Batshit crazy

Rod Dreher can’t say this because he’s friends with him, but Eric Metaxas is batshit crazy. As a prominent “Christian” commentator (Rod is sure of his Christian sincerity; I can’t share that assurance), he brings the Christian faith into disrepute.

I’m especially concerned about the millions who don’t know a Methodist from an Evangelical from a Catholic from an Orthodox.

Maybe God is doing something — just not what Trumpy Evangelicals want Him to do. He is surely exposing intellectual and theological rot: the kind that inspires Christian leaders to declare apocalypse, exhort believers to shed blood and prepare for martyrdom, and to denounce anyone who disagrees as devil-driven collaborators with history’s greatest evil — all for a cause that the leader cannot even begin to explain.

I was talking to my wife about this, and she got pretty upset (and has given me permission to share this story). She was a senior in high school — First Baptist Academy in Dallas — when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush. She said that the adults in their circles had been encouraging students throughout the campaign to believe that if Bill Clinton was elected, it would be indescribably awful, but not to worry, because God would surely not let that happen. And yet, it happened. She said it’s hard to express the titanic sense of shock that she and other students had that day. This was not supposed to happen! God had failed!

My wife said that when Christian leaders talk like Eric is talking, they set people up to question their entire faith. If Joe Biden is sworn in, does that mean God has failed, or abandoned us? Or, if Christian authorities were wrong about Trump getting a second term, what else are they wrong about? Are they wrong about who Jesus is?

Words mean things!

Eric Metaxas’s American Apocalypse

Andrew Sullivan took note, too:

Biden’s victory was not God’s will. Therefore it couldn’t have happened. That’s the core conviction. That no court and no judge, including conservative ones, can find any evidence for it in over 50 lawsuits does not matter. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. “Who cares what I can prove in the courts? This is right. This happened,” declared influential evangelical Eric Metaxas this week, asserting Trump’s victory as a metaphysical truth.

Most (but not all) of the signator[y attorneys general and congressmen] know the case has no chance. They also know that by filing an amicus brief, they’re communicating exactly the opposite message to their constituents.

David French, The Case Against Xavier Becerra

Every once in a long while, the court needs to invest some of its accumulated capital in issuing judgments that are not only legally right but also respond to imminent, tangible threats to the nation. That is particularly appropriate when, as here, the court finds itself being used as a tool to actively undermine faith in our democratic institutions — including by the members of the court’s bar on whom the justices depend to act much more responsibly.

In a time that is so very deeply polarized, I cannot think of a person, group or institution other than the Supreme Court that could do better for the country right now. Supporters of the president who have been gaslighted into believing that there has been a multi-state conspiracy to steal the election recognize that the court is not a liberal institution. If the court will tell the truth, the country will listen.

Editorial: Don’t just deny Texas’ original action. Decimate it. - SCOTUSblog