The super PAC juxtaposes footage of prominent white evangelical leaders praising the president with derogatory and violent quotes from Trump himself, with the assumed aim of illuminating a religious hypocrisy among Trump-voting Christians.
The church shouldn’t need a hashtag to shame it into taking sexual violence seriously. Abuse survivors shouldn’t have to look to Twitter and Facebook and blogs to find a place to belong, to be believed, and to give voice to their trauma.
In the aftermath of Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973, over the veto of President Nixon. It stipulates that the president should inform Congress 48 hours after initiating the military in any hostile action, and then limits the president for 60 days in carrying out such actions before Congress declares war or passes a proper authorizing action. It was an attempt to find a compromise between Congress’ power to declare war and a president’s need to take immediate military action in certain situations. Nearly ever president since, Republican and Democrat, has bristled under its provisions. Further, Congress has largely abdicated its responsibilities to enforce the War Powers Act provisions.
Among the many foreign policy experts, former diplomatic and military leaders, intelligence officers, members of Congress and the Senate, editorial writers, and columnists weighed in on Donald Trump’s killing of Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, most noted a complete lack of strategy. But what they miss is that Trump has only ever had one strategy: doing whatever benefits him and his own political and financial self-interests.
Today, the United States and Iran are two countries on the precipice of war with ruling elites who quote Rumi.
In 2008 Rabbi Brad Hirschfield published You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. In this book, he talks about his own first-hand experience of falling into fanaticism and what it took for him to climb out of it. I was fascinated by this perspective then, and given what’s happening in our world today, I’m even more fascinated by it now.
The words of Jesus must now be taken seriously, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”
The attack by a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone that fired missiles into a convoy carrying Soleimani was neither impulsive nor a retaliatory response. It was not undertaken to protect Americans. It was not an act of patriotism. It was not done to defend the U.S. embassy in Baghdad after the “dramatic but bloodless” siege. If anything, it was in response to Trump’s increasingly untenable situation at home.
President Donald Trump will hold a campaign event in a Miami megachurch on Friday to shore up support from Christian conservatives, after a prominent evangelical publication questioned whether the faithful should support the Republican.