"blasphemous lunacy"

That Donald J. Trump is wrong about a vast conspiracy of election fraud is abundantly and convincingly clear. He's lying. Millions are convinced otherwise, despite state election officials, the Attorney General, and, yesterday, late afternoon, the Supreme Court, a bench that includes three bona fide conservative judges he installed.

Those who remain his loyal supporters are mostly Christian evangelicals, who do a ton of praying for him. Why Christians so adore him has always been mysterious to me. That they continue to idolize him is just plain baffling. In yesterday's Washington Post, Michael Gerson, once a speech-writer for George W. Bush, pointed out what seems painfully obvious: believers are guilty of "blasphemous lunacy."

I wondered if giving the adjective the status of the noun would be more accurate--is "lunatic blasphemy" preferable to "blasphemous lunacy"? It's been years since I lugged around a heresy detector, but I couldn't help thinking I preferred reversing authority of those two words--that what all those conservative evangelicals are doing is more fittingly defined as blasphemy, even, than lunacy. What they're up to is lunacy--I'll give him that; but blasphemy, pure and simple, although to the less orthodox (yes, I consider myself orthodox), it's just plain lunacy.

Whatever. You choose. It seems the two words can be seamlessly interchanged.

Gerson, a Wheaton graduate, a lifelong Republican, a Washingtonian insider who, for a time, did Plumblines on Dordt College radio, names names in the op-ed--specifically, Eric Metaxis, who, in addition to other things, once wrote a best-selling biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Metaxis predicted that  “Trump will be inaugurated. For the high crimes of trying to throw a U.S. presidential election, many will go to jail. The swamp will be drained. And Lincoln’s prophetic words of ‘a new birth of freedom’ will be fulfilled. Pray.”

Wow. At worst, Metaxis should take some polish the crystal ball he's got in his study. Gerson goes on: 

Just to be clear, Metaxas has publicly committed his life to Donald Trump, claimed that at least two members of the Trinity favor a coup against the constitutional order, endorsed the widespread jailing of Trump’s political enemies for imaginary crimes, claimed Abraham Lincoln’s blessing for the advance of authoritarianism and urged Christians to pray to God for the effective death of American democracy.

Then, finally, Gerson goes back to flashing words: "This is both seditious and sacrilegious."

But the essay is not just a smack down. It also asks the inescapable question about "the church": specifically, whether "the church" can even be imagined whole when seams are so ripped. Gerson calls Metaxis's disease "delusion," then points out the real victim: "And this ends up feeding doubts about religion itself."

Yes, it does. In. Me. Too. 

We've got a scraggly Christmas tree this year. We still like it, but, Covid-wise, we don't plan on company this December, so the cheap little tree is down here instead of upstairs, just for the two of us, not for guests. We downscaled. But right now, it looks perfectly beautiful across the room.

If the weather's nice, maybe we'll find a church to attend on Christmas Eve, returning to our childhoods--if any are open. Lately, we've been reading through a rich collection of meditations we've been through before, long enough ago to enjoy them when we go through them again. For the next few Mondays, the local Public Radio station will be playing a few of my own. I'm no apostate.

Years ago, when I was teaching in Arizona, good, good friends who were not "into church" sat across from me one night, each of us holding a beer, I'm sure, when one of them said, "Schaap, seriously--are you in a cult?"

Just about slayed me. I couldn't help but laugh.

"You're, like, always in church," they said.

I was Christian Reformed, a fellowship I was thought could not be defined as a cult. Still am Christian Reformed. Probably will be, up to and through my own funeral.

But I am also one of those people Gerson suggests has grown more doubtful, not about God, but certainly about his praying people. 

Not for a moment do I doubt the incarnation we celebrate. But watching Christians pray so fervently for a man who makes truth a joke prompts me to wonder about truth in fellowships that can include both me and them. Gerson's right.

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You can read Michael Gerson's op ed, "Prominent evangelicals are directing Trump’s sinking ship. That feeds doubts about religion" here.