Sometimes you just can’t help but laugh at how Democrats get their panties all in a wad about Christians who express beliefs that are actually in line with the Bible.
That was my response when I heard about the blowback to Calvary Chapel Chino Hills pastor Jack Hibbs being invited to give the opening prayer in the U.S. House on January 30 of this year.
In a February 15 letter signed by 26 Democrat House members and principally authored by Rep. Jared Huffman of California, Hibbs is characterized as a “radical Christian Nationalist who helped fuel the January 6th insurrection and has a long record of spewing hateful vitriol toward non-Christians, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ community.”
As Politico helpfully pointed out recently, a Christian Nationalist is someone who believes our rights come from God, which puts the nation’s Founders in this unfortunate category.
Huffman expressed disdain that Hibbs “embraces the false and exclusionary Christian nationalist narrative that the United States was established as a ‘Christian nation,’” adding that “he has repeatedly flouted separation of church and state by working to institutionalize Christian prayer and bible readings at local school board meetings, among other things.”
Oh, the horror.
Regarding Hibbs’s supposed support for the events of January 6th, Huffman pointed to remarks he made prior to the riot in which he asserted his belief that the 2020 election was stolen, that God could intervene to keep Trump in office, and that the certification of the electoral college would be comparable to the War of 1812 and the Revolutionary War.
Huffman also noted that Hibbs attended Trump’s speech at the Ellipse on January 6th and argued that “this is what you get when you eject God from the courts and from the schools and you tell kids . . . that they are evolutionary byproducts.”
If you ask me, that sounds more like a condemnation of violence than a justification for it.
It gets better.
Huffman then went on to decry Hibbs’s invocation of God’s “holy fear” and petition for “repentance of our national sins,” which Huffman claims are “allusions to to the militant and fanatical agenda he preaches about the LGBTQ+ community, Jews, Muslims, and anyone who conflicts with his ‘biblical worldview.’”
Leftists know they have to couch their radical views in popular, unassuming terms, and reading this letter, you get the sense there’s a little bit of projection going on.
Here’s how Huffman characterized Hibbs’s views on the Rainbow Jihad:
Among other things, he has called transgender people a “sexually perverted cult” who are in “violation of the word and will of God” and part of an “anti-God, anti-Christ plan of none other than Satan himself.” He launched a nationwide campaign to require schools to out transgender students in order to defeat “demonic and dark satanic powers.” He claims that same-sex marriage has “crucified God’s word” and that homosexuality and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people is evidence that humanity is living in the “last days.” He champions discredited “conversion therapy” and has rallied opposition to a California law to reduce anti-LGBTQ+ bullying in schools.
Sounds right to me. The distinction between male and female is a fundamental element of our humanity and being made in the image of God — it’s right there in Genesis 1 — and if we’re convinced we can decide this element of our existence for ourselves or redefine marriage to mean anything we want, any notion of objective truth goes out the window.
That last bit about opposition to a law “to reduce anti-LGBTQ+ bullying” is a reference to a ballot initiative that required schools to allow gender-confused boys to use girls’ restrooms.
Radical, indeed.
Huffman proceeded to paint Hibbs as having extreme views on Islam.
He preaches that Christians are at “war” against the “death cult” of Islam, which he calls a “vehicle” for Satan in the Last Days. He criticizes Christians who seek interfaith dialogue with Muslims based on the common Abrahamic origins of the two religions as falling for “a demonic doctrine being propagated by heretics.”
Any objective reading of the Quran makes it difficult to dispute the assertion that Islam, which literally means “submission,” seeks the subjugation of all “infidels,” including Christians, Jews, and non-religious people.
Finally, according to Huffman, Hibbs “disparages Jews as being in a ‘stupor’ and a ‘God-given blindness,’ unlike the ‘true Jews’ who worship Jesus because ‘they didn’t get bogged down in Judaism, which…cannot save you.’”
The Apostle Paul writes about this temporary blindness is Romans 11, where he promises that through Jesus “all Israel will be saved.”
The proverbial bed-wetting wouldn’t be complete without a complaint about a violation of House procedures.
Huffman accused Speaker Johnson of circumventing the process for inviting a guest chaplain to give the opening prayer, which stipulates that each member can invite a guest chaplain from his or her district once per session of Congress. Hibbs is from California while Johnson is from Louisiana, and he’s the second guest chaplain Johnson has invited to give the opening prayer.
Huffman and the other cosigners asked Johnson to explain why Hibbs was allowed to give the opening prayer and work with them to “ensure that the House reflects and respects our country’s essential constitutional values and increasingly diverse faith perspectives.”
To date, Johnson has not responded to the letter.
While it isn’t the least bit surprising that Democrats in Congress are flipping out over Johnson’s invitation of Hibbs, Johnson has also received criticism from Faithful America, which bills itself as “the largest online community of grassroots Christians acting for social justice.”
The organization has collected nearly 18,000 signatures for a petition castigating Johnson for turning the guest chaplain program into “a platform for insurrectionists, Christian nationalists, or those with a record of antisemitic and anti-Muslim remarks.” The petition adds that the “kind of bigoted vitriol and anti-democracy disinformation that we have seen from Pastor Hibbs is quite simply not what Jesus wants from us.”
I guess they forgot about those times when Jesus called the ruling elite of his day “whitewashed tombs” and a “brood of vipers,” how he rebuked them for “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men,” or when he said his “kingdom is not of this world.”
Or maybe it’s just too much to expect Christians to believe what the Bible actually says.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member