This Evangelical Minister Helped Build the Religious Right. He Now Believes He Made a Terrible...

[DonViejo]

This Evangelical Minister Helped Build the Religious Right. He Now Believes He Made a Terrible Mistake.

And that Donald Trump might mean the end for American evangelicalism.

KARA VOGHTJUN. 8, 2018 6:00 AM

The past four decades have seen an ever-tightening alliance between American evangelicals and the Republican Party, and few have played as pivotal a role in fostering that coupling as Reverend Rob Schenck. The evangelical minister from Buffalo, New York, gained national notoriety in the 1990s as a fervent anti-abortion activist who orchestrated shocking stunts to promote his cause, including one in which an aborted fetus was thrust in the face of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton. His keen ability to advance religiously conservative causes brought him to the nation’s capital and the epicenter of politically conservative power circles. During the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, he boosted the right’s anti-abortion and anti-LBGT agenda, netting great success with the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act and Bush’s partial-birth abortion ban.

But today, Schenck is, in many respects, unrecognizable. He’s distanced himself from many of his fellow evangelical pastors and former political allies, leaving his anti-abortion work behind in favor of another pro-life cause, though one uncommon among American evangelicals: gun control.

Schenck attributes this transformation to his late-career doctorate in ministry—specifically, his research on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who questioned the symbiotic, and problematic, relationship that emerged between Adolf Hitler and 1930s German evangelical churches. Schenck began seeing parallels in the closeness between the American evangelical church and the Republican Party, and wondering if the religious institution to which he’d dedicated his life had become complicit in providing a spiritual veneer for a hate-filled political agenda. Schenck says the result of this codependence culminated in 2016, with four-fifths of white American evangelicals supporting President Donald Trump, whose behavior often stands in sharp contrast to traditional Christian values. Schenck, still an activist to his core, is now a voice of ethical reform in American evangelicalism and public policy, specifically on gun safety.

Schenck explores this Trumpian phenomenon and his personal evolution in his new memoir, Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister’s Rediscovery of Faith, Hope and Love. He is self-critical as he explores the forces that gave way to the ultimate abandonment of his former values, highlighting particular moments when his thirst for power and influence overrode his pillars of faith. Ultimately, the work is a meditation on the thorny relationship between religious leaders and politicians, and the dangers that lie in getting too close to the sun.

I recently sat down with Schenck to discuss how evangelicals might extricate themselves from the moral contradictions of their Faustian bargain with the GOP, the “unwitting dupes” among his peers, and if disaffected evangelicals can be brought back into their faith.

more
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/06/this-evangelical-pastor-helped-build-the-religious-right-he-now-believes-he-made-a-terrible-mistake-rob-schenck/

[cloudbase]

1. It's a miracle

what a little bit of education can do for a person's outlook.

[msongs]

2. making $$ from religion...still. nt

[populistdriven]

3. the end of America would include our evangelism i guess nt

[Girard442]

4. To me he looks like a rat abandoning a sinking ship.

There's nothing wrong with the Evangelicals today that wasn't obvious to any casual observer thirty years ago.

[Wednesdays]

5. Even if he's sincere now,

he will be marginalized by his fellow evangelicals into obscurity.