Evangelicals are suckered by con man Donald Trump and at least a few are speaking out

Echo essay opinion published in RawStory (an investigative news website) by Tom Boggioni:

In a blunt-talking column published by the Charlotte Observer, a lifelong Evangelical expressed dismay that Christians have been taken in by Donald Trump who could not be less like Jesus Christ.

According to Isaac Bailey, Christians who are still standing by the former guy president, despite his record of criminality and incitements to violence, need to "wake up" and realize they have been suckered by a con man who has been preying on them since he was first elected in 2016.

Russell D. Moore is an American theologian, ethicist, and preacher. In June 2021, he became the director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today, and on August 4, 2022, was announced as the magazine's incoming Editor-in-Chief.

Referring to comments made by Christian leader Russell Moore* about the influence the former guy president has had on parishioners who are now claiming that the words of Jesus show weakness, Bailey wrote, "Maybe in their minds, Trump is the Jesus of Revelation. He’s the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords with a sword in his mouth who has come back to judge the righteous and unrighteous, to wage war." (OMG❗)

With that in mind, he continued, "It’s why they view every Trump indictment not as democracy working as intended, upholding the principle that no man is above the law, but as akin to a lash from a Roman soldier’s whip on Jesus’ back. I wish it weren’t true. But it is."

Using the case of Edgar Maddison Welch, who showed up at a "Washington, D.C., pizza parlor, convinced he had to save children from an imaginary satanic child sex ring funded and operated by Democrats," while armed with an AR-15 "only to realize too late he had been taken in by a hoax. He was sentenced to four years in prison," as an example, Bailey said that should be lesson to all Christians who have fallen under Trump's cult spell.

Evangelicals have been suckered by a con man!

"I hope those who’ve come to believe Trump is here to save us wake up before it’s too late for us all," he warned.

*When Donald Trump came on the scene, Russell Moore criticized him publicly, but found himself ostracized by many other evangelical leaders who had embraced the former guy president. 😞

Dorothy Day: "Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul."

An essay published in The Conversation

"...for Dorothy Day (1897-1980), Jesus Christ appeared in every poor person who came to share a meal at a house of hospitality."

Sandra Yocum - Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Dayton (Photo credit "America Magazine")

Servant of God Dorothy Day was an American Catholic activist and founded the Catholic Worker movement, establishing houses of hospitality and advocating pacifism.

Dorothy Day died 38 years ago. Her life followed an unorthodox path – moving from rejecting religion in favor of activism to embracing Catholicism and integrating it with social action through the Catholic Worker Movement.

A hero of the Catholic left, Day found an unlikely champion for her canonization in New York’s conservative archbishop, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, who hailed her as “the saint for our times.”

At their November 2012 meeting, the U.S. bishops unanimously supported her cause, and the Vatican accepted the recommendation, naming her “Servant of God.” If an investigation proves her life to be exceptionally virtuous, she will be declared “venerable.”

However, to declare her a saint, two miracles through her intercession will need to be proven. The process is long and complex, and only three other American-born Catholics, all women, have been canonized. The Catholic Church remembers the life of saints at daily Mass on their feast day, usually the day of death.

What most appeals to me, as a scholar of Dorothy Day, is her ability to discern beauty in the midst of her harsh and demanding life. In that, she has a lesson for the times we live in.

An early radical life

The arc of her early life followed an unconventional path. In her 1952 autobiography, “The Long Loneliness,” Day reveals her lifelong attraction to the radical life among anarchists, socialists and communists.

Dropping out of the University of Illinois in 1916, she followed her family to New York City and found work as a journalist and freelance writer. 

Living on her own, she spent much of her time among radicals like Max Eastman, editor of socialist newspaper “The Masses” and communist. As a journalist, she took up the cause of striking workers. She loved to read in her spare time and found especially inspiring the work of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.

