Church Chat

 

 

I am one of those awful “Evangelical Christians.” 

 

But first, let me give you my definition of Evangelical Christianity. But before that, let me explain that you can pronounce it “E-vanglical” or “Evan-gelical.” When I'm talking around the house, I say “E-vangelical,” but when I’m talking to others, I say “Evan-gelical” to sound snooty.

 

My definition of Evangelical Christianity:  Christians who believe in the central tenants of Christianity. There is a God, Jesus is the Son of God, The Bible is the written revelation of God, and man was made for potluck dinners.

 

Okay, I made that last one up. My definition of an Evangelical Christian is anyone who can repeat The Apostles’ Creed without crossing their fingers.

 

Evangelical Christianity is a broad, diverse group of people who believe all of this God stuff. God is here, and he is not silent, as one famous Evangelical writer said.

 

While every Christian denomination cannot be described as Evangelical, you can find Evangelicals in every denomination.  Therefore, I believe there are Evangelical Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Mennonites, Free Will Baptists, Churches of Christ Without The Piano, Churches of Christ With The Piano, and the various churches that sound chill like The Wear Your Pajamas Fellowship.

However, when the national news media refers to Evangelicals, they are only thinking about one denomination: Southern Baptists.

Nothing makes The New York Times happier than to find something goofy out about a Southern Baptist leader like Jerry Falwell, Jr.

You might have remembered last year it turned out Jerry wasn’t exactly “saintly” when a picture surfaced of Jerry, Jr with a comely young lady, not his wife, and they looked like they were drinking real wine and not grape juice (you Southern Baptists know what I’m talking about).  The top of their pants were not buttoned, and it looked like it was a post-coital to me. Others may have thought it looks pre-coital.  Anyway, coital was in there somewhere.

It was a huge scandal made even bigger by Falwell’s association with a certain Big Orange Man. 

Falwell was influential in helping Trump with Evangelicals even though Trump didn’t know his Corinthians from a hole in the ground.

Not all.  I repeat. Not all Evangelicals were on The Trump Train.  However, a lot were mainly because the other party decided that the best way to unify the county was to make fun of people they disagreed with.

Sure, it sounds simplistic (and maybe it is), but at least to this Evangelical, the Democratic Party decided the problem with the country was all of the dumb hicks in The Southern Baptist Convention.

  
Then something stupid came on the horizon.  Qanon.

Qanon is a conspiracy group that popped up on 4chan (a message board) that said there is “a cabal of Satan worshiping pedophiles running a child sex trafficking ring,” (all Democrats, by the way) and their enemy is Donald J. Trump.  “Q” is  supposedly someone with high government clearance that has access to classified information and because of that has to be anonymous.

Agent One:  “Hey, after the Satan service, can we check on our trafficking ring?.”
Hillary Clinton:  “Sure!"
Barack Obama:  “I’m in!”

There was supposedly a pizza place in Washington, DC, that allegedly held children in the basement for the trafficking ring.  A guy drove to Washington to free the children.  Guess what?  The pizza place didn’t have a basement.

There have been other boneheaded ideas from Qanon, like Trump would be inaugurated on March 4th, 2021 (don’t ask).  When that didn’t happen, then Qanon said he would be inaugurated on March 20th, 2021.  That didn’t happen either if you didn’t notice.

In my circle of Evangelicals, I didn’t hear much about Qanon.  But there are many people out there who think we open every meeting with prayer and a message from Qanon.  We don’t.

Here’s why I never fell for that nonsense:  the “anonymous “part.  If you “can’t” tell me who you are, then I’m not all that interested in what you have to say.  It is as simple as that.  By the way, all of the anonymous and unnamed sources in the various Russian scandals were why I didn’t buy those reports, either.

The bottom line is QAnon has hurt conservatives and Evangelical Christians in particular.   I wonder if QAnon wasn’t something a liberal comedy writer came up with to see how many suckers are Conservative.  Too many.

Yet, I’m not worried about Evangelical Christianity.  We’ll get through this because we can say The Apostle’s Creed without our fingers crossed.