More misinformation from the media “mainstream”:
As of this week, the nation faces a crazier election season than many of us ever imagined, with Donald J. Trump as the all-but-certain nominee of the Republican Party. Regardless of the outcome in November, his campaign is forcing American Christians to grapple with some scary realities that will have implications for years to come.
This election has cast light on the darkness of pent-up nativism and bigotry all over the country. There are not not-so-coded message denouncing . . . immigrants. . . .
When many secular Americans think of evangelicals, they think of old, white precinct captains in Iowa or old, white television evangelists and their media empires. . . .
The center of gravity for both orthodoxy and evangelism is not among Anglo suburban evangelicals but among African Anglicans and Asian Calvinists and Latin American Evangelicalism today can be found in churches that are multiethnic and increasingly dominated by immigrant communities. — A White Church No More, Russell Moore Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, 5/6/16.
Fact Check: Russell Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and he is clearly upset about Donald Trump. And just what has Trump said about immigration to suggest “scary realities” of “pent-up nativism and bigotry?” Basically he made some uncomplimentary remarks about Mexican lawbreakers and proposed strong steps to secure our porous border against illegal immigration. Also, he’s made some vague suggestions about reducing our tsunami levels of legal immigration.
To ordinary Americans that hardly sounds like anything “dark” and “scary,” but to the financial and political elites who run America it is disconcerting indeed. The right-wing of our ruling Establishment wants endless immigration for cheap labor and enhanced profits, and the left-wing wants masses of diverse and impoverished people for cheap votes. To justify their squalid self-interest they have stables of journalists, such as those at The New York Times, to cheerlead mass immigration.
And they also invite guest columnists, like Moore, to do their work too. Moore boasts of his faith, but it’s hard to see much Christianity in advocacy which serves crass greed and the lust for political power. The divisive diversity created by mass immigration undermines social trust, compassion, and understanding. Such an environment is hardly conducive to the practice of Christian virtues.
Some say that we have a duty to help foreigners with an open door. But admitting them in overwhelming numbers—with never a let-up—will turn us into what they are fleeing and make it impossible for us to help anymore. True Christian charity doesn’t destroy charity, and neither does it require national self-destruction.
In any case, Moore—with the greatest of modesty—likens his stand to that of the Old Testament prophet Elijah who stood as one man fearlessly against the corrupt and evil establishment of his day. But Moore, alas, is no Elijah. This Southern Baptist ethicist doesn’t confront America’s Establishment; he serves it in the most obsequious manner.
Writing for the Establishment’s journalistic flagship, The New York Times, he repeats a propaganda line elites commonly use to denigrate conservative native-born Americans, namely that they are old and white. The emphasis on “old” is to suggest that their day is past, and it’s time for “vibrant” immigrants to replace them.
Moore dresses this line in religious garb, but the thrust is still the same. In his telling, “Anglo” evangelicals are second-class Christians in comparison with vibrant foreigners and U.S. congregations dominated by “immigrant communities.” As for how it is that the latter so excel in “orthodoxy and evangelism,” Moore doesn’t explain. Evidently the reader is supposed to accept his claim on faith—as well as the implication that it’s time for worn-out “Anglo” Christians to yield to their spiritual superiors.
Moore’s service of providing moral cover to the powers-that-be will not go unnoticed—or unrewarded. Perhaps he will follow in the footsteps of many ambitious Southerners who completely shed their roots to reap the approval and perks of establishmentarians. If, however, he has even a smidgen of sincerity as a Christian ethicist, he might reflect that no true prophet can serve profiteers and the corruptions of power.