[Dialogue] 9/29/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Mark Sandlin: President Trump the 2nd Christ?; Spong revisited

Thu Sep 29 06:20:32 PDT 2022

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President Trump the 2nd Christ?
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|  Essay by Rev. Mark Sandlin
September 29, 2022“President Donald J. Trump, The Son of Man – The Christ.” That's the title of a book that is pictured in a meme making its way around social media. While it might sound like some kind of satirical production, it is not. The author of the book, Helgard Müller, believes that there are two Christs. The first is the one that Christians are aware of, Jesus “the son of God.” Müller says the second Christ is Trump, “the son of man.” As I understand it, in Müller's thinking part of the proof is in the fact that they both were betrayed. Jesus by Judas and Trump by Pence.

To any reasonable person, it's basically a laughable idea, until you realize that there's a whole group of people who don't find it laughable. Not at all. As a matter of fact, at the time of my writing this, that book is #17 in Amazon's Christian Commentaries.

It begs the question, who is buying up all these books? Who is buying into the possibility of a reality TV star who became one of the few impeached Presidents of the United States being a Christ figure? Seriously, how seriously should we take people like that? Truthfully, we should take them very seriously because they are a danger both to the nation and to a healthy spirituality in general.

I believe the answer to the “who” of that question is actually a religion of sorts. It's a religion we don't talk about much and it is a religion that needs a deity because the one that it has tried to co-opt doesn't actually square up very well with the religion's belief system. It is the religion of white supremacy and it is called Christian Nationalism.

Recently, Christian Nationalism has been front page news making it easy for some people to assume that it is a relatively new movement in the United States. Easy, but incorrect. Christian Nationalism has its roots in Christian Reconstructionism, a movement that was started by R.J. Rushdoony in the 1970s and is based on an extreme form of Calvinistic fundamentalism.

As a Presbyterian minister myself, I hate to have to include him as a fellow Presbyterian minister, because the theo-political perspectives he laid out are at the core of the very dangerous Christian Nationalist region of today. That's a bit ironic. As I said, I see Christian Nationalism as the religion of white supremacists. However, Rushdoony was an Armenian-American. Historically, as immigration to the U.S. increased, Armenians had to fight in court to be recognized as “white.” A fact that makes me wonder if the hard-core white supremacists would identify Armenians as “one of them.”

The court ruling in one of those cases is actually deeply revealing in terms of the completely illogical and unscientific perspectives of how far too many Americans understand race. The ruling found Armenians should be considered “white” because the “average man in the street” would see Armenians as white and because they “readily amalgamate with the European and white races.” Basically, you get to be considered “white” if a person who self-identifies as white thinks you look enough like they do.

That perspective is rampantly true in Christian Nationalism. In that world, “Christian” is basically used as a code word for “like me” (white, straight, conservative, Americans) and doesn't have much, if anything, to do with following the teachings of Jesus. Where Jesus celebrated diversity and inclusion, “Christian” Nationalism promotes uniformity and exclusion.

As I see it, Christian Nationalism is simply a modern variation of Christian Reconstructionism. While they may vary some in terms of what a “Christian” government might look like, they both are a variation of dominionism. They are a danger both to the nation and to a healthy spirituality in general.

Dominionism is a strange conservative Christian ideology that is based almost entirely on one word in one Bible verse: Genesis 1:28. It specifically draws from the King James Version of the Bible. The verse says this: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Christian Dominionist don't just believe that verse gives them marching orders to take over governments and install systems based on “Christian biblical law,” but that the verse is basically God's foretelling of it being inevitable. Interestingly enough, the verse it is all based on comes from Jewish scripture. That fact alone should tell you how fast and lose the adherents of this particular ideology are willing to play with the text (and reality) to make it suit their purposes. That certainly doesn't bode well for a nation much less the spirituality of its people.

As a matter of fact, Christian Dominionist are much more interested in Mosaic Law than anything Jesus ever said (which frequently stood over and against it) and they tend to favor strict adherence to that law. Folks, that's frightening. Here are a few of the things for which strict Dominionists believe Mosaic Law can require the death penalty: following other gods, being gay, disobedient children, adultery, and abortion (because they consider it murder).

