New York Times opinion writer Timothy Egan published a scathing rebuke of Evangelical Christians who “give cover to an amoral president” because they believe God is using Trump to promote their causes.
The op-ed, published on Friday, notes how evangelicals allegedly have turned a blind eye toward Trump’s rhetoric and appear to be thrilled by Trump’s bullying antics.
“There has never been anyone who has defended us and who has fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump,” conservative activist Ralph Reed said at a gathering of Christian activists earlier this summer.
Egan describes Vice President Mike Pence as wearing “his faith like a fluorescent orange vest,” but said that faith turned invisible when he visited the United States’ southern border this summer and saw human beings “crammed like cordwood in the Texas heat,” lumping him in with “the phonies, the charlatans.”
“Pence is the chief bootlicker to a president who now sees himself in messianic terms, a president who tweets a description of himself as ‘the second coming of God,'” Egan writes.
He also claims that “millions” of Americans believe in a version of “Jesus Trump, Superstar,” a comedic reference to the 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar.
Egan sets out to condemn Catholics, as well. He notes the decision of Indianapolis Archbishop Charles C. Thompson to remove a Jesuit high school of its Catholic identity this summer for refusing to fire a gay, married teacher. A similar school in another part of the city was forced to terminate one of its teachers after it was revealed he had married another man.
Thompson’s actions are “selective moral policing,” according to Egan, which angers good people of faith. He claims that a majority of Catholics support same-sex marriage, saying that Christ does not condemn homosexuality in the Bible.
Egan asserts that “young people are leaving the pews in droves” because religion is too often used as a weapon for loathsome behavior. He indicates people of faith should instead look to the example of a nun who opened up a shelter for migrant children along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Faith is not that complicated. Religion always is,” Egan writes.
