AMERICAN REDEMPTION: My Latest ‘Hot Type’ Column in Byline
My weekly Hot Type column in Byline Supplement urges Americans of faith to lead the charge to rebuke Christian Trumpism and Christian Supremacy — it’s their debt to us
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This weekend’s Hot Type column just dropped in Byline Supplement, and I bring America’s dilemma to the feet of those of faith — get to work. Christian Trumpism needs to be defeated by Christians.
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What a world.
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Below is an excerpt from today’s Hot Type:
Hot Type: American Redemption is Our Last Best Hope
In her latest Hot Type column, Heidi Siegmund Cuda urges Americans of faith to challenge Trump's Christian Supremacy and redeem the soul of America
It never made any sense, how the most religious people I knew in 2016 became the most virulently anti-Hillary Clinton. More shocking was how they became ardent Trumpists. Church on Sunday, and MAGA-hatted all week.
We’ve told the story of how the Christian right embraced an amoral man many times on these pages, but we’ve never told the story of redemption.
If the soul of America is to be redeemed, it must start with people of faith.
True believers owe us. They’ve tortured the keyboards of many a great writer who tried to make sense of the senseless.
How could a proper Christian support the man who mocks the disabled, calls war heroes suckers, allowed hundreds of thousands to die during a pandemic by preaching anti-science bullshit, praises Hitler and Putin, while making dick jokes about golfers.
Have they no sense of decency?
I learned a few years ago that we had been asking the wrong question. Not why would they, but what do they get out of it?
In a startling new book, The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, religious scholar Dr Matthew Taylor gives the most clear-eyed analysis of what happened to millions of people of faith in America, and how we can help return them to the light. Whether or not we can do it in a week remains to be seen…
Taylor writes about the Christian Trumpists, lured in by what he calls the ‘charismatics’ — independent preachers who have become global rock stars. Their alignment with Trump and Trump’s alignment with them have been good for business in a parasitic way and very bad for America.
In his scholarship, he replaces the term ‘Christian Nationalism’, which he says offers too broad a scale, with the phrase ‘Christian Supremacy’.
“Think of it as a spectrum of extremism, and on the far right of the spectrum on the policy level are those who believe that Christians or Christianity should be privileged over other communities or world views in America, and I would argue that is an anti-democratic form of Christian Supremacy and quite dangerous.”
The title of his book comes from the bible, but it also came from Parler, the social media site central to the coordination of the January 6 mob…
He said the best place to start to understand Christian Trumpism is with the Seven Mountain Mandate, whose leaders can be found within the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement.
“The basic concept is that you divide society up into these seven different arenas of influence — religion, family, government, education, arts, entertainment, media, commerce,” he explained. “And the idea is that each of those is envisioned as a mountain, and that the top of that mountain in the NAR theologies is either controlled by Satan and the demons or by God and the Christians. And there's no in between.
“So the goal, the mandate, from God and their theology, is for Christians to take over the tops of mountains, to assume positions of influence over every one of the seven mountains, and then let Christian influence flow down into society.”
He said it’s like a trickle-down version of theocracy, and here is where Christian Trumpism finally begins to make some ‘logical’ sense in this upside-down world.
“The rationale for supporting Donald Trump is, he's not a good Christian,” said Taylor. “He's not a good person, but he's very good at conquering mountains. He conquered the media mountain, he conquered the business mountain. Why don't we let him conquer the government mountain for us?
“They believe he’s an instrument in the hand of God for the redemption of American Christianity, and so we have to support him, because he is God's anointed. And the assassination attempts on Trump have only cemented this narrative that Trump is a figure of destiny in the hand of God.”
The NAR leaders he documents in his book, including Trump’s spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain, a televangelist married to Jonathan Cain, the keyboardist and rhythm guitarist of the rock band Journey, are part of a distinct world of independent charismatic prophecy, he says…
We are one week out from the most consequential election in US history since the Civil War, and Taylor says, it is time for people of all faiths to push aside the fringe and reclaim America for all people.
We are a multicultural democracy in the process of a succeeding, not a hateful Christian supremacist state in the process of seceding.
He would like to see people think through their faith, and do some actual soul searching.
“Religion originates in that part of humanity that is trying to make meaning of the world,” he told Byline Supplement. “Religion has been a force of great beauty, of great insight, of great power, of powerful experiences of great communal connection throughout history — a force of great charity and care for the least in society.”
But, he cautions, it has also been a force for great evil.
“Christianity has given us the Crusades and pogroms. It has given us anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, colonialism and all kinds of different forms of racism.”
He said he hopes that Christians reading these words will remember that the strength of American Christianity lies in the separation of church and state, because it has provided for all religions to flourish.
As I listen to him, I hear the words of President Abraham Lincoln, as he spoke of Emancipation 162 years ago — the last time America was in such a dire predicament.
“We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
When Lincoln addressed Congress in 1862, he asked: “Can we all do better?”
“The way is plain,” he said. “Peaceful, generous, just... a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud.”
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