SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE NEW MANICHAEANS

Nadeem F. Paracha

Published November 10, 2024

DAWN

Illustration by Abro

Just days before this year’s US presidential election, when I was wrapping up my interviews with a cross-section of voters in some US states for a research project, I was approached by an old white man in Denver, Colorado. The man asked me who I was voting for. I told him I’m not a US citizen so can’t vote. But even before I could complete my sentence, he asked, “Are you voting for Trump?”

He then declared, “Kamala Harris is evil…she is an evil, evil person.”

“Yes,” I replied. “And Trump is an angel.” And that was it. Unable or unwilling to notice the obvious sarcasm in my reply, the gentleman seemed satisfied with my reply and moved on. I had come face-to-face with an example of how ‘Manichaeism’ shapes modern populist politics.

Manichaeism was an ancient religion in Persia. It believed that the universe was dominated by two forces (good and evil) — one represented by light and the other by darkness.



Manichaean dualism, an ancient belief in the eternal struggle between good and evil, shapes many modern populist narratives. This ‘us-versus-them’ mindset, popular in the US and global right-wing politics, fuels dangerous worldviews that can justify violence

Today, the term ‘Manichean’ is used as a disparaging term to describe someone who disregards shades of grey or who adopts a strong ‘us-versus-them’ mindset. According to the American Professor of Ethics William F May, Manichaeism reduces distinctions to a ‘cosmic struggle’ between two rival powers: good and evil. A form of Manichaeism has been particularly strong in American politics, especially among right-wing groups.

Since Manichaeism was a religion, its modern political manifestation retains much of its original metaphysical essence. For example, when politicians posit an ‘us-versus-them’ position, it is not only about formulating ethnic, racial or nationalistic binaries. Added to a valorised race/ethnicity/nation is also a ‘divinely-ordained’ purpose.

So, a valorised people, though striving to achieve political power, come to see themselves a ‘chosen people’, selected by God to fulfil His purpose. Among right-wing political groups in the US in the early 20th century, this ‘purpose’ was to sustain racial segregation to protect the country’s white races, because they were the ‘chosen people.’

Later, the same chosen people were to fight against ‘international communist conspiracies.’ Communism was explained as an ‘evil.’ For right-wing groups, America’s war against communism (during the Cold War) was a war between good and evil. The former US president Ronald Reagan (1981-88) described the erstwhile Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

Manichaean rhetoric was also present during the rise of Nazism in Germany. The Nazis enthusiastically indulged in pseudo-history and exotic theology to add to their claims of racial superiority a metaphysical dimension. The rise of Nazi Germany was viewed by the Nazis as an outcome of a battle that they were fighting against shadowy evil powers who were out to corrupt and destroy pure Germanic races, through lowly non-white races and wicked ideologies such as liberalism and communism.

Manichaean rhetoric and mindset make secular ideas seem theological/cosmological in nature. The valorised ideas/people in this context become chosen by God and opposing ideas/people are demonised as evil or driven by satanic forces or by Satan himself. Therefore, to a lot of Trump supporters, Harris is evil.

But Manichaeism is present in modern political-theocratic doctrines as well. It is very much present in Christian nationalism, which Trump constantly evokes. It is present in the Hindutva ideology valorised by India’s right-wing ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It also plays a pivotal role in the rhetoric of Iran’s theocratic regime, especially when addressing the country’s archenemy, the US. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the US has been referred to by the theocracy as ‘the Great Satan’ (Sheytan-i-Buzurg).

In the 1970s, Islamist parties in Pakistan often portrayed the former Pakistani prime minister Z.A. Bhutto and his government as evil because, apparently, he and his ministers were serving Satan by always being drunk and holding wild sexual orgies (‘key parties’).

Such diabolical accusations, often published in right-wing tabloids, became so common that Bhutto once decided to respond to them by announcing to a crowd: “Yes, I drink, but I don’t drink the blood of the people!” Here he was referring to the Islamists who, according to him, were ‘agents’ of rich ‘bloodsucking’ industrialists.

Not all binary thinking in politics is Manichaean, though. Binary thinking in this regard becomes Manichaean only when the ‘us’ begins to describe itself as special people chosen by God to do His work in a wretched world.

This outtake of Manichaeism is present when most populists describe the other side as evil and/or satanic. Pakistani politician Imran Khan and his fans lambasting their opponents as ‘corrupt’ is a classic populist ploy, but it’s not Manichaean as such. However, it does become this when some of his supporters begin to view Khan as an incorruptible messiah, having characteristics of some of Islam’s ancient luminaries.




Binary thinking can stall nuanced political debates. But it becomes far more dangerous when it is used to construct narratives that lead to serious violence. For instance, in the last two decades, Christian nationalists in the West and Islamist militants took Manichaean thinking to an extreme, in a bid to justify terror attacks.

Far-right militants in the West and Islamist terrorists are often swayed by narratives that are largely influenced by Manichaeism — especially by its ‘dualist cosmology’, based on the idea of a primordial conflict between light and darkness, good and evil. Class, ethnicity, nationality or material economic conditions eventually dissolve in this cosmic conflict. But race and faith don’t. The militants in this context explain the conflict as one that has been going on for centuries outside the material realm, and within a spiritual one that the sacred texts supposedly speak of.

In a 2018 essay, the psychologist Karl Umbrasas wrote that terror outfits that kill indiscriminately can be categorised as Manichaeans. According to Umbrasas, such groups operate like “apocalyptic cults” and are not held back by socio-political and moral restraints. They are thus completely unrepentant about targeting even children. To them, the children are also part of the larger problem that they are going to resolve through a ‘cosmic war.’

The moral codes of such terror groups transcend those of the modern world. So, for example, when an Islamist or far-right terrorist kills innocent men, women and children, it is likely they see the victims as part of the ‘evil’ in the cosmic war that they imagine themselves to be fighting. In fact, one can thus suggest that the current government of Israel is also very much Manichaean.

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 10th, 2024

WE CAN ONLY HOPE

Opinion

How Trump's victory could accelerate women's departure from evangelicalism

(RNS) — Evangelical Christian pastors looking to mimic Trump’s appeals to young men will only drive the gender gap in the church further apart.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump listens at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Katelyn Beaty
November 7, 2024

(RNS) — Weeks before the 2024 presidential election, disgraced and self-rehabilitated pastor Mark Driscoll came out in support of Donald Trump. He shared a photo of himself shaking Trump’s hand before gleefully announcing that Trump was forming an evangelical Christian faith advisory board as the former president had in his previous campaigns.

It’s a match made in machismo heaven.

Driscoll is one of many vocal pro-Trump leaders who use brash, testosterone-is-my-testimony branding to make Christianity more appealing to men. Others include Idaho’s Douglas Wilson, Midwest megachurch pastors Joe Rigney and Michael Foster and Right Response Ministries’ Joel Webbon, who has said he forbids his wife to read a book he hasn’t read first.

Their appeals mirror Trump’s bid, by appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast and other “bro media,” to disaffected young men.
PODCAST: The Menfolk Aren’t Doing So Hot. Why Should We Care?

