Brother Al, aka, the Rev. Albert Mohler, Jr., is considered to be one of the leading theologians, or even the leading theologian, of the Southern Baptist Convention, still the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the US.
In Christians, Conscience, and the Looming 2020 Election 10/26/2020 on his website, he lays out his justification for supporting Donald Trump's re-election. Warning: his prose is typically dreadfully boring, e.gl, Edmund Burke, mealy-mouthing clichees, blah, blah. But because of his prominence on the Christian Right, his position is worth noting. It's not surprising: he says he's voting for Trump because abortion.
For the Christian Right, this has hardened into something like a magical incantation. In Brother Al's vrsion here, "I have not always been satisfied, but I never doubted which party would defend unborn life and which would embrace the Culture of Death." He repeats the "Culture of Death" phrase again in the piece. Of course, what he means by that is the Democratic Party and all its nefarious allies: uppity women, feminists, nasty wimmin who use birth control, anything and anybody supporting LGBTQ people or issues - you get the picture.
Brother Al comes probably as close to sounding reasonable as a hardline Christian Right authoritarian can. He says he voted for an unidentified third party candidate in the 2016 Presidential race, supposedly because he didn't trust Trump the Chosen One to be anti-abortion/anti-women's-rights enough.
Now he writes, "There will be evangelicals who cannot in good conscience vote for Donald Trump. I understand their predicament. But not voting for Donald Trump, though a political decision in itself, is not the same as voting for Joe Biden. This is beyond my moral imagination." (my emphasis in bold)
Brother Al in this column models in his own dull, snooze-inducing way to Trumpists can use abortion as a fundamental cultural identifier for hostility to women's rights, white supremacy, hatred of democracy, and everything else that Trumpism represents. And how they can use it as an anathema against anyone who doesn't support their moral hero Donald Trump as being outside the pale of moral decency and an ally of the "Culture of Death".
Fanaticism is fanaticism. And no one whose head in is the place Brother Al models for us is going to be able to persuade them to change their minds in a few minutes' conversation. Dave Neiwert devotes a helpful chapter in his latest book Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us (2020) on how to approach people who you might want to pull back from crackpot political mindset that also has relevant to this particular twist.
For myself, I can believe that someone may genuinely think and feel that all voluntary abortions are wrong. I don't agree with them. But women have to decide themselves about what to do about the fetuses that are medically and physically part of their bodies. But there's a radical practical and political difference between that and the fanaticism of the view advocated by people like Brother Al who treat abortion as deliberate murder.
There's plenty to say about the hypocrisy of the anti-abortion hardliners. For this particular political moment, I'll mention only that anyone who can support the Trump administration deliberately cruel and sadistic policy of kidnapping children including newborn babies from the refugee parents is someone I just don't believe is even capable of having any genuine empathy for some else's unborn fetus. At least not for anyone outside their immediate families.
That may not be psychologically sound. And, of course, anybody can claim anything about what's in their own mind.
But no one else has to be suckered by transparent fanaticism. And Brother Al's column is an example of the latter.
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