As supporters of US President Donald Trump’s allegations of voter fraud have persisted in questioning the results of the election five weeks since it was called for Joe Biden, some evangelical leaders have had enough.
Karen Swallow Prior, an evangelical author and professor, tweeted on Friday that she was ashamed to have voted for local and state GOP candidates, many of whom backed lawsuits challenging the election.
“What a bunch of money-grubbing, power hungry, partisan cowards who care nothing about conservatism,” Swallow Prior, a self-described life-long conservative, said in her tweet.
Southern Baptist author and speaker Beth Moore speaks during an event in Birmingham, Alabama, on 10th June, 2019. PICTURE: RNS/Adelle M Banks/File photo.
Author and columnist David French published a column Sunday on The Dispatch titled, “The Dangerous Idolatry of Christian Trumpism”, maintaining that “the frenzy and the fury of the post-election period has laid bare the sheer idolatry and fanaticism of Christian Trumpism”.
Perhaps most notably, Beth Moore, a popular Southern Baptist author and speaker, took to Twitter on Sunday to voice her frustration and seeming bewilderment at the Christian zeal for Trump, saying that in her more than 63 years, she has “never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism”.
With a warning to her nearly one million followers that she would be blunt, the founder of Living Proof Ministries posted a thread in which she called on Christians to “move back” from Trumpism and insisted Christian nationalism “is not of God”.
Moore had particularly strong words for her “fellow” Christian leaders, who she said have a responsibility for protecting their congregants.
“We will be held responsible for remaining passive in this day of seduction to save our own skin while the saints we’ve been entrusted to serve are being seduced, manipulated, USED and stirred up into a lather of zeal devoid of the Holy Spirit for political gain,” she tweeted.
Within a few hours, the tweet thread garnered nearly 40,000 likes and more than 3,000 comments on both sides of the issue. More than a few commenters said that Moore should “stay in her lane”. By mid-afternoon Sunday, “Beth Moore” was trending nationally on Twitter.
Moore added to Sunday’s twitter thread by stating that the answer to Trumpism, for Christians, cannot be “Bidenism”.
“We do not worship flesh and blood. We do not place our faith in mortals. We are the church of the living God. We can’t sanctify idolatry by labeling a leader our Cyrus. We need no Cyrus. We have a king. His name is Jesus,” she tweeted.
Her tweets came a day after thousands of pro-Trump protesters gathered in Washington, DC, on Saturday for the “Jericho March”, with speeches by Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano and evangelical commentator Eric Metaxas, both of whom invoked their faith in support of President Trump and his allegations of voter fraud in the November election.
“Let us ask God to make truth and justice triumph,” Vigano said in a pre-taped message.
Many of the protesters waved flags that included Christian imagery, alongside Trump slogans and “Stop the Steal” messages.
Courts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia have repeatedly rejected claims of mass election fraud and other irregularities. On Friday, the US Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asking the court to block those states from certifying their votes.
Elsewhere in Washington on Saturday, people reportedly affiliated with the hate group Proud Boys tore down Black Lives Matter signs belonging to churches and setting at least one aflame.
Moore has been the subject of controversy in the past, most often in response to her teaching Scripture to mixed-gender audiences, which many conservatives say undermines Southern Baptist teaching.
Correction: The name of the article’s author has been corrected.
