Matthew 25:40 Jesus’ Universal Health Care

May 4, 2017 By Shane Phipps

The debate over universal healthcare has been raging for years. The topic has been a red hot focal point in the last few elections. One of President Obama’s keystone achievements was the passage of the ACA (more commonly called “Obamacare”). While always controversial and certainly not without its flaws, it can’t be argued that millions of formerly uninsured Americans finally got insurance coverage under that new policy.

Late night talkshow host, Jimmy Kimmel, made headlines recently when he told the emotional story of his newborn son’s battle with a heart condition. Most of Kimmel’s tale was recounting the stress his family underwent as the heart defect was detected and the surgery that was performed to correct a portion of the problem. He tearfully thanked all those involved in saving his brand new son’s life. The final portion of his comments have sparked much controversy in their wake. Kimmel finished his story by sharing his concerns about the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the ACA. He implied that, were he in a different financial state and un or underinsured, without the ACA, his son may have been denied that surgery because being born with a heart defect could be considered a pre-existing condition.

Right wingers began to weigh in on Kimmel’s statements. Former right wing congressman from Illinois, Joe Walsh took to Twitter with his response, which was immediately and rabidly denounced and attacked. Walsh tweeted, “Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care.” Walsh’s insensitive comments drew the ire of thousands on social media. His response, while obviously lacking in compassion, also indicates a lack of understanding of how insurance works. If you have insurance, you are paying for other peoples’ healthcare, as well as your own–it’s not your personal bank account.

As cold-hearted as Walsh’s response to Kimmel was, it pales in comparison to the comments made by a couple other GOP congressmen. An Alabama congressman recently implied that people wouldn’t have pre-existing medical conditions if they “lived right.” Another Republican congressman from Kansas invoked the name of Jesus to call out poor people who don’t deserve healthcare because they don’t take care of themselves. Rep. Roger Marshall, a doctor, said, “Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us.’ There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.” Some in the GOP seem to think they have the market cornered on Christianity, but what is coming out of some of their mouths about healthcare seems pretty far removed from how I envision Jesus would respond to the debate.

The phrase that comes across to me when I read such comments from those lawmakers is elitist, judgmental Pharisees. To imply that people with pre-existing conditions earned their own way into their health status through unclean living is beyond judgmental, it is shortsighted. Did Jimmy Kimmel’s newborn baby earn his pre-existing condition by not living right? I have news for you, mortality is a pre-existing condition and it will catch up to all of us before we know it.

Jesus is sometimes called the Great Physician. There is no shortage of examples in the Bible of Jesus going out of his way to heal the sick and infirm. In his own time, many of those sick and infirm were looked at with the exact same smug and judgmental attitudes that the congressmen referenced above are showing. People in Jesus’ time who fell ill with terrible afflictions were often shunned by society and left to beg in the streets as if they brought their condition upon themselves through their sins. What did Jesus do about them? Did he join the religious leaders of the day and turn his back upon them? No, Jesus went to them and offered them his brand of universal health care.

As the debate rages on in our nation’s capital about the fate of our health care, I urge leaders on both sides of the aisle to view the matter with compassion as they seek a better plan and use the example of Christ to help guide their decisions. Whether they are Christians or not, Christ’s example is a good one. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Viral Video of Teacher Slapping Student Shines Spotlight on Our Mental Health Problem

March 4, 2022 By Shane Phipps

Chances are you’ve seen the shocking video from Jimtown, Indiana that shows a veteran teacher slapping a student in the hallway. If you haven’t, you can see it here. It’s a difficult thing to watch. For most teachers, it’s a difficult thing to watch for multiple reasons. Before I go any farther, I want to make this point clearly, right up front. That teacher deserves to lose his job. I don’t think you’ll find many teachers who would argue against that. Whether or not he should have been given a chance to retire with full pension is another debate that I don’t wish to get into. That said, let me finish my point. When I watched that video and I saw that teacher storm off in what was quite clearly a rage beyond his control—fight or flight response in high gear—I know exactly what he was feeling. I have felt it too. I’ll wager most teachers have. That’s why it was so difficult for me to watch. I hated to see a grown man slap a student—but I also hated that I could so easily relate to the rage that had gotten the best of him. I felt some of his guilt. I think that if any good can come of this situation, it could be that it will help shine spotlight on the state of teacher and student mental health in our modern educational climate.

I’m going to take a risk here and reveal a personal story that came near to derailing my life. It’s not easy to be so vulnerable and brutally honest about a moment of weakness that I’m not proud of, but this teacher’s situation in Jimtown brought it right back to the front of my mind and I feel like my sharing it could help someone feel that they aren’t alone. As I said before, I could relate completely to the rage that teacher felt and the sense of panic—the feeling of being completely out of control—because I’ve been there. A few years ago, I was suffering through a year where I had the worst collection of students in one class that I’ve ever had in more than two decades of teaching. Many of the kids in that class had been so scarred by personal trauma that they really needed help far beyond what I’m qualified to offer. But even knowing that, it was very tough not to take personally their behaviors and disregard for me. This group of kids wanted nothing to do with learning what I had to teach them. They wanted nothing to do with the classroom procedures and expectations I had for them. There were days where I wanted—quite literally—to jump out the window rather than deal with them for another moment. Day after day, week after week, month after month, that kind of thing wears on you. As a teacher, you are charged with keeping order in your classroom. You are held accountable for not just your students’ behaviors, but also their academic performance. If the main variable between the success or failure of your job performance as a professional (students) would just as soon look you right in the eye and tell you to f**k off as to give you one ounce of respect, it will get to you, if you care enough to try that is. One day, just before Christmas break, I was caught in the perfect storm. That class I mentioned, my last of the day, was having a particularly bad day in a particularly bad week. Toward the end of class, when I couldn’t even get them to sit down, I felt the panic rising. I backed myself against the wall as a cornered badger would. I was no longer in direct control of my physical response and that’s scary. Thank God I was able to channel my rage inward and not lash out at any student, but I did take it out on myself. I turned in blind rage and gave the concrete wall a mighty kick right as the bell rang. I didn’t know it at the time, but that kick broke my big toe. I burst through the classroom door and stormed out of the building before the students were even released to the busses. I probably looked a lot like that teacher in the video stomping off around the corner after slapping the student. I was in a state of pure, adrenaline-filled panic. As I stormed out of the building, I didn’t think I’d ever walk back in.

