By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist
I wrote in a previous column about my disappointment over the decline of my denomination, the United Methodists. We are not alone. Our shrinking membership is paralleled by the majority of other church groups in America.
Longtime church members tend to blame external forces – the banning of prayer in schools, ever-loosening morality, competition from sports and other entertainment, and the evaporation of Sunday as the Sabbath day.
But I lay the burden squarely at our own feet. It’s not Jesus’ fault; his life and teachings remain perfectly relevant. We Christians, like the original disciples, have failed to understand who He was.
Teenagers, which is the group one must convince for a church to survive, have an intense need to belong. The church seems like a natural fit for them. It offers a family of usually well-meaning people who hold up a suffering servant as their Lord. “Come to Me,” He says, “all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” This is a compelling invitation to teens, whose lives are often a tumultuous search for identity.
But we have bollixed up our evangelism so badly as to obscure the profound love that Christ offers. Ask young people what they think of Christians and many will tell you we are hypocritical and judgmental, especially towards LGBTQ people. Unfortunately, their criticisms are too often accurate.
The “love the sinner, hate the sin” approach has failed miserably. Too many of us cannot hide our palpable distaste for people that Jesus asked us to love the most – the different, the despised, the immigrant, the homeless.
Those of us who wish the church to endure have essentially two options. The first is to keep doing what we are doing, claiming that we have been right all along and that any deviation from traditional Scriptural views (from a Bible that endorses polygamy, the death penalty for adultery and homosexuality, second-class status for women, and implies that the earth is roughly 6,000 years old) is the work of a permissive, Satan-infused culture. Good luck attracting young people to that view of the world.
The second is exemplified by Salkehatchie Summer Service. “Salk” as it is known to participants, was started in 1978 by John Culp, a United Methodist minister. Rev. Culp was led to gather adults and teenagers to renovate substandard homes in Hampton County as a way for participants to live out their faith. It has grown from that single camp to more than forty camps in every region of South Carolina.
Salk allows young women and men 14 or older to test-drive their faith in a potent and beautiful way. The rhythm of the week is both invigorating and exhausting. We awaken in darkness, pray, eat, work, eat, work, eat, worship and fellowship, sleep, and awaken to do it again.
Young people of every generation, but this one more than ever, are not content to accept and obey. They are adept at seeking information and opinion through the web and social media. They have many skeptical questions about traditional beliefs and scriptural inerrancy.
The focus of Salk is not words on the page but people in their homes. Poverty does not need to be believed in. It can be observed and wrestled with. Most Salk campers have never been confronted by the kind of poverty they experience at Salk. They are invited into homes with buckets arrayed to catch rain through leaky roofs, rotten floors, gaping windows, and unsafe porches. Conversations about poverty that they have heard from us adults are often superficial and tend to the extremes of “lazy and shiftless” or “industrious but oppressed.“
At Salk, campers often spend hours with the homeowners, sometimes working side by side. This can result in a reversal of the description of a “poor person” to a “person who is poor.” Campers can no longer talk about poverty without acknowledging its humanity.
Differences are accepted at Salk in a way they might not be back at the teen’s high school. Gay and transgender youth participate in Salk and are embraced-literally. It’s impossible to make it through the week without being hugged dozens if not hundreds of times. Every year, I look forward to my first embrace from a towering young adult who renews our friendship by bear-hugging me and lifting me off the floor.
That said, Salk has a diversity problem. Its leaders and campers are primarily white. The lack of diversity is a symptom of the churchwide racial divide. My challenge to Salk would be to make real John Culp’s founding vision in which teams of black and white Christians working together were to be the rule, not the exception.
If young people are going to choose faith, to respond to that desire for meaning that Methodists believe has been planted in all our hearts, the places they will gather to worship and serve will likely look like Salk. The new church will be a community that reflects the fullness of God’s creation, seeks out those who have been made to feel unworthy, and makes the building of God’s kingdom on this Earth its core mission.
Paul DeMarco is a physician who resides in Marion, S.C. He is a layperson who has been participating in Salk since 2008. His comments are his own and do not reflect an official position of the United Methodist Church or Salkehatchie Summer Service. Reach him at [email protected] For more information about Salk, go to https://www.umcsc.org/salkehatchie/.
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Well, this is very cool that Paul chose to write about Salkehatchie. John Culp is a neighbor of mine. I regularly pass by his house on my walks around the neighborhood, and since he spends a good bit of time working in his yard, I frequently stop to chat with him.
He’s a great guy.
As for the rest, I certainly agree that John’s program is a great expression of what the church is about and should be about.
As for the rest, well… he writes about the church a bit the way so many write about politics — as though it’s a choice between left wing and right wing. Ones or zeroes. Me, I don’t see it that way. If you’re a Christian, of whatever flavor, you’re going to in sync with both the left and right on some things, and seriously out of sync with them on others. You can’t make the church fit either of those current fads of thought, and you shouldn’t try. It should be the other way around.
