There’s an article from The Atlantic
This is the headline:
The Tiny Blond Bible Teacher Taking on the Evangelical Political Machine
You might think the article is about Beth Moore’s horrific treatment by woman-hating, Christian bigots.
It’s not.
The article is about Donald Trump.
Beth Moore is merely a convenient, recognizable puppet used to remind you that Christian guys suck.
ATLANTIC: By the late ’90s, women were packing sports arenas to hear Moore tell this and other parables. She earned speaking slots at big-name churches, including Hillsong and Saddleback, whose pastor, Rick Warren, calls her a dear friend. “She’s a singularly influential figure among evangelicals as a woman leader,” Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, the elite evangelical school outside of Chicago, told me. “Beth just is a category by herself.”
ME: So…Beth Moore is loved and respected throughout all of evangelical Christianity.
Got it.
ATLANTIC: Moore considers herself a complementarian: She believes the Bible teaches that men and women have distinctive roles and that men should hold positions of authority and leadership over women in the home and in the church. Yet her husband, Keith, a retired plumber, sees his vocation as helping his wife succeed. “That’s what I do,” he told me. “I lay blocks so O.J. can run.”
ME: So…Beth Moore’s own husband is on-board with her success.
Got it.
ATLANTIC: …she had glimpsed headlines about Donald Trump’s 2005 comments on the now infamous Access Hollywood tape. But it wasn’t until that plane ride, with newspapers and transcripts spread out in front of her, that Moore learned the full extent of it—including the reaction of some Christian leaders who, picking up a common line of spin, dismissed the comments as “locker-room talk.”
ME: See? The center of the universe is Donald Trump. Not even Beth Moore’s titanic success is immune to the blunt force of Trump’s crassness.
ATLANTIC: Evangelicals, Moore said, have “clearer lines between men and women and how they serve.” But sometimes, “that attitude is no longer about a role in a church. It becomes an attitude of gender superiority. And that has to be dealt with.” Moore may be a complementarian, but she is adamant that Christian men should not treat women “any less than Jesus treated women in the Gospels: always with dignity, always with esteem, never as secondary citizens.”
ME: In other words, Beth Moore believes women should be treated the way she has been treated since founding her ministry.
ATLANTIC: White evangelicals helped elect Donald Trump, and they may well decide his political future, as soon as the 2018 midterms. While it can seem as if the whole of evangelicalism has embraced the president, Trump has in fact exacerbated deep fracture lines within the movement. Christians of color have expressed rage over what they see as abandonment by their brothers and sisters in the faith; many have even left their congregations.
ME: White evangelicals did help elect Trump. It’s true! So did non-white evangelicals. So did pagans, Buddhists, Catholics, atheists, and agnostics.
Any Christian of any color who sees support for Donald Trump as “abandonment by their brothers and sisters” is reading too many articles from The Atlantic. Maybe crack open a Bible instead…
ATLANTIC: Moore has not become a liberal, or even a feminist. She’s trying to help protect the movement she has always loved but that hasn’t always loved her back—at least, not in the fullness of who she is. This mission has cost her, personally and professionally, but she told me her only regret is that she’d let others dictate what her place in the community should be: “What I feel a little sorry for, looking back over my shoulder, is how often I apologized for being there.”
ME: The movement hasn’t always “loved her back”?!!! She sells gazillions of books! She travels constantly! She fills arenas! Maybe that’s not “love” but it’s certainly not “secondary citizen treatment”.
Sorry. It’s going to take more than Donald Trump saying something vulgar before I will concede that Beth Moore is a victim of sexism.
It may not be necessary to apologize for success but it might be nice to express a little gratitude.
Christian women: Don’t be fooled!
The Atlantic doesn’t care even a tiny blonde bit about how you’re treated.
The Atlantic cares about destroying Donald Trump.
That’s it.
Do you think this article would be appearing in The Atlantic if Hillary Clinton was POTUS?
(Answer is: no.)
This article is meant to influence simple-minded Christians during the mid-term elections.
Christianity liberates everyone – men and women.
Beth Moore is just one of a very long line of women who, because of Christ, are children of God.
Trump has no say in the matter.
3 Responses
I was legitimately surprised when Trump won the election.
I will NOT be surprised if women in the church begin following Beth Moore right off a political cliff.
Beth, what in the world are you doing?! I’ve tried very hard to be empathetic toward you the last few months–even outright defending you! But please stop saying stupid things now. Please.
Please take a sabbatacle and come back when you’re ready to DO your ministry again, instead of signaling all those Conservative things you USED to do/believe.
Anyone that thinks popular media is politically unbiased is a naïve fool.
Wait a minute! You’re telling me that TRUMP actually said something vulgar in a private conversation as little as TWELVE YEARS ago? CNN was right! He’s a racist! And I should have given my vote to higher taxes, a wave of illegal aliens from countries filled with terrorists, and giving the government the right to jail me for expressing my non-PC opinion in any manner. Now I’m stuck with a president who lowered taxes, raised unemployment, protects our freedom of speech and right to bare arms and secures our borders, but who APPARENTLY once said something crass when he thought he wasn’t making a public statement! Next time, I’m going to vote for the gender confused socialist who has NEVER said anything crass in his/her life. THAT would be the CHRISTIAN thing to do.
Lesson learned, all thanks to Beth Moore and the Distance.