I was in no shape to return to work, so I called off for the next couple days before Christmas break. I went to the doctor. I was prescribed Zoloft and Trazadone. I was referred to a therapist whom I saw for the next few months. Thankfully, the two-week break allowed enough time for the meds to take effect in my system and I’ve been on them ever since. They have worked wonders for me, and I’ve never again gotten anywhere near that level of anxiety since.

When a large part of your job is to get kids to do seemingly simple things they just don’t want to do, it gets very tricky. Let me give you a couple of real-life examples of things teachers deal with every day…

A teacher has hallway sweep duties which require him to take the first few minutes of his prep time to patrol the hallway and stop any student who isn’t in class after the bell rings. The teacher must take the student’s name and escort them to class. He stops a boy who’s late. The boy is a student he doesn’t know. He asks the boy his name, per protocol, and the student looks him straight in the eye and says, “you’re not my teacher, I don’t have to tell you shit.” The kid just runs off. Do you run after him and grab his arm to stop him? Um, better not. Now you could go down to an administrator’s office and sit there with him to try to track down the incident on the security camera footage, but if you do, then you’re looking at losing most of your prep time. What’s your move?

Your school has a very strict policy of no phones in the classroom. If teachers see students with their phones out, they are directed to confiscate them. You have a very volatile student in your next class. This kid will fly off the handle over nothing. You know she is going to have her phone out in class, because that’s what she does. You dread seeing her walk into the classroom. You begin the lesson and, sure enough, there she is with her phone in her hand, not paying a bit of attention to you. This same thing happened yesterday too. You went to confiscate her phone and she said, “F**k that, you’re not my mom.” You remained calm yesterday. You simply wrote a referral and sent the student to the office. She cussed you out as she left the classroom, then you had to somehow go back and remember where you were in the lesson. So here she is back again in your class the very next day. She has her phone out again. You feel a cold sweat on the back of your neck and your disrespect gauge is in the red. Your responsibility hasn’t changed since yesterday. What’s your move?

I didn’t make those scenarios up off the top of my head. These are the kinds of things I’ve seen happen.

Now let’s return to the teacher in the video that’s making national news. I don’t know what that scenario was and what led up to the slap, but I could hazard a guess that it might have been something similar to one of the scenarios I listed above (again, I don’t know, just guessing). Maybe that teacher has had a particularly bad year. Maybe he’s not on medication. Maybe this time it just pushed him an inch too far and he lost it. He went WAY too far when he struck the child. But I know what he was feeling.

One more observation about this situation that I wanted to point out for the good of the cause. I’ve read a whole bunch of social media comments about the story of the teacher in Jimtown. I can tell you that a large chunk of those comments go something like this…

“If that were my son, that teacher would have a lot more to worry about than losing his job!”
“That guy better be glad that’s not my kid or he’d be in for a real ass beating!”

You get the drift.

I can’t help but notice the irony in those comments. Apparently, it’s pretty easy for all of us to get to the point of violence when we experience trauma.

We have a lot of different types of crisis in public education these days. We need to put teachers’ and students’ mental health at the top of that list, especially in these very troubling times.

Abortion Ban Questions Christians Should Ask Themselves

May 4, 2022 By Shane Phipps

With the recent announcement of leaked information, it appears that the Supreme Court is primed to overturn Roe v. Wade. The likelihood of many more states banning abortions seems to be imminent. No matter which estimates you use, it is very likely that half, give or take, of the states in the Union will immediately move to ban abortions should the Supreme Court follow through with what it seems to be preparing to do. One look at the map of where abortion will be banned should raise concerned eyebrows for anyone with a decent knowledge of our national demographics, particularly where poverty, religion, and race intersect. The whole situation begs the question, what are conservative Christians prepared to do to make what they have been wishing for so long have a happy ending?

The old saying, “be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it,” applies perfectly here to those conservative Christians who have traditionally used the abortion issue as their primary rationale for refusing to consider any candidate without an “R” next to their name on a ballot. I want to address this piece specifically toward those people. I intend to present them with some cold, hard facts and ask them some direct questions.

Let me begin by giving some history about how many abortions actually happen in the United States since Roe v. Wade. Some may be surprised to learn that the number of abortions performed in the U.S. has been on a steady decline for decades. From a high-water mark of 25 abortions per 1,000 pregnancies among women 15-44 years old in 1980, that number has fallen to less than 12 in recent years. I share that information first because it doesn’t get enough attention. Measures already in place, such as Planned Parenthood, safe sex information campaigns, education initiatives, etc., have been effective in working to drastically reduce the number of abortions. The truly scary part of this equation is that many of the states which will ban abortion will also likely want to shut down some of the institutions that support women’s health care, such as Planned Parenthood. If that happens, you could actually see the number of abortions in some of those areas increase with an abortion ban.