There is a fairly direct line leading from Christian Dominionism to Christian Reconstruction to Christian Nationalism. They are three heads of the same horrifying dragon. They are also more powerful than many Americans are aware of. As an example, the recent overturning of Roe is a plan that was set out by Dominionists quite some time ago.

Dominionism (and its shadowy presence in Reconstructionism and Christian Nationalism) believes that, as the movement makes progress in controlling the government and hence putting at bay those who oppose it, there will be a Second Coming of Christ. Events like the overturning of Roe help to usher in the Second Coming of Christ. That's great news for the three-headed monster that wants so badly to claim Christianity as its treasure because the teachings of the first Christ stand over and against everything they wish to promote.

Enter Müller's “President Donald J. Trump, The Son of Man – The Christ.” Frankly, I'm less concerned about the content of the book than the concept of the book. Maybe I should call it a “pamphlet” rather than a book seeing that one passionate reviewer said he completed it in 90 minutes. Personally, I refuse to put a dime of my money into purchasing the book. Though, I can tell you that the majority of the reviews of the pamphlet, even from those who seem to have fairly conservative theological outlooks, tend to find the book to be “blasphemy” (which, interestingly enough, is a crime punishable by death according to a strict reading of Mosaic Law).

The concept of the book is concerning to me because of how readily some adherents of Christian Nationalism buy into it. It worries me because of how easily they can be convinced that a man that is all but the opposite of Jesus could be the second coming of Christ. It worries me because of how powerful of a tool for manipulating people's religion is when its leadership is placed in the hands of folks who are more interested in power and prestige than in love and equality. 

It is a strong reminder that we must work to prevent Christian Nationalism from finding any further footing in our nation. We must see it for the extremism that it is. We must not let that oh-so-shallow version of spirituality rule the day. We must turn to our love of neighbor, let me motivate us and inspire us toward continuing the difficult work of dismantling the systemic divisions Christian Nationalism prefers to create. It won't be easy (it never has been), but if we persistently work at this together, it will truly be worth it.~ Rev. Mark Sandlin
Read online here

About the Author
Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. Mark also serves as the President and Co-executive Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.”  Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His Podcast The Moonshine Jesus Show is on Mondays at 4:30pm ET. Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Diane 

I am curious as to why progressive Christians still use the word " worship" when it comes to liturgies and order of services? Isn't it an antiquated word too? I often use the words let us celebrate God's presence together. Your thoughts?

A: By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.
 Dear Diane,I am one of those who tries no longer to use the word worship to describe what it is we do when we gather. Sometimes, as you say, we celebrate. Yet sometimes we gather to mourn or question or simply wonder. Even the use of the word God, I believe, is problematic as it usually dualistically presupposes a being separate from Reality. Let me offer a different perspective.

Our work as a people, which is one way to describe liturgy, is the soul’s practice of becoming the truth of who and what we truly are. Soul is shorthand for describing how each creature is Being present in a particular place and time. Our ego is the soul contracted by defenses and desires to secure the love it needs to exist; the spontaneity and freedom that is Being is blocked and mostly unconscious. The awakening of our soul as Holy Mystery is learning to live spontaneously as presence, our true nature.

In communal liturgy, we gather to discover and deepen our awareness that there is no gap between us and Holy Mystery. Drawing upon Julian of Norwich we could say that grace and peace are always in in us – because they are us – but we do not always act from that love and peace. We become lost in our blindness (fear, anger, deceit, envy) to our own truth. We come to liturgy battered and bruised by our own inner critic (self-shaming, self-doubting, self-rejection), attachments, identities, societal prejudices – by the effects of human blindness. Liturgy is where we practice together and directly experience in our practice that in truth, we are love incarnate longing to live as such. In and through our practice together we are gradually being born into the freedom that is our true nature.

We gather to hear stories, sing songs, dance, receive teachings, anoint, and be fed. Each of these is a spiritual practice of presence. And this communal spiritual practice is itself grounded in a receptive listening flowing from the practice of meditation. Too much of formal communal liturgy is busy doing rather than relaxed being, more reflective of cultural anxiety than spiritual grounding and awareness.

