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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018

‘Toxic Christianity’: the evangelicals creating champions for Trump

Author:     Harriet Sherwood
Source:     Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     21 Oct 2018 01.00 EDT
 Link: ‘Toxic Christianity’: the evangelicals creating champions for Trump
Stephan:   When I was a young man recently out of the army, I was reporter in Virginia Beach, and I watched as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and other leaders in the emerging christofascist movement gathered at the recently founded Liberty University, and devised a plan. They committed to creating a cadre of clerics, to take over the military chaplain corps and install christofascist chaplains, and to get their followers to fund creating universities that would turn out lawyers, judges, media graduates, and politicians. The purpose of all this: To breach the church-state wall the Founders had put in place and to take over the infrastructure of the American government from the inside. They were quite clear about this, and have pursued these efforts ever since. Here is a realtime analysis of where they are today.

Donald Trump poses with the Liberty University president, Jerry Falwell Jr.
Credit: Steve Helber/AP

Three times a week, 15,000 students stream into the Vines Center, a huge silver-domed building on the campus of Liberty University for “convocation”, an intoxicating mix of prayer, political rally and entertainment. Thousands more watch a live stream of the event.

The star attraction has twice been Donald Trump, in 2012 and 2016. His first appearance was as a successful businessman and reality TV star, the second as the man campaigning to be the Republican party’s candidate for president. Last year, he made a third appearance at Liberty, to address the university’s graduation ceremony. By then, he was one of the most divisive leaders in the country’s history.

But not at Liberty. The Christian university which dominates the town of Lynchburg, Virginia, has become almost synonymous with Trump. It sits at the heart of the alliance between the president and conservative evangelical Christians – an alliance forged in part by Jerry Falwell Jr, […]

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1 Comment

  1. Rev. Dean on Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 3:42 pm

    I cannot believe these people (at Liberty) call themselves Christian. They act like the devil, not like Jesus, and do not know the meaning of Jesus’s words {or what they are claimed to be by the (chosen) writers} of the New Testament Bible, which were chosen by clergy men many years after the death of Jesus.