So, this raises the question to conservative Christians and churches in these areas, what are you prepared to do to serve the health needs of the women in your areas who rely upon the kinds of services you wish to dismantle?

Another crucial factor that can’t be overlooked in this whole situation is the areas where abortion will most definitely be outlawed. Any estimate you look at about which states will be first in line to ban abortion will show that the entire southeastern portion of the country will make abortions illegal. Here is a map of one such estimate.

Much of that map aligns very closely with what we consider the Bible Belt. That’s no surprise, of course, but the issues go much deeper than that. Let’s take a closer look at who is really being impacted by this. Take a look at this next map. It shows the areas of the country most impacted by poverty. The areas in dark and light red show the poorest areas of the nation.

Now match the areas of dark and light red in the poverty map with the red areas of the abortion ban map. You will begin to get a clearer picture of just who is actually being impacted by abortion bans. It’s the poor. People living in poverty won’t be able to afford to travel to states where abortion is legal. Their options? Have more children born into desperate poverty or seek out an illegal and potentially deadly abortion method.

It begs this question for conservative Christians: What are you prepared to do to support those women in poverty who will now be burdened with such sobering options?

As clear as the connection to poverty is, this goes much further than just simple economics. Using another map, we can begin to see something even more potentially sinister. Let’s look at the map from a standpoint of ethnicity and race.

Here is a map that shows the heaviest concentration of African American populations in the nation.

It doesn’t require a cartographer to see how seamlessly this map overlays with the abortion ban map, does it?

Let’s look at the map for Hispanic people in America.

When you look at Florida, Texas, and Arizona, it’s easy to see how many people of Spanish descent would be impacted by abortion bans.

Let’s look at another map, this time Native American populations.

Lay the biggest concentrations of blue over the abortion ban map and you’ll see a familiar pattern.

Look, I’m not claiming that conservative Christians are cognizant of all of these demographic factors when they talk about being pro-life. In fact, I’m certain that most of them are not. However, I’m just as certain that most of the politicians that conservative Christians are supporting largely because of their pro-life stance are very aware of it. In fact, it’s all part of the plan to control minority groups and limit their rights.

I ask you, conservative Christians, are you willing to face the facts that your number one political agenda negatively impacts so many minorities and less fortunate people of our nation?

When we take a hard look at the actual facts of who is being targeted by the potential abortion bans, we see the ugliest patterns of American history being repeated. The same groups that have had to struggle, fight, and die for their basic rights are still being manipulated and controlled by forces in our government bound to keep discrimination firmly rooted in our national institutions. The impoverished, women, African Americans, indigenous people, and immigrants are far and away the groups most impacted in this struggle for women to have the right to control their own bodies. The wealthy will go on having their abortions under a qualified physician’s care. The rest will be left to fend for themselves, robbed of any desirable outcome. The rich will get richer, and the poor will become more destitute.

Conservative Christians, what are you prepared to do the help the least of these, your brothers, and sisters in the aftermath of your getting your wish?

Christian Trump Supporter, You Say You Love Your Country, Will You Now Help Us Save It?

October 1, 2020 By Shane Phipps

It felt like it all came to a head on Tuesday night during the first presidential debacle—I mean debate—between President Donald Trump and his opponent, Joe Biden. Watching the president lose all touch with decorum, respect, dignity, and perhaps even sanity was extremely uncomfortable and downright disturbing. The whole world saw it and pitied us. When you can feel the world pitying us, it’s not a good feeling at all.

I wonder, Christian Trump supporters, did you feel it? I wonder, did it make you, on any level, uncomfortable that you still think this is the best person to lead our nation? I wonder, did it make you, somewhere down deep inside, in a place you try to deny exists, regret your decision to stand behind this sad excuse for a leader? I know a lot of you and I already know the answer to that question. I know that at least some of you felt squeamish, if not downright ashamed. Others of you probably thought it was funny as you roared with laughter and approval, but I am here to reach out to those of you whom I know were disturbed. I think you hold the keys to our nation’s future. It wouldn’t take too many of you Christian Trump supporters to set aside your pride and vote against Trump to make all the difference. Our country is in a very serious crisis, will you now help us save it?

Christian Trump supporters, let me just run down some of the things that were made very clear in the debate that should help to make your decision easier for you when it comes time to decide whether to swallow your pride and do the right thing at the polls or to stubbornly dig in and go down with the ship.

Trump Mocked Biden for Wearing a Mask

On a night when it was announced that 26 of our 50 states are beginning to see another spike in Coronavirus cases—a pandemic that has now killed well over 200,000 Americans—our president mocked his opponent for wearing a mask.

“Every time you see him, he’s wearing a mask.”

-Donald Trump speaking about Joe Biden during the debate

Can you imagine? Can you even imagine, the smallness of a person who would take to the world stage and mock his opponent for doing what every leading pandemic expert is calling upon all of us to do to combat the spread of this plague? Ladies and gentlemen, our president has a lot of blood on his hands. You conservative Christians claim to be so “pro-life” when it comes to abortion, but you continue to support a man who has done everything he can to undermine the science of health care as he downplays the seriousness of the threat and causes millions of his supporters to stand against wearing masks. In the process, he has led DIRECTLY to the deaths of thousands of his own supporters. It is a demonstrable fact that many of the deaths from Covid-19 have come from Trump territory, such as the Bible Belt of the southeast, where they take the president’s anti-mask statements very seriously. This is “the most pro-life president we’ve ever had” that I’ve seen so many of you claim?

Trump Refused to Outright Condemn White Supremacy While in the Same Breath, Condemning Left Wing Protesters of White Supremacy

President Trump was asked directly to condemn white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys and he refused to specifically do it. Then at the end of that refusal, he did indeed specifically condemn Antifa (anti-fascists) and the Left for protesting against racism and discrimination.

