1) Everywhere I’ve seen articles headed “200 evangelical leaders slam Christianity Today“* The 200 denounce the author of the spirited editorial in Christianity Today because they claim he “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.” Let’s look at this. offensively questioned: If they were not offended the editorial failed. Pharisees find any criticism deeply offensive and sometimes react violently. questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions: No. He was not questioning the integrity of the tens-of-millions, but of their leaders. Like speaks to like, and evangelical hustlers swarm around Trump because their avarice, debauchery, lust for power, demagoguery, and insincerity are perfectly matched by his. I read that he is going to install in the White House his thrice-married spiritual director and Chair of the Evangelical Advisory Board, Pastor Paula White, as a kind of Secretary of Religion. Pastors of mega-churches, televangelists, and evangelical movers and shakers must be hoping that evangelicalism is on its way to again being made the state religion and that Trump will force America to be “christian country.”

*Google search could not squeeze all this into their titling over a Fox report, so it reads “Nearly 200 evangelical leaders condemned Christianity ….”      

2) Trump’s craving for secrecy is a paradox. He has led a resolutely public life of which most would be ashamed. So why the utter refusal to cooperate with Congress? Maybe he believes in the divine right of kings to be never answerable to the people they govern. Maybe he is so absolute in his refusal to cooperate because if you give them something innocuous, then they will be demanding something that could be damaging. Or maybe he thinks that the monarch-president is more broadly protected by the Vth amendment and so all his court can decline to testify because it might tend to incriminate Trump. Or maybe it is as simple as John 3:20: “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”