The pastors’ appeal seems to be working. The gender gap in American Christianity has flipped. Among Gen Z Christians, men are now attending church in greater numbers than women, who are leaving in droves. The gender gap in the church mirrors the gender gap at the U.S. polls. According to psychologist Jean Twenge, the number of young men who identify as conservative is at an all-time high of 65%.

For decades, church leaders have complained of a “feminized” Christianity that’s too soft and emotional. Hence resources like David Murrow’s “Why Men Hate Going to Church,” events like the Stronger Men’s Conference, with its pyrotechnics and monster trucks, and a podcast ecosystem wherein pastors mimic the latest talking points from Rogan and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.

Aaron Renn, a writer and consultant on urban policy and culture, notes that religion in America is “right-coded,” which is translating into: “Male = conservative = religious; Female = liberal = non-religious.”

He criticizes evangelical churches for judging men’s sins more harshly than women’s. He argues that today’s “manosphere” is one of the few places that take men’s and women’s differences seriously and teach men how to attract “high value” women.

Christian leaders who think they can simply mimic this performative masculinity in service of the gospel are morphing Christianity into something pre-Christian, turning it into another institution that sidelines women. That women, who have long formed the backbone of the local church, are turning away is a canary in the church’s coal mine.

Jesus’ ministry unfolded against the backdrop of the Roman Empire. There, sexual dominance and unmitigated violence were everyday realities. Women were seen as less than human and unfit for education or participation in society. Other vulnerable people — children, the disabled — were literally discarded.

By contrast, the early church, taking its cues from Jesus, saw women as fully human and welcomed their gifts and leadership. Church leaders taught monogamy as a family model that protected women and children. Widows were cared for by their spiritual family.

A Christianity that denigrates women in order to boost up men is a far cry from the teachings and example of Jesus. One wonders if Trump would consider Jesus, as he termed Howard Stern after he had Kamala Harris on his show — a “beta male.” Sure, Jesus defeated sin and death and Satan in the most dramatic way. But Jesus also compared himself to a mother hen, taught his followers to turn the other cheek and entrusted women with the Good News.

Today, Christian communities will thrive insofar as they create cultures where women and men can flourish together. Where their concerns are heard, and where they are told, You belong here. A church that tells women to keep silent and let men do the heavy lifting comes across as woefully out of touch with women’s incredible inroads over the last century. A church that tells men that being a man means lording power over others fails to disciple men in distinctly Christian ways.

Driscoll and his pastoral ilk will only drive the gender gap in the church further apart. Leaders who are strong enough to be gentle like Jesus will be better for the church in the long haul.

Katelyn Beaty. Photo courtesy of Beaty
(Katelyn Beaty is the author of “Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church” and a co-host of the RNS podcast “Saved by the City.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

                                     TIME TO READ 

God and the State

Mikhail Bakunin

God and the State

Written: February - March, 1871;
Source: God and the State;
Publisher: Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York © 1916;
First Published: 1882 (Discovered posthumously by Carlo Cafiero and Elisée Reclus);
Translated: Benjamin R. Tucker;
Online Version: Anarchist Archives; Bakunin Reference Archive (marxists.org) 1999;
Transcribed: Dana Ward;
HTML Markup: Brian Baggins.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV

Bakunin's most famous work, published in various lengths, at times ending mid-second section with the line "This is the sense in which we are really Anarchists.", this version is the most complete form of the work published hitherto.

Originally titled "Dieu et l'état", Bakunin intended it to be part of the second portion to a larger work named "The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution" (Knouto-Germanic Empire is in reference to a treaty betwixt Russia and Germany at the time), but the work was never completed.

What follows is a small collection of passages representative of the primary themes of the book:


"God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave." While Satan is "the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds."

"The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such

"Science is the compass of life; but it is not life itself....What I preach then is, to a certain extent, the revolt of life against science, or rather against the government of science, not to destroy science - that would be high treason to humanity - but to remand it to its place so that it can never leave it again



Bakunin Internet Archive

After their son came out, this conservative Christian couple went into a closet of their own

“There is no hate like Christian love.”

John Blake, CNN
Sun, November 3, 2024

LONG READ

As soon as Greg McDonald Jr. saw his parents, he knew he was in trouble. His father stood waiting for him with his arms folded and his brow furrowed. Beside him was Greg’s mother, her eyes red and puffy.

“Quick, pretend you’re interested in me,” Greg Jr. told his friend Betsy as he steered the speedboat toward the dock at his parents’ riverfront home outside Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Greg Jr. had just taken a group of friends out for a rollicking boat ride. It was late in the summer of 2001, and he was about to head off to his first year of college. In just a few weeks the 17-year-old thought he’d be free.

But while Greg Jr. was away his father, a conservative Christian, had checked his computer’s search history. He’d heard stories of young men being corrupted by the internet and had discovered his son’s secret: visits to gay porn sites.

As Greg Jr. stepped off the boat with his friends, his father looked sternly at the group. “You need to leave,” he said to the other teens.

Once they were alone, the father turned toward his son.

“Are you—?” he asked.

“Yes, I am,” Greg Jr. said, cutting his father off as he walked past his parents toward their house.

“You could be an axe murderer, and we would always love you,” his father called out after him. “But we need to get you fixed.”

You may think you kow what happened next. Greg Jr. prayed to God for deliverance. Pastors condemned him. Church members shunned him. Longtime friends disappeared, and he wrestled with shame because he felt like he had failed God and disobeyed the Bible.

But that’s not what happened to Greg Jr. That’s what happened to his parents, Greg Sr. and Lynn McDonald.

Their son’s admission would send the McDonalds on a journey that forced them to make agonizing choices about their faith and family. They would be thrust into the middle of a hidden crisis afflicting the conservative Christian community. And how they responded to their son’s admission would mushroom into a scandal — one that prompted two of the most prominent evangelical pastors in America to publicly question each other’s faith.

What triggered all these events was one fateful decision: After their son came out, the McDonalds went into their own closet.

A hidden crisis among conservative Christian families

If you’re seeking a model of a contemporary, conservative Christian couple, Greg and Lynn McDonald would seem right out of central casting. Warm and photogenic, they sprinkle their conversation with biblical quotations and self-deprecating humor.

The McDonalds live in a gated community along the banks of the Chattahoochee River, some 25 miles outside of Atlanta. Their neighborhood looks like a real estate brochure, with rows of large, uniform houses, spotless sidewalks and American flags flying from front porches.

A family photo of Greg McDonald Jr. as an 18-year-old hangs at his parents’ home. - Austin Steele/CNN

Their living room reflects their faith and love of family. A towering bookcase is lined with titles such as “God Sex and Your Child,” Rob Bell’s “What Is the Bible?” and Charles Swindoll’s “Getting Through the Tough Stuff.” Seven family photos adorn the wall. One of them is a portrait of their son, Greg Jr., around the time his parents confronted him about his secret.

Lynn, 65, steps to the wall and adjusts one of the photo frames.

“I can’t think clearly if things aren’t straight,” she says with a sheepish smile. “I like things in order.”



Greg Sr. is a solidly built man with a firm handshake who talks and moves with an air of crisp authority. He was an entrepreneur and a food broker, a person who sells food products to buyers. He retired at 47.

