On June 21, 2022, Rusty Bowers, the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, testified before the January 6th Commission of the United States House of Representatives. His sworn testimony about his refusal to go along with an illegal scheme to replace Arizona’s legal slate of electors with a false slate of Trump supporters included this statement:
“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election, I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”
Bowers’ refusal to support an effort to overturn the presidential election of 2022 has been met with great anger from Trump Republicans. Bowers has been harassed, threatened with bodily harm, warned of possible retributive violence to his family and all manner of efforts to defeat him in any reelection effort.
Despite Bowers’ decision to uphold the law rather than bend to enormous pressure placed on him by those devoted to former President Trump, and the former President himself, Bowers has stated that if Trump were to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2024 Bowers would vote for him.
I do not understand. I admire and respect Bower’s integrity. But how does one identify illegality, experience its machinations personally, take a stand against it and then indicate that no matter what and nevertheless you will continue to support the perpetrator?
The wide divisions in our country are so well known. The divisions continue to divide families, strain and break friendships, and tear at the very fabric of our democracy. We are far from The Spirit of ’76.
As the Fourth of July has once again been celebrated, the truth is that our “Spirit of 76” – our American soul – is not well. Things are not well with our souls as Americans, either.
I have never imagined that in The United States of America we would support personal behavior of spying on our neighbors. We now seek to enforce a very personal, private but now newly prohibited medical procedure by financially incentivizing citizens to “turn in” neighbors suspected of seeking such care. Where will this end?
I have never imagined that in The United States of America lying to achieve elected office, or achieve appointment to high office, would be tolerated as just how the system works or praised as “party loyalty” over citizenship.
If all this were not more than enough, there is more.
When the history of this divided time in our nation is on record for reflection, I think that one of the single greatest destroyers of our American soul will be identified as The Institutional Church. Specifically, the right-wing Church of Christian Evangelicals, right-wing evangelists, ‘spiritual counselors to the President’, mega church gospel-misrepresenters, and the loosely affiliated Church organizations which are built around a nationalistic, white supremacist ideology. Together they have waged and are waging a culture war based on fear, not the care of others. It is our own ‘Taliban.’
It is absolutely soul-breaking that one of the caretakers of the soul of America and the souls of the American people, the right-wing Evangelical Church in America has purposefully – as well as with no shame or hint of remorse – willingly participated in achieving their long-sought ends by determining that the means to those ends do not matter.
So, among other things the constitutional right for a woman to choose to have a safe abortion procedure is gone. But in achieving that end evangelicals have endorsed an immoral man for President, supported his life-long, hedonistic behavior by claiming to have given him “a pass” or calling him a “baby Christian.” (Can you imagine thinking you have such a right to grant moral behavior passes?)
The Evangelical Church has therefore endorsed and campaigned for – if not verbally, certainly tacitly – all that Donald Trump represents; lying, cheating, manipulation of the legal system, abuse of women, sexual misconduct, disregard for positive, American tradition, flaunting of the United States Constitution, racism, devaluing people of color, religious bigotry, fear-mongering for personal gain and profit, undermining science in medicine, and a tortured nationalism resulting in promotion of insurrection, conspiracy, and the furtherance of Trump’s big lie.
In her opening remarks of the first televised session of the hearings of the January 6thCommission, Republican member of the House of Representatives and Vice Chair of the Commission, Liz Cheney, made this statement to her fellow members of The Republican Party.
“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
The right-wing, the Evangelical Church in America that has sold its soul to Donald Trump and once again crucified Jesus on the cross of politics and religion. It has earned Cheney’s same stark statement of truth.
YOU HAVE DEFENDED AND DEFEND THE INDEFENSIBLE. THERE WILL COME A DAY WHEN DONALD TRUMP IS GONE, BUT YOUR DISHONOR WILL REMAIN.