Thread: First Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress' gospel of division does not represent my Dallas

First Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress' gospel of division does not represent my Dallas

Filed under Commentary at Jun 7
Robert Wilonsky, City Columnist

I had not intended to take the Dallas North Tollway home Wednesday night — the radio said there was an accident and that northbound traffic was backed up into downtown. But I guess God — or, more likely, The Ticket's Mike Rhyner, to whom I was listening to at that moment — had other plans for me. By habit, I pulled onto the toll road only to wind up dead-stopped within a few seconds, staring at a billboard from which First Baptist Dallas senior pastor Robert Jeffress grinned back.

Next to Jeffress it said, in all caps, "AMERICA IS A CHRISTIAN NATION." My rabbi warned me there would be days like this.

The newly planted billboard touts a "Freedom Sunday" worship service June 24 at the downtown church and hosted by the man who serves as one of President Donald Trump's main spiritual advisers — a job that appears to be part propagandist, part contortionist. According to a video Jeffress prepared for Freedom Sunday, there will be "inspiring patriotic worship" and "a salute to our armed forces," followed by the Fox News' commentator's "special message" advertised on that billboard.

There will be indoor fireworks, too, which is not how they concluded the Last Supper. And first-time visitors to First Baptist will receive a copy of Jeffress' book Twilight's Last Gleaming: How America's Last Days Can Be Your Best Days, a grim piece of work about "the coming collapse of our nation," according to Mike Huckabee's foreword.

Consider this your semi-regular reminder that Jeffress, Fox News' go-to religious authority, is among this city's most divisive voices. Nothing he says shocks me anymore. I mean, this is a preacher — a follower of Christ — who actually said, "America is not a church where everyone should be welcomed regardless of race and background."

Which is the opposite of Hebrews 13:1. And, I think, the rest of the Bible.

Still, the billboard caught me off-guard. I took a picture while in standstill traffic, then tweeted it when I got home. Sent to a friend who used to attend First Baptist — used to. Even dispatched to some city leaders, among them Mayor Mike Rawlings, whose grandfathers were Nazarene ministers, and who speaks often of being a follower of Christ.

"I don't mind someone being proud of the Christian tradition in America — it's obviously there," said Rawlings. "But one of the strengths of Dallas is our faith-based community [and] it's the strength that makes us a city of love versus a city of hate."

There is nothing at all unique or original about Jeffress' sermon, which he first gave this time last year and sells as a DVD/CD package on his website, alongside such titles as The End Times Illustrated and Countdown to the Apocalypse: Why ISIS and Ebola Are Only the Beginning. It's just one of his many greatest hits on a setlist that includes such standards as "Mormonism is a Cult," "Abortions Caused 9/11," "Jews Are Going to Hell," "Islam Promotes Pedophilia" and "Evangelicals Just Don't Care if Donald Trump Had Sex With a Porn Star."

"American Is a Christian Nation" is his "Free Bird."

"The politically incorrect truth is, the vast majority of the men that founded our nation were evangelical Christians," Jeffress has said, repeatedly, in various iterations. Yet he preaches a gospel that has been repeatedly debated — and disproved — by scholars and researchers, among them Willamette University law and history professor Steven Green, who three years ago published a book on this very subject: Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding.

"From where did the idea of America's founding as a Christian nation arise?" Green wrote for CNN in 2015. "In a nutshell, it arose in the early 19th century as later generations of Americans sought to establish a national identity, one that distinguished and exemplified the founding by sanctifying the nation's origins. This is the origin of the 'Christian nation' myth."

Princeton University history professor Kevin Kruse writes in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America that the myth formed much later. He said its seeds were planted by business leaders who enlisted clergymen to wage war against the New Deal, and that it took root during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.

In the 1950s, Kruse has written, "the federal government, which the Christian libertarians had long denounced as godless, was increasingly seen as quite godly instead. Congress cemented these changes, adding 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance and adopting 'In God We Trust' as the nation's first official motto."

Deep history is behind the words on that billboard — a library full of argument. But all I saw Wednesday was someone telling me and everyone else who does not worship Jesus Christ that we do not belong here.

"That is not the Christ I follow," the mayor of this city said Thursday. "It's not the Dallas I want to be — to say things that do not unite us but divide us. I never heard those words, that voice come out of Christ. Just the opposite. I was brought up to believe: Be proud of yours, but do not diminish mine."

Bless us all.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/c...present-dallas

Ironically, Jeffress is not a spiritual leader, he lacks all the reverence, temperance, manners and decency needed to be one. He's a promoter, an "evangelical" political leader.

Just a word to Fox, when he's on now, you're off and I'm on CNN or Netflix.

Advice to Trump, keep some distance.

Advice to Southern Baptist Convention, sigh, what has happened to you? Do you not count all the "used to goes" who have left your politicized churches? I'm still a member, but my membership is in my home state with the wonderful church I grew up in, because since I moved many years ago coupled with all your nonsense, I've found absolutely no reason at all to move it, which means I don't attend and I don't give. Shame on you all!!

America is a Christian Nation, simply because the vast majority of Americans align with some type of Christ based religious organization. But if SBC Pastors like Jeffress are allowed to attack our laws, supreme court rulings, girls and women who choose to terminate unwanted and/or unsafe pregnancies, gay and transgender people, well, then the SBC has wandered so far from Christ, there is no point to the Southern Baptist Convention at all.

The wonderful Southern Baptist Church I was raised in taught Jesus, tolerance, love, appreciation, good works, kindness, manners and decency. We studied all race groups, were taught to love them all, studied other countries through our international missions, and appreciated all countries even when they were very different from ours, we were taught to be positive and polite, friendly and helpful, judge ourselves not others, and no man or woman EVER talked about sex, wombs, or any other private matter during a sermon, a sunday school class, a meeting, a circle, or to the best of my knowledge any other time that would in any possible way relate back to our church.