In damage control mode, Trump later claimed not to even know who the Proud Boys are. If I know who the Proud Boys are, I would hope to God that the President of the United States would know. The fact is, Trump was lying about that. He knows fully well who the Proud Boys are, and he refused to specifically condemn them because they support him, and he needs all the people like them he can get. They are his most adamant supporters. This is Trump’s M.O. He gets caught saying what he really thinks about a person or a group and then he denies even knowing them when it is an easily provable fact that he does know them. We’ve seen it play out time and time again. But Trump wasted no time or words in jumping on the Left and placing all the blame for the unrest in this country on them. In many of the cases of the most violent and destructive rioting that has occurred, it has been proven to have been stoked by radical right wingers who have inserted themselves, often in disguises—sometimes even blackface—to stir up violence and then skip town. Trump knows this too, conservative Christian, he just doesn’t want you to know it.

Trump is Inciting Potential Intimidation at the Polls

During the debate, Trump continued to hammer away at the validity of the upcoming election, planting the seeds of paranoia in his supporters minds. He even called upon them to go into their polling places and watch them very carefully. This is a very nefarious call to action that treads tediously close to inciting intimidation at polling places, a felony, by the way. While it’s not clear that Trump is actually encouraging intimidation at polling places, he is certainly doing everything he can to try to discredit the legitimacy of our election process. It sounds a lot like he is paving the way for blocking a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election—a fact he isn’t even willing to deny.

Trump is Systematically Going Against Everything His Own Advisors Have Warned Him Against—This Fact Was On Full Display Throughout the Debate

As I was scanning through the various news channels to gauge national reaction to the debate, I happened across an interview with a former Trump staffer named, Miles Taylor. Taylor called Trump’s performance in the debate “one of the worst political moments of the 21^st Century.” Taylor went on to say the following about his tenure in Trump’s administration.

“We spent so much time trying to explain to Donald Trump what our foreign adversaries were trying to do in the United States to divide Americans that it would be my hope that Donald Trump would have heard some of that and avoided some of the rhetoric that would have aided and abetted those foreign enemies. There were three things we were worried about when it came to election security and what our adversaries wanted to do. One, was that they wanted to spread misinformation about candidates. Two, was they wanted to undermine the integrity of the vote and question the actual electoral process itself. And three, they wanted to generate civil unrest in the United States. Donald Trump materially contributed to each of those [during the debate] and as a result the President of the United States has fulfilled the dreams of America’s enemies.”

-Miles Taylor, former Trump staffer

Holy cow! That is one of the most damning statements I’ve ever heard about a sitting president. How does that make you feel, Christian Trump supporter? The man you’ve entrusted with your precious patriotism and nationalism is running our nation from the playbook of our biggest enemies. Does that give you pause at all?

After reading all of this, Christian Trump supporter, will you consider setting aside your pet issues, such as abortion and the “sanctity of Christian marriage” for one election and help to cleanse our nation of this ugly stain? It wouldn’t take that many of you to slip into the voting booth and do the right thing.

Nobody would even have to know. What do you say?

Think about it.

The Christian Right is under siege by a pandemic of hypocrisy

April 20, 2020 By Shane Phipps

As the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown drags into it’s second month, the country is getting restless. That’s pretty understandable, this is uncharted territory for all of us and patience does tend to wear thin. After a honeymoon period where most of us were pretty much resigned to the fact that we were going to be hunkered down for a good while, there is now a growing movement of folks pushing to end the lockdown in order to get the economy back up and running. All of a sudden, sensing an opportunity on the wind to rally some of his biggest support base, President Trump is now pressuring governors to open their states back up earlier than almost all of the medical experts advise. As a result, once again, we see the Christian Right taking to the streets for all the wrong reasons and, in the process, shining an intense spotlight on their seemingly endless supply of hypocrisy. Let’s just look at a handful of examples, shall we?

All of a sudden, many on the Christian Right are desperately concerned with the welfare of the poor.

Don’t get me wrong, I think being concerned about the poor is one of the most Christ-like attributes one can possess. The issue here is that, until now, many on the Christian Right have not had much of a track record where this is concerned. Look at the social media page of a typical Right Wing Christian who is suddenly concerned about the nation’s poor because of the shut down and I’ll wager you won’t have to dig very far to find a bunch of previous posts that would suggest how the poor are entitled and lazy and looking for handouts–about how taxation is theft–about how they’ve worked and struggled for every dime they have and they don’t want their tax money going to support a bunch of lazy people. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they seem to be seeing a different aspect of poverty.

Many on the Christian Right seem to be warming up to Socialism.

Anyone who’s paying attention has seen countless social media posts applauding “Trump’s $1200 stimulus checks” as if Trump was responsible for them. They seem to not understand that only Congress (Democrats and Republicans working together) had the power to appropriate those funds, despite the fact that Trump is insisting his name be stamped on the checks. I’ve seen many Right Wing Christians suggesting that perhaps liberals should tear their checks up since they are “coming from President Trump.” They think that’s real funny, so much so that they fail to see that the joke is on them. In lauding these stimulus checks, they are publicly praising Socialism. I guess, to them, Socialism isn’t Socialism if it puts money into their own pockets.

Many on the Christian Right don’t seem to understand quarantine and social distancing protocols at all.

