RELIGION
Concerning the problems Americans are facing, ex-president Trump said, “I alone can fix it.” Many of the MAGA cult believe that Mr. Trump is the Messiah. They venerate and worship him. He holds himself out as a preacher and prophet. He publicly waives the bible over his head. He also sells bibles for profit on T.V. He is supported by a base of extreme evangelical Christian Protestants who somehow do not concern themselves with Mr. Trump’s behavior.
What is he getting away with?
He can pay off a porn star with corporate funds in a tax-deductible scheme, defraud students in a failed Trump University, be involved in over ten business bankruptcies including casinos, hotels, country clubs, a mortgage company, a travel site, a vodka business, a meat business which involved charges of switching labels and lasted less than two months. He’s been involved in about 3,500 legal cases. The Trump Organization paid $750,000.00 to settle a claim for misusing nonprofit funds from the 58th presidential Inaugural Committee. He has failed to pay his creditors, divorced his wife, engaged in adultery, bragged about groping women in the crotch, lied about winning an election that he lost, has been charged with illegally trying to overturn an election, has been convicted of filing false papers with banks inflating his assets in order to obtain loans and lying to the government by understating these assets. He has been charged with illegally taking classified documents from the government to his home, not securing them and refusing to return them. He is recorded trying to pressure a foreign country to go after his political opponent. He is accused of avoiding military service, insulting our military heroes, including John McCain, calling them fools and suckers, and accusing a top-ranking general who was trying to protect our country, of treason. He is accused of fomenting the invasion of the Capitol building by encouraging his followers who stormed the building and attacked the police. He surrounded his first campaign and administration with a band of criminals and abused his presidential power by pardoning them, all without remorse. He, himself, is a convicted felon and knowingly falsified business records. Additionally, he was found to have sexually abused and defamed a woman who also accused him of rape. Is this a religious leader? Are we really “suckers and fools?” Yet almost all the Republicans fear him and follow him and praise him despite the criticisms they had of him in the past. Federal Judge Cannon loves him and dismissed the charges against him. The Supreme Court protects him, appears to want to keep any criminal cases against him from going to trial and rules for him far beyond anything that constitutional scholars could have imagined.
So, here’s what we can expect, The Supreme Court will find that “separation of church and state” is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution and therefore does not exist. They will find that the President, while in office, has the absolute God given right to proclaim and decree that Evangelical Christian Protestantism is the official religion of the United States. How can the Court do this when the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees religious freedom and prohibits the establishment of a religion? Simple! How did they find that the President is immune? They will use a special originalist theory about what the Founding Fathers thought. Read carefully. The Constitution only prohibits CONGRESS from making a law establishing a religion. It doesn’t prohibit the President from proclaiming or decreeing that there is an official religion. Also, they will probably find that the President has the right to freely practice his own religion and the religious beliefs which he is proclaiming are universal.
Under the Trump administration all private and public buildings will be required to display the ten commandments and his portrait. All meetings of any type, sporting and other events, entertainments. parades and gatherings shall be compelled to commence and end with Christian prayer invoking God to preserve and protect our country and our president, Donald Trump. All buildings throughout our country and embassies in foreign lands shall have the words “God Bless America and Donald Trump” emblazoned on them. An alternate phrase is available, namely: “Donald Trump and America First”.
There will be no need to pass the hat at church because a ten percent tithing tax will be included when you pay your income tax and used to support government approved religious activities. Attendance at church services will be compulsory.
All “other” religions will be required to remove any signage or symbols from their churches or temples, mosques and other religious buildings. They will not be allowed to proselytize or practice their religion in public.
If you are Gay or a lesbian, included in LGBTQ+, watch out! They are coming for you! The MAGA Christians hate you. You will most likely be declared infidels and an “offence to God.” You will be an outcast and an “undesirable” and an immoral criminal. You very well may, after a speedy trial, as a convict, be deported to a penal colony retraining camp in northern Alaska where you will be compelled to perform forced labor, maintaining the new oil pipelines until you are “cured.” You had better get out the vote this November!
All official documents including passports, drivers’ licenses, voting registration, birth certificates will be stamped with religious symbols and display the owner’s religion in large letters. There is already a movement to change the name of Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. to ”The Trump International Airport”. Expect the core of the MAGA religious movement to attempt to change the name of the National Cathedral to “Saint Donald’s Cathedral.” Please don’t think that this is so far-fetched that it could never happen.
Open a history book. There it is. Christians are the most persecuted people in the world. The Romans abused the Christians terribly. Besides the Crucifixion, Nero had Christians eaten by the lions sixty-four years later. Persecution of Christians goes on to this day. Muslims do not accept anyone leaving Islam. In Afghanistan Christian converts must flee the country or be killed. Yet we support the economy of that country. In North Korea Christians are subject to imprisonment, torture and death. Yet Mr. Trump hugs Kim Jong Un. Christians would be wise to stay out of Libya and Somalia.
What about the Catholics killing Protestants? They each have been killing one another in the name of God for a long time. There were the Hessian Wars, the Thirty Years War, the Reformation and the many internal battles in England, France, Ireland, Germany and Switzerland.
Talking about religious hatred, consider the Jewish People. In the 1930’s the Jews thought themselves loyal Germans first, just like the American Jews, but Hitler hated them and had their religion banned, their businesses burned, their homes taken away and had them rounded up and sent to concentration camps. SIX MILLION innocent Jews including women and children were executed by the Nazis because of their religious beliefs. This is all happened during our lifetime. We lived through it. The world did little or nothing to stop it. America turned back a boatload of Jewish immigrants knowing what they would face. And the German Jews never saw it coming. It could happen again, here!
The name of God has been used and misused throughout the ages. Most recently at the Republican Convention Donald Trump proclaimed, “God is with us,” or words to that effect. He said that “God wants us back in the White House.” That’s a hard statement to fact check, but again, it wasn’t original or the first time that God’s endorsement was announced. “Gott Mit Uns” was imprinted, surrounding a swastika, into the metal of belt buckles used by Nazi soldiers in World War II. It didn’t seem to work for them and probably won’t work for Mr. Trump, because the Nazi belt buckle we saw was taken from a dead Nazi soldier.
Mr. Trump and his religious MAGA followers might do better by checking out their bibles and reading Mathew 7: 12. “In everything do unto to others what you would have them do to you.”
GOD BLESS OUR WAR HEROES AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!