Backlash

From their own. A couple of stories that popped up over the weekend. (I would have noted them sooner, but I lost both internet and phone Saturday morning. Obviously, they're back now.)

First, former evangelical Frank Schaeffer doesn't have much in the way of kind words for Tony Perkins, who, you will remember, is of the "it's all forgotten and forgiven" school of Trump suck-ups:

Tony Perkins seems to have forgotten the basis of Christian theology, not just evangelical, which is to be forgiven in this tradition, you need to confess first. Donald trump never confesses to anything, and the one time he apologized for molesting a woman in a criminal assault, which was caught on tape, he tried to take the tape back, said he would sue the women who claim he assaulted them and call them all liars. This is not a confession.

So, Tony Perkins forgot his own theology and instead replaced it with a theology of revenge on people he disagrees with politically. And that is what is going on here. It's revenge of white America. It is revenge of evangelical right-wingers and who they want to punch in the mouth is not just black Americans, people, to put it in the president of the United States' words, “who live in shit hole countries,” but anybody who disagrees with them.

He also gives Franklin Graham an honorable mention:

So when Franklin Graham defended Donald Trump, he is defending a man who is not only destroying the reputation of this country, but who has become the figurehead for, in a bad sense, the #MeToo movement. The president himself, an assaulter, a criminal assaulter of women who bragged on it and called anyone who accused him a liar, in a party that now represents the grossest underbelly of human primate behavior.

And none other than the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today let Jerry Falwell, Jr., have it:

Noting that Falwell stated, “All these things [Trump’s affairs] were years ago, and he has apologized,” [editor Mark] Galli called out the evangelist for getting his facts wrong in an effort to provide cover for Trump.

“In fact, the payoff for one of the alleged affairs was offered a mere 14 months ago; meanwhile, Trump has never apologized for his affairs, only for his lewd remarks in one video,” Galli wrote. “He’s never asked forgiveness as far as I can tell. But even if we charitably assume he has privately apologized to these women and to his wife, Falwell’s exegetical justification for Trump’s adulteries is startling.”

He's not as blunt as Schaeffer, but he gets his point across.

Pass the popcorn.