Category: Eric Metaxas

Donald Drains the Swamp – New Book by Eric Metaxas

After books on Christian heavyweights Bonhoeffer and Luther, Eric Metaxas tackles the heaviest weight of them all – Donald the Caveman. I haven’t seen a pre-publication copy as yet, but I can only imagine the wonders within this prehistoric prose.

I do wonder how Metaxas will delicately handle a full treatment of Donald the Caveman’s swamp draining. How, for instance, will he depict the Access Hollywood episode and all that grabbing?

The Stormy Daniels payoff chapter should be a delicate one for a children’s book. Maybe the book will carry a parent’s advisory.

Will there be an entire chapter on Donald the Cavemen’s golf escapades? You have to fill the swamp before you can drain it, I guess.

How about a chapter about the S***hole countries, the very fine neo-Nazis, John Dean the rat, our allies the enemies, and his good friend and mentor Vlad.

Should be amazing.

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Fair use of image from Amazon book page.

Eric Metaxas Says Katie Hopkins is His Hero

As yet another indicator of how far into the alt-right Eric Metaxas has drifted, here is a recent love tweet to British nativist Katie Hopkins.

In no universe should Katie Hopkins be called sweet or be anybody’s hero.

Final Solution

She lost her radio show after tweeting that a “final solution” was needed for Muslims.

Euthanasia Vans

In 2015, she advocated euthanasia for the elderly in nursing homes, telling interviewer Michael Buerk that she would deploy “euthanasia vans” if she ruled the world. According to Metaxas’ hero:

“We just have far too many old people.” Did I know that one in three NHS beds was being blocked by the elderly and demented? A third of our hospitals filled up by people who don’t even know they’re there? She’d soon put a stop to that. “It’s ridiculous to be living in a country where we can put dogs to sleep but not people.” Her solution? “Easy. Euthanasia vans – just like ice-cream vans – that would come to your home.” After they’d finished in the hospitals, presumably. “It would all be perfectly charming. They might even have a nice little tune they’d play. I mean this genuinely. I’m super-keen on euthanasia vans. We need to accept that just because medical advances mean we can live longer, it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

Sweet.

She thinks racial profiling is a “good thing,” doesn’t mind being called a racist, promotes the white genocide conspiracy theory, and advocated using gunships to thwart migrants coming into the UK. She called refugees “cockroaches.”

Regarding Metaxas’ tweet, I don’t know what he refers to by removing Trump by “any means necessary.” Numerous people have called for impeachment, but this is a Constitutional means and well within our republican government.

Metaxas’ devotion to Trump has taken him to some dark places when he considers a person like Katie Hopkins “sweet” and a “hero.”

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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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Oren Paris III Resigns as Ecclesia College President, Enters Conditional Guilty Plea in Kickback Scheme

Correction: An earlier version of this article said Ecclesia was unaccredited. I have corrected it to reflect that the school is accredited by the Association of Biblical Higher Education but is not regionally accredited which is the gold standard for academic accreditation. 
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Watch out, shoes are dropping in the Ecclesia College kickback case.
Arkansas Online today reports that Oren Paris III resigned from his post as president of Ecclesia College and entered a last minute conditional

Ecclesia College

guilty plea in the kickback and bribery case which came to light early last year. Along with State Senator Jon Woods, and consultant Randall Shelton, Paris was indicted in federal court on March 1, 2017 for allegedly participating in a scheme to funnel state improvement funds through Ecclesia to Woods and Shelton. State representative Micah Neal was also in on the alleged plot and earlier entered a guilty plea.

Read the Indictment Here

Ecclesia College is an Christian school in Springdale AR which has the support of Christian nationalists David Barton and Eric Metaxas. The school is accredited by the Association for Biblical Higher Education but is not accredited by the Higher Learning Commission which covers schools in Arkansas.
Initially, Paris was defiant and claimed he would be vindicated. Although Paris entered a guilty plea, the move may have been a legal maneuver, according to media reports. His trial was slated to begin Monday and Paris may be hoping to revisit his status if an appeals court overturns Judge Timothy Brooks decision not to dismiss the case.

