On Conspiracies and Jericho Marches

Yesterday in Washington D.C. there was apparently a prayer march.

I must have missed the memo, or the GSB research team was asleep at the wheel and failed to inform me.

Not that I would have gone mind you. I think you have to be out of your mind to march in a largely maskless crowd in the midst of a pandemic, and with the Proud Boys on top of that. To say the optics were bad is like saying Harvey Weinstein needs to be more respectful of women.

Everything about this march was wrong. Let’s start with the cause. 

It is not enough that evangelicals marched with the Proud Boys, but they continue to squander their credibility by embracing the “Stop the Steal” campaign, a quest with the remarkable record of 1 modest win and 55 losses in federal courts, which are staffed by a mix of Republicans and Democrats, two factions that in recent years have not been able to agree on anything, yet have set aside their partisanship to become united in one voice to say this: “The President has no case.” 

I guess all the Republican judges must be part of the conspiracy as well. All I can say is good luck trying to preach the truth of the gospel to anyone who knows you have embraced the silliness of Stop the Steal. You have sold your birthright for a bowl of stew.

 And then there is the method. Reuters reports that Evangelicals who attended the event conducted a “Jericho March” and blew shofars. I put “Jericho March” in quotation marks because Reuters did. Amongst us Evangelicals the quotation marks are not necessary because the modern Jericho March is, unfortunately, all too familiar.

God told the Israeli army to march around Jericho 3,500 years ago and the walls fell down. I believe it. Archaeology supports it. But to conduct Jericho Marches today expecting something supernatural to happen is to reduce an historical event to an incantation. Add to that the shofar (an ancient Jewish ram’s horn) and you have quite a spectacle.

I was not there, but I did not have to be to know that those who participated did not look like the people to whom King Jesus had entrusted the Kingdom. 

Maybe I am judging too harshly. Maybe we should sacrifice our integrity and credibility at the altar of a political party. Maybe I’ve misread Revelation 12:11—maybe the first century Christians did not overcome by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and not loving their life unto death but by their endorsement of Nero’s political rival, their shofars, and a good Jericho March.

Maybe . . .  not. GS

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