But as I say, from the moment he focuses on Salkehatchie, I’m all with him…
What you disparagingly describe as “fads of thought” often marks the leading edge of latter revelation of the expanding universe of faith.
Thanks for posting this Brad. Your criticism is valid. It is borne from us United Methodists facing a dramatic schism into conservative and progressive wings. Barring a miracle (for which I am praying), the church will divide in the near future. Depending on which way your church votes to go, Methodists in the pews will be forced to choose (my understanding is that individual churches will be able to make a choice). Most Methodists, I believe, will choose to worship in a church that reflects their personal view of gay clergy. Which means if your church votes against your belief, you would leave a congregation of which you may have been a member for decades. The severing of those relationships will be tumultuous and painful.
Perhaps it will be. But then, if you’re forced to go somewhere else, maybe that’s what God wants you to do. Maybe it will be a growth opportunity.
That sounds pretty cold, doesn’t it? Well, chalk it up to my being a weird person. I grew up moving every year, and I’m very much an introvert. The great temptation for me, which I have to resist, is that I dug watching Mass on TV during COVID. And I know that a huge part of growing as a Christian involves interacting with others, so I go to physical Mass.
But the pandemic offered growth opportunities. I had experiences I have valued, and that I would have missed out on if I hadn’t been pushed in those directions. For instance, I wouldn’t have learned how much I love — and gain from — Bishop Barron’s sermons.
And when we started returning to Mass physically months ago, we didn’t always go to my parish that I love and have been involved with for so many years. We started going frequently to St. Martin de Porres. One reason was COVID-related. To this day, everybody at St. Martin’s wears masks to Mass. They show respect and care for each other by doing that. The mask-wearing at my regular parish fell off dramatically several months ago — before the Omicron surge and my own experience with infection, and long COVID. So since the first of the year, we’ve been to St. Martin’s more than St. Peter’s.
We might go to St. Peter’s tomorrow. I think we will. But it’s not an absolute, definite thing anymore.
And maybe it shouldn’t be. There’s a lot about St. Martin’s — a historically black church, for those who don’t know it — that I like a lot.
Also… Y’all remember how I’ve been on the Bernardin Lectureship Committee at USC for the last couple of decades? It was in that context that I asked E.J. Dionne to come be our annual speaker a few years back, you may recall.
Anyway, we didn’t have the lectures for a couple of years, and I was surprised to find at the last minute that we were having it this year. Of course, this time I hadn’t been involved in choosing the speaker or the topic. Turns out, he spoke about his specialty, which is… St. Martin de Porres. Not the parish, but the original saint — who was the first black (or really, mixed-race) saint in the Americas, and is “the patron saint of mixed-race people, barbers, innkeepers, public health workers, and all those seeking racial harmony,” according to Wikipedia.
So I’m feeling a little nudged, you know?
Kind of like when I first came here to work at The State in 1987. The day I came to interview, Executive Editor Tom McLean took me out to breakfast, and during that conversation, I learned that in the coming months, both Pope John Paul II and Billy Graham would be coming here for major events.
It was like I was hearing someone say, “Hey, if they feel moved to come here, maybe you should, too.”
And I did. And it worked out great. Much, much later, The State newspaper got shot out from under me, and I had to move on.
Because things work like that. Life works like that. And sometimes it’s hard to see why, or what you’re supposed to do. But we’re supposed to try…
By the way, please don’t read that long comment of mine a some sort of announcement that I’m swapping parishes. St. Peter’s is still our “church home,” as some protestants like to say.
But I’ll keep going to St. Martin’s as well.
It’s kind of a Catholic thing. When my wife and I were first dating while students at Memphis State, I noticed that she and her friends (she had graduated from a small Catholic girls’ school) regularly went to different Catholic churches around town from week to week — because this one had a 4:30 Mass instead of a 6 o’clock one, and that worked better for them that day, or because they liked this or that priest, or whatever. Because, of course, it’s all on Church. If you’re a Baptist, each building and each congregation is a separate “church.” Not so with us. There’s just one, and you just go to Mass wherever you are in the world, and it’s the same as going at home.
Which makes sense to me. So when we were in Ireland, we went to the cathedral around the corner from our hotel in Waterford. And years before in London, we went to the closest one to our hotel in the Swiss Cottage area. That was particularly cool, since it was St. Thomas More. I’m very much an Anglophile, and mean Her Majesty no harm, but it was sort of fun to mildly cock a snook at the Crown that way…
As for going to Mass at any Roman Catholic Church in the world being the same as going at home — back in the days of the Latin Mass (which was before my time), it was even more the same, but you can follow a Mass in just about any language — although I usually make a point of going to one in English or Spanish.
