At the 2016 Southern Baptist Convention, messengers from churches across the nation approved a resolution calling for Americans to “discontinue the display of the Confederate battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ.”
The speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, Philip Gunn, was there (full Baptist Press report here) as chair of the Southern Baptist Seminary board of trustees. He went home determined to help do something about his state’s flag. Mississippi’s new flag dropped the Confederate symbolism of the old, replaced by a magnolia blossom and the phrase “In God We Trust.”
This is clearly an example of a major evangelical institution using its clout — “power,” if you will.
This brings us — using a back door, I will admit — to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to listen to that), which focuses on the waves of coverage about Christians symbols and banners among participants in both the “Save America March” backing Donald Trump and the deadly riot outside and inside the U.S. Capitol. How did some F-bomb screaming rioters end up chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” while others nearby played loud Contemporary Christian Music?
The hook for this rather complicated podcast discussion with host Todd Wilken was one of those voice-from-on-high, magisterial New York Times passages — with zero attribution to sources — that speaks for the Acela Zone ruling elites. The double-decker headline proclaimed:
How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism
A potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war.
Are we talking about ALL Trump loyalists? Or is it simply MANY of them? Hold that thought, because we will return to it shortly.
But here is the key passage that needs to be read carefully, more than once:
The blend of cultural references, and the people who brought them, made clear a phenomenon that has been brewing for years now: that the most extreme corners of support for Mr. Trump have become inextricable from some parts of white evangelical power in America. Rather than completely separate strands of support, these groups have become increasingly blended together.