If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a dozen times; this notion that the lockdown restrictions are an attempt by liberals to take away religious freedoms. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. “If fast food restaurants are essential then why isn’t church?” Such a short-sighted complaint which shows zero understanding of how this works. Essential businesses that are still open, like restaurants, grocery stores, and certain other stores that carry items people might need are all operating under very specific social distancing protocols. They either limit the amount of people who can come in at one time or operate only by curbside or drive through transactions. They exercise extreme caution by sanitizing things after each transaction and have gone to great lengths to limit direct exposure from person to person. A better analogy to match what churches do would be movie theaters. Those are shut down because hundreds of people shouldn’t be sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in a room with one another. New movies are now being made available to rent and stream from home. Most of the responsible churches are having online services or drive up and park services where parishioners are not all under one roof. It’s pretty simple really, but you’d never know it if you were listening to some of these protesters.

Many pro-lifers on the Christian Right seem to suddenly be pro-choice.

As more and more anti-lockdown protesters take to the streets, they are exposing their blatant hypocrisy. Some far Right Christians–the very same people who say they’ll never vote for a Democrat because they are “baby killers”–are now on the streets holding signs that say “my body, my choice” as they demand to have restrictions lifted and go back to business as usual. They say if they wish to take the risk with their own bodies, they should be allowed to do so. This is the ultimate in selfishness. These same people, when it comes to a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body, will scream that her choice is taking the choice away from the unborn fetus she carries. That argument, in and of itself, is not without merit, if you subscribe to the belief that a fetus is a human life, but it goes right out the window when you are willing to put many, many people at risk by refusing to follow the CDC protocols for social distancing. Anyone who is protesting against the lockdown by saying “my body, my choice” has lost absolutely all legitimate standing as a pro-lifer.

Far too few on the Christian Right are asking themselves what Jesus would do.

What would Jesus do in these strange times? I’m betting he wouldn’t be marching the streets demanding to be able to go out and make money right now. I believe Jesus would be more concerned with helping those who need it most, the desitute, the sick, the elderly, etc. I think he would be standing with the health care workers and the charities. I believe Jesus would walk up to these Christian Right protesters, many of whom are carrying high powered weapons, Confederate flags, and swastika banners, and tell them all to go home and sin no more.

I wrote this song just before the pandemic began to affect us. At the time, this song was about the healing that needs to happen within the Christian Church collectively. The song seems to have taken on new meaning now, so I’ll share it here to close this piece. Everyone stay safe.

The Art of the Deal…with the Devil

April 16, 2020 By Shane Phipps

In 1987, Donald Trump published a book (written by Tony Schwartz) called The Art of the Deal. Unlike many of his actual deals, the book was an enormous success. Trump made his reputation as someone who is skilled at negotiating big real estate deals. The fact that he has had to file for bankruptcies for his businesses six different times seems not to have had too much of an impact on that reputation. Whether he is truly a great businessman or not is neither here nor there as far as I’m concerned. But there is one deal that I have got to give him credit for; he managed to get millions of Right Wing Christians to sign a deal with the Devil. Depsite how depressing that fact is, I really must tip my cap to The Donald, he really nailed that deal.

Trump was somehow seemed to be able to convince Right Wing Christians that he was actually pro-life. He got them to ignore the fact that he had never been against women’s rights to choose to have an abortion before he started considering a run for president. If Trump had run for president when The Art of the Deal was first published, he’d have probably run as a Democrat, and he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Twenty-five years later, when he started seriously floating the idea of running, he did a very smart thing; he surveyed the poltical landscape and looked for his easiest path. He undesrstood that the Christian Right was so tied to the abortion issue that the majority of them would vote for literally anyone if they spouted the right message about abortion and one or two other issues that seem to mean everything to them. So Trump suddenly became a “pro-life conservative Christian Republican.” It was a miracle! No, it actually wasn’t. It was a cold, calculated business choice. Trump saw a bunch of people he could exploit, he saw where most of them lived, he did the Electoral College Map math, and he saw that he had a chance. You’ve got to hand it to him–although I’m firmly convinced that the man is ignorant about most things–he had this formula figured out and played it exactly right. Once he understood just how firmly he had conned the Christian Right, he didn’t even have to hide his con from anyone anymore. He just went around saying things in public (things that should have been enormous red flags to conservative Christians) with complete impunity–I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they’d still vote for me–I‘ve never asked God to forgive me, I never felt the need–grab them by the pu**y–I could go on and on, but you get the point. Trump managed to get the Christian Right to buy in lock, stock, and barrel to his ruse. A man who is likely personally responsible for a considerable number of abortions put an “R” next to his name and the Christian Right just mindlessly jumped on board.

Since then, despite more than three years of a non-stop horror show that is culminating now in an unprecedented health care crisis which Trump has bungled from the start, the Christian Right (the most extreme portion, at least) seems to have only steeled their reserve when it comes to their support of this charlatan. Now, as Trump seems bent on overextending his Constitutional power by attempting to force states to begin to open back up for business as usual, despite the overwhelming majority of the scientific/medical community’s dire warning against it, we are seeing the Christian Right take to the streets to demand that the lockdown be lifted. We are seeing people who claim to be so pro-life that they would vote for a man such as Trump, saying things like, the loss of human life is not as important as getting the economy running again. Let’s talk about how pro-life you are again, Christian Right.

We have seen, time and again, Right Wing pastors defying social distancing orders and holding church services despite the health risks and, predictably, we’ve seen many of those churchgoers get sick from Covid-19. At least two pastors who have railed against the “overreaction” to the Covid-19 pandemic and refused to follow proper protocols have contracted the illness and died. We have even seen some from the Christian Right threatening widespread violence should Trump lose the election. A few months ago, a Right Wing Florida pastor, Rick Wiles, issued this public statement:

“However he leaves, there’s gonna be violence in America. I believe there are people in this country, veterans, there are cowboys, mountain men, I mean guys that know how to fight,” he said, “and they’re going to make a decision that people who did this to Donald Trump are not gonna get away with it. And they’re gonna hunt them down,” the pastor said. “The Trump supporters are going to hunt them down,” he added. “It’s going to happen and this country is going to be plunged into darkness and they brought it upon themselves because they won’t back off.”