She was also an activist. In 1917, Day joined a friend in a suffragette protest which led to their arrest and incarceration at the notorious Occoquan work farm in Virginia. Day describes in vivid detail the guards’ brutality, grabbing her and dragging her to her cell.

She subsequently participated in a hunger strike with her companions to protest against such treatment.

After her release, she returned to New York, working odd jobs and drinking until dawn with an assortment of friends in a bar nicknamed “Hell Hole.” She recalls with fondness the playwright Eugene O'Neill reciting Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven.” As she wrote in her biography, the hound’s relentless pursuit fascinated her and caused her to wonder about her own life’s ultimate end.

She went through times of deep personal sorrow. Her granddaughter, Kate Hennessy, reveals in “Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty” Dorothy’s heartache of failed love affairs, including procuring an illegal abortion. The trauma contributed to her strong opposition to abortion after becoming Catholic.

The highs and lows of this life left Day unsettled, and she recalls slipping into the back of St. Joseph’s Church, on Sixth Avenue, taking solace in watching Mass as dawn broke over the cityscape.

Becoming a Catholic

Then, in 1925, Dorothy Day fell in love with Forster Batterham, the brother of a friend’s wife, a transplanted southerner, a lover of nature and, like Day, of opera. They shared her Staten Island cottage and conceived a child, Tamar Therese, born in 1926.

She describes in loving detail her life with Forster, “walking on the beach, resting on the pier beside him while he fished, rowing with him in the calm of bay, walking through fields and woods.”

It was the birth of her daughter that connected her to the beauty of the divine in a deeply personal way. She wrote,

“The final object of this love and gratitude is God.”

She was moved to worship God with others. Even though the man she loved rejected all institutions, especially religious, Day had her daughter baptized a Catholic and herself less than six months later.

This ended her common law marriage, though in her memoir, her granddaughter, Hennessy, makes abundantly clear that her grandfather, Forster, remained a constant presence throughout her grandmother’s life.

About five years later, Day met Peter Maurin, a French immigrant who taught her about Catholic radicalism. They founded the Catholic Worker Movement and began publishing a newspaper by the same name in May 1933 to disseminate their radical Catholic vision as a counter to Communism.

That same summer a Catholic Worker Movement community formed and lived in what Maurin called a “house of hospitality,” a place of welcome to every person, especially the poor. Day explains the gospel inspiration for these houses of hospitality.

“The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way of knowing and believing in our love.”

The Catholic Worker Movement continues to thrive through its newspapers and houses of hospitality.

Saving beauty

For Day, beauty appeared wherever God was present. This meant Day came to see beauty everywhere and in everything.

She believed Christ’s saving beauty appeared not only on the altar at Mass but also around every Catholic Worker Movement table. Jesus identified with the least, and so, for Day, Christ appeared in every poor person who came to share a meal at a house of hospitality.

Her writings make clear that she never wavered in this conviction.

This attentiveness to beauty translated to everything commonplace in her daily life. Another Day scholar told me of his vivid memory of an elderly Dorothy gazing intently at a jar of unkempt wild flowers that were quite unremarkable in their abundance and fleeting in their beauty.

Day’s keen sense of wonder at commonplace beauty remained a hallmark of being a witness to God’s love. Three years before her death, she wrote:

What samples of His love in creation all around us! Even in the city, the changing sky, the trees, frail though they be, which prisoners grow on Riker’s Island to be planted around the city, bear witness. People – all humankind, in some way.“

In sharing with her readers the view from her Staten Island cottage, she wrote:

"the bay, the gulls, the ‘paths in the sea,’ the tiny ripples stirring a patch of water here and there, the reflections of the cloud on the surface – how beautiful it all is.”

Dorothy Day surrounded herself in the beauty of a loving God made manifest in the least – something contemporary culture could learn from.

