This was one of those news articles (The Independent)…yeah, I don’t even really know how to begin unpacking it.
I’ve done a quick check on Kim Sengupta, (the author of the article) and they don’t seem to be given to penning complete bullshit for The Independent.
So apparently one third of Republicans are white evangelicals. And 80% of white evangelicals believe that “God gave Israel to the Jewish people”. A number of them further believe in End of Days prophesies whereby there will be a “war of civilisations” (that phrase ring any bells…ISIS…bullshit right wing commentary on terrorism perhaps?) that will result in Jews either embracing Christianity or face being used to wipe the floor by Gods wrath.
Oh, and I missed the bit about those End Day prophesies foretelling Jewish control of the whole of Jerusalem. That bit’s kind of important.
So according to Kim Sengupta, they received their ‘Prayergram’ and the topic was the “Jerusalem Prayer”. And it contained the following –
“God bless Donald J Trump! He understands the real principles behind success. It is not being good at what you do or understanding theory and practice. It is being on the right side of the blessing of God. Whoever blesses Israel shall be blessed: whoever curses Israel shall be cursed.”
&
“If we bless Israel, regardless of its faults, lack of faith, both personally and organisationally, God bless us. While the world cries out, Donald J Trump who learned about the blessing on his mother’s knee, masters the simple, plodding art of doing the right thing regardless of consequences.”
That’s not a joke…apparently that’s not a joke. People sign up to receive their “prayergrams”, and journalist who’ve been critical of Donald Trump and/or “the right” don’t even need to sign up to get theirs.
Now I can’t quite work out from the numbers given in the Independent article just how many white evangelicals there are in the USA, or how many of them would likely be favourable to the notion of Christian Zionism (wiki). But if one third of Republicans are white protestant evangelists (RNS), and Donald Trump (with enthusiastic backing from Pence and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley) is pulling this Jerusalem shit to pander to a section of that one third, then we have to assume the proportion of Republican who buy into this End Day shit is quite large.
So some politics in the USA is sold on religious grounds that encourage those it entices to vote a particular way to not think about politics….because far better to concentrate on “gods work” etc. Now that’s crap on any number of fronts. But (and can this be for real?!) for a President to then pander to this “gods work” guff by proposing something insanely reckless in the political sphere, when the basic idea (surely!) is just to “jolly the nutters along” and keep them ticking that Republican box, it’s…well, I don’t know what that is exactly.
If you think your sanity can handle it, throw those prayer passages into a google search, and once you discount the Independent article and any obvious further pieces based on it, you have yourself a rare old time exploring a whole world of what appears to be popular, money spinning madness. I’m not recommending that you do. I’m just saying that you “could“.
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