Untenable

The current adoration and whole-hearted support given to Donald Trump by the religious right continues to baffle me.  It makes no sense.  It doesn’t fit.  It doesn’t make sense given their religious dogma and it doesn’t fit what they preach. This phenomena is similar to the quote I shared a few days ago:  “He is a despicable human being but a good President.”  Just as that statement is untenable, so, too, is Michelle Bachman’s statement, “I have never seen a more biblical president than I have seen in Donald Trump.”   What does being a “biblical” person mean?

The best-selling non-fiction book in the United States for two successive years—1925 and 1926—was Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows.  Mr. Barton claimed that Jesus was not only “the most popular dinner guest in Jerusalem” and “an outdoor man,” but a great executive.  “He picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world….Nowhere is there such a startling example of executive success as the way in which that organization was brought together.”  His parables were “the most powerful advertisements of all time.” In fact, Barton pronounced Jesus as “the founder of modern business.”  In the period 1923 to 1929, business (prosperity) was the “god” of American society—and business (prosperity) became the national religion of America.  Every business man, Henry Ford included, was given a “halo” by the public.  Those haloes didn’t fit—but they certainly benefited the businessmen of the time.  And then came the Great Depression!

Bruce Barton’s portrait of Jesus as a great businessman was untenable, that means, unjustified, flimsy, weak, absurd, and illogical.  But people bought it!  Michelle Bachman’s portrait of Donald Trump as being “highly biblical” and that we “will in all likelihood never see a more godly, biblical president in our lifetimes” is untenable.  But people have bought into it!  

Is there nothing new under the sun?  Does history repeat itself?  How long will we continue to buy into the untenable?