By Bill Mefford
As we all know by now, the evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, created a minor shock wave last week as the editor, Mark Galli, came out and called for donald trump’s impeachment and removal from office. Yes, that is a good thing, although I have pointed out repeatedly, this is kind of late in the ballgame. As usual, the evangelicals have come late to what is currently the most important justice issue of our time and that is nothing out of the ordinary. Evangelicals ALWAYS come late to justice issues. But they have arrived and in spite of the frustration of coming late we should be glad they have shown up at all.
On Sunday (the 22nd), the magazine followed Galli’s editorial with a defense of their editorial by the magazine’s president, Timothy Dalrymple. Here is my response.
Dalrymple’s response defends CT in a number of ways against their critics who he perceives as primarily trump critics. As usual, evangelicals have little concern for the criticisms leveled against them from their political or theological left. In fact, Dalrymple first points out that he is upset that trump or anyone else might label them liberal at all. Of all the attacks trump can levy against CT, calling them liberal might be the most damaging as most entrenched evangelicals would allow themselves to be called anything but liberal. Calling them racist, or white nationalist, or head-in-the-clouds-spiritualist, or hyper-individualized, or anything else is fine - just do not call them liberal! So, in his response, Dalrymple makes a number of claims that backs up his primary assertion that CT is theologically conservative.
To that end, Dalrymple says that CT is pro-family and pro-life. Again, he states this as a way to ensure his readers and himself that they maintain the highest allegiance to God and Scripture. And we know what pro-life and pro-family means: they don’t give a damn about a woman’s right to choose their own reproductive choices and they hold to a discriminatory understanding of marriage, denying LGBTQ+ people their God-given and constitutionally-based rights to love who they want to love as well as denying LBGTQ families the right to adopt or provide foster care to children in need of loving families.
I have news for Dalrymple and the rest of CT: neither of these is absolute in terms of maintaining a high view of biblical allegiance. I have a very high view of Scripture and I am both pro-choice and affirmational of inclusive marriage. It is because of my strong respect for Scripture that brings me to both views as conservatives like Dalrymple and CT have overused clobber passages to the point they have lost their appropriate biblical and cultural context and their views are most often the result of their culture rather than their biblical exegesis.
And if Dalrymple and CT had such a high view of Scripture why didn’t they call for the impeachment and removal of trump when he was credibly accused of sexually assaulting nearly 20 women, or when he illegally banned Muslims, or when he validated neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, or when he caged children and split up immigrant families, or for the rampant corruption of him and his administration? But they did not call for his impeachment or removal. They are evangelicals and by an almost 80% clip, evangelicals do not care about families unless those families are straight, white, and middle-class.
No, neither Mr. Dalrymple nor CT are pro-family or pro-marriage because they are so busy excluding those they deem not worthy of either institution that they do not have time to be in favor of either.
Lastly, Dalrymple and CT want us to know that they support the “many positive” things that trump has done and that in 2016 they were faced with “an impossible choice” between trump and Clinton. Uh, no.
First, Mr Dalrymple, what exactly are the “positive” things that trump has done? They would point to his court-stacking with far right-wing judges and would ignore the fact that many of these judges were not endorsed by the non-partisan American Bar Association and, during their confirmation hearings, some of them even refused to say that Brown vs. Board of Education was settled law! This is not positive - this is frightening!
Secondly, Mr. Dalrymple, you were not faced with an “impossible choice” in 2016. You were faced with an incredibly easy choice for any person who values expertise to incompetance, honesty to corruption, or leadership to pettiness. The choice in 2016 was between the most qualified person to ever run for the presidency and an immoral, unethical monster of a human being who showed us he was a racist, misogynist, lying, cheat during his campaign and to which he has fully lived up to. Mr. Dalrymple, please do not blame anyone but yourself for your own misogyny that did not allow you to cast the easiest vote in your life. You have only yourself to blame, though taking responsibility for that vote is highly unlikely as evangelicals in the United States are as likely to take responsibility for their actions as their leader, donald trump.
The only people this was a difficult choice for are people who do not value morals, ethics, or the lives of the poor, the immigrants, or the most vulnerable. In other words, this was not a difficult choice for evangelicals.
But if only they would read the Bible of which they value to highly.