Medicine of caresses ~ from Pope Francis

Pope Francis Calls Nurses, "Experts In Humanity" - Thanks Nurse Who Saved His Life ~ The medicine of caresses

Love is the best medicine, Pope Francis tells pediatric patients

Pope urges nurses to touch the sick like Jesus

Pope Francis met representatives of Italy’s National Federation of Professional Nursing Orders in the Vatican 

Pope Francis met Italian nurses on 3 February, 2018.  (Vatican Media)

VATICAN CITY - "I thank her and I want you to know her name: Sister Cornelia Caraglio,” said Pope Francis as he remembered the nurse who saved his life, at 20 years old.

"When, at the age of 20, I was on the verge of death, she was the one who told the doctors, even arguing with them, 'No, this isn't working. You must give more,'" the Pope said during a meeting with thousands of nurses - members of Italy's national association of nursing professionals.

“And thanks to those things [her suggestions], I survived,” recalled the Pope.

The Pope Thanks Nurses
Pope Francis thanked all nurses in attendance, "you are there all day and you see what happens to the patient. Thank you for that!" he continued, “many lives, so many lives are saved thanks to you!”

He spoke about the importance of the nursing profession and the unique relationships nurses form with all members of the healthcare team - patients, families, and colleagues. Pope Francis stated that nurses are at “the crossroads” of all these relationships.

Furthermore, Pope Francis acknowledged the “truly irreplaceable” role nurses play in the lives of their patients. “Like no other, the nurse has a direct and continuous relationship with patients, takes care of them every day, listens to their needs and comes into contact with their very body, that he tends to,” stated Pope Francis.
The Pope called nurses, “promoters of the life and dignity of the persons.”

He spoke about the sensitivity they acquire from “being in contact with patients all day," and addressed the healing power of listening and touch. Calling touch an important factor for demonstrating respect for the dignity of the person.

He praised nurse’s continuous and tiring commitment to their individual patients despite the patient’s societal status. Calling a nurse’s care particularly important in a society which often leaves weaker people on the margin, only giving worth to people who meet certain criteria or level of wealth.


Pope Francis called the nursing profession “a real mission,” and referred to nurses as, “experts in humanity.”

When speaking of touch, Pope Francis told the story of when Jesus healed the Leper through touch. Encouraging the nurses, "we must recognize the importance of this simple gesture," Pope Francis said. "Mosaic law forbid touching lepers and banned them from approaching inhabited places. 

But Jesus went to the heart of the law, which is summarized in love for one's neighbor," stated Pope Francis.

While acknowledging the difficulty of the nursing profession, Pope Francis encouraged patients to have patience with nurses, to not demand things from nurses and to smile more at their nurses.
The Pope reminded nurses, "a caress, a smile, is full of meaning for one who is sick. It is a simple gesture, but encouraging, he or she feels accompanied, feels closer to being healed, feels like a person, not a number.”

Pope Francis encouraged nurses, to not forget the “medicine of caresses.”

Good Friday slaughter in Kenya - unfortunately the Christians are martyrs

As the Christians of the world are mourning the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Kenyan people are embroiled in the aftermath of a terror attack on a college in Garissa. In the planned "surprise" deadly attack, the Chrisians were targeted by the killers.

BBCNews reports - Locals question why security was not heightened, with only two guards on duty at the time of the attack.

In my opinion, the Kenya killing attacks were calculated to coincide with the Christian remembrance of Good Friday, because the murderers were reported to have spared the Muslim students.  

Clearly, the Christians are martyrs, while the murderers are criminal evil doers. In the words attributed to the Apostle Matthew 24:26  "But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born."

Kenya al-Shabab attack: Security questions as Garissa dead mourned - BBCNews

Kenya is mourning 148 people killed in Thursday's al-Shabab attack on Garissa university campus, amid questions over why warnings were ignored.

Kenyan newspapers say there was intelligence information of an imminent attack on a school or university.

Locals question why security was not heightened, with only two guards on duty at the time of the attack.

Four more people have been found alive on the campus, but two are suspects and have been arrested, sources say.

One is said to be a Tanzanian national with no known links to the university.

Kenya's interior minister declared the recovery operation over.

