words be accursed (Revelation 22:18). Sure, we had study Bibles with footnotes and a concordance, etc., but we would not have condoned adding any human document to the Bible, within the covers, as if it were also divinely inspired. And that is clearly the implication of the inclusion of the constitution to the Trump Bible.
Pastor Livingston’s sermon proves that not all white American evangelicals are Trumpists.
Now, having said that, a qualification is in order, lest anyone make it against me. Might Livingston secretly 0r even openly support Trump for president? It doesn’t seem so, but it’s possible. What he clearly opposes is Christians mixing political passion with Christianity. Christianity is about another world, the kingdom of God, not this-worldly politics. In other words, his message is do not mix your political passions or even American nationalism with the gospel. They aren’t even on the same plane.
Watch it. Share it. Let the world know it.
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