I don’t honestly know how else to interpret it. If so many Right Wing Christians are still all in for Trump after everything we have seen, it smacks of nothing less than a deal with the devil. It’s become clear that the far Right segment of Christendom is much more interested in money than in the issues they hide behind.

I wrote this song about what I’ve watched happening to my country. I hope you’ll take a moment to listen.

Conservative Christians, It’s Time to Step Up: Where are Your Good Samaritans?

December 9, 2019 By Shane Phipps

Our nation lies stripped and beaten. We’ve been left for dead, lying in a roadside ditch. Things look bleak. It’s going to take the help of some conservative Christian Good Samaritans to save us.

That may scare the hell out of my progressive readers who wouldn’t count on a conservative Christian to spit on them if they were on fire, but I’m afraid it’s the truth. I don’t think there is any way that PresidentTrump will be convicted and removed from office if an impeachment trial goes to the Republican majority Senate. That means, he’ll be the GOP nominee for president in 2020. It’s beginning to feel like we’re heading down the exact same road we were on in 2016 when most reasonable people saw no possible way that such a selfish-charlatan-shyster as Donald Trump would actually find his way into the Oval Office. But three years later, here we are again.

It may sound rather hopeless, but I’m not without hope because I personally know a lot of conservative Christians and I’m confident that, when push comes to shove, they can temporarily separate their personal faith-based political convictions and do what’s best for our country. They can be the Good Samaritans we so desperately need right when we need them most.

Most conservative Christians are probably going to go all in and double down on Trump, but not all. The good news is, it wouldn’t actually take too many of them to stand up and do the right thing to make a huge difference. If we can turn a just a few key states blue, our nightmare could be over. The Democrats are almost assuredly going to win the popular vote with relative ease but, as we’ve seen all too often of late, that doesn’t get the job done. Hillary Clinton defeated Trump by almost 3 million votes in the popular election of 2016, after all. With the Electoral College poised to spin its unfair web to once again ensnare the will of the people, it’s imperative we find our Good Samaritans for 2020.

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells of a Jewish man who was stripped, beaten, and left for dead along the side of the road. A Jewish priest and a Levite came by but just walked right on past the man without batting an eye. Then a Samaritan man–sworn enemies of the Jews–came along and finally did the right thing stopping to care for the injured man. Jesus used this story to demonstrate that we are to do the right thing and look out for the well-being of our neighbors even if we might not normally coexist in harmony with them. There is a large and growing rift within Christendom between the politically conservative fundamentalists and the ever-growing politically progressive Christians. We are not likely to come together on many of those hot-button issues like abortion, immigration, health care, and LGBTQ rights anytime soon, but that shouldn’t be necessary in this upcoming election. We need level-headed, reasonable conservative Christians to put aside those issues for one election cycle, at least, and cast their votes to help pull our nation out of the ditch.

As I see it, there are at least three kinds of conservative Christians–I personally know several examples of each–when it comes to the topic of Donald Trump:

There are those who’ve completely sold themselves to a political agenda who are so far in with Trump that they can no longer see him with discerning eyes. They are boisterous and flamboyant supporters of the president and will be to the bitter end. They are like the priest and the Levite in the parable. They will never be swayed and there is no sense even considering them.
Then there are those who put on a supportive front when it comes to Trump. They outwardly show subtle support but inside they have real concerns. They listen to him lie and spout hate, they see his policies that have brought shame upon our nation, but they are too afraid to speak out against Trump because they fear retribution from those from the first group. So they just go along with the crowd and won’t make waves.
Finally, there are those who are secretly repulsed by the words and actions of Trump. They see Trump as detrimental to the Christian message and they’d love to see him out of office. They are hesitant to speak out, though, because they are uncomfortable with the idea of promoting a Democratic candidate since they disagree with their stances on some of those morally-sensitive issues. These are the potential Good Samaritans in this analogy. These good people could be the heroes in the 2020 election.

We need the conservative Christians in that third group to temporarily lay aside those issues that make it so difficult for them to vote outside the Republican Party and do the right thing for this country for this election. We need them to take the bold step of being vocal in their opposition to the policies of the Trump Administration and to point out how much damage they are doing to the reputation of the Christian Church which continues to support them. We need them, just this once, to vote with their reason rather than their faith. Silence amounts to implied consent. A crucial moment is upon us and reasonable conservative Christians hold the key to our immediate future.

It wouldn’t take a huge amount of Good Samaritans to have a tremendously positive impact. I know a lot of people who fit the description of that third group of conservative Christians and I have faith that, when they step into the voting booth next November, they will summon the courage to be like the Samaritan.

God bless America. Let freedom ring.

This is the Church–Or Should Be

October 22, 2019 By Shane Phipps

I’m pretty tired of what the Church has become. As far as I can tell, in many denominations, there is very little left of what the Church is supposed to be. No one should ever enter a church and be uncomfortable because they are made to feel unworthy of being there. Yet, millions of people have left their churches for that very reason.