“I’m a fixer, a problem solver,” says Greg Sr., now 67. “Whenever there was a problem in business, they said, ‘Send McDonald.’ “

For some people, the McDonalds’ story may seem baffling. Having a gay child is no longer considered a problem that needs fixing. The Supreme Court established same-sex marriage as a fundamental right in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. LGBTQ+ people are out in the workplace, hold hands in Ikea commercials and openly raise children. Most mainline Christian denominations affirm gay and lesbian people.

But there are millions of conservative Christians in the US who still do not accept what some call the “homosexual agenda.” They say normalizing LGBTQ+ relationships represents a threat to the American family and religious liberty. And their perspective is gaining political momentum. A record number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced across the US in 2023.



This backlash against LGBTQ+ acceptance has led to a crisis in the conservative religious community.

An estimated 40% of the nation’s youth experiencing homelessness identity as LGBTQ. Many of these youths are being cast out by conservative religious families. Some parents shun their gay children when they can’t change them. The harm that many LGBTQ kids suffer after being rejected by conservative religious families is widespread but barely acknowledged or addressed in conservative Christian communities, religious activists and LGBTQ+ youth advocates tell CNN.

Demonstrators protest the passing of SB 150 -- better known as Kentucky's "Don't Say Gay" bill -- on March 29, 2023, at the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort, Kentucky. - Jon Cherry/Getty Images

Greg Jr. says he didn’t tell his parents about his sexuality earlier because he’d heard stories of evangelical parents who refused to pay for their gay kid’s college or kicked them out of the house. Once on the streets, these forsaken youths are more likely to experience sexual assault, HIV infection, hate crimes, depression and suicide, according to True Colors United, a nonprofit group formed to address youth homelessness in the US.

The current share of homeless youth who are LGBTQ+ is likely larger than the 40% estimate because many of them end up surfing on the couches of friends or avoiding places where homeless adults gather because they’re afraid of being harmed, says Kahlib Barton, chief program officer with True Colors United.

Many LGBTQ+ youth tend to travel together, living in abandoned buildings and under freeway overpasses and often engaging in sex work for survival, Barton says. Virtually none of them go to the church for help.

“Most youth don’t feel comfortable going to a church because they’re either forced to engage in religious practices they don’t agree with or their sexual identity is not appropriately respected,” Barton says.

Greg Sr. didn’t know any of those stories when he told his son that he had to be “fixed.” He made that declaration 23 years ago, but he still winces at the memory.

“Boy, how I wish I could reel those words back,” he says. “And I can’t. We literally chased Greg Jr. away. Once those words leave your lips, it’s like eating shoe leather. It’s hard to recover from that.”

Their son, though, knew what awaited his parents before they did. When they enlisted the church to “fix” him, he would say something to them that would prove prophetic:

“There is no hate like Christian love.”

‘Peer pressure will sort him out’

The McDonalds didn’t think there was anything hateful about how they raised their son and his older sister, Connie. They wanted them to have the stability they never had as children. They raised the two children in a conservative Christian cocoon: church every Sunday, mid-week Bible study, Christian private schools; Christian contemporary music tuned 24/7 on the car radio.

They saw signs early on that their son might be gay. They say they were tipped off by his body language and what Greg Sr. describes as his son’s “tender-hearted” personality. They quietly took steps to address the issue.

“If a show came on TV, and it was ‘Will & Grace’ or if there was touching between two men, I’d grab the remote and turn to another show,” Greg Sr. says. When Greg Jr. was still a boy, the McDonalds shared their concerns with a Christian counselor.

He’ll be fine, the counselor assured them. “Peer pressure will sort him out,” he said.

Meanwhile, Greg Jr. was learning about hate at his Christian schools. He was bullied by classmates who hurled gay slurs at him. Teachers denounced homosexuality in classroom diatribes while looking directly at him. There were others who treated him with compassion, including art teachers who sensed his secret. He came out to several high school friends who made him feel accepted.

An undated family photo shows Greg Jr., Greg Sr., Lynn and Connie McDonald. - Courtesy Greg Sr. and Lynn McDonald

Even so, Greg Jr. learned to be quiet and blend in. That impulse was so ingrained that just before his parents confronted him after that speedboat ride, he still pretended to be straight by asking his friend, Betsy, to feign attraction to him.

“It was about being perfect all the time and not doing anything to stand out as deviant, or outside the norm,” he would say later. “You try not to be noticed.”

After their son came out to them, the McDonalds relied on the church to apply another form of peer pressure. They sent their son to youth counselors and pastors.

They persuaded him to try Christian “conversion therapy,” a widely discredited practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation through methods such as intensive prayer, aversion conditioning, and in extreme cases, exorcism. Greg Jr. went to one meeting and refused to return.

“We didn’t realize the harm we were doing,” Lynn says. “When you find out your child is gay in that environment, it’s overwhelming. I hate to say it, but I was also looking at myself. I was thinking, ‘This is disruptive. What is my life going to look like now? ’ ’’

Several months after their confrontation with their son, the McDonalds told their pastor and a select group of close friends. It took about two years for Greg Sr. to tell select business partners and co-workers. Some stopped talking to them. Others assured the McDonalds they would pray for their son’s deliverance from homosexuality. One told Greg Sr., “You gotta get a handle on your son.”

Still, Greg Jr. refused to be “fixed.”

A Christian counselor once asked him, “Don’t you want to go to heaven?”

“Not if you’re there,” Greg Jr. said.

‘I felt I had to choose between loving God and loving my child’

By this time Greg Jr. had moved away to attend DePaul University in Chicago. He and his parents barely spoke. He rebuffed their attempts to cite scripture. Their occasional visits were so strained that their son avoided being alone with them and surrounded himself with friends.

The tension filtered into the McDonalds’ marriage. They blamed one another.

“You should have taken him on more fishing trips—”

“Whose idea was it to let him take those art classes?”

“Well, you didn’t play baseball with him enough…”

The McDonalds thought a gay child was a failure of parenting. That was the dominant teaching in their conservative Christian culture.

They followed leaders like the author and psychologist James Dobson, founder of “Focus on the Family.” Dobson has ascribed homosexuality to such external factors as a domineering mother, an emotionally abusive father and being sexually molested as a child — beliefs that have been debunked by many scientific researchers.

James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, gestures while speaking at a rally on January 8, 2006, in Philadelphia. - Jeff Fusco/Getty Images

“We were Focus on the Family groupies,” Greg Sr. says. “We drank from the fire hose. If they published it, printed it or did a video, we owned it.”

Lynn McDonald says says her reaction to her son’s disclosure was also shaped by another source: the Old Testament story in which God demanded that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac to prove his faith.

“I felt I had to choose between loving God and loving my child,” she says.

Her words may seem melodramatic, but not if you know her background. She grew up in a family where relatives struggled with mental illness and alcoholism. She married Greg Sr. when they were right out of high school. Both now say they were too young and immature. It took 12 years of counseling and prayer to preserve their marriage.

What saved her through it all? She says it was following the words in the Bible.

“My safe spot was the church,” she says. “There were parameters. If you followed them, nothing harmful will happen to you.”

But in the evangelical world, that safe spot came with a price. The McDonalds felt tremendous pressure to hide having a gay child. Not long after their son told them he was gay, they asked their minister if he could put them in touch with other parents of LGBTQ+ children in their congregation. He couldn’t. He didn’t know a single family in a congregation of about 5,000 people who were willing to talk about having a gay child.