Each authentic and sincere spiritual practice within liturgy flows from emptiness into embodiment such that it sparks curiosity, reignites the fire of soulful longing, and supports us in the gradual realization of Christ heart. The path of Jesus is the soul’s gradual awakening to the truth that she is fully alive and thriving, become a living Christ.
Liturgy is not so much the worship of a deity but our communal spiritual practice of realizing, as did Jesus, that to be an authentic human being is to be nothing other than the unique presence of Holy Mystery here and now.~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.

Read and share online here

About the Author
Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of  in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You and Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey.  |

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The Moonshine Jesus Show
- every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on   Facebook,,   YouTube,  Twitter,  Podbean  |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Gun Control, Immigration and Senator Hagel: The Manifestations of Cultural Paranoia in our Current Political Debate

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
February 7, 2013There are times when listening to the political debate in this country that I am absolutely astonished. Many of the participants in the current struggles regarding the proposed limitation on assault weapons, or making background checks for gun ownership universal, appear to be responding to a world that I do not believe exists. The debate on a proposed immigration bill seems to me to reveal little more than massive xenophobia. The Senate hearings on the confirmation of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense seem to want to rewrite the history of the second Iraq war. Am I the only one who is out of touch with reality or is something else operating in this nation, but below the level of consciousness? Do people, for example, really believe that they need military assault guns that will fire 100 bullets without reloading to protect themselves from the Federal Government? Did the framers of the second amendment really believe that the constitution guarantees to individuals the right to possess a military arsenal sufficient to defend our homes against a frontal assault by a battalion of armed criminals? Can a nation made up of immigrants really close its doors to others of the world’s “huddled masses, who yearn to be free” and who otherwise qualify? In the Hagel debate have our leaders, including Senator John McCain, forgotten that the reason we were told the Iraq war was necessary did not exist or that the “surge” was required not to win that war, but to pacify a country that was about to fall into a religious civil war between the Sunnis and the Shia? Political debate is certainly a legitimate and a vital part of our democracy, but does it not have to be connected with reality to be effective? Let me examine briefly the evidence that disturbs me.

The United States is a far more violent society than any of the developed nations of the Western world. Our murder rate is off the charts when compared with Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia or Germany. From where in our national character does this killing violence emerge? The mass killings that have occurred recently in schools, theaters, worshiping communities and even at public political rallies, have become so regular that, while we are still horrified, the fact is that no one is any longer surprised. Many of these episodes appear time after time to be the work of a mentally disturbed person, but we still debate whether background checks should be required for all gun owners and whether mentally ill people or those with criminal records can be ruled out as gun owners. The Newtown, Connecticut slaughter was directed against defenseless women and children. The bodies of the youngest victims in that tragedy were not just killed; they were riddled with as many as eleven bullets each. We are faced as a society with increasing levels of fear. We cannot go to our places of worship, take our children to an elementary school, venture out to a theater, or meet with our congresswoman in a public place without facing the threat of being murdered and yet these realities are not judged to be of sufficient importance to cause us to temper by law the passions of our gun culture. The representatives of the National Rifle Association want to counter these sources of fear by posting armed guards in public places and by having our children taught by “pistol-packing” teachers in our public schools. They are opposed to universal background checks, because “they won’t work,” that is, no criminal, they say, will submit to a background check. That argument makes as much sense to me as suggesting that since bank robbers will not obey the law we ought to have no laws against robbing banks. Am I missing something?

Are assault weapons with magazines that fire 100 bullets needed for any purpose other than mass murder? If we as a nation can ban the civilian possession of napalm, machine guns, bazookas, missile launchers, tanks and nuclear weapons without violating the 2nd Amendment, why can we not ban military assault weapons from individual ownership without that measure constituting “an assault on our second amendment rights?” If one child in one school can be saved by such legislation, is it not worth it? Because in a free society no one will ever be 100% safe, should we do nothing to make some of us safer? Because this argument seems so strange to me I begin to suspect that there must be other agendas operating in this debate, agendas that are hidden from view, perhaps even hidden from those who offer these out of touch arguments.

