Nor A Single Swallow Summer

That the Mercy Culture faithful are devoted to a man who is inarguably the biggest heathen ever elected to public office in the history of the country is only slightly terrifying. https://t.co/AAK8fBFTXg via @CharlesPPierce

— Esquire (@esquire) July 12, 2021

Thanks to Charlie Pierce, I now know how large: a church. In Fort Worth. One church. In Fort Worth, Texas. A single congregation.  But "it is part of a growing Christian movement that is nondenominational, openly political and has become an engine of former president Donald Trump’s Republican Party."  Because WaPo says so.  Yeah?  Name three more.

Clearly we are all doomed.

I googled "Mercy Culture."  I got no returns on it but the WaPo article and the Esquire article by Mr. Pierce.  Oh, and several different sites (Facebook, etc.) hosted by Mercy Culture Church.  I didn't look at any of those because I don't trust them for reliable information like church membership size, average church attendance, even how long the church has been in existence.  Frankly, I just wan't interested enough to wade through it.  Suffice to say WaPo has ventured beyond the environs of the BosWash and discovered a new tribe living in deepest, darkest....D/FW Metroplex.  A church.  One church.  Which is marking the end of the world as we know it.

One church.

There's a UCC church in Dallas, an open and affirming church which mainly ministers to the LGBTQ+ crowd, but that doesn't mean it's exclusive.  That church is large, and has satellites as far away as Houston.  Maybe it's doing more than that now; I don't know, I haven't checked their website, either.  But that church doesn't threaten Western civilization because it doesn't openly champion Donald Trump.  At least I doubt it does.  It's a church that's about ministry, not about power.  Robert Jeffress (no relation at all; not even the same last name, but people ask) was a huge Trump supporter at First Baptist in Dallas.  Why is he no longer a threat?  There were some other clowns, from Florida and further south in Texas, too, who went to lay hands on Trump when he was in office.  Not threatening anymore?  Not new enough to deserve further attention?  What about the churches that told their members God would protect them from Covid?  Church gatherings are still spreading covid; is that no longer worry worthy?

Mr. Pierce understands this dynamic, to some degree:

Every couple of decades, the authoritarian streak in political religion brawls its way to the front of the movement. Generally, it runs into the natural tendency of American politics to dilute any kind of fervor into a low murmur among all the others. (Look up Generation Joshua. It’s still around. When was the last time you heard anything about it?) Sooner or later, however, there’s going to come a time when that inherent process breaks down, and I am extremely concerned at who and what will emerge then. Somewhere out there is a religious Trump, and I’d like to keep him as far away from religion and government as is humanly possible until we find a way to fire that person into deepest space. 

I still don't give Trump that much power and authority.  I think the GOP has, as Mr. Pierce likes to say, eaten the monkey brains, and it's made them crazy.  I don't think that's a long term plan for governance nor for the viability of a political party.  If all of that makes the prospect of the country seem a little shakier to white people, then I think they're finally catching up to the fear and loathing non-white people have felt in this country since, well, at least 1619.  It's been happening to them for a long time.  Now we, the white people, find out it can happen to us, too.  Maybe instead of wringing our hands about the next "successful" Trump or "religious Trump," we could begin to make common cause with those we've pretty much ignored or treated as objects of our largesse (why else do we object so to affirmative action and even implementing the 15th Amendment the way it should have been?).

It's just a thought.  But it was the black vote in South Carolina that gave Joe Biden the wins he needed in the Democratic primaries; and it turns out Joe Biden was just the president we needed after four years of Trump.  Maybe we should consider that a lesson, and think on it more, and look to our brothers and sisters in need and oppression, some of it at our hands, and think about how we can join common cause together.

Better than worrying about how white people are dumb enough to fuck the whole thing up again, this time with somebody more competent but just as venal, narcissistic, racist and xenophobic.  Those are the guys really thinking their time has come.  We're not going to thwart them by being better white people than that. The only way we can be better white people than that, is to be better citizens towards our fellow non-white citizens.  And that means not just inviting them to share power, but giving them the power whites in this political and social culture already have.  To whatever extent we don't do that, we're just holding on to the relics of the past, too.  We can either pick at the fragments we shore against our ruin; or we can build wholly new foundations. That is the either/or at this point.