Steve Bayne FACEBOOK
Glenn Beck handed over the evangelical vote to Trump. Beck now qualifies as the Grand Pooh-Bah of that part of Christian America that over the years has been transformed into something resembling a cult more than the religion of the Englightement thinkers who brought us the ideas behind the Constitution. Beck’s Christianity comes closer to snake handling and witch cults than it does the Christianity that brought us the renaissance and the principles of tolerance.
Christians, what’s left of them, are becoming far too sophisticated to be manipulated by the likes of Beck or Cruz. Evangelicals in S. C. and elsewhere have left the finger wagging to the provincial political class, moral simpletons who use Christianity to “knife” their political opponents in the back (or front, as the case may be). Christians worthy of the name understand that salvation is not a political act, and that it is the individual relation to the Deity – not blind conformity to an imposed local stereotype – that constitutes the substance of their faith.
The Pope fares just as badly by any reasonable standard of what should be man’s relation to God. More on him, later.