Churches are pretty good at conveying the message that no one is worthy of God’s grace. It’s stitched into the fabric of nearly every denomination’s creed. It’s spoken from pulpits, it’s sung in songs, it’s recited in liturgy, but it doesn’t seem to land permanently in the hearts of the people. So many of very people who are moved by that notion inside the walls of the sanctuary on Sundays go through the rest of their week sharing a very different message in public. They constantly send the impression that they are superior to people who think, act, or believe differently. They continually lose sight of the truth that sin is sin and that we all fall short, every day, in some way, by what we have done, by what we have left undone, in our words, deeds, and (especially) thoughts. But none of that seems to register. So they create their own unofficial lists of “unforgivable sins”–abortion, homosexuality, voting for Democrats, etc.–and go on the attack against anyone who doesn’t see it their way. It is the most anti-Jesus thing I can imagine, but I see it played out all the time. Then on Sunday, they gather and agree once again that none are worthy.

Yes, I’m pretty sick of that.

I’ve heard it said that the Church should be like a hospital for the sick in spirit. We are all sick in spirit. I remember fondly times where I actually felt that in church. I remember when I was welcomed into a church when I had hit rock bottom with my alcohol addicted lifestyle. I was welcomed into the body of the Church with open arms and without judgment. There I found others who had been welcomed in to the Church during the ebb tides of their lives. I met recovering drug addicts, alcoholics, adulterers, thieves, even a convicted murderer. All welcomed, none judged. It was beautiful. But then, slowly but surely, the Church gets to all of us–poisons us. Before long, we forget what it felt like to be welcomed when we felt so desperately unworthy. We begin to create our own lists of “unforgivable sins” because that’s what the Church trains us to do. Then, before we realize what has happened, we are intolerant, judgmental hypocrites. It’s the classic bait and switch. I know this because this very thing happened to me. I went from a recovering alcohol junkie, saved by grace and welcomed by the Church, to a conservative fundamentalist with a hardened heart and closed mind. Now I am a recovering conservative Christian who’s been welcomed into a new kind of Church movement; Christ-following progressives.

If you think I’m off base, ask yourself these questions, thoughtfully and prayerfully:

If I were a member of LGBTQ community, would I feel welcomed in my church?
If I’d had an abortion, would I feel welcomed in my church?
If I were an undocumented immigrant, would I feel welcomed in my church?
If I believed in a billions-of-years-old earth, would I feel welcomed in my church?
If I supported an NFL player’s right to kneel during the national anthem, would I feel welcomed in my church?
If I supported universal health care for all, would I feel welcomed in my church?
If I were a registered Democrat, would I feel welcomed in my church?

I could go on, but If you answered no to any of those questions, you’ve just identified a big problem within the modern Church.

This problem is nothing new, but it’s been amplified during the current political circus brought by the Trump administration. Now the issue is front and center every moment of every day on social media. Just this week, I’ve seen Beth Moore dragged through the mud and belittled by conservative evangelicals who loudly proclaim that a woman has no right to teach the Gospel. I saw it spoken from the stage and I heard it applauded by the audience. I’ve also seen a conservative Christian pundit claim that if people don’t vote for Trump, the Democrats will “outlaw the Bible.” I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

At the root of this problem is, of course, an unholy marriage between the Church and politics. The only way to fix the problem is to attack it at its root. If we want the Church to be what it should be, we’ve got to get the politics out of the equation and go back to the mission of creating a welcoming safe harbor for the sick in spirit. In my opinion, that will never happen on its own, so the only way to accomplish it is through legislative force. If I were made dictator-for-a-day, my first order of business would be to eliminate politics from the Church. I would mandate that a church would immediately lose its tax-free status the instant a political agenda was pushed to its parishioners, overtly or subtly, spoken, written, or implied. That’s what it’s going to take to break up this evil marriage.

I actually feel some hope that we could get there soon. The year 2020 will be a huge pivot point in the history of our nation and in the history of the Church. We’d all better be praying that the Church can return to being what it is supposed to be.

If You Love America, Thank the Progressive Christian Socialist Movement

October 7, 2019 By Shane Phipps

The Trump era has seen a growing division in the American Church. The direction the current administration has taken America has caused millions of Christians to feel very uncomfortable being associated with the politics supported by their churches and the majority of their fellow parishioners. Mirroring what is happening in society at large, battle lines have been drawn across American Christendom. There are the fundamentalists who cling steadfastly to the idea that Christianity is, by nature, politically conservative and the growing and increasingly visible and vocal group of progressive Christians who can not square their faith with what is going on in the current GOP–they can see very little to none of Jesus in the current conservative Christian political ideology. Because of the unique current political climate and the fact that progressive Christians are standing up to be counted, this feels like a new development, but it’s not. In fact, it’s far from new.

Progressive socialism is stitched into America’s DNA. It is famously written in the very first lines of our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence, which states that All men are created equal. Even though, of course, the frailty of fallible men, the poisoning of politics, and omnipresent disease of greed kept those words from being practiced, still they are there as a guiding light shining brightly on what we were supposed to be all along.

American progressive Christianity and Christian Socialism date back to the beginning or our country. The pacifist Quakers quietly and steadily pushed for American society to live up to our creed that all people are created equal in the eyes of God. While the Quakers tended to be mild-mannered and preferred to shy away from the conflicts of the political realm, they served their fellow brothers and sisters where it counts; with their deeds. Quakers were among the first and most effective workers in the abolitionist movement and many of them risked their own freedom and well-being to buck the laws of the land in favor of the spirit of our national birthright of equality and freedom for all by helping untold thousands of slaves escape through the Underground Railroad. That was socialist anarchy at its finest.