The McDonalds joined this silence. They shared their son’s sexual orientation with a select group of friends and church members, but otherwise kept a tight lid on their family struggles. They worried about being disowned by friends, relatives, their church and their employers.

“There’s the fear about my reputation and my family’s reputation,” Greg Sr. says. “You have to keep this image just so.”

One night, the pressures of maintaining that image threatened to overwhelm Greg Sr. He was driving home, mired in depression. He felt like a failure as a father.

He spotted a bridge in front of him. As he drew closer, he accelerated. He aimed his car at the bridge’s concrete abutment. The slapping of his tires on the highway grew louder as he sped toward the bridge.

“As I got closer, I just decided that’s it,” he says.

But at the last second, he jerked the wheel and turned away from the bridge. He pulled off the highway and sat in his car, shaking. He then called his doctor to get a prescription for anti-depressants.

A conservative Christian walks into a gay bar

Not long after, Lynn was shaken by her own brush with mortality —one that led to a different result.

She and Greg Sr. had remained closeted for more than a decade, struggling with shame, after they learned their son’s secret. But in 2013, she faced another battle: She was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“I had to put on my big girl pants and get through this,” Lynn says.

What followed was months of chemotherapy, multiple surgeries and her hair falling out in clumps. She spent much of her time in bed and barely had enough energy to move. Her husband stood by her, but another person soon appeared at her bedside: Greg Jr.

Their son was now 29 and living in Chicago after attending DePaul and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. At Greg Jr.’s invitation, his parents moved briefly into his Chicago condo. He washed his mother’s laundry and tucked her in at night. He took her shopping and purchased stylish caps and scarves to cover her hair loss.

Lynn began thinking of the years she had spent raising her son in a home where he was afraid to be himself. The years she spent quoting scriptures at him that condemned his homosexuality. But here he was, showing her compassion. Instead of anger, he was embodying Christ’s example — loving those who had scorned him.

Books on a shelf at the McDonalds' home in Duluth, Georgia. - Austin Steele/CNN

She lost her zest to preach at him.

“I saw my life flash before my eyes,” Lynn says. “I didn’t know how many days I was going to have on Earth to even be with my son. It wasn’t about changing him. It was about loving him and trying to make up for the years that I did lose with him when he was raised in our home.”

Around the same time, Greg Jr. reached out to his father in a different way. One night he asked his dad, “Wanna get a drink?” He took his father to a bar in Chicago called The Closet. It was, of course, a gay bar.

As Greg Sr. walked inside, he caught himself thinking: Gosh, if my conservative friends could see me now. His son introduced him to the bartender. Her name was Karen, but his son described her as his “momma bear.” She was the one who steered him away from guys who meant trouble and helped him with his college homework by holding up flash cards at the bar.

Karen was a lesbian, but that didn’t matter to Greg Sr. She loved and protected his son. He felt his attitudes shift.

“The reality is that I didn’t care anymore what my friends and co-workers thought,” he says. “I was far more concerned about my son and having a relationship with him.”

Lynn’s cancer went into remission. And a dozen years after that riverside confrontation, the McDonalds’ relationship with their son also started to heal.

But they still had to square this with their faith. They didn’t know how to answer this question: Can you still love God, the Bible and your gay son?

The search for that answer would lead Greg Sr. to an unexpected friendship. For Lynn, it would end one.

‘The Bible was not as black and white as I once thought’

To reconcile his son’s sexuality with his Christian views, Greg Sr. entered another arena that for evangelicals was as taboo as a gay bar: He started reading books and listening to sermons from religious and LGBTQ+ scholars who challenged his views on homosexuality. He came across a YouTube video of the man delivering a lecture at a New Zealand church. His name was David Gushee, one of the leading Christian ethicists in the US.

Gushee had White evangelical Christian roots. He became a born-again Christian in high school and later a Baptist minister. He, too, once believed that there could be no moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships.

A family crisis prompted the shift in his views. Gushee learned that his younger sister, Katey, had been hospitalized with depression, including one stay after a suicide attempt. She had struggled to accept her sexual identity as a lesbian before finally coming out.

Gushee started reexamining scriptures and the formation of the Bible. He talked to other LGBTQ+ people who grew up in the church but left. He heard horror stories about religious parents casting their kids onto the streets, where many fall prey to drug use and sexual predators.

Gushee took a stand. He urged for the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the church.

He rejected the “welcoming but not affirming” approach that many churches attempt to avoid demonizing LGBTQ+ people and alienating traditional conservatives.

“They ultimately fail to include LGBTQ+ people in the Christian community on equal terms with everyone else, while doing continued spiritual, psychological, familial, and ecclesial harm,” Gushee wrote in his book, “Changing Our Mind.”

Lynn McDonald shows a snapshot of her son, Greg Jr., from when he was seven years old. - Austin Steele/CNN

By this time the McDonalds had moved to Georgia, where Gushee lived and taught at a university. Greg Sr. was so taken by Gushee’s book that he wrote a letter to him and invited him to lunch. The two men met and became friends.

“David’s book helped open my mind, not change my mind,” Greg Sr. says. “I began to realize that the Bible was not as black and white as I once thought.”

Greg Sr.’s solution to his theological questions was to focus on another color in the Bible — the red letters in the New Testament that are attributed to Jesus.

And he came to a conclusion: A Christian parent can love their LGBTQ child not in spite of their faith, but because of it.

“There are things in the Bible that may or may not make sense, but what you can be assured of is that Jesus says to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that includes our children, straight or gay,” he said.

Greg Sr. also says he realized something else.

“It was as much of a choice for Greg Jr. to be gay as it was for me to have brown hair.”
The McDonalds lose some old friends — and make new ones

Twelve years after they confronted their son about his homosexuality, the McDonalds started sharing their story with anyone who would listen.

“Once we stepped out of the closet, our phone started ringing,” Greg Sr. says.

They met Christian parents who shared their struggles. A community was formed. And in 2015, they formed a support group for Christian parents with LGBTQ children called “Embracing the Journey” — the signature line Greg used in his emails while his wife fought breast cancer. They filed articles of incorporation one month before Lynn’s last major surgery.

In doing so they met new people and lost some old friends. Lynn had befriended several women in a home Bible study group, where her ministry never came up in the discussion. One day she finally asked her friends what they thought about it.

One woman said she didn’t like to think about the religious debate over homosexuality because the subject was “horrible” and “full of pain.” She told Lynn she had a nephew who was gay and that she thought homosexuality was “disgusting.”

“And she just went on about how awful it must be to do this ministry, and I’m thinking, ‘That’s my life she’s talking about,’’’ Lynn says.

Lynn says her friendship with the woman ended after that Bible study. She never met with that group again.

There were others, though, who affirmed the McDonalds’ ministry. One of them was David Quinones. He was a lay leader in the Episcopal Church when it started to split in 2003 over the ordination of a gay bishop. Quinones opposed the ordination.

One night, Quinones and his wife, Deb, received a call from the hospital. It was their son, Josh, then a senior in college. He told them he had attempted suicide because he was tormented over being bisexual (he was scared at the time to tell them he was gay).

