COLUMN: Christian Conservatism is dead

Harry Caines contributes a weekly column to CacheValleyDaily.com. Harry is a resident of Logan and an alumnus of Utah State University. He can be reached via email at [email protected]. His column is a work of opinion, and does not reflect the views of Cache Valley Daily, the Cache Valley Media Group, or its employees.

“Train a child up in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

—Proverbs 22:6

By supporting the candidacy and presidency of Donald J. Trump, Christian Conservatives in America have proven themselves to be ideological hypocrites more interested in having their obtuse phobias appeased by an avaricious madman than holding to the bedrock principles laid out by Jesus in his ministry as it is accepted in the canonical Bible.

That’s it. Column over. I’m heading out to grab some lunch.

Wait! Don’t leave yet. I have not turned in a column under 900 words in the entirety of my CVD run. This would freak out my editor. I guess I can blather on for a bit about this subject.

Let me continue with what is, for me, a rare gesture. I want to praise Donald Trump for his persistence and patience in waiting to find just the right group to dupe into supporting his desire for the ultimate exercise in American megalomania. That being, running for the office of President of the United States.

In the late 1990’s, Trump attempted to build credentials and a consensus to win the nomination of Ross Perot’s newly formed and hopelessly aimless Reform Party. Trump espoused many socially liberal positions, such as allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military. Ironically, Trump bowed out when a wave a social conservatives followed right wing firebrand Pat Buchanan to the Reform Party and hijacked the party’s nomination for the 2000 election.

Trump tried to get Middle America to answer his call, and they shrugged.

In the 2000’s, President George W. Bush entered a war with Iraq based on faulty intelligence. As both the war and Bush became overwhelmingly unpopular, Trump used his newly minted popularity as the host of the television show “The Apprentice” to lambaste Bush and his inner-circle for their ineptitude. Trump’s language mirrored that of the left wing ideologues who spent every day in a froth.

Trump tried to get the American Left—who have a history of being easily seduced—to rally to him, and they flat out ignored him.

Then Trump figured out the winning formula. He would woo the American Right to his cause. He would appeal to Americans that are referred to by the established proper nouns Evangelical Christians and/or Christian Conservatives.

How could this happen? Christian Conservatives in these modern times have openly scorned and rebuked politicians and celebrities alike for their perceived dearth of morality.

Christian Conservatives have followed the lead of such groups like Focus On The Family, Family Research Council, Eagle Forum, The Christian Coalition and Citizens United in a pseudo-purification ritual for political candidates, mostly in the Republican Party.

Trump was the embodiment of everything these groups and their followers abhorred. He is a brash New Yorker that flaunted his opulent lifestyle. He has been married three times, cheating on each wife. He has boasted about sexually deviant behavior on many occasions.

And, in what would have to be a disqualifier for any human being to be considered a human being, Trump has discussed and admired his own daughter Ivanka’s sexual attributes. He onced joined radio host and good friend Howard Stern in ogling Ivanka’s physique.

Not long ago, appearing on the Howard Stern Show was enough to disqualify a political candidate from consideration of the Christian Conservative vote. And yet, Trump sat proudly next to Stern as he called Ivanka a “piece of a–”. Trump agreed.

And Christian Conservatives thought nothing of it.

There is only one reasonable deduction as to how this could come to pass.

Christian Conservatives flocked to Donald Trump in record numbers because many (COLUMNIST’S NOTE: not all) of them are Christians in name only. Many so-called Christian Conservatives have abandoned the fundamental tenets of Jesus’s teachings to embrace Donald Trump’s bigoted, racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic bile.

How else can so many on the Christian Right stay laughably silent as the Stormy Daniels saga continues to play out? I am an amoral libertine with an unabashed skepticism regarding organized religion and I feel the need to take a shower after reading the latest Stormy news.

Trump is a morally bankrupt pervert who shares zero values with rural, white Evangelicals. But he blows that dog whistle using borderline language that soothes the superpatriot soul, and the Christian Right capitualtes.

Many Christian Conservatives need to remember, reexamine and reconnect with the Sermon On the Mount found in the Gospel of Matthew. And not just 5:27-30, where Jesus defines adultery in a way that Trump has violated 6,902,467 times.

I would suggest reading about turning the other cheek (5:39), being humble in the act of charity (6:2) and most certainly judgment of those different than you (7:1-2).

Take the whole of the Sermon On the Mount and read it in Bernie Sanders’s voice. It sounds natural that way. This means that if Jesus gave that speech today he would be dismissed in the Facebook comment sections by Trumpkins as just another crying, libtard snowflake.

Christian Conservatism in America is dead. It did not die of apathy. It did not wither due to Millenials who were born into a society inoculated against blind faith and indoctrinated from birth into the expansive cynicism of the Internet. And it most certainly was not killed off by positive portrayals of homosexuals on television. President Donald J. Trump is the cancer that rotted Christian Conservatism to its’ core.

Trump, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, led Christian Conservatives out of their meetinghouses with his flute that played a tune of willful ignorance. He led his followers into the gold-plated pews found in the hastily built Church of Trump.

It was at the altar in the Church of Trump where his cultist followers bent the knee and swore allegiance to Great Father Donald. Instead of praying with solemnity to the revered Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Trumpkins now scream out the new Godhead of, “Obama! Hillary! Benghazi!”

The Lord’s Prayer is no more. “Our Father, who art in Heaven…”. It has been replaced with “Build the Wall!” and “Fake News!”

I feel a sad resignation that the one true belief that Donald Trump has felt inside his bones his whole adult life has proven to be true. Trump has always believed himself to be a god. His followers confirm—in their unshakeable allegiance to his cult of personality—this belief to Him (proper noun) every single day.

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