Joseph Nkaiserry identified the victims as 142 students, three police officers and three soldiers.

"We have called off the operation after combing the whole university, all the bodies have been removed from the scene and brought to Nairobi," he said after arriving back in the capital.

Police in neighbouring Uganda say they have received information suggesting a similar attack is being planned there. Attack warning

Security services appear to have had some information that an attack on an institution of higher learning was in the offing and appear to have warned institutions to be careful, the Daily Nation newspaper reports.

It says the university of Nairobi warned its students on 25 March that it had received intelligence information about a possible attack on a university and asked them to be vigilant.

Please pray for Tim and Cheri Hoke in Uganda....God protect them and their students from harm.

Right Winger Limbaugh Should Stick to Politics

My thinking about right wing radio pundits is to prevent their name from appearing in the media, because these zealots thrive on their notoriety. Nevertheless, ignoring them isn't always possible when their outrageous behavior must be admonished.

Right wing radio nut, Rush Limbaugh, must be experiencing low radio ratings. Otherwise, why in the world would he dare to challenge Pope Francis on political grounds? He's terribly wrong.

Limbaugh claims Pope Francis talks like a Marxist because he defends wealth sharing with the poor. Although I certainly don't know Pope Francis, I'm sure he's unaffected by Limbaugh's blabber mouthing.  

In daring to challenge Pope Francis about his opposition to "trickle down" economics, a theory about how the rich somehow magically share wealth with the poor, Limbaugh's extremist position finally confirms what most social justice liberals have been saying for decades. In other words, conservatives like Limbaugh can't achieve eternal salvation because they ignore the Beatitudes, preached at The Sermon on the Mount by Jesus Christ. 

As a matter of fact, challenging Pope Francis may well have determined the eternal salvation of the bombastic Russ Limbaugh. Thankfully, Pope Francis also believes fervently in forgiveness, so Limbaugh still has a chance to redeem himself. 

Nevertheless, Limbaugh violated the most important tenet of the Beatitudes:  Jesus condemns those who judge others before first judging themselves: "Judge not, that ye be not judged.

People who follow radio pundits expect Limbaugh to act in bizarre ways when the egotist is determined to get attention. But, like Jesus said to his followers, render unto Caesar things that are Caesars. Limbaugh should stick to his political rantings and stay far, far away from mentioning Pope Francis.

I predict Limbaugh's radio demise is forthcoming. Cancelling his show is long over due. 

Moreover, his criticism of Pope Francis is inappropriate.

Meanwhile, I advise Limbaugh to retract his judgmental statements about Pope Francis. There's virtually nothing to be gained by having right winger Limbaugh confirm what social liberals believe about his eternal salvation.  

A Christian can't be a political conservative. It's incongruous. 

Pope Francis has every right to call out conservatives for their arrogance towards the poor. On the other hand, Limbaugh and his minions have no right whatsoever to criticize the Pope. 

Entitlements for the Rich - Manifesto by Steven Pearlstein

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/i-am-a-job-creator-a-manifesto-for-the-entitled/2012/09/28/756f2e90-07ee-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_story.html

Some voting Americans are creating a new interpretation of Biblical teaching about the poor.

Columnist Steven Pearlstein gives us words to ponder in this regard when he writes: "I am a Job Creator: A Manifesto for the Entitled"

Maine Writer's op-ed: Americans pride ourselves as a Christian nation, but seem to give little attention to the Beatitudes Jesus Christ gave us in his Sermon on the Mount. 

http://www.trinitystudycenter.com/mount/matthew_5-1-12.php 

Some claim the Sermon on the Mount is the New Testament appendix to The Ten Commandments, written in the Biblical Book of Exodus, by Moses http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+20&version=NIV

Neither Biblical document references deferential treatment for people based on race or socio-economic status. Moses didn't tell rich people or poor people "Thou shalt not steal". He said this law applies to everyone, equally. Although Jesus said the poor would inherit the earth, his reference included those who are servants of the poor. In other words, one could argue that Jesus referred to sharing the wealth. As a matter of fact, Jesus even demonstrated this generosity, by multiplying the loaves and fishes, so everyone who came to see him could eat - presumably, for free.

http://kingofages.com/2012/07/18/john-6-1-15/

Although I sure wish this manifesto had been my own creation, why re-invent this copyrighted brilliance. Here's the manifesto from Mr. Pearlstein as printed in the Washington Post (link above). By the way, pay attention to the narcissistic "I":

I am a private-equity fund manager.