“He was afraid we weren’t going to love him anymore and that we would reject him,” Quinones says.

David Quinones, his wife, Deb and their son, Josh. - David Quinones

Quinones says he and his wife also reacted with shame and secrecy after their son’s admission. That changed after they attended an “Embracing the Journey” session and met other parents who shared their struggle. Many of those meetings ended in tears. The Quinoneses have since joined the McDonalds’ ministry.

“What we needed was to be able to talk to other people who were struggling,” David Quinones says. “There’s this false narrative out there: Either I love my gay child, or I love God.”

That narrative, though, still holds tremendous power in the evangelical world. That’s what the McDonalds discovered when they got swept up in a controversy over something they did for their son.

What happened, Greg Sr. says, would “break my heart.”

A ‘Satan-drenched theology’ comes under attack

It was called the “Unconditional Conference,” and was scheduled for September 2023 at North Point Community Church in suburban Atlanta. Led by Andy Stanley, North Point is one of the largest evangelical churches in America. The McDonalds had joined North Point during the same year they moved to Georgia.

The McDonalds organized the conference with “Embracing The Journey” volunteers, and Stanley agreed to host it. The two-day event was promoted with a tagline: “In a world that makes us choose sides, experience a conference from the quieter middle.”

But what happened after the conference was announced was anything but quiet. Critics pounced. One said the conference promoted “Satan-drenched theology.” Others said the McDonalds had become part of a campaign to shift traditional views on marriage and sexuality. Social media fanned the flames.

Greg Sr. and Lynn McDonald speak at the Unconditional Conference in 2023. - Sterling Graves

One of the conference’s most prominent critics was the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, an author, podcaster and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Mohler wrote a column arguing the McDonalds’ conference was designed as a platform “for normalizing the LGBTQ+ revolution.” He wrote that “in truth, there is no ‘middle space’” on homosexuality because all “same-sex sexual behaviors” are clearly forbidden by the Bible.

He then took aim at Stanley, saying that his decision to allow the conference to be held at North Point was proof that the pastor was inching away from “historic normative Biblical Christianity.”

“Sadly, it looks like the train is about to leave the station,” Mohler wrote.

Not long after Mohler’s column appeared, Stanley stepped before his congregation on a Sunday morning and did something he’d had never done before: devote an entire sermon to directly responding to his critics outside his church.

Stanley addressed Mohler near the beginning of his sermon.

“I want to go on record and say I have never subscribed to his version of biblical Christianity to begin with, so I’m not leaving anything,” he said.

Stanley then proceeded to defend the conference, and the McDonalds. He said North Point wasn’t backtracking on its belief that biblical marriage is between a man and woman. But he argued that evangelicals must deal with what was happening to LGBTQ+ children in their churches because “86%” of LGBTQ+ people in the US grow up in church, “but they leave at twice the rate of straight people.”

R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, speaks at the National Conservative Conference in Washington D.C., on July 9, 2024. - Dominic Gwinn/AFP/Middle East Images/Getty ImagesMore

Stanley cited the McDonalds’ relationship with their son, and the isolation faced by many LGBTQ+ youth in the evangelical world. He also distanced his church from Mohler’s brand of Christianity.

“Bottom line, that version of Christianity draws lines. And Jesus drew circles,” Stanley said. “He drew circles so large and included so many people in his circle that it consistently made religious leaders nervous.”

While Stanley faced criticism from evangelicals, others would say he didn’t go far enough. They say a pastor should affirm, not accept, their gay members. But it’s what Stanley did before the sermon, though, that spoke just as loudly.

Greg Jr. had traveled to North Point’s sprawling campus before that Sunday to help his parents plan the conference. It was the first time he had set foot in a church in years. During one planning session, Stanley came by to greet the conference organizers. When he spotted Greg Jr., he dropped his backpack, walked up to him and gave him a hug.

Lynn McDonald looked on in amazement. Tears welled in her eyes.

“It was a healing moment, to see Andy love on my son,” she says. “Greg Jr. was finally being seen and heard.”

Stung by a deluge of public criticism, the McDonalds could have used a hug as well. For the first time, they were facing an army of anonymous Christian commentators trying to “fix” them. They wondered if they had inadvertently dragged their pastor into a no-win situation.

“It broke my heart,” Greg McDonald Sr. says today about Stanley’s sermon. “That he (Stanley) felt the need to do that to help his congregation understand why he would allow a conference to come to his church. There are plenty of LGBTQ+ people in churches, whether their pastors know it or not.”

Why did the McDonalds attract such withering criticism? The debate over homosexuality in the church is not new. Why was their public support for their son and other families like theirs so infuriating to many conservative Christians?

Gushee, the Christian ethicist, has a theory.

“They chose love over dogma,” he says. “The whole premise of their ministry is, ‘We’re not trying to tell you how to interpret scripture. But the bottom line is, love your child, stay in a relationship with them and go on the journey with them.’”
The McDonalds find a new family

One might say Greg McDonald Sr. stood up to all the criticism because of his faith, but there is another reason. He was bullied as a child because he had dyslexia. He failed the fourth and eighth grade. Some kids called him “retard” and teased him for riding on the “short bus,” a miniature school bus used to transport kids with physical and mental disabilities.

He hates seeing LGBTQ+ youth bullied.

“When I see someone being harassed and they can’t really fend for themselves, it makes the hair on my neck stand on end,” he says. “Especially when they’re bullied in the name of God.”

The McDonalds now have plenty of company on their journey. A year after the conference, they say their ministry has a team of 91 volunteers who offer support to families in England, South Africa, Australia, Ethiopia and other countries. They’ve written a self-help guide for parents of LGBTQ+ children called “Embracing the Journey,” and they speak at churches and conferences.

Greg McDonald holds a copy of his and his wife’s book, "Embracing the Journey." The book seeks to help Christian parents support their LGBTQ+ children. - Austin Steele/CNN

“The need is immense,” Greg Sr. says. “It just keeps growing. We wouldn’t be doing this if the church was already doing this. There are a lot of churches that are starting to do this, and we applaud them for that. But we need more churches entering in this conversation.”

The McDonalds have earned new nicknames within some parts of the LGBTQ+ community. They’ve been dubbed “McMom” and “McDad” by an assortment of LGBTQ+ children who have adopted them as surrogate parents after being rejected by their own families.

One of them is Patrick Potulski, who met the McDonalds through their son. Potulski was 21 when he says he fell out with his parents over his homosexuality. His parents are immigrants from Poland, a heavily Catholic country where homosexuality is still stigmatized.

He says the McDonalds invited him over to stay on weekends. They cooked dinner for him, played board games and watched movies with him. His parents eventually accepted him, but he says he won’t forget the McDonalds’ kindness.

“They were always so welcoming and accepting,” Potulski says. “Always offering a hug when I needed one.”

And Greg Jr.? He’s now a 40-year-old man with a thick mustache and a cheerfully blunt manner. An interior designer, he lives in Georgia and helps his parents with their ministry.

He no longer attends church, but he says he still considers himself a follower of Jesus. When asked what advice he would share with Christian parents with gay children, he says:

“Tell your kids you love them, teach them to be kind, let them be weirdos and let them fly their freak flag,” he says.

He then adds: “And don’t be an a**hole.”