Read the Plea Agreement Here

In the plea agreement, Paris admits that he “knowingly obtained GIF [General Improvement Funds] money for the College under materially false and fraudulent pretenses.” Paris then caused funds to be paid to Randall Shelton knowing that some of those funds would end up back with Senator Jon Woods in a kickback. By entering a conditional guilty plea to one count, Paris has thrown Shelton and Woods under the bus.
Incredibly, Ecclesia College is standing by Paris, writing on the school Facebook page:

Dear friends,
As you know, Dr. Oren Paris and two others were indicted a little over a year ago by the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. For Oren, his immediate family, and the extended family at Ecclesia College, this has been a period of spiritual trial, eased by an ever increasing gratitude for God’s constant presence and His great faithfulness.
While we continue to believe firmly that Dr. Paris has been honest and forthright in his statements from the beginning of this case, he and his legal team are now convinced that the best path forward is to accept a conditional plea agreement negotiated with the government. We stand with him in his decision.
Information recently brought to Dr. Paris’s attention has shed new light on facts he previously knew but had interpreted differently. This enables him to truthfully make the statement required by the government. The terms of the conditional plea agreement clear the path for an appeal to be filed with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to address some the issues raised during the course of this case that have caused us all great concern regarding the appearance of fairness of the judicial system. In the meantime, while Dr. Paris will be stepping down as president of Ecclesia College until his name is cleared in order to avoid further unnecessary distraction from the College’s mission, he will continue to serve Ecclesia.
We know and trust that God is moving on our behalf toward His ultimate answer to our ongoing prayer for His deliverance. Please continue to pray with us that the upcoming appeal will lead to a fully just outcome in the end.We are completely confident that God has every individual and this institution in His all-capable hands. To the faculty, staff, and students operations will continue as normal. We look forward to seeing Him in and through this situation for the overall good and promising future of Ecclesia College.
For His glory,
EC Board of Governance

It is very difficult to square the plea agreement with this statement from the Board of Governance. If his statement to the government is true, then he “knowingly obtained GIF money for the College under materially false and fraudulent pretenses” and “knowing and intentionally engaged in a scheme to defraud the citizens of Arkansas of the honest services of Arkansas state Senator Woods.” (See image below from page 4 of the plea agreement)

This case is not over. Senator Woods and Randall Shelton still must go to trial and no doubt they will have something to say about Paris’ involvement.
 
 
 

Dennis Prager, Eric Metaxas and the Surpassing Moral Good of Evangelicals

Eric Metaxas loves him some Dennis Prager. After Jon Ward’s profile of Metaxas as a Donald Trump supporter came out on Friday, Metaxas heartily recommended Prager’s defense of evangelicals who support Trump on Saturday. In his National Review article, Prager wrote, “this Jew would like to defend Evangelicals and other Christians who support President Donald Trump.”
After chastising never-Trump evangelicals, Prager said that God used prostitute Rahab to help bring the Israelites into the promised land. If God can do that, why can’t evangelicals get over Trump’s moral failings? The punch line of the piece is:

Evangelicals realize that the moral good of defeating the Left is of surpassing importance.

Is that so? Is such a defeat what we are here to accomplish?
A few minutes of reflection bring up several problems with Prager’s summary of evangelical moral good. Who is The Left? At one time, the left was the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. was considered the Left by conservatives. Many Christians agreed the races shouldn’t mix or be treated equally. Should this movement have been defeated, Mr. Prager?
To many conservatives, The Left includes people who want a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. However, many evangelicals also favor inclusive policies. Ronald Reagan favored inclusive immigration policies. Was he a part of The Left to be defeated?
On Saturday, Mona Charen was booed when she blasted the Republican party for overlooking the sexual harassment allegations against President Trump. She had to escorted from the event due to concerns for her safety. She also stood against the outrageous presence on the program of Marion Merechal-Le Pen. Le Pen claims to be the political heir of her Nazi and racist grandfather. Yet, CPAC welcomed her with open arms. Trump is aligned with CPAC. Is Mona Charen, a lifelong Buckley conservative, now a member of The Left because she opposes Trumpism?

Thou Shalt Defeat The Left?

Here is another puzzle. Where is it written in the Scripture that Defeating The Left is of surpassing importance? We are supposed to treat others the way we want to be treated. We are supposed to teach disciples in all nations. We are supposed to love God and then our neighbor as ourselves. Those without sin can cast a stone but if we have sin, we have to drop them. There is talk of salt and light. Somebody help me find this Defeat The Left passage.
Even though I believe Prager and by extension evangelicals who think like him are wrong about the surpassing moral importance of defeating the Left, I do think he put into words one of the Great Commandments of Trump Evangelicals.
On Metaxas’ Facebook page, he said he likes Prager so much, he is thinking of proposing marriage. That is legal of course, but it would violate his old religion, but perhaps not his new one. Since Prager is Jewish and Metaxas is Christian, they would be of different faiths. However, now that Metaxas is with his new evangelicalism striving to defeat the left, perhaps such arrangements are just fine.