A Wild Metaxas Appears!

We haven’t checked in with Eric Metaxas lately. Let’s see how he’s doing.

It appears he’s about the same, maybe a little worse.

It is sometimes hard to follow Twitter so here’s what happened. First, Metaxas retweeted Wayne Grudem’s biblical defense of Donald Trump’s wall (see my take down of that article here), calling it “A Sane View of the Border Wall Controversy.” Then law professor John Inazu responded:

I wonder at what point in the United States’s genocidal westward expansion Metaxas and Grudem would argue a wall would have been biblically justified.

Good question. What if the Bible had been the holy book of the Chickasaw people?

Then, Metaxas responded to Inazu:

When did you arrive?

Reaction was swift and negative to Metaxas’ insensitive tweet.

Here is a sampling.

Nate Pyle and Katelyn Beaty are Christian authors and Beaty is former editor of Christianity Today.

In contrast to Metaxas, Inazu did stay classy and gave Metaxas a little history lesson:

Since coming out for Donald Trump in the 2016 campaign, Metaxas has bewildered his supporters with his move toward nativism. Metaxas eventually removed the offensive tweet without apology.

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17 thoughts on “A Wild Metaxas Appears!”

  1. I laughed out loud at the “a wild metaxas appeared!”
    I think you were spot on when you said “It appears he’s about the same, maybe a little worse.”

        1. When has Warren stated a desire for open borders? When did this become “wall or nothing?”

          1. Why bother with evidence-based thinking when fabrication, obfuscation, and derailment are so much easier to hide behind. Convenient especially when one has no legitimate counter-argument in response to anything Dr. Throckmorton has written or said.

    2. Mr W. U. Phid:

      Do you keep your door locked 24x7x52? If not, then by your logic, the US should have open borders at least some of the time.

      To paraphrase the esteemed Python, ’tis a silly argument, let’s not go there.

    3. Not a good comparison. No one has any right to seek asylum in my house ever. However, people do have a right to seek asylum in the U.S.

      1. “Dad, can Johnny spend the night his parents are out of town?” If I chose to grant asylum to Johnny, I open the door to him. I can also deny him asylum and the door stays locked.

        Catch my drift?

          1. Not sure why this troll is given space to bombard you with obvious logical fallacies, non-sequiturs, and false equivalencies. His every post only confirms he has no legitimate counter-argument. Even college freshmen can understand this.

        2. Don’t be an idiot (if that’s even possible). The United States, as a signatory of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other international treaties concerning asylum seekers and refugees, has a responsibility to grant those people a fair hearing, and grant refuge for those who are genuinely in need.

          Now do you see why your false equivalence is so idiotic? (Probably not, since you’re too busy up-voting your own comments.)

          1. While I think it is obvious that there is a difference, I do believe What Up really sees an analogy. I think many people do and it puzzles me why they do. I want to understand it but it still escapes me.

            The U.S. didn’t have any immigration laws until the late 1800s. it was fear that drove those laws, not unlike today. I don’t want open borders now but I do think we should have a more liberal policy toward those here (path to citizenship) and I think we should treat many seeking asylum as refugees. Many want to fight in our armed services and now Trump is kicking them out of the Army. This is a tragic situation and one which is driven by misinformation and fear. I want to understand it but if one understands history, one understands that this fear doesn’t end anyplace good.

          2. Seeing analogies that don’t exist is a fun strategy to hide behind when self-serving relativism is one’s guiding gospel of fear, fear-mongering, and xenophobia. Not unlike U.S. White Evangelical and Pastor Paula White who is again displaying her biblical illiteracy on a national stage.

          3. I agree with everything you said, and as a Brit living in Texas, I’ve seen what happens when irrational arguments, fallacies and lies are used to stoke the fear of immigrants on both sides of the Atlantic.

            The problem is that even if you could reduce all immigration to zero, it wouldn’t solve the plight of those who believe it is destroying their livelihood. Automation, globalization and rampant inequality back home are going to limit job opportunities and keep wages suppressed no matter how many illegal immigrants we toss out of the country. In the UK, Brexit is likely to make the economic situation of those who voted for it worse, not better. In the US, are hundreds of thousands of low income Americans going to flock to the fields for $12/hour instead of $8/hour? I highly doubt it.

            Meanwhile I have a teacher friend whose class is full of (legal) immigrant kids living in fear of the day their older (undocumented) siblings are rounded up and taken away. I have a friend whose husband (with four US citizen kids) was told by an immigration lawyer to give up his efforts to become legal when Trump won the election because he has a DUI from 20 years ago when he was a teenager.

            And it’s all so pointless. My sister has two sons. One married to a second generation British Indian woman, the other married to a third generation British Polish woman, and their wives couldn’t be more British if they tried. The same has happened to previous waves of immigrants to the United States since the nation began.

            As for figuring out how to stop the fear-mongering. It’s probably not possible. Being on the left politically, I would certainly argue that an economy with strong workers rights, a national healthcare system, a fairer tax system, and a stronger safety net would reduce the circumstance that allows such fear-mongering to bear fruit, but I am not hopeful we can achieve any of those things while the increasingly far right maintains its structural advantage in the US state and federal electoral system.

          4. I agree with everything you said, and as a Brit living in Texas, I’ve seen what happens when irrational arguments, fallacies and lies are used to stoke the fear of immigrants on both sides of the Atlantic.

            The problem is that even if you could reduce all immigration to zero, it wouldn’t solve the plight of those who believe it is destroying their livelihood. Automation, globalization and rampant inequality back home are going to limit job opportunities and keep wages suppressed no matter how many illegal immigrants we toss out of the country. In the UK, Brexit is likely to make the economic situation of those who voted for it worse, not better. In the US, are hundreds of thousands of low income Americans going to flock to the fields for $12/hour instead of $8/hour? I highly doubt it.

            Meanwhile I have a teacher friend whose class is full of (legal) immigrant kids living in fear of the day their older (undocumented) siblings are rounded up and taken away. I have a friend whose husband (with four US citizen kids) was told by an immigration lawyer to give up his efforts to become legal when Trump won the election because he has a DUI from 20 years ago when he was a teenager.

            And it’s all so pointless. My sister has two sons. One married to a second generation British Indian woman, the other married to a third generation British Polish woman, and their wives couldn’t be more British if they tried. The same has happened to previous waves of immigrants to the United States since the nation began.

            As for figuring out how to stop the fear-mongering. It’s probably not possible. Being on the left politically, I would certainly argue that an economy with strong workers rights, a national healthcare system, a fairer tax system, and a stronger safety net would reduce the circumstance that allows such fear-mongering to bear fruit, but I am not hopeful we can achieve any of those things while the increasingly far right maintains its structural advantage in the US state and federal electoral system.

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