Wednesday, August 09, 2017

ROD DREHER APPARENTLY UNAWARE TILL NOW THAT RIGHT-WING MINISTERS LOVE AMERICAN WAR

A Republican president is rattling sabers and an evangelical preacher linked to that president is loudly shouting "Amen":
Texas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, one of President Trump’s evangelical advisers who preached the morning of his inauguration, has released a statement saying the president has the moral authority to take out North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary — including war — to stop evil,” Jeffress said. “In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un.”
Fellow religious conservative Rod Dreher is shocked and appalled:
This is obscene! God forbid that we should have to go to war at all, much less a nuclear war, which would be a catastrophe for humanity. But Jeffress ought to be praying against such a thing, not goading it on. What is wrong with him?!
(Emphasis in original.)

Dreher is apparently the only person on the planet who doesn't know that politically connected right-wing preachers are reflexively in favor of American wars. Whether it's Jerry Falwell fighting the nuclear freeze movement in the U.S. in the 1980s and writing an essay at the height of the Iraq conflict titled "God Is Pro-War" or Billy Graham's preacher son Franklin asserting that "Islam has declared war on the world, and it's high time we acknowledge it and respond decisively," this is the most predictable Christian conservative reaction imaginable. Where has Dreher spent the past several decades of his life if he doesn't know this?

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