Why Do Evangelicals Follow Trump? 5 Reasons.

Illustration I created originally for coverage of the Vice Presidential debates in 2016

“When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross.” - Sinclair Lewis pic.twitter.com/mGrpSBtVOv

— Fernand R. Amandi (@AmandiOnAir) June 1, 2020

John Pavlovitz's 5 reasons white evangelicals obey Trump

 

The Following is Adapted from the Video Transcript

1. Trump is their “symbiotic spokes-husk”.
White evangelicals recognized that they have in Donald Trump someone without a working morality of his own —just an empty husk who would adopt the outward moral convictions of whoever partnered with it.

2. Trump Promises Official Government Legitimacy to Evangelical Christianity.
So they decided “We'll make Donald Trump a Christian!” They put him on stage at Liberty University. They had him say a couple things about religion and he made some photo ops at prayer breakfast or religious functions or at a church service and suddenly he was sufficiently Christian for millions of Christians to support. Never mind that Donald Trump has no interest in emulating Jesus in any quantifiable measure or that he knows nothing of the gospel teachings. And even if he did he would have no interest in living those out.

3. Pastors and Evangelists Endorse Trump
For Christians who really want to support Donald Trump on the grounds that he is a Christian and that he is anointed by God, all they need are some pastors or evangelists who they respect to say that Donald Trump is a Christian. And suddenly —voila!— he's a Christian without Jesus at all!

4. Trump Re-affirms Authoritarian Leadership Patterns That Attracts Evangelicals
It’s a popular concept among Evangelicals that God is a white heterosexual man who was born in America raised Christian and votes Republican. They want to perpetuate that idea with an authoritarian male leader to tell them what to do.

5. Trump Panders to the Evangelical Fascade of Patriotism, Nationalism and Pro-life lip-service.
Donald Trump thrives within the pro-life lie that he is actually against abortion. He appeals to a Christianity that is steeped in white supremacy and nationalism and the fear of the outsider. Donald Trump is brilliant at leveraging such fear as well as good old fashioned capitalism that Evangelicals feel further legitimizes their prosperity. He’s someone who will get them what they want.

It might seem surprising that people who profess to follow Jesus or say they love God would embrace them on with a lack of character that Donald Trump has but it's really nothing new. The old testament records the story of the Israelites who, at first, follow God. They're being obedient; they're being faithful and then they begin to loose their way. They begin to compromise their convictions and they end up bowing down before false idol. They end up worshiping a golden calf. So it really shouldn't be surprising to us, few thousand years later, religious people are still compromising their convictions, losing their way and kneeling before an orange jackass.

The illustration at the top of this article was originally created for this 2016 post.

 

RELATED: Not all Evangelicals Support Trump. A minority of them call his followers to repent.

Presiding Bishop rebukes Trump for using church in a political stunt https://t.co/fPxOtJbjoW from @churchtimes

— O. Douglas Jennings (@odouglasj) June 2, 2020

 

See another article about the power-grasping evangelicals:

The Power Worshippers: A look inside the American religious right @AJEnglish https://t.co/Gw1gd5FyOG

— O. Douglas Jennings (@odouglasj) July 1, 2020

Will Evangelicals Care About What Trump's Family Members Reveal?:

Mary Trump, the president's niece, calls Donald Trump a sociopath in her new book pic.twitter.com/XYrNZ3d8kn

— act.tv (@actdottv) July 8, 2020

 

🚨Wow. Ben Shapiro: “Trump is Lying to all of them.
Stop buying the lies!”#Tbt #RepublicansForBiden pic.twitter.com/HlFevDcwef

— Republicans for Joe Biden (@RepsForBiden) August 13, 2020

Good comment on today's Evangelicals:

Because Christ is merely their team mascot. His teachings have absolutely no bearing on evangelicals’ actual practices or beliefs.

— Mark Russell (@Manruss) August 31, 2020

What real Christianity looks like:

Glad to see the wise @RevDrBarber getting major coverage in the @nytimes for his truly Christian teachings, which we all need more than ever, no matter which religion we may belong to, for atheists and agnostics as well. Amen sir. pic.twitter.com/0NDGa5mGy2

— Harvey G. Cohen (@CultrHack) December 28, 2020

View from the pulpit:

View from the pulpit: Thread by @Brcremer on Thread Reader App https://t.co/qJvdoxDHzz

— 𝐎. 𝐃𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐥𝐚𝐬 𝐉𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦 (@odouglasj) April 25, 2023

Let's get this straight:

The way the other panelist are SQUIRMING as this man schools the shit outta them. pic.twitter.com/Y1ETyczseF

— bonky ⚘ she/her (@shesbonky) January 8, 2024

Zauriel: The Angelic Super Hero [Fan Art Process]

I've been on a DC Comics JLA Member Zauriel kick lately.

Here's the process of fan art that started with a post-it note:

Of course, this is just my interpretation of how Zauriel looks. There have been a lot of takes on the character. I prefer a "brighter" look.

Here's a Wikipedia article about the Justice Leagues only Angelic member!

And this quick info screen capture should be helpful:

AND, I enjoyed this video about Zauriel from a comics fan on YouTube. Very informative:

In Guarded Praise of Dandelions

"Dandelions symbolize everything I want to be in life" 

"Fluffy and dead with a gust wind?" 

