Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Death of the G.O.P., and Her "Christian" Trumpism

On January 6, hours after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in a riot that led to 5 deaths, including the murder of officer Brian Sicknick, 147 House Republicans and 6 G.O.P. Senators shirked their constitutional duties and voted not to confirm Joe Biden's electoral victory because of "fraud" for which there is not a scintilla of hard evidence. Four weeks later, on February 3, 61 House Republicans voted to remove Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the daughter of the former Republican Vice President, from her position as the 3rd-ranking member of the G.O.P. House caucus. Her "sin"? She had the audacity to respect the Constitution and vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting that deadly riot. Then the very next day only 11 of them voted with 219 Democrats to remove QAnon freshman congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)―and, reportedly, half gave her a standing ovation―from her committee assignments for, among others things, incendiary claims that a plane never hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that the Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas school shootings were "false flag" operations, that the 2017 Las Vegas shootings may have been staged, that Barack Obama was a Muslim, that Bill and Hillary Clinton are murderers, that Nancy Pelosi has committed "treason" and thus deserves to be executed, that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a "communist," that Joe Biden is "president of Communist China," that Muslims don't belong in American government, and―most bizarre of all―that California's 2018 wildfires were caused by Jewish "space lasers" (for a convenient summary of Greene's outrageous, transparently dangerous views, see here). Let this sink in: More House Republicans voted to remove (the very conservative, more traditional Republican) Liz Cheney than to remove the conspiratorial greenhorn Marjorie Taylor Greene.

This is bad enough, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. Arizona's state G.O.P. not only censured Republican (!) Governor Doug Ducey for the "sin" of enacting "anti-liberty" emergency measures during the coronavirus pandemic, but also introduced a bill to allow the Legislature (currently dominated by Republicans) the authority to override the secretary of state's certification of its electoral votes. On January 19, the Oregon G.O.P issued a letter claiming (against all evidence) that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was a "false flag" and condemning the 10 House Republicans who had the temerity to impeach Trump. Just this week word has leaked that the Nebraska G.O.P. has drafted a "Resolution of Censure" against Nebraska's Republican Senator Ben Sasse (see his response here) for his opposition to Donald Trump. As far as the Republican "base" is concerned, an Axios poll earlier this week put Marjorie Taylor Greene's approval ratings at +10, in contrast to Liz Cheney's at -28.

All this validates the considered opinion of conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who last week opined that "The GOP isn't doomed. It's dead." And, contrary to what many might suppose, I don't view this with glee. The country needs a functioning center-right party to balance the center-left Democratic Party. To put it bluntly, however, today's G.O.P. is not that party (just as certainly as that the post-Reagan G.O.P. is not the activist, big government Republican party of its 3 greatest Presidents: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower). Such is recognized by both conservative writers like Tim Miller (here and here) and liberals like Jamelle Bouie (here). Bouie perceptively speaks of the "dissolving" of the "once-porous border between the right and the far right." Dana Milbank, more colorfully, refers to it as "the cult of Trump." Most pointedly, the evangelical Christian conservative Michael Gerson, former head speech writer for George W. Bush, condemns Trumpism as "American fascism." 

The aforementioned Marjorie Taylor Greene has now become the poster person for this development. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to put it bluntly, is not a fan. Earlier this week, he blasted her as a "cancer" on the party because of her "loony lies and conspiracy theories." Indeed, The Washington Post's Parker refers to her as "a QAnon-promoting female version of Trump — only without the charm." The characterization is apt. The only thing that approaches the level of her arrogant self-confidence is her staggering gullibility and invincible ignorance (can you imagine Kevin McCarthy's having assigned her to the Education Committee?!). 

As a Christian theologian, however, what concerns me most is that she "baptizes" her lunacy and conspiratorial hatefulness with the veneer of Christianity. Just last week, Tyler Huckabee wrote an article for Relevant Magazine in which he noted that in 2011 Greene had been baptized at North Point Community Church, the Georgia megachurch pastored by Andy Stanley (Full disclosure: Stanley graduated with his ThM in my class at seminary; I didn't know him personally, though I did grade some of his Greek papers while I served as a TA for the New Testament department). 

Now, I am used to so-called "Christians" like Trump's former press secretaries Sarah Sanders and Kaylee McEnany having no compunction lying for their boss and defending what was, on the face of it, indefensible. They were not ignorant, however, and they did what they did knowingly and in bad faith (even if they thought they were somehow, for whatever reasons, justified in doing so and pretending they were telling the truth). Greene is another animal entirely. She evidently believes (or used to believe, as she now, somewhat unconvincingly, claims) the nonsense she spouts. In January 2020 she posted a campaign video in which she claimed that Democrats want both "to murder babies up until the day of birth”―a demonstrably false claim―and "to take away our guns." Are guns necessary simply for self-defense? Hardly. Back in October she posted another video in which she implied that to "get your freedoms back" from "socialists" like Joe Biden would entail "earn[ing it] with the price of blood." Yesterday, Democratic Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland showed a poster-sized copy of a (since-deleted) Facebook post (pictured at left) in which an AR-15 toting Greene portrays herself as the enforcer against the so-called "Squad," the liberal (and minority) Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib (pictured), and Ayanna Pressley (not pictured) likewise abominated by Donald Trump. 

To put it mildly, this is not the posture to be taken by any genuine follower of Jesus of Nazareth. The "John Wayne"-style, hyper-masculinized Jesus is, after all, an idol of right wing American imagination. Likewise, Paul the Apostle, writing to the wisdom-obsessed churches of Corinth, notes that "Not many of you were wise by human standards ... but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise" (1 Corinthians 1:26-27, NIV). It should go without saying, however, that the brilliant and educated former rabbinic scholar did not intend this as an excuse for continued ignorance and the gullibility that so often accompanies it. On both these counts, the pugnacious and fact-challenged Greene betrays her Christian confession. 

To be sure, yesterday Greene attempted to defend herself by saying that "none of us are [sic!] perfect," by tepidly "regretting" some of her supposedly "past" QAnon beliefs, and admitting, in suspiciously general terms, that "9/11 happened." Today, however, she showed her true colors, doubling down on her extremism, saying she has been "freed" and will do everything in her power to cement Trump's influence and push the Republican Party even further to the Right.

But "regret" hardly substitutes for what is needed, to wit, repentance. In her public statements the last two days she has not retracted her most heinous idea, namely, her endorsement of political violence against her―and what she considers the nation's―political enemies. And that is simply inexcusable. She needs to repent. And, as John the Baptizer so forcefully put it, that entails "produc[ing] fruit in keeping with repentance" (Luke 3:8). Anything less not only casts Christianity in a bad light, it casts aspersion on the one to whom it is called to bear witness. And that is not acceptable.