Word&Way News: May 31
Here’s the weekly roundup from Word&Way. In addition to a look back at an infamous political moment that is free for anyone to read, paid subscribers to A Public Witness received a reflection on the 90th anniversary of the Barmen Declaration.
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Top 5 at wordandway.org
SBC Seminary Says Former Staffer Ordered Sex Assault Report Destroyed. Bob Smietana reported on the growing details of an attempted cover-up of sexual assault being investigated by the Department of Justice.
Review: Miracles for Skeptics. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Miracles for Skeptics: Encountering the Paranormal Ministry of Jesus by Frank G. Honeycutt.
With Strawberries and Goats, a ‘Farmastery’ Reaches Out to Its Neighbors. Yonat Shimron reported on a farm community in North Carolina started by a United Methodist minister.
Christian Organizations Come Together to Take Boycott, Divestment Action As Rafah Campaign Continues. Aleja Hertzler-McCain reported on a new effort by Christian groups calling for “economic non-cooperation with injustice.”
How Trump Turns His Trial Into a Show. Rodney Kennedy explored how the pilgrimages made by various politicians to Donald Trump’s Manhattan trial are about religion.
Dangerous Dogma
This week: Scott Coley on Ministers of Propaganda
Another noteworthy program this week:
Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood spoke with Tripp Fuller of Homebrewed Christianity about Baptizing America.
by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief
Yesterday, 12 New Yorkers showed more courage than nearly every elected Republican politician (except the rare few like Sen. Mitt Romney and former Rep. Liz Cheney). Deciding to convict Donald Trump could lead to death threats and violence. But the jury members upheld their oath as they looked at the law and the facts of the case instead of poll numbers. Unsurprisingly, the politicians who have abandoned their long-professed principles to justify anything Trump does quickly attacked the jury. A hit dog will holler.
But worse than the politicians are the preachers and theologians rushing to defend a convicted felon who falsified business documents to cover up his hush money payments to a porn star he had an affair with. With such statements, they convict themselves. As Proverbs 21:15 reminds us, “The exercise of justice is joy for the righteous but terror to those who practice injustice.”
Of all the quick hot takes after the verdict, perhaps none is morally worse than that from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler. He flipped from “Never Trump” in 2016 because “character matters” to endorsing Trump in 2020 and insisting after the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, he would vote for Trump all over again. In Trumpian form, Mohler last night attacked the judge, prosecutor, and the jury members with numerous false claims while also taking shots at President Joe Biden. But that run-of-mill partisanship isn’t what stands out.
“Say what you will about Donald Trump and his sex scandals, he doesn’t confuse male and female,” Mohler wrote.
It takes a special kind of theologian to find a silver lining in someone being a serial adulterer and sexual abuser. While Mohler’s Southern Baptist Convention is roiled with legal investigations for coverups of clergy sexual abuse, his response captures the moral rot of the SBC quite well: Rally behind the abuser as long as he will discriminate against LGBTQ people.
With theologians like that, no wonder people are walking away from churches. God, help us.
Other News of Note
Church & State, the magazine of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, published an excerpt from Baptizing America.
Judd Legum reported at his Substack newsletter Popular Information about training materials from the Florida Department of Education to push Christian Nationalism in public schools.
Texas unveiled new curriculum for public schools that includes adding more Bible stories into classroom studies.
Robert Downen of the Texas Tribune reported on the Texas GOP convention and its focus on spiritual warfare against liberals.
Amid new controversy about the use of “An Appeal to Heaven” flags by those pushing Christian Nationalism, one was removed from a group of flags at the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza.
Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis this week had her law license suspended for three years in Colorado. Last year, she pleaded guilty to a felony count of aiding and abetting false statements as she tried to overturn Trump’s 2020 presidential loss (and she was similarly charged in Arizona last month). She previously called A Public Witness “a bad actor” for reporting on her lies about the 2020 election.
“Disentangling Presbyterian and United States of America, even a bit, even if initially in our speech, might help us reckon with the long history of Presbyterian entanglement with this nation. … Our reckoning with that entanglement could bring greater clarity about what is basic and primary as we live as citizens of the realm of God while also living in the United States of America.” —Barry Ensign-George reflecting in The Presbyterian Outlook on “the trouble with ‘the national church.’”
The Washington Post documented how Catholic priests and other leaders raped and sexually abused Native American children at U.S. government boarding schools for decades.
During a visit to Israel, Nikki Haley wrote “finish them” as she signed an Israeli artillery shell prepped to fire into Lebanon. Mike Pence, another failed 2024 GOP presidential candidate, similarly signed an artillery shell in January.
Two American missionaries and a local Haitian mission director were killed by gang members in Port-au-Prince.
Amy Frykholm of The Christian Century wrote about an initiative for coffee justice in Mexico.
Clint Schnekloth wrote at his Substack newsletter Lutheran Confessions about why he recommends Baptizing America:
Photo of the Week
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