"Unapologetic. Hard to kill. Feral, filled with sunlight, bright, beautiful in a way that the conventional & controlling hate but cannot ever fully destroy. Stubborn. Happy. Bastardous. Friends with bees. Highly disapproving of lawns. Full of wishes that will be carried far after I die."

                                                                --Popular internet dialog from somewhere *

                                     

My neighborhood is in a dedicated Natural Reserve zone which does not allow home owners to use anything but environmentally-friendly lawn care products. We also are not allowed to have fences. The Home Owners Association contracts with a service that will treat our yards twice a year (fertilizer, mostly). But that does not prevent Dandelion growth. This means that if Dandelions grow in my yard, I must pull them by hand. It's good exercise.

So each Spring, I play Dandelion Wac-a-mole. Here is my procedure:

I have a tool that is kinda like a glorified flat-head screwdriver. I insert it under the Dandelion plant.

As the soil is loosened around the plant, I can pull it out by the root.
I try to get as much root as possible.

Here you can see more of the garden tool I use for extraction of the plant.
Also, notice the white seeds at the end of a dedicated stem before it's fully unfolded.

My neighbor's yard which is full of Dandelions.
He's taking the bullet to provide early pollen for the bees! LOL!

So far, this Spring, as in the past 16 years I've lived here, I've been able to keep my yard relatively Dandelion-free. But I admire the plant as an example of great survival design and strategy!

* I've not been able to find the source of that intro quote yet. But here is the first time I saw it used.

_____________________

BONUS: The Dandelion/Witcher Connection

Dive Deeper on The Forgotten History of Dandelions:

Watching-a-Robin-Family Comic Story

Intro sketch of the mom & dad robins that made a nest on the corner of our grape vine trellis

 

© O. Douglas Jennings. All rights reserved.

My post-it note comic is based on a true story! It had been over 4 days since the mom robin had not been back to her nest. And then I found a pile of Robin feathers near by. My daughter used a step chair to look into the nest without disturbing it and took a photo that revealed an egg. I'm not sure why the nest had been abandoned. It’s very possible something caught the poor little Robin or maybe she just abandoned the nest because she sensed the egg was not viable.

Have a Quantum Easter!

May Maximum Blessing Density Be Yours!

 

 

© O. Douglas Jennings. All rights reserved.

Doug's Art Fair Demo Gets Super Feedback

Last night I took part in an Art Fair held at Country Side Grade School in Barrington, IL. My job was to make a demonstration of how to create a super-hero comic page. There were lots of activities and student art there. I wish I would have toured the student art in other rooms. I was in their multi-purpose area (notice the stage on my right). My demo took all my concentration so I stayed mainly in my corner.

The PTO organizers were very accommodating and high-school volunteers helped me set up in the well-lit area near the table (not shown) where kids were making Super Hero Buttons. Organizers had a sign for me (far left) but you'll notice I created my own.

I began the demo sketching a comic page layout. I did not have a story in mind but just started out with a super hero flying toward the reader. One of the attendees, a student named Daniel, who was sporting a  classic super hero mask he had colored with markers at one of the activity tables, ask me "Who is that super hero?" 

"Who do you want it to be?", I asked him.

"I think he should be Light Man", he said, "He looks like light would come out of his eyes".

"That's cool!" I said, "So, you think I should put an "L" on his chest and call him "Light Man"?

"Yeah!" confirmed Daniel, who then happily went off to play with the balloon sword he had gotten from yet another activity table (the balloon swords were a HUGE hit with the grade school boys while the girls were bigger fans of the masks).

That was enough to get me started on the story. I could only do one page so I decided to make it a cliff-hanger as you can tell from the panels. I made the initial sketch drawing using a blue high-lighter marker  instead of a pencil so it could be seen at a distance. I had a lot of people watching me from chairs that had been set up around my station. It was definitely a kind of performance art. One dad asked me if his son could color the finished product. I told him he should take a photo with his phone and print it out later for his son to color. He liked that idea. It was a great size for capturing on an iPhone. Normally comic page original art is drawn on an 10"x15" (11"x17" with border) illustration board, whereas I was drawing my demo on a 26"x30" sheet.

After I sketched enough with the blue marker, I placed that page behind a clean sheet that was thin enough for me to see through and finished the inking with a Sharpie. It took me 30 minutes to do the sketch but an hour to do the inks. Daniel came back and liked what I had done. He really liked the name of Light Man's arch ememy, Shadow Shark. He looked for another page for the rest of the story and was disappointed when I told him I had time for only one page. 

"On the next page you should have Light Man blast Shadow Shark with his eyes." Daniel offered, "Then Shadow Shark would fall out the window saying, 'Curse you, Light Man!'. You, know, like the villains always say."

"That would be a great story!" I encouraged as Daniel rejoined the other kids in the inevitable chasing and balloon sword play. I wondered how this experience of seeing his stories drawn out will influence him. Maybe he'll become a writer or artist. Or at least he'll have a great memory of that time when he was a kid and an artist took him seriously and made a story out of his idea. That could lead to a lot of good things. 

Thanks to the PTO volunteer who took these photos and to the high school volunteers who helped me set up and put things away. And special thanks to Nicole Koviak, the head organizer who contacted  and scheduled me for the event through Kaleidoscope School of Fine Art by way our Curriculum Director Alyane McNulty.