A Study on the Profundity of
Maga-Evangelicalism
by R.E. Slater
"Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often
shaped and adjusted by our social goals." - Jim Forest
A Study on the Profundity of
Maga-Evangelicalism showing why it's style of Christianity naively handles the bible in its doctrines and interpretations. Consequently, it holds to an evil god rather than a Loving God because maga has no loving God theology. Only a god of war, wrath and judgment.
One can easily make the argument that the historic traditional church used societal outcome beliefs to shape civil laws as we are again seeing repeated by today's evangelical maga church under their applauded leader Donald Trump who is purposely destroying America.
The result? Maga civil law is showing itself to be religiously oppressive, brainwashing, harmful, and deadly. And all of this is based upon maga's misuse of biblical scriptures as seen in its Project 2025 contract produced by hyper-right maga counsel from a hyper-right bible which it purportly claims to understand - but doesn't when ignoring the bible's historical context and development.
More plainly, the bible maga preaches comes out in "cookie-cutter forms". Froms which removes a loving God theology for a wrathful and judging God found at the height of earlier syncretizing religious formations in ancient Israel's "prophetic" day.
R.E. Slater
March 7, 2025
The Evolution of God [from Polytheism to Monotheism]
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Naiviety in Maga-Evangelical Bible Circles
by R.E. Slater
When taking the Bible at face value by interpreting it literally and without serious critical engagement, naive hermenuetical interpretive traditions will always lead to unhelpful and personally, or societally, harmful conclusions.
I had mentioned this in an earlier post regarding the prophet Ezekiel's idea of a God which did evil and now inspires today's maga-evangelical church to do the same kind of evil upon society as it's imagined evil God had done evil in Israel's day.
However, contrary to evangelical dogma, a process view of God rejects evangelical teaching that God does evil by countering that God is always loving all the time and can do no evil.
If this is so, then maga beliefs must immediately stop, repent, and repair the harm and evil that it is doing.
Why? Because fundamentally, maga is misreading the Scriptures wrong-headedly - and then justifying it's misreadings by creating apologetic defenses for its purposeful naivety applied to the bible's collective narratives. Biblical narratives which at once are telling us how ancient peoples once thought of God and were trying to understand God's seemingly judgmental presence in their daily lives.
Often, ancient religious recitations about who and what God is have shown themselves to commonly agree to theologies of oppression and judgment predicated upon divine behaviour. Many an ancient cosmology has recanted it's national experiences as "walking a fine line" between fate or fortune at the hands of a god or gods. Israel's God seems little different in this respect.
But ancient wisdom may not necessarily be true as Jesus later told Israel's religious establishment. Jesus taught of a loving God as opposed to the priests and scribes who taught of a judging God. The years of Jesus' ministry were years of exampling and teaching a God of love. His theology is a loving God theology which center and content is now captured in a theology known as process theology. Process theology is contrary to maga evangelical theology fallen back upon Israel's older, errant theology of a God of evil, wrath and judgment.
R.E. Slater
March 7, 2025
Why feeding poor hungry children cannot be measured
by dollars but in healing societies of compassion.
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A Personal Soliloquy
by R.E. Slater
Perhaps Christians should remember that their part in doing evil is not something which can be so easily un-broken. Israel in its more recent modern history has shown itself to be highly unjust towards the people of Gaza for decades. And consequently, each ethnic group have reaped their sins upon their own heads for not loving and cooperating with one another.
We too easily forget that peacemaking and building healthy societies is extremely difficult. More so, that when doing evil things to innocents is first and foremost the breaking of societal trust with one another which can then quickly deform into lawlessness, evil and anarchy.
Being called to be Peacemakers has shown humanity to repeatedly defy, deny, and ignore its responsibilities... until the time comes when you and your tribe are oppressed, persecuted, harmed, murdered, and ruined.
Never take the calm of a peaceable society for granted. It's calm has come over decades and centuries of trying to find civil ways of living peaceably with difference with one another.
Difference is good if one begins on the basis that difference can be healthy and loving in a multiethnic, multi-pluralistic societal form.
However, individual oneness can be the subtractor to Peaceable Plurality unless it is tempered - tempered! - in peace and love.
R.E. Slater
March 8, 2025
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Maga-Christianity's Unloving
- and Unlovingly Applied -
Doctrines of God
by R.E. Slater
In the Book of Ezekiel, chapters 25-32 focus on God's judgment against the nations surrounding Israel. This would include Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt, for their actions against Israel and God's people. Pointedly, when maga-evangelical Christians read chapters and verses like these they believe themselves to be the persecuted instead of the persector oppressing and harming civil societies such as America's Constitutionally founded communities of unifying difference.