Greg and and Lynn McDonald sit for a portrait with their son Greg Jr. at the McDonald home in Duluth, Georgia, on May 30. - Austin Steele/CNN

Greg Jr. is a stoic man, but his pride in his parents’ ministry is evident.

“My mom is the heart and soul of the ministry — my dad is everything else,” he says.

In recent years the McDonalds have added another face to the wall of family portraits hanging in their immaculate living room.

The largest photo shows Greg and Lynn with Greg Jr., and their daughter, along with her husband. Standing next to a beaming Greg Sr. is another person. He’s a tall, clean-shaven man with a boyish face. His name is Jon, and he’s Greg Jr.’s husband.

Greg Jr. and Jon were married in 2019. Jon has gone on vacations with the McDonalds and been to their house many times to cook meals and play board games.

“He loves my family,” Greg Jr. says. “He’s like their son.”

The McDonalds attended their son’s courthouse wedding. Lynn says it was “pretty surreal” to witness the ceremony.

“There was aways a little glimmer of hope that maybe he’d find a wonderful Christian girl and get married,” she says. “I was grieving when they said their vows. But I was also joyfully crying. I was grieving for my dream of what I wanted for my son, but also joyful that my son doesn’t have to do life alone anymore and he found someone who cares and loves him.”

How people regard the McDonalds’ journey may depend on their religious beliefs. Some say they have betrayed their faith. But the McDonalds say they’re even more committed to their Christianity — a faith that they say draws circles instead of lines.

The McDonald’s days of shame and secrecy are over. The Christian cocoon they built to shield their son may have crumbled, but once they broke free from it, their family soared.

After they discovered their son was gay, the McDonalds prayed to God that He would change him.

Their prayers were answered, they say — just not in the way they expected.

God changed them instead.

John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”

Opinion

The last temptation of Donald Trump: How he lured evangelicals to follow Satan

Nathaniel Manderson
Sun, November 3, 2024

Donald Trump Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images

Many distractions in this life can take a person away from their true path. Even as I put these words together, I think about everything unrelated to my writing. I think about my career and need to find work that gets me out of being constantly underemployed. I find myself looking around the coffee shop where I write. I watch other people talking. I wonder about their lives, and why they seem to have figured out something I have not. Sometimes my mind goes back to my history of making historically bad decisions. I think about my bills, my kids, past partners, my family and all the ways I generally feel sorry for myself. All the while good work needs to be done. In my own understanding, God's work needs to be done, yet this world's distractions and temptations keep me far from the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ.

As I consider the temptations in my own life, I realize that the current leadership of the evangelical church in America — which is my own religious background — has fallen prey to the temptations offered by Donald Trump. These temptations are eerily similar to the temptations the devil offered Jesus in the desert, before Jesus began his ministry.

For those of you who do not know this story, which is told most famously in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes into the desert to fast for 40 days and prepare himself to do his work. At this time, Satan comes to him, offering the same three temptations, at least as Christians understand it, that can pull anyone and everyone off their true path. They are the same temptations Trump has offered to the evangelical movement, with the difference being that the evangelical movement has chosen to follow Trump as he leads them away from God and closer to the path set forth by the devil himself.

The first temptation was the offer of turning stones into bread. Jesus would have been starving by that time, but his famous reply was that man does not live on bread alone. I must admit that the thought of having more money — more bread, both literally and metaphorically — is as powerful to me as to anyone else. I want to provide more for my daughters, and every time I have to explain to them why I can't afford something, it breaks my heart. Yet I also understand money has the potential to take me down a dangerous path, away from my true calling as a teacher and counselor.

Trump has offered the evangelical church a lot of bread, and the possibility to live the way he does. There are invitations to Mar-a-Lago, trips on the Trump plane, tax breaks for the wealthy and, on a larger scale, an economy that is constructed to benefit the richest people in our society, prominent evangelical ministers among them. In every area of life, when money becomes the end goal, community is undermined, art suffers and the truth is distorted. The church is no different. Evangelical leaders, by the way, are terrified of this message. They twist themselves into theological knots teaching and preaching that it's OK to be both a millionaire and a minister to the gospel of Christ.

I don't know if it is or it isn't, but I do know there is a specific message in the gospel about the temptation of greed, and I know that temptation can undermine the teachings of Jesus Christ. Somehow or other, for many evangelical Christians, paying proper wages to the working class, offering opportunities to the disadvantaged and welcoming foreigners have become evil things, and providing tax breaks for billionaires has become a foundation of the Christian faith. Trump has offered evangelical leaders almost limitless bags of cash, and those leaders will do anything to get their hands on it.

The devil's second temptation is the offer of protection and safety. In the gospel, he urges Jesus to jump off the roof of the temple — if he is truly the son of God, surely his father, will protect him. Jesus replies that we must not put the Lord God to the test. This is an interesting temptation that we often encounter in life. The desire for comfort, safety and protection is almost universal. In my career, I have greatly desired job protection, for example, but that is never guaranteed when you are committed to telling the truth. Diplomacy was never my strong suit and my working life has been a struggle. I wish it weren't that way, but over time it has taught me that sometimes security becomes more important to people than their own integrity.

I see that in the evangelical support of Donald Trump. His offer of protection is clear, and something he discusses all the time. He promises to keep the Christians safe from the evil forces of liberalism. The left is coming for your guns, he tells them. They will persecute you for your Christian faith. Your children are in danger of conversion by the "woke" mob on college campuses, on television, in the big cities. Never fear, believing Christians, Donald Trump will keep you safe.

The problem with this message — other than the fact that it comes from the devil — is that there was no promise of safety for those who chose to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is the follower who risks their own safety by choosing to love their enemies, heal the sick, serve the poor and love those who are cast out, imprisoned or powerless. That is hard to do under any circumstances, but especially for someone who is sitting at home on their couch and is only interested in the rights of people who agree with them and think as they do.

It should be obvious that Jesus Christ did not live a safe life, a protected life or a comfortable life. Promises of protection and safety would have taken him off course just as Trump's temptations have taken the evangelical leadership away from what should be their true mission.

The final temptation offered by the devil, and by Trump, is the most obvious. The devil offers Jesus power over the whole world, and all he has to do is kneel before Satan and submit to his authority. I feel that I barely have to write anything here — the truth of this is louder than anything I can put into words. People support politicians, most of the time, based what they perceive as their own self-interest. I am no different. My fight for the working class, and for the first-generation college students I have worked with and supported has been at the heart of my politics. I do not seek power as such, but I definitely want more and better opportunities for the population I love. The idea of gaining personal power and greater influence is a natural temptation but, again, that again could take me away from my true calling on the front lines of this work.

Power does corrupt, as it most certainly has in the case of evangelical support of Donald Trump. Pastor Robert Jeffress is hardly the only example, but no one embodies the corrupting force of that this temptation better than he does. That man loves the power of the White House and the power Trump has provided him. Jeffress will create whatever theological explanation he has to in his efforts to return Trump to the White House.

