Corrin, The Theologian

Is the Devil really a Democrat?

Tom Macdonald and the Devil?

With a Substack named Clarion Call, and a header that quotes a Bible verse, some may have wondered about my religious status. I can confidently state that I am one of the least religious people around.

I blame my parents for failing to instill faith in me at an early age. I was basically raised as a heathen, and rarely saw the inside of a church until I was in my teens. The fact that I was finally brought to a church regularly at all, was probably only due to their belief that it would be a good thing for my younger sisters.

For me, it was too little too late. The main emotion I remember feeling at Sunday School was embarrassment for being the dumb kid in class, who was light years behind everybody else in knowing religious doctrine.

I grew up in the Philadelphia suburban town of Narberth, and on weekend ski trips to the Poconos, we would drive by the town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In my young mind the world was a very small place. I actually thought that Jesus was born in that Bethlehem and then moved to Narberth!

In later years, I was rarely in a church outside of weddings and funerals. There was one brief period when, driven by the same guilt as my own parents I suppose, we brought our children to the local Episcopal Church. That didn’t end well, when the church went through a very difficult and divisive Civil War and ended up expelling their pastor! He later told me that he discovered that, “There is very little love in the church.”

It probably comes as some surprise then, that in my 75th year, I was recently called upon to make some theological rulings. The occasion was the release of my favorite rapper, Tom MacDonald’s, latest song, “The Devil is a Democrat.”

Tom, who loves to troll liberals, seemed to be saying that California Governor Gavin Newsom was the Devil incarnate. (In fact, he published the picture above, with the Governor sporting horns, on Facebook.)

In my video reaction, I was forced to admit that, as much as I considered Newsom to be one of the slimiest creatures that ever slithered out of the political swamp, I did not think he was the actual devil. In support of that position, I quoted the full verse of Ephesians 6:12 (King James Version, of course!)

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

I love the old King James language, but perhaps the more modern “Good News” translation makes it clearer:

For we are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age.

To put it simply, we are not fighting against Gavin Newsom or any other earthly being. Our struggle is with a spiritual power, one that rumor says was once in Heaven before being cast out to a lower place.

For most of my life I would have characterized this story as a Fairy Tale, one suitable to tell young gullible children, but certainly not something a rational adult could believe. The last five years have changed my opinion about that.

It’s hard to comprehend the scope of the Evil that has been let loose in the world in recent years. It started with the release of a manufactured deadly virus, followed by a mandated cure that was even worse than the disease. The perfection by which this operation was meshed with world-wide propaganda to create irrational fear in the population was unworldly.

I firmly believe that when all the damage from this “Plandemic” is toted up, it will be shown to be more deadly than the Nazi Holocaust and Stalin’s and Mao’s purges added together. Hundreds of millions will have died prematurely around the world–and to what purpose?

Some believe it is just a case of corporate greed run wild, or perhaps it was done to consolidate political power. When we dig down and finally discover the true motivation, however, I suspect we will uncover some true believers in overpopulation who decided to take action and “fix” the problem, or perhaps some bean counters who wanted to “solve” the looming Social Security disaster.

This would be typical of Hannah Arendt’s concept of “the banality of evil.” She invented the term after watching the 1961 Trial of Nazi Architect of the “Final Solution,” Adolph Eichmann. She found that far from being a monster and an unhinged hater of Jews, Eichmann had been, if anything, “too normal.” Thus proving the maxim that, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

So if true Evil does not originate in the flesh and blood of ordinary people, perhaps the Christians are right to counsel us to “hate the sin, but not the sinner,” or even love the sinner. That might be a bridge too far for me, but we should at least have some sympathy for those caught up in the Devil’s snares (if not for the Devil himself.) After all, as Flip Wilson’s favorite character Geraldine explained, “The Devil made me do it!”

So to answer the question raised in the subtitle, No, I don’t believe the Devil is a Democrat. I’m pretty sure he works both sides of the aisle!