I am the misunderstood superhero of American capitalism, single-handedly creating wealth and prosperity despite all the obstacles put in my way by employees, government and the media.

I am a job creator and I am entitled.

I am entitled to complain about the economy even when my stock price, my portfolio and my profits are at record levels.

I am entitled to a healthy and well-educated workforce, a modern and efficient transportation system and protection for my person and property, just as I am entitled to demonize the government workers who provide them.

I am entitled to complain bitterly about taxes that are always too high, even when they are at record lows.

I am entitled to a judicial system that efficiently enforces contracts and legal obligations on customers, suppliers and employees but does not afford them the same right in return.

I am entitled to complain about the poor quality of service provided by government agencies even as I leave my own customers on hold for 35 minutes while repeatedly telling them how important their call is.

I am entitled to a compensation package that is above average for my company’s size and industry, reflecting the company’s aspirations if not its performance.

I am entitled to have the company pay for breakfasts and lunches, a luxury car and private jet travel, my country club dues and home security systems, box seats to all major sporting events, a pension equal to my current salary and a full package of insurance — life, health, dental, disability and long-term care — through retirement.

I am entitled to have my earned income taxed as capital gains and my investment income taxed at the lowest rate anywhere in the world — or not at all.

I am entitled to inside information and favorable investment opportunities not available to ordinary investors. I am entitled to brag about my investment returns.

I am entitled to pass on my accumulated wealth tax-free to heirs, who in turn, are entitled to claim that they earned everything they have.

I am entitled to use unlimited amounts of my own or company funds to buy elections without disclosing such expenditures to shareholders or the public.

I am entitled to use company funds to burnish my own charitable reputation.

I am entitled to provide political support to radical, uncompromising politicians and then complain about how dysfunctional Washington has become.

Although I have no clue how government works, I am entitled to be consulted on public policy by politicians and bureaucrats who have no clue about how business works.

I am entitled to publicly criticize the president and members of Congress, who are not entitled to criticize me.

I am entitled to fire any worker who tries to organize a union. I am entitled to break any existing union by moving, or threatening to move, operations to a union-hostile environment.

I am entitled to a duty of care and loyalty from employees and investors who are owed no such duty in return.

I am entitled to operate my business free of all government regulations other than those written or approved by my industry.

I am entitled to load companies up with debt in order to pay myself and investors big dividends — and then blame any bankruptcy on over-compensated workers.

I am entitled to contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, loans and even bailouts from government, even as I complain about job-killing government budget deficits.

I am entitled to federal entitlement reform.

I am entitled to take credit for all the jobs I create while ignoring any jobs I destroy.
I am entitled to claim credit for all the profits made during a booming economy while blaming losses or setbacks on adverse market or economic conditions.

I am entitled to deny knowledge or responsibility for any controversial decisions made after my departure from the company, even while profiting from such decisions if they enhance shareholder value.

I am entitled to all the rights and privileges of running an American company, but owe no loyalty to American workers or taxpayers.

I am entitled to confidential information about my employees and customers while refusing even to list the company’s phone number on its Web site.

I am entitled to be treated with deference and respect by investors I mislead, customers I bamboozle, directors I manipulate and employees I view as expendable.

I am entitled to be lionized in the media without answering any questions from reporters.

I am entitled to the VIP entrance.

I am entitled to everything I have and more that I still deserve.

Maine Writer's finale:  Americans Christians! How Do You Plead?