The immigration debate has similar irrationalities connected with it. First please note that this debate focuses primarily on immigration coming from the nations of our Southern hemisphere. I have heard of no one who wants to build a protective wall along the thousands of miles of common boundary that we share with Canada to stop illegal entry. Is our perception of the skin colors of Canadians and Mexicans a factor in our fear? Is this an expression of our unrecognized racism at work? Who are Mexicans? They are the descendants of those we once called “Indians,” the first settlers in the Western hemisphere who appear to have migrated from Siberia some 15,000 to 25,000 years ago. In 1846 we went to war against Mexico and in our victory annexed about half of what was then the nation of Mexico. Our present states of Texas, Nevada, California and Utah, as well as significant parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming were once areas claimed by Mexico. Are we afraid that those we once conquered might through “illegal” migration reclaim their former homeland? We close our eyes to the fact that American businesses and American citizens regularly hire those we call “illegal immigrants” to harvest our crops, to work in our hotels and restaurants, to tend our yards and homes, and always at a pay scale below that required by law in the United States and with no concerns for either the health care of these workers or for their retirement savings. These employers also do not report these worker’s wages for tax purposes. Are we cognizant of the fact that without this source of cheap labor, the price of our food among other things would skyrocket? Is not the real reason that immigration reform cannot get through the Congress of the United States is that powerful vested interests do not want it to pass? So these vested interests fan the xenophobia of the masses and it is this fear that is mined by our politicians to build the political pressure that makes a legal attempt to put an end to this chaotic and illegal system all but impossible.

The charges against Senator Hagel, fueled as they are by massive amounts of money from right wing sources, fit into the same picture. When Chuck Hagel was the Republican senator from Nebraska, a conservative mid-western state, he did not “buy” the propaganda campaigns of the war hawks in his party as they attempted to legitimize the war of choice that this nation unleashed against Iraq. These war hawks, most of whom had never served in this nation’s armed forces, justified this war after the fact by asserting that Saddam Hussein was evil and the world was better off without him. That may well be true, but the fact is that this nation has refused to go to war to unseat other evil regimes in North Korea, Syria, Serbia, Cambodia and a variety of countries in Africa. There has to be more to the anti-Hagel campaign than this. Senator Hagel’s apparent “sin” was that he saw through the war hawks’ propaganda and opposed that war even as he exposed the darker side of that chapter in our history and that he was right. Do we need to be reminded yet again that the weapons of mass destruction that were used to justify this war were not there and that the “surge” was required to prevent an Iraqi civil war that none of those who planned this war saw coming? To demand a “yes” or “no” answer to the “success” of “the surge” outside the context in which it was ordered is very revealing.

Let me suggest that the real reason for the incredible hostility that marks each of these debates is that they all reflect a change in consciousness that threatens the power of the established order that has held political power in this land from the very beginning of our history. The world is changing. Power is shifting. America is no longer the unchallenged preserve of white males of European ancestry. That fact has raised fears in this nation to new historic levels. That is why the gun debate, the immigration debate and the Senate hearings on Senator Hagel are so irrational. That is also why in the last election the attempt was made to suppress minority votes in those states where a Republican governor and Republican legislators had the power to do so. That is why the discussion of manipulating the Electoral College by changing it from states to congressional districts is being entertained. That is why a campaign to delegitimize the first African-American President to be elected in this country has been systematically conducted, giving rise to such bizarre things as the legitimacy of his birth certificate, the claims that he is really a Muslim, a communist, a fascist, or at least that he is not “one of us.” The fact that he has won twice by significant majorities has only heightened the paranoia. That is why demographic shifts in this nation create such fears. That is why we have witnessed a systematic attack on women, including attempts not only to roll back Roe v. Wade, but also to challenge a woman’s right to comprehensive health care, including contraception. The controlling power of the white males of European background is receding. Women, young people, black voters, Hispanic voters and Asian voters are growing in political power. The gridlock that has tied up the Congress since 2010 grows out of that fact. These efforts will ultimately fail, but they are capable of doing massive harm to this nation and to its economy before that failure is fully recognized. One step forward is to raise these underlying fears to consciousness. That is what this column seeks to do. America needs two functioning political parties. Those parties, however, need to be grounded in reality. At this moment that is not true of both of them.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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