As I’m writing this, it was announced a few hours earlier that Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, has suspended his campaign for President. About a year ago, he was considered the one to beat Donald Trump in the campaign. However, he has shown that he can’t be an effective leader. If DeSantis didn’t have the backing of many older people who live in Florida which keep him in office, I doubt he would have been re-elected.
After coming in second at the Iowa Caucus last week, Fox News anchors was calling on DeSantis and everyone else to end their campaigns and support Trump. It’s proof that Fox and even the Republican Party care more about Trump than they do the country. This is only one small state in the country with only about 3.2 million population. That’s just about a little under 1 percent of the country’s population. Now, they reported only about 110,000 voters of the 752,000 registered Republicans turned out to vote in the record cold temperatures and conditions. That’s less than 15 percent of the 23.5 percent of the state’s population and it’s only 0.033 percent of the country’s population.
This brings me to address the foolishness of a campaign ad that was released last week that focus on showing Trump as sent by God. Yes, I know many Christians believe that God sent everyone to the world. But the campaign ad has faced some backlash even from the people who believes we’re all sent by God. First and foremost, the notion that God foresaw back in the 1940s, He would need to send someone like Trump to Earth to spend decades womanizing, cheating people on business deals and partaking in debauchery such as alleged sexual assaults and having affairs on at least two of his wives, then that’s outrageous. Trump has repeatedly shown his racial tendencies toward people who aren’t white nor rich. Remember he called for the New York City youths were were convicted in that Central Park rape to be executed. Does that sound like a man God sent to Earth?
Dr. Ben Carson, who used to be a brain surgeon, and was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Trump, defended the ad comparing him to King David of Israel which surprised Neil Cavuto of Fox News. Now, Cavuto has been a critic of Trump, despite being on Fox News. But I think even he was surprised by Carson’s comparison, which the former brain surgeon appeared to walk back on a little when he realized what he was saying.
The idea that a Presidential candidate is sent by God is foolish. America’s population only makes up less than 5 percent of the world’s population. There are about 2.4 billion Christians in the world. That means there’s only 13.8 percent of Americans compared to the Christians of the world. And to think that God foresaw everything (especially all the wars, terrorist attacks and deadly earthquakes and storms) that would happen in the world in the last 80 years and think that Trump is the person we need really shows you how the Christian Right has overtaken the Republican Party.
It’s ironic that the Iowa Caucus occurred on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. When he was alive, many religious figures criticized King who was a pastor himself for getting involved in the Civil Rights movement, even though he wasn’t the first. Vernon Johns was a pastor who got involved in civil rights when King was still in school. Maybe it was because a lot of clergy still wanted to preach the idea of exclusion and racism. In college, a journalism student in one of my classes wrote a feature on churches that are open to everyone regardless of skin color. He called it “Is Heaven Segregated?” Our professor chuckled and said, “They used to preach that.”
The whole reason the Moral Majority formed in its initial stages was to support Bob Jones University, a private Christian school that refused to integrate. From that point on, the Christian right was on its way to get it hooks into politics. The Pew Research Center reported from the early 1990s to the latter half of 2022, adults identifying as Christians dropped from 90 percent of the country’s population to only 64 percent.
However, Gallup Polls also show that church attendance and membership has fallen between 50 percent with about 47 percent polled saying they don’t claim any form of religion. And why should they? Look around and you’ll see all types using their religion as a form of control and oppression. You need only look at the conflicts between Israel and Palestine or how Christian Nationalists in America want to form a theocracy. Yet there are so many denominations of Protestant Christianity, how are we going to even have one religion when we can’t even agree on how to do it. Some people like thin crust pizza. Others like original or deep dish. They may all include the same toppings, but underneath they want something a little different.
The hypocrisy is also showing with how Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have shown they don’t practice what they preach. Fifteen years ago, churches told members who voted for Barack Obama to repent and renounce their choice or leave the congregations. CBS Sunday Morning just ran a story on Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopalian bishop, said he had to preach with a bullet-proof vest under his clothes because people were threatening him.
So, why would anyone want to be associated with something that advocates violence and oppression? And saying that God made Trump is just preaching to the choir. It only solidifies to his base that they think he’s commanded by God. And how many Trump supporters don’t believe in God or are agnostic? It also shows the foolishness since President Joe Biden is a devout Catholic.
The Lincoln Project, which consists of mostly moderate conservatives and former members of the Republican Party, has dropped an ad criticizing Trump titled “God Made a Dictator.” Only a dictator would have religious people think he’s been commanded by God to rule a country. It’s a very pious and pompous view of yourself. And thankfully, some Christian conservatives are calling Trump out for it. Religion and faith should cross politics nor should it dictate it. Something that should be used for one’s own spirituality and faith shouldn’t be used a force on others.
As they said in the Star Trek franchise, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 