According to Pastor Robert Jeffress, Mormonism is a cult, Islam, Hindusim, and Buddhism are “false religions,” and the Roman Catholic Church came out of paganism. Members of his Dallas congregation clap when he says these things.
Jeffress has been pounding his chest recently and asserting a triumphalistic theology rooted, I believe, in fear. He supports Rick Perry and has urged evangelical Christians to vote for Perry, not the Mormon, Mitt Romney.
Jeffress is a Southern Baptist preacher. I wish he could visit my World Religions class sometime and learn something. I wish he could visit the many Christian churches that hold classes on the non-Christian religions in order to learn something. But pastors like Jeffress are more committed to fear-based rhetoric than learning something.
Peel back the onion of the conservative Christian rhetoric and you will find fear. Fear of gays, fear of women, fear of Obama, fear of liberals, fear of Mormons, and fear of the non-Christian religions. It’s all about fear.
The fear is usually masked by chest-pounding. The more fear, the louder these preachers shout. It’s an embattled spirituality that is reacting to a world that has passed them by. The Religious Right wants to “take back America.” What this means is they want to remake America into the image of their fear-based, dogmatic theology.
It won’t work. The majority of us don’t live there, and we don’t want to. To affirm the narrow worldview of Pastor Robert Jeffress is to take a huge step backwards and relive the religious ignorance and bigotry of a former age.
Furthermore, Mormons and non-Christians aren’t going away. They are all here to stay. It’s time to stop the fear-based rhetoric and learn something.
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