I often listen to Jeffress on the radio. He's a good speaker, about as good as it gets in the evangelical realm. He likes to tell a story how he managed to talk himself into the Oval Office when he was on a school trip to Washington as a teenager. It may be a more instructive parable than he realizes, because Jeffress has been doing everything he can to return to that office ever since. All he had to do, in fact, was to submit to the authority of Donald Trump. This temptation, the corrupting force of power, can prevent a person of faith from supporting those people they are claiming to help. Once these ministers have tasted that kind of power, it is like an addiction. Nothing else can satisfy them.

My recent employment has been as a hospice chaplain, ministering to dying people and their families. It's a job that stays with you on a very deep level. Every day, I am faced with families who are trying to say goodbye to a loved one, and with people who are trying to say goodbye to life. This is not always a peaceful transition, no matter what many of us would like to believe. There is sometimes great anxiety, loss of control and anger.

What I have learned is a great but simple truth: Death comes for all of us, regardless. People of faith, successful people, people who have failed, people who believe they have done everything right and people who have done almost everything wrong. Their lives before the final stage hardly matter, and those final days are often difficult and sad. The comforts of this world have left them. Power, safety and money are all gone, and revealed as empty pursuits in the end. Those things — the temptations of Trump and the devil — only tend to keep a person from their true path, distorting their relationships, their careers, their family life, their art or their writing, their politics and their faith.

I have reached the inescapable conclusion that the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the evangelical church in America are going in opposite directions. The evangelical church is heading closer to the devil. It has submitted to Donald Trump and moved ever further away from a man who served the poor, healed the sick, loved his neighbors and taught his followers to do the same. Evangelical leaders have stopped listening to Christ. There is only one other alternative.

Authoritarian movements depend on political religions — not least in America

(RNS) — On Election Day 2024, one is on offer.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at Rocky Mount Event Center, Oct. 30, 2024, in Rocky Mount, N.C. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Mark Silk
October 31, 2024


(RNS) — From Russia and Hungary to Turkey and India to the U.S. of A., actual and wannabe authoritarians make a practice of imbuing their movements with religious significance, in a way that identifies them with the sacred dimension of their nations.

All nation-states sacralize themselves to some degree. In the U.S., texts from the Declaration of Independence to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” are treated as holy, and Washington is littered with temples and shrines, from the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and the U.S. Supreme Court to the various war memorials. Not to mention our military sites — the battlefield at Gettysburg, the Valley Forge camp and above all the burial grounds for those who served in the armed forces such as Arlington National Cemetery.

We have come to call this civil religion, defined by the Italian scholar Emilio Gentile as “the conceptual category that contains the forms of sacralization of a political system that guarantee a plurality of ideas, free competition in the exercise of power, and the ability of the governed to dismiss their governments through peaceful and constitutional methods.” In Gentile’s view, “civil religion respects individual freedom, coexists with other ideologies, and does not impose obligatory and unconditional support for its commandments.”


This civil religious inclusivity helps explain why we ban partisan political activity in U.S. military cemeteries — a ban Donald Trump was widely regarded as having violated in August, when he visited Arlington with family members of military personnel killed in the United States’ 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. The headline on a column by USA Today’s Marla Bautista read, “Trump’s appalling desecration of Arlington National Cemetery shows he still can’t be trusted.”

Only something sacred can be desecrated.

The opposite of civil religion is what Gentile calls “political religion”: “the sacralization of a political system founded on an unchallengeable monopoly of power, ideological monism, and the obligatory and unconditional subordination of the individual and the collectivity to its code of commandments.” Political religion is therefore “intolerant, invasive, and fundamentalist, and it wishes to permeate every aspect of an individual’s life and of a society’s collective life.”

A historian of fascist Italy, Gentile is above all interested in the expressly secular totalitarianisms of the mid-20th century. Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, he argues, constructed fascism, Nazism and communism as national political religions to some extent modeled on familiar religious beliefs and forms.

Civil religion and political religion à la Gentile are, to be sure, ideal types. A civil religion can have aspects of a political religion, and a political religion may likewise incorporate civil religious forms.

Thus, with the onset of the Cold War, American civil religion was expressed so as to exclude atheistic communists. The addition of the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 was explicitly intended to differentiate the U.S. from the Soviet Union and its godless supporters, as was the designation of “In God We Trust” as the national motto two years later.

The Air Force Academy chapel in Colorado Springs, Colo. 

(Photo by Anthony Quintano/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

A quintessential expression of that moment is the Air Force cadet chapel in Colorado Springs, Colorado, built in 1959. It is, in form, a militarized version of a Christian church — an apparent expression of political religion. But it is very much an expression of the civil religion of the times in featuring separate Protestant, Catholic and Jewish chapels inside.

Contrast this with the cathedral of the Russian military, consecrated in 2020: a Russian Orthodox church with no nod to religious inclusion in a country that is only 40% Russian Orthodox and where fewer than half the citizens consider themselves Christians of any sort. It perfectly expresses the alliance Russian President Vladimir Putin has made with Russian Patriarch Kirill, harking all the way back to the linkage of church and state in the Byzantine Empire.

Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, center, and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, right, at the consecration of the Cathedral of Russian Armed Forces outside Moscow, June 14, 2020. (Oleg Varov, Russian Orthodox Church Press Service via AP)

A mini-me version of Putin’s political religion has been cooked up by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who governs with the idea of “illiberal democracy” — a nice term for populist authoritarianism. Presenting Orbán with the “gold degree” of the Order of St. Sava, Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije praised him for “defending Christianity.” Orbán “fights for the soul of Europe,” the patriarch said. Replied the prime minister, “We are peaceful people, we want peace, but there is indeed a war for the soul of Europe, and without Christian unity – including Orthodoxy – we cannot win this battle.”

Such use of religion can look like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s incorporation of Islam into his own authoritarian regime. The difference is that where Erdogan’s Islamism serves to appeal to Turkey’s sizable conservative Muslim population, the Christianism (to put it that way) of Putin and Orbán has no significant religious grassroots constituency, but seems all about rebuilding a postcommunist authoritarian ideology. In the case of Hungary, it resists at once immigration (from Muslim countries) and the pluralistic liberal culture of Western Europe.

How religious constituencies function under authoritarian regimes depends, of course, on how they view those regimes, and vice versa. A half-century ago, Shiite Muslims protested against the authoritarian Shah of Iran, who sought a connection to the glory days of the pre-Islamic Persian Empire. In 1979, these turned into parades supporting the authoritarian regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which promoted Islamic legal authority as the basis for a theocratic political religion.

A different kind of switching sides occurred in Myanmar, where religious power resides in the community of Buddhist monks. In 2007, the monks denied legitimacy to the military regime by refusing to accept its alms — symbolically represented by “turning over” their begging bowls. The regime yielded but reestablished its power via a genocidal campaign to rid the country of the Muslim minority Rohingya, in which anti-Muslim monks played an ideological role.

Meanwhile, hostility to Islam has been at the center of the Hindu nationalism successfully advanced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Its ideology of Hindutva has generated a postsecular political religion that builds on hostility to Muslims in India dating to the Moghuls.

In America, meanwhile, Donald Trump’s incorporation of a form of Christianity into his MAGA movement is personified by his principal spiritual adviser Paula White, a Pentecostal pastor who has praised Trump as “chosen by God to protect religious values.”

