Though Donald Trump’s recent promotion of a $60 “God Bless the USA Bible” may seem trivial, or even absurd, on its face, advocates and strategists say something more sinister is at play with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s “make America pray again” hard sell.
“It’s really important that we don’t just get stuck there and that we don’t just talk about the fact that he’s such a clown who is doing something that is sacrilegious in an effort to raise money to defend himself,” said Bishop Joseph Tolton, an American theologian and global advocate against the white, far-right evangelical Christian movement.
The Trump-endorsed Bible, which is accompanied by copies of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and Pledge of Allegiance, sends a “blaring message” to white evangelical Christians, said Tolton, president of the advocacy group Interconnected Justice. He told theGrio that Trump’s promotion of the $59.99-plus-tax Bible – for which he is receiving royalties – nods to a constituency that wants to see the U.S. government, and governments globally, overtaken by a white Christian ideology and theology that is already growing in political power.
“[House Speaker] Mike Johnson is a Christian nationalist, as is [U.S. Sen.] Ted Cruz, as is Governor [Ron] DeSantis,” noted Tolton, who said conservative Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett are also “deeply connected to this wildly extreme religious ideology.”
Even Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker, who quoted the Bible in the court’s IVF ruling that determined embryos are considered children, is an admitted believer that America was founded as a Christian nation. Parker is a proponent of a Christian theology known as the Seven Mountain Mandate, a movement within evangelical Christianity that takes the position that conservative Christian…
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