MAGA charismatic prophets got in wrong in 2020. Biden, not Trump, won the presidency. Now they are claiming that they were just off by four years. Katherine Fung is covering it at Newsweek. One such prophet, Johnny Enlow, believes his prophecy of a 2020 Trump win was actually right. “I want to explain something: Why we would say that this last four-year period of Trump has been him in power. And it’s been him in power not as a traditional president but him in power as in given authority on the mountain of government by God,” he said. MAGA worship leader Sean Feucht wants the prophets who apologized for getting it wrong in 2020 to now apologize for apologizing. More here.
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Bob Smietana has a piece at Religion News Service on evangelical pastors concerned about national and spiritual unity in the wake of the election. Here is a taste:
First Baptist Church in Covington, Tennessee, a small town 12 miles from the Mississippi River, has both Democrats and Republicans in its congregation, and its pastor, Cliff Marion, didn’t address the election on Sunday, feeling it was time to move on. He calls unifying the country “the million-dollar question,” adding, “I don’t think either party has it figured out because it seems like each party has different views of the kind of America they want.”
Marion said he has avoided falling into partisan divides so far but said political activists have made inroads into churches and seem intent on making disciples to their causes, rather than followers of Jesus.
“Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson, they’re the greatest disciplers in the Southern Baptist Convention,” said the pastor. “They make better disciples than Lifeway (the Southern Baptist Convention’s publishing arm) does, because all our people do is turn them on all day long.”
In response, he said, he has tried to remind the 500 or people who attend services at First Baptist that political opponents are not enemies.
“We will not be a church that curses the darkness,” he said. “We will go into the darkness and light more candles.”
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BBC religion reporter Aleem Maqbool is covering the “Christians who see Trump as their saviour.” Here is a taste:
Reverend Franklin Graham is one of America’s best-known evangelists and the son of Billy Graham, arguably its most famous preacher. He is one of the Trump believers, convinced there is no doubt that the president-elect was chosen for this mission by God.
“The bullet that went through his ear missed his brain by a millimetre, and his head turned just at the last second when the gun was fired,” he says. “I believe that God turned his head and saved his life.”
The questions asked about Trump’s character – including accusations of sexual misconduct, and his alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels and associated hush-money trial – don’t dim Mr Graham’s view.
“Remember when Jesus told the crowd, ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone’ and that slowly, the entire audience began to disappear? All of us have sinned.”
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What is happening on X:
Jenna does not want Trump to back down on the Hegseth nomination. No word form her on Gaetz or RFK:
Woops! I commented on the previous tweet too soon. Jenna apparently is fine with RFK on abortion as long as he gets FDA employees to quit “en masse”:
Lance is taking the battle to the cities:
Eric Metaxas–yes Eric Metaxas–complains about “holier-than-thou virtue signaling.” Pence apparently struck a nerve. It looks like Metaxas is going to double-down on RFK and his extreme abortion views.
According to Eric, Matt Gaetz is fighting “literal demons.” Of course there will be no evidence of demonic activity in the Gaetz ethics report:
It looks like Tony Perkins is now part of the POTUS Shield movement:
Tony Perkins quotes Democratic congressman Seth Moulton:
We have now come to the point where evangelical megachurches spend Sunday morning worshipping God and listening to political lectures from the pulpit:
Denny is clear-eyed about RFK and abortion:
Thanks to Emma Bell for her assistance with this roundup.