If ever there was an award for resolutely, completely, unequivocally, absolutely, categorically, unambiguously, decisively rejecting the election results of the world’s leading democracy, it must go to my evangelical cousins (ECs from Misc. 37) ! It doesn’t matter that 30 of the 31 or so courts that were approached for countermanding the election on the grounds that the voting / counting was fraudulent, refused to countenance the appeals as they lacked merit. It doesn’t matter that Republican senators specially summoned to the White House for a white- washing session returned home to pronounce a Democratic victory. It doesn’t matter that the much loved Fox News made the call for Biden much ahead of the hated “fake” main stream media.
Even after Emily Murphy of the General Services Administration (a Trump appointee) belatedly and reluctantly came to the conclusion that Biden is indeed the winner, the ECs continue to sing the refrain that “there has been massive voter fraud all favouring Biden. It is up to the courts to decide if the result might have been different absent the fraud. The Biden supporters, including mainstream media, are screaming for Trump to concede. But there are rules governing the process. In the end, Biden may take the White House, but it will not be surprising if the process leads to a Senate vote wherein each state gets one vote. Were that to happen, Trump would win at least 32-18”.
(credit: cnn.com)So the embers of hope are not that easily put out. Which, as a principle is a very good thing; hoping against hope, when all the votes have been cast and counted! But I don’t know what keeps them alive. Perhaps the knowledge that beyond all lesser courts there is the United States Supreme Court which has been carefully packed with conservatives for just “such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). Perhaps Paula White’s African and South American angels are having a rough time crossing hills and dales, oceans and deserts and are somewhat delayed in their move to converge on D.C. to work their democracy defying magic.
Mind you, it might not be as fanciful as I have made out. Trump’s cry of “fraud” and “rigged” might soon echo in the hallowed chambers of The Supreme Court. The numbers there being what they are, the decision should be predictable. No doubt ” vote switching, all computer errors favouring one candidate, multiple votes by one individual, votes by illegal immigrants, and the inclusion of votes by dead people” will all be weighed. Trump may triumph and be hailed by collective hosannas by democracies around the world. There will of course be whimpers of the US essentially becoming a “Banana Republic” by the much loathed main stream media, but who cares! Righteousness will once again rule; the name of Christ will be glorified by the mere action of the President clutching the Bible momentarily (British usage). This picture will doubtless dominate the minds of the faithful to the happy exclusion of all the reported dark deeds of the President and his blatant failure to uphold Christian values in his personal behavior or advance them in the public square.
(credit: foreignpolicy.com)But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The fight is far from over. As Timothy Dalrymple writes in Christianity Today, “evangelical believers who have long laboured in the same fields now find themselves in warring camps. One camp declares they cannot comprehend how men and women who share their faith could possibly support the incumbent. The other camp wonders how anyone nurtured by the Word could reject the incumbent”. Burdened as he is with the weight of the Christian organ he heads, and the need to balance opposing views, Dalrymple would have us believe that both the camps are evangelical, but the real evangelicals know that “those who are not with them are against them”(Matthew 12:30); they are all progressive liberals bound to hell. It matters little that ” they study the same Scriptures, affirm the same creeds, and sing the same hymns”; they are, quite simply, the children of perdition.
According to Dalyrimple, “the vices of the President seem small to the evangelicals when the virtue of the world hangs in the balance”. But he doesn’t explain how “virtue” and “Trump” can proceed from the same mouth (James 3:10). Strangely,the evangelicals who make much of their spirituality, seem to lack the faith that “the same God who spoke the stars into being, who has preserved the church around the world for two thousand years, can preserve the American church against four years of political exile”, if indeed such treatment of the church is top most in the minds of the Biden-Harris duo. Can it be said categorically that they care little for the sanctity of life and the protection of church and family? (my irrepressible mind at this stage runs pictures of little immigrant children separated from their parents and incarcerated under Trump’s watch near the Mexican border). To his credit Dalrymple does not throw himself lock,stock and barrel into the camp of the evangelicals. He is careful enough to write that “I believe the evangelical alignment with the Trump administration has advanced the kingdoms of men but not the kingdom of God. I worry it has damaged the culture and tarnished our witness for generations. Of course, I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong. But I lament that so many people now look at evangelicals and see Trump instead of Christ”.
(credit: pinterest.com)It is worthwhile noting that the the tone of the evangelicals is getting increasingly shrill post-counting of votes. There is now a lot of talk about end times, anti Christ’s abominable reign and the fulfillment of Daniel’s dark prophesies. In this radically polarized age, they are calling to one another to gird up their loins and prepare for persecution, while all the time nursing their not so secret hope that the fat lady will not mount the dais and take the microphone to tell them that Trump is well and truly vanquished.
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