Why get an Awomen to do an Amen’s job?

Just when we thought we had reached peak stupid with the manner in which many right-leaning Christians in the US were viewing the Messiah, er, I mean the President, we find out that there is indeed another summit beyond the lofty clouds of a Democrat in the White House.

Rep Emanuel Cleaver, an ordained minister and a Democrat, uttered this nonsense at the end of the opening prayer of the 117th Congress:

“We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and (the) God known by many names, many different faiths,” he said. “Amen, and Awomen.”

Cleaver by name, cleaver by nature, cos this bloke just took a big ol’ meat cleaver to any sanity around religion that is left in the government of the United States of America.

The irony of course is that his first name means “God with us”, because I’m pretty sure God has left that building a while back!

I don’t get it. Here we are, trying to keep crazy Christians out of the White House, or at least influencing the White House, and you get even crazier universalists, and woke ones to boot.

I mean, given what Amen means, and given it has nothing to do with gender, how could a Congress-person who is ordained, utter without even blushing the now immortalised in stone “Awomen”?

Well I guess the same ordained Congress-person who pretty much prays to a grab-bag of all gods and none at the same time without blushing. That’s where liberal Protestantism has landed. And it landed on its face.

You’d almost mistake this for Acts17 and Athens with its pick-and-mix deities lining the streets, including the statue to the unknown god. Call it what you like, but don’t call it Christian. Though in continuing the Acts 17 theme, let me ask of the good Rev Cleaver, along with the Athenians, “What is this babbler saying?”

But then again, I’m pretty sure no one would confuse the level of intellect in the modern day Congress with the level of intellect in 1st century Athens.

Cleaver is reported to have “Asked God to give the new Congress the strength to overcome selfishness, prejudice and ideology, and to heal the partisan divisions of 2020.”

To which God apparently prayed (to himself), “Give me the strength to put up with this nonsense for another four years.”

Interesting how Cleaver prayed for the strength to overcome ideology, before doubling down on ideology. Ah well, might as well have that on both sides of Congress.

I am almost as offended by this as I was by Trump doing the evangelical stuff. I say almost, because in the end, who even gives a hoot about progressive end-of-the-line (formerly known as mainline, but it’s now terminal) civic religion in the US any longer? No one’s going to the wall for that. No one is marching on Washington for that. It’s nowhere near as dangerous. It’s just kinda lame.

People are marching on Washington for white hot religious zeal, and that while hot religious zeal is currently coming in two forms: A Trumpistic conservative quasi-evangelical zeal, and a progressive post-liberal zeal.

Both are at loggerheads, both are deeply religious, and both see themselves as the inheritors of the new Promised Land that is surely coming if they can just get their amen or their awomen in the White House, the Senate, the Congress and the Supreme Court. These folks won’t settle for some half-baked Trinity, the want a four-squared god.

What they don’t want is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who sends his Spirit to bring about new creation and to shape His church to proclaim the gospel, do good deeds, and wait for the true King/President/Prime Minister to arrive on the scene.

Yet in the meantime the leaders of the free world will continue to demonstrate how bound they are to idols.

Can I get an “Amen” from all orthodox believers on that one, whatever your political stripe?