This isn’t anything new - I was exposed pretty heavily to this stuff growing up. The antisemitism runs so deep, that many of them are not even aware of it.
For instance, most evangelicals LOVE israel, are crazy about it, and will take religious journeys to the Holy Land to see where Jesus walked. So, when the GOP gets really hawkish and pro-israel, they love it - which may seem contradictory, but you need to view it from their lens.
A common thread in modern (I am speaking about mainstream Protestant-based Christianity) Christian circles is that the Jews killed jesus. They resent them for that. Although they believe that the Jews are “God’s chosen people” they tend to focus heavily on how much the Jews disobeyed and were punished by God in the old testament, and how they rejected the return of Christ in the new testament. It’s so, so deeply ingrained.
So the thing with Israel is, they believe that in the end times (which are always lurking very close in their minds), Israel will find peace, and that will herald the coming of the antichrist, sparking a chain of events that leads to Armageddon, the last great war. In this “Great Tribulation” period, christians are gone, and there are something like only 500,000 jews (that number may be off) that are the chosen people of god, and the rest are cursed. So this israel obsession really comes from a place of antisemitism, not a love of the Jews. But it’s all mixed up and full of mental gymnastics.
The trippiest thing - and this is a point I’ve been hammering in my arguments with evangelicals - is that trump actually fits the ticket of every single antichrist prophecy I grew up with. It’s eerie as fuck. One guy on my feed is absolutely losing his mind about it. If i wanted to supress evangelical nutjob votes i’d go after that thread, but I am so so convinced most of them dont actually believe the stuff or care at all as long as the right brown people are fucked and women have no rights.
Trust me, enough mental gymnastics and this can be made true. It doesnt really take a ton of effort to get there, compared to say, the histrionics around Obama supposedly being the AC (very common back then)
It’s hard for any logical thinking person to imagine but Christians can basically convince themselves of anything.
Oh im not saying there aren’t gymnastics going on only that he is no peace maker bringing the world together the way the antichrist is supposed to do. Or maybe the prophets were tuned into fox…
Look, Jared is doing his best to bring peace to the Middle East and we all know that’s the really hard one, so once he takes care of that the rest of the world’s a piece of cake.
I grew up as a frequent churchgoer, still consider myself a Christian although I don’t attend a church and find myself repulsed by the significant percentage of modern churches that are all-in on Trump… Anyway, I don’t recall a lot of Antichrist prophecies that would match up for Trump.
I don’t think the Antichrist is supposed to be western European, which Trump is. He’s also supposed to perform miracles (signs and wonders). He’s supposed to try to destroy Israel, as well.
About a year ago I got an unexpected phone call from a childhood friend who I hadn’t spoken to in years. I knew the guy had some issues with drugs and mental health but I remember him being a good kid/teenager, and I generally liked him a lot even though he hung with a not so great crowd.
Anyway, he wanted legal advice. Some guy signed up for Comcast under his name or something and he wanted to sue the guy. I explained that there’s no money to be had in doing that, since Comcast didn’t end up charging him once they realized what happened.
He then went on a pretty long rant about how he looked up the guy, and he’s a rich Jew so we can definitely threaten him and take some of his Jew money. Completely serious about it. It shook me pretty hard and all I could muster was something lame like “look, him being Jewish has nothing to do with this, and I’m not going to have that kind of conversation”.
On a somewhat lighter note, my old boss had a habit of saying he “presbyterianed someone down” in negotiations. About 1/2 the time he would then explain the joke “see, I can’t say jewed them down anymore, it’s not politically correct”. shudder
Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod are both very conservative. It’s the ELCA that is (or at least usually is) liberal. Or, if not Lutheran, look for any church that identifies as Reconciling In Christ, which is stating that the church is fully welcoming to LGBTQ+ folks. There won’t be many Trump fans there.
The Church does not approve of the use of abortion as a means of birth control or family planning, but considers it a woman’s right to receive one.[137] The Church opposes any legislation which would prevent women from obtaining abortions or information about abortions.[138]