Jim Jordan stirs the crowd at Coeur d’Alene’s Candlelight Christian
Last Friday night, August 9th, Ohio State University wrestling coach turned MAGA U.S. Congressman from Ohio Jim Jordan spoke at a $50 a person fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-ID, CD1, western Idaho). Jordan and Fulcher spoke at the Candlelight Christian Fellowship, a Fundamentalist (“Evangelical”) non-denominational, low-lying, modern church on the west side of Hwy. 95 in Coeur d’Alene. Both Jordan and Fulcher displayed their full-on weird MAGA credentials at the gathering—all of which were highlighted by the venue at which they spoke.
The Candlelight Fellowship has made political news before [see the P.S.here]. In September of 2020 Charlie Kirk, youthful founder of Turning Point USA and darling of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), was a featured speaker at Candlelight. Kirk’s appearance was shortly after famously anti-science, anti-mask Candlelight Pastor Paul Van Noy narrowly survived a bout of Covid-19 that put him in the ICU for 18 days. It takes only a little internet digging to reveal multiple connections among Pastor Van Noy; Pastor Matt Shea of Spokane’s On Fire Ministries, the militia movement, and “The Biblical Basis of War” fame; Pastor Ken Peters, founder of The Church at Planned Parenthood (TCAPP), formerly of the Covenant Church in near north Spokane; and Shahram Hadian, traveling far right preacher and former candidate for governor of Washington State.
The bland title of the article describing the Candlelight fundraiser that appeared on the front page of the paper version of the Sunday Sandpoint Daily Bee, Jordan, Fulcher warn of growing divide in America, belies the article’s out-of-step content and the aura of the venue.
First, it was odd that both Fulcher and Jordan were still focused on attacking Biden three weeks after he stepped down and endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Nowhere in the article is Harris even mentioned. Evidently, Fulcher and Jordan live in some sort of time-warp.
The opening of the article, as seems typical for this bunch, was dark and vaguely threatening:
[Jordan and Fulcher] said the divide in America is great and called on people to line up with the right side.
But in doing so, they would face adversity.
“If you’re getting involved today, you’re taking risks,” said Jordan, a Republican representative from Ohio.
Fulcher, a Republican senator [he is not a U.S. senator, he is a U.S. rep.] from Idaho, said America has enjoyed great successes and endured many trials, including wars.
“I will submit to you right now; we’re going through another Civil War of sorts,” he said.
Gee. All the violent rhetoric of the last eight years has come from the right, not the left. Is this paranoid projection?
The author noted that “Security was tight, with guards at front and side doors and inside the auditorium,” and that Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris was in attendance. I guess they’re not taking any chances with all those imaginary antifa terrorists roving around in north Idaho.
Then it got muddier and stranger still [the bold is mine]:
Fulcher, in a five-minute talk, said there’s a growing battle between two opposing worldviews: Christian and secular.
“We’re seeing that conflict,” he said.
He said about half of those in Congress believe in the general tenets of the country, which he said was founded on Christian principles. [A number of the Founders were prominent Deists, (see P.S.)]
“The other half look at it totally different,” Fulcher said, explaining they want a more socialist society, with government in control, distributing wealth and offering programs for those in need.
In my Christian upbringing (they do consider Methodists to be Christian, don’t they?) taking care of the poor, downtrodden, and marginalized was taught as the paramount Christian virtue. Insofar as government is an expression of the will of the community it ought be very Christian to offer “programs for those in need.” To what sort of warped “Christian” message had Fulcher’s audience subscribed that they could hear his blather and not object? [Does the background and associations (see above) of this non-denominational cult offer a clue?]
He [Jim Jordan] said the administration of President Joe Biden has been stifling rights of assembly, free speech and free press.
“The most important liberty we have, more important than anything else, is our right to talk,” he said.
“That’s truly what this election in the end is about: protecting those liberties, those fundamental rights we have,” Jordan said.
This must be some weird psychological projection, since it is these folks who celebrate their Supreme Court’s reactionary majority’s trashing of the right to privacy and the right to make decisions about one’s own body, and seem poised to remove the right to love whom you choose—all based on theirclaimed theocratic right to tell everyone else how to live.
Perhaps their claim of “Biden” “stifling” the free press refers to Fox “News” paying out $787.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit for knowingly spreading lies about Dominion Voting Systems. (See Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network.) Are they arguing that Fox should be free to lie without fear of challenge? I guess that would suit them just fine.
[Jordan] quoted Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The dividing line in America is no longer between right and left — it’s between normal or crazy,” she said in her rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address.
More psychological projection? What on earth is “normal” about what the Republican Party has become?
Jordan said that in the four years since Biden took office, the U.S.-Mexico border went from secure to no border at all; safe streets turned into places of record crime; $2 gas became $4; and stable prices turned into record inflation.
Mr. Jordan and his listeners seem unable to absorb actual crime statistics—or see prices at the pump (and realize that two dollar gas was a product of low demand during Covid)—or notice that inflation is under control.
The blather at this fundraiser was the very essence of weird.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Deism as defined in Wikipedia:
Deism is the belief in the existence of God (often, but not necessarily, a God who does not intervene in the universe after creating it), solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority.
Note: Deists favor rational thought and reject the notion that the Bible is the revealed word of God, which is often the first tenet of faith for Fundamentalist (“Evangelical”) Christians. Here is Candlelight’s expressed statement of faith on that point:
We believein the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. We believe it is the inspired, inerrant, authoritative, Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20–21). The Bible is sufficient in and of itself to provide us with all that pertains to life and Godliness (2 Peter 1:2–3).
Science and rational thought apparently have nothing to offer these folk. If you can’t explain the findings of physics, geology, and archeology using the sufficiency of the Bible’s Old Testament and Noah’s flood, then, by G-d, the science must be wrong. No wonder these people cannot get their heads around the physics of global heating.