White has been strongly influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation, a politically ambitious collection of charismatic Christians who are the subject of “The Violent Take It by Force,” an important new book by Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. Credited with providing Christian nationalists with their marching orders, the NAR should be understood as promoting a political religion based on Christian supremacy summed up in the so-called Seven Mountains Mandate.

The mandate holds that Christians should ascend to dominion over the “mountains” of contemporary culture: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business and government. As Taylor puts it in describing one of the movement’s leaders, while he “speaks the language of democracy and justice and constitutional rights, his ultimate vision is a retrenchment from democracy in the church and society.”

I don’t want to suggest that the MAGA movement is all about establishing the NAR political religion. But there’s no question that NAR ideas have spread through MAGA world.

As for Trump himself, it’s anything but clear that he knows or grasps the Seven Mountains Mandate. But like other authoritarian leaders, he is driven inexorably toward the exclusivism of a political religion. And it’s the NAR’s political religion that’s on offer from the Republican Party this Election Day.\\

Opinion

The ‘Courage Tour’ is attempting to get Christians to vote for Trump − and focused on defeating ‘demons’

(The Conversation) — The ‘Courage Tour,’ a religio-political rally, is going around battleground states. It is focused on defeating Democrats, but also on defeating ‘demonic forces.’

Michael E. Heyes
October 30, 2024

(The Conversation) — As a scholar of religion, I attended the “Courage Tour,” a series of religious-political rallies, when it made a stop in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, from Sept. 27-28, 2024.

From what I observed, the various speakers on the tour used conservative talking points – such as the threat of communism and LGBTQ+ “ideologies” taking over education – and gave them a demonic twist. They told people that diabolical forces had overtaken America, and they needed to expel them by ensuring Donald Trump was elected.

The tour is attempting to get those Christians to vote for Trump. The tour has moved through several battleground states such as Arizona, Michigan and Georgia, drawing several thousand people at every site.

The tour is not only focused on defeating Democrats but also on defeating demons. The idea that demons exert a hold over the material world is a key feature of the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, worldview. The NAR is a loose group of like-minded charismatic Christian churches and religious leaders – sometimes termed “prophets” – who want to see Christians dominate all walks of life.

As someone who recently finished a book on the intersection of demons and politics, “Demons in the USA: From the Anti-Spiritualists to QAnon,” I was eager to see this combination for myself. I believe it would be a mistake to think that the New Apostolic Reformation is a fringe group with no real influence.
The influence and reach

The group has an associated nonprofit organization known as Ziklag – named for a town in the Hebrew Bible that is an important site associated with David’s kingship – with deep pockets for the movement’s goals. A ProPublica investigation found that the group had already spent US$12 million “to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the New Apostolic Reformation “the greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you have never heard of.”

The diffuse nature of NAR membership and its rapid growth make it difficult to gauge followers: Estimates have placed the number of NAR adherents between 3 million and 33 million, but individuals who may not label themselves as part of the NAR might nevertheless agree with the group’s theology.

Moreover, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s presence at the meeting I attended is also a tacit and significant endorsement for this group.


The ‘Seven Mountain Mandate’

According to NAR’s theology, there are “seven mountains” that govern areas of worldly influence, and Christians are destined to occupy all of them. These mountains are religion, government, family, education, media, entertainment and business.

Known as the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” this “prophecy” first rose to prominence in 2013 with the publication of “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate,” written by Bill Johnson, lead pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, and member of the NAR, and Lance Wallnau, NAR prophet and one of the founders of the Courage Tour. In the book, the Seven Mountain Mandate is trumpeted as a message received directly from God.

The NAR perceives the majority of these mountains as currently occupied by diabolical spiritual forces. To counter these forces, the NAR engages in “spiritual warfare,” which are acts of Christian prayer that are used to defeat or drive out demons.

As religion scholar Sean McCloud writes, these prayers can be taken from “handbooks, workshops and hands-on participation in deliverance sessions.” Deliverance sessions involve diagnosing and expelling demons from an individual.

Alternatively, it is not uncommon for pastors to incorporate spiritual warfare into church services. For example, in a much-reported sermon, Paula White-Cain, the former spiritual adviser to Trump, commanded all “satanic pregnancies to miscarry.” In the sermon’s context, satanic pregnancies were not literal pregnancies. Instead, White-Cain was praying for the failure of satanic plots “conceived” by the devil.

In NAR theology, all Christians are embattled by demons, and spiritual warfare is a necessary part of life. As scholar of religion André Gagné writes, the NAR sees spiritual warfare as happening on three “levels.”


The ground level occurs in a case of individual exorcism or deliverance, a kind of “one-on-one” battle with demons. The second level is the occult level, in which believers seek to counter what they believe to be demonic movements such as shamanism and New Age thought. Finally, there is the strategic level in which the movement does battle with powerful spirits whom they believe control geographic areas at the behest of Satan.


Friday night on the Courage Tour.

The Courage Tour

The Courage Tour is part of a strategic-level act of spiritual warfare: Stumping for Trump is really about exerting Christian influence over the “government mountain” that followers of the NAR believe to be occupied by the devil.

According to the speakers on the tour, America is in trouble: It is currently being run by “the Left,” or Democrats, a group that is slowly pushing the U.S. toward communism, a system of government in which private property ceases to exist and the means of production are communally owned.

It claims that the Left wants to see this shift occur because it is populated by “cultural Marxists.” This is part of a far-right conspiracy theory that suggests all progressive political movements are indebted to the ideas of Karl Marx, whose Communist Manifesto is most closely associated with communism.

In more extreme forms of communism, nation-states disappear – an idea reflected in speakers’ frequent criticism of “globalism,” which was generally defined as a single, worldwide governmental structure. The group rejects globalism on the grounds that God instituted nation-states as a divinely ordained form of government.

Wallnau described globalism as a sign of the beast and the end of days, and claimed that “the intent of that Marxist element in our country is to collapse our borders.”




Promotional sign on the Courage Tour for My Faith Votes, an organization that encourages voters to vote biblically.
Michael E. Heyes, CC BY

Demonizing queerness

The speakers further claimed that this demonic Marxism was perverting the educational system in the United States. For example, numerous speakers criticized schools for supposedly indoctrinating or “evangelizing” children with “LGBTQ ideologies.”

Wallnau even suggested that the “trans movement” began “in the days of Noah” when the fallen angels of Genesis 6 married human women and had hybrid children. This echoes a discussion Wallnau and Rick Renner had on the “Lance Wallnau Show,” linking such “ideologies” to fallen angels and the Apocalypse.

This negative view of nontraditional gender and sexual orientations is a long-lived feature of the group. John Weaver, a scholar of religion, notes in his book “The New Apostolic Reformation” that the group’s ideas are indebted to conservative theologian Rousas John Rushdoony, who supported the death penalty for homosexuals.

Likewise, religion scholar Damon T. Berry writes that members of the movement believe that “demonic spirits” are “acting to subvert the will of God through aspects of culture like the toleration of homosexuality, abortion, addiction, poverty and political correctness.”

Wallnau encouraged the audience on the Courage Tour to “fight for your families because I don’t want to leave behind a demonic train wreck for my children.”

As hard as it is to believe, one of the most important questions of the election might well be – how many Americans believe in demons?

(Michael E. Heyes, Associate Professor and Chair of Religion, Lycoming College. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)


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