Here's a more detailed outline of Ezekiel 25-32:
I. Judgment on the Nations (Ezekiel 25-32):
A. Prophecies Against Individual Nations:
1. Ammon (Ezekiel 25:1-7): Condemned for rejoicing over the destruction of Jerusalem and mocking the Israelites.
2. Moab (Ezekiel 25:8-11): Condemned for gloating over the destruction of Jerusalem.
3. Edom (Ezekiel 25:12-14): Condemned for rejoicing at Israel's misfortune and for their hatred of Israel.
4. Philistia (Ezekiel 25:15-17): Condemned for their actions against Israel.
5. Tyre (Ezekiel 26-28): Condemned for their pride, arrogance, and trade practices.
- a. The Fall of Tyre (Ezekiel 26): God announces the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar.
- b. The Pride of Tyre (Ezekiel 27): Tyre's wealth and power are described, followed by God's judgment.
- c. The Ruler of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:1-10): The king of Tyre is accused of arrogance and is compared to a fallen angel.
6. Sidon (Ezekiel 28:20-23): Sidon is condemned for its sins.
7. Egypt (Ezekiel 29-32): Condemned for its pride and idolatry, and its king is compared to a dragon.
- a. The Fall of Egypt (Ezekiel 29): God announces the destruction of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar.
- b. The Death of the Pharaoh (Ezekiel 30): Egypt's king is described as a fallen leader.
- c. The Destruction of Egypt (Ezekiel 31-32): Egypt's pride and downfall are described.
B. Themes of Judgment by God upon Israel's Enemies:
1. God's Sovereignty: God is the ultimate judge of all nations, not just Israel.
2. Justice: God will hold all nations accountable for their sins and actions.
3. Pride and Arrogance: God condemns the pride and arrogance of the nations, especially their rulers.
4. Rejoicing at Israel's Misfortune: God condemns those who rejoice at the destruction of Jerusalem and the suffering of God's people.
5. False Trust: God condemns those who place their trust in other nations rather than in Him.
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Expounding Ezekiel Properly
by R.E. Slater
Why Evangelical Maga Christianity is Naive - and Naively Misuses
the Bible Regularly for It's Own Social Purposes and Faith-Causes
A processual view of God's judgment greatly alters what God is and does as ancient Israel believed about its God and how today's maga church similarly believes.
It also places the evangelical maga church, like that of the nation Israel, into the role of an evil doer when harming it's congregations and outsiders to itself by ungenerous, unjust and inequitable dogmatic beliefs and actions.
Why?
Because the controlling God of yesteryear's ancient beliefs - as ascribed in the bible - is statedly untrue of a loving God IF God is loving: "Murder, mayhem, and harm can never come from a loving God."
But by preaching a controlling God who purposely does evil - as seen in Israel's experience of God in Ezekiel - and as preached and believed in today's evangelical churches - tells us that a controlling church, just like it's controlling God, can and will do evil.
Ezekiel's message of divine vengeance doing evil simply tells us what Israel's beliefs were about God... BUT NOT WHAT OR WHO GOD ACTUALLY IS.
Why?
IF religious beliefs are evolving over time then the bible is a collection of those evolving beliefs about God... whether right or wrong.
Thusly, Israel's errant theology of God is statedly written in the bible for all to read... which doesn't mean that it is interpretively true of God but it does mean that it is experirntially true of ancient Israel's beliefs about God. Its the old story of one person experiencing evil misfortune while another experiences beneficial fate. How then might God be viewed between the two experiences?
Today, those beliefs about an evil God in the bible are insupportable under a loving God theology.
Examining Evil as Evil and Not of, or coming from, a loving God
If you do evil to others it can turn around and find you as well. In Processual Context this seems to be Ezekiel's belief. Thusly it can be said that evil cannot come by a loving God's redeeming hand but by humanity's own evil hand as processual human beings who are reaping the processual results for in-humane, unloving, behaviors, words and deeds.
Israel's God, like the evangelical church's God, can-and-will do evil because one suspects that evil was by Israel, or the church's, own hand. But a processual view of God using the same bible sees the error of that evangelical maga God theology.
We might more properly say, "Evil is its own reward." Similarly, love is IT's own reward.
Love does not do evil. Evil does not do love.
Which then is God?
And what kind of evil, controlling Sovereign inhabits this controlling God's Being?
If God is true by maga-evangelical standards of theology then the evil we see being done by the maga church to today's Constitutional societies of America - which also includes how the maga church treats the stranger, alien, and migrants of our lands - is also true of its own evil theology claiming to be loving but actually doing evil both to it's own congregations as well as its community neighbors around each maga-evangelical church campus.
Jesus told the Jews they got it backwards. Non-evangelical believers are telling maga'ites to cease their evil actions and to restore their evil actions back to love.
The brokenness you've committed is very great and will be very difficult to now fix. Stop. Repent. Start loving. Cease the cycle of evil and become peacemakers.
God is love. God is not evil. Evil is evil. And doing evil is, well, evil.
R.E. Slater
March 8, 2025
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