Who isn’t familiar with the ubiquitous acronym WWJD? When that phrase swept the nation in the 1990s and 2000s, with people wearing WWJD bracelets and sporting the phrase on bumper stickers, most people probably thought it was a brand new thing. In fact, that acronym dates back to the 1880s when a progressive Christian socialist minister coined it in a series of sermons. It was during the 1880s that a new political party called the Christian Socialist Fellowship began to emerge. Their purpose, according to their constitution was “to permeate churches, denominations, and other religious institutions with the social message of Jesus; to show that Socialism is the necessary economic expression of the Christian life; to end the class struggle by establishing industrial democracy; and to hasten the reign of justice and brotherhood upon earth.”

“to permeate churches, denominations, and other religious institutions with the social message of Jesus; to show that Socialism is the necessary economic expression of the Christian life; to end the class struggle by establishing industrial democracy; and to hasten the reign of justice and brotherhood upon earth.”

This group was forming during the rapid growth of the Industrial Revolution when workers were being exploited and abused. Few laws were in place to protect workers. Child labor was a huge problem. Long hours, low pay, and unhealthy working conditions ruled the day. The Christian Socialist Party began to become organized and found a vibrant leader in the person of Eugene V. Debs. For the next few decades, into the 1920s, Debs was a fixture in the presidential elections. He never made a large impact upon the outcomes of the elections, though he did get nearly a million votes in a couple of elections, but he had a huge impact on the issues of the day. Because of Christian socialists and the work of Eugene Debs, the two major parties were forced to take on those issues. If you enjoy a 40-hour work week, workman’s compensation insurance, health care and pension benefits, paid vacation time, and union membership, you can thank Christian socialists.

This went far deeper than just workers rights. It spilled into the women’s rights movement, as well. Women, when you go to the polls to vote in the 2020 election, keep in mind the hard work of Christian socialists who helped give you that right.

African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Asian Americans, minorities in general, you can thank Christian socialists for the fact that Jim Crow laws and legalized segregation and discrimination no longer exist.

Conservative Christians fear nothing more than socialism. They show it every time they post about politics on social media. That’s got to be because they don’t understand what socialism is. They certainly don’t understand how much they benefit from socialism every day in their own lives.

And they also don’t understand that Jesus was far more socialist than conservative.

Christian Trump Supporter, Your Clandestine Wish has Been Revealed

August 16, 2019 By Shane Phipps

Well, Christian Trump supporter, I think I finally understand you. That’s not particularly comforting but it’s something, I guess. I’ve been holding out hope for you for a couple years now. As I continue watching Trump fall deeper and deeper into a mind-numbingly deep well of national embarrassment and shame, I keep waiting for you to finally wash your hands of him. Instead, you keep doubling down on your support and it’s been quite vexing to me. Now I realize that you’ve wanted Trump to fail all along. Now it makes sense. It doesn’t make it an easier pill to swallow, but it makes sense. When you claim God is using Donald Trump, what you are really saying is that God is using Donald Trump to hasten the end times. Now I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.

This isn’t the first time this reality has been on my radar. I’ve known for a while that the most extreme right-wing Christians were licking their chops at the thought that Trump might lead the world into their long-anticipated end times prophesy-era. The fact that crazed extremists like Jim Bakker are making a handsome living off of selling this message–and selling pre-packaged end times prepper-meals–was a dead giveaway. But I had assumed that level of la la land was reserved only for the far-flung fringes of the tinfoil hat brigade. It’s now becoming much more clear that there are more of you than I had ever imagined or feared.

The fact that so many of you continue to support Trump’s tariff trade wars is a clear sign. This week, the stock market has taken a huge tumble as investors are reeling in their funds and hiding them in safer harbors as economists warn of a coming world-wide economic recession due in no small part to Trump’s misguided trade wars. In the past, the economy was the one ace that you Christian Trump supporters could keep up your sleeve to justify your stance. Now that the economy sits poised on the brink of a big slide, the last firewall you have between the light of day and your real agenda is crumbling.

Because you’ve been deceived into thinking that Trump is the instrument God is using to wrap up the Book of Revelations, you can ignore the suffering of children split from their families, housed in awful concentration camps and abused; you can continue to stand against sensible gun control measures that could limit the damage done by domestic terrorists fueled by the president’s bigoted rhetoric; you can stand idly by as the unimaginably wealthy get wealthier at the expense of the huddled masses; you can continue to demand the rights of Americans be limited by their religious beliefs, place of origin, or sexual orientation; you can call the dire need for health care reform “socialism” and write it off as godless, completely overlooking the socialist nature of the Gospel; you can sweep under the rug all the environmental damage caused by Trump’s roll back of many protective measures put in place by previous administrations and laugh at anyone who talks about the problem of climate change; you can justify being on the same team as the most vile white supremacists our country has to offer; you can turn a blind eye to the plight of women who are sexually abused, harassed, or raped and claim they brought it on themselves by the way they act or dress; you can do all these things because you believe you are going to live to see the end times prophesy revealed and that you’ll reign over all when it is over. This is the exact same twisted mentality used to get Islamic extremists to fly jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon…think about it.

Christian Trump supporter, do you know what is completely absent in all of what I just described in you? It’s the love of Christ all Christians are commanded to reflect.

You seem to think you can help orchestrate the second coming of Christ forgetting, presumably, that Christ said that he didn’t even know when that would be. You’ve forgotten or overlooked what Christ said was the greatest commandment. You’ve now put all of your eggs in one basket. You are left standing shoulder to shoulder with one of the most despicable leaders in our nation’s history. You are prepared and expecting to ride up on a cloud of jubilant triumph as the evil of the earth is swallowed up by devastation. You’d better pray that your plan works because, if it doesn’t, you will go down with the ship and history will record your shameful legacy.

Good luck with that, I guess.