This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I borrow this headline from the Washington Post.

It appeared over a column that agreed with one of my main contentions, about which I have written several times:  There is huge risk for religion in this country when so-called “White evangelicals” have headed, in legions, toward Donald Trump and his acolytes, thus perverting true Christianity.

The so-called “White evangelicals” are not evangelical at all.  They give rot to the word evangelical, so I decline to use it anymore in any positive sense.

Here is how Post columnist Jennifer Rubin started her recent column:

“Much has been written about White evangelicals’ central role in the fraying of democracy.  More attention, however, should be paid to the damage the political movement has inflicted on religion itself.

“The demographic — which remains in the throes of White grievance and an apocalyptic vision that postulates America (indeed “Western civilization”) is under attack from socialists, foreigners and secularists — forms the core of the MAGA movement.  Many have rejected the sanctity of elections, the principle of inclusion, and even objective reality.

“The consequences have been dire for American politics.  The siege mentality has morphed into an ends-justify-the-means style of politics in which lies, brutal discourse and even violence are applauded as necessary to protect ‘real America.’  

“Essential features of democracy, such as the peaceful transfer of power, compromise with political opponents, and defining America as an idea and not a racial or religious identity, have fallen by the wayside.”

Sadly, Rubin writes, “the degradation of democracy has intensified in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory.  The doctrinal elevation of the ‘big lie,’ the increase in violent rhetoric and the effort to rig elections, all reflect a heightened desperation by the MAGA crowd.”

While lovers of democracy note the risks for the U.S. form of government, Rubin advocates that we “should not lose track of the damage the MAGA movement has wrought to religious values.”

Peter Wehner, an evangelical Christian (sorry, I borrow the word “evangelical” one more time) and former adviser to President George W. Bush, agrees with Rubin, though they write from separate points of view in different publications. 

In a column for Atlantic Magazine, Wehner reports how a recent speech from Donald Trump, Jr. reflects the inversion of religious faith.

“The former president’s son,” Wehner writes, “has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP:  The scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have gotten us nothing.”

Then, he adds, “decency is for suckers.” 

I say Trump and his son are the ones who are indecent.

Trump, Jr. believes, as his father does, that politics should be practiced ruthlessly, mercilessly, and vengefully. The ends justify the means.  Norms and guardrails need to be smashed.   Morality and lawfulness must always be subordinated to the pursuit of power and self-interest.  That is the Trumpian ethic.

Sounds selfish, right?  Well, it is.

Wehner continues:

“Understanding this phenomenon goes a long way toward explaining the MAGA crowd’s very unreligious cruelty toward immigrants, its selfish refusal to vaccinate to protect the most vulnerable, and its veneration of a vulgar, misogynistic cult leader.  If you wonder how so many ‘people of faith’ can behave in such ways, understand that their ‘faith’ has become hostile to traditional religious values such as kindness, empathy, self-restraint, grace, honesty, and humility.

“In this upside-down world White evangelicalism has become, the willingness to act in self-sacrificial ways for the sake of vulnerable others — even amid a global pandemic — has become rare, even antithetical, to an aggressive, rights-asserting White Christian culture.  The result is reckless self-indulgence that places some evangelicals’ own aversion to being told what to do ahead of the health and lives of vulnerable populations.”

And, not to mention self-indulgence for themselves as they eschew, for example, vaccines and masks.

There is no hint of awareness that their actions are a mockery of the central biblical injunction to care for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, and the vulnerable among us.

Another writer put it this way:

“It’s important to say this straight.  This refusal to act to protect the vulnerable is raw, callous selfishness.  Exhibited by people I love, it is heartbreaking.  Expressed by people who claim to be followers of Jesus, it is maddening.

“If these trends continue uninterrupted, we will wind up with a country rooted in neither democratic principles nor religious values.  That would be a mean, violent and intolerant future few of us would want to experience.”

I concur, on at least two grounds:

• First, it makes absolutely no sense to mix politics and religion.  In Mark 12:17, the Bible counsels us “to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”  Good advice.  Keep religion – or the term I prefer, Christianity – separate, except to allow your Christian convictions to influence how you act and behave in society, including in politics.
• Second, political dogma – especially from the “White evangelical” movement described above — pollutes real Christian beliefs.  The church should be about God, not politics.

There, I said it again.  With emphasis.