In Waterford, we were in for a bit of a surprise, in that a good bit of the Mass was in Irish. But it wasn’t too hard to follow along, and to participate more fully at the English, Latin and Greek bits…
When I was a kid,we went to Lake Junaluska…
I appreciate your wisdom. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more accepting of the transitory nature of all things. It was initially shocking when I realized that the Methodist Church that I know (both the denomination and my home church) might not survive. But my initial disorientation has subsided, replaced by an slightly melancholy equanimity. Thousands of churches close each year and dozens of Christian denominations have disbanded or been subsumed. Their congregants find other denominations, or sometimes create new ones. And that second possibility buoys me. I am hopeful that a new progressive wing of the United Methodist Church can reach out to young people who feel they currently have no place to belong.
And perhaps the young people could also do some reaching, and see the church as something they should find it in themselves to adapt to, rather than expecting it to do all the adapting…
I think that is fair – but the problem is that many young people see the church as a cold, dark place that judges them and then they see the church members and see nothing special about them- they act like everyone else.
I fear that the culture wars have driven many young people away- or at least made them not interested.
For too many of them, attending and getting involved in a place that they might believe is hateful, hypocritical, and judgmental would be like your neighbor telling you how much he hates your wife and family and detests them, but still- “come over for dinner and listen to me.”
Here you put your finger on the most common “reason” offered by people of all ages for abandoning church: “…they see the church members and see nothing special about them- they act like everyone else.”
That one always astounds me. Churches are full of sinners. They don’t have ANY members, or clergy, who are NOT sinners. Churches tell you this over and over.
If you run across a church that does NOT teach that, and stress it, you definitely should run the other way. Because that church is not a Christian church.
And yet you see these people — often young people, but also often older ones — who act like they’ve made this tremendous discovery: Christians are sinners! Therefore, they are hypocrites! And there’s nothing worse than that, is there?
That always blows me away — that those folks think they’ve discovered something unknown. Something those awful church people were trying to hide.
Of course, we can all look around and see individual people who CALL themselves “Christians” who are — in terms of their public words and behaviors — among the worst people we see. Yep. That’s the human race for you. And that’s what Jesus called on all of us to try to rise above. That’s why we have churches…
Folks like those individuals who see themselves as better than others are, of course, one of the most common themes in The New Testament.
Jesus had little patience with the priests and scribes who saw themselves as better than the tax collectors and prostitutes he sought out. He was preparing the way for a church, and churches — properly understood — are full of people who KNOW they are sinners, not people who are satisfied with themselves…
“Jesus had little patience with the priests and scribes who saw themselves as better than the tax collectors and prostitutes he sought out.”
When Jesus is a Republican who is pulling for Republicans to win elections, the “better than” everyone else crowd is now seen as Democrats and people that don’t fall in line with Conservative political goals.
You can dismiss that all you like but I hear it all the time- especially from younger people that are in their early 20s.
I was watching my pastor online last week. He purposefully has avoided speaking of political matters for years when he’s in the pulpit but last week he ventured into it a bit- and of course misstated the facts of the matter (I mean there is no doubt he misstated the facts of the matter) and I could sense the unease in the church members I could see on the tv seated behind him. Just totally unnecessary.
“When Jesus is a Republican…”
But he isn’t. Nor is he a Democrat. Or a Federalist. He left the politics to other people.
One of the big questions in this area, for me, has always been this: Jesus lived as a man in a time when the average person had NO say in how the country was governed. His country even had little say, even though Rome allowed local puppet rulers such as the Herodian Tetrarchs.
It’s an intriguing question to wonder whether he would have been MORE interested in politics had he lived in a republic. I can make arguments either way. But one thing I’m fairly sure of… both Republicans and Democrats who think he would definitely have been on THEIR side are wrong…
“That one always astounds me. Churches are full of sinners. They don’t have ANY members, or clergy, who are NOT sinners. Churches tell you this over and over.”
– I agree Brad- and most churches preach this often but the problem is the people sitting in the pews – in a lot of cases- do not live their live in a way that illustrates that they understand that fact. Oh, many in those pews will say it- especially when they are church. But too many of them don’t live their lives like they know it. In fact, often it’s just the opposite.
The examples are just too numerous too mention- from self righteous people proclaiming their Christianity while looking down their noses on everyone else- to explicitly treating people terribly while proclaiming their “Christ-like behavior” for anyone within earshot.
I saw a clip of 3 hosts on Fox News this morning – all 3 who wear their religion on their sleeves on tv (One of them is a serial adulterer- Pete Hegseth) talking about migrants like they are nothing more than cattle to be sent packing to any place that helps the hosts political point of view.
Young people- and a lot of other people are just sick of it.
It’s one thing to be a ‘sinner” and know you need to be at church, it’s another to proclaim yourself a sinner but treat other people like trash in the process while acting as if going to church gives you the excuse you need to beat people over the head.
That excuse just doesn’t work anymore.
and a LOT of people, like me now, just see the american church and the Republican party as one and the same.
“– I agree Brad- and most churches preach this often but the problem is the people sitting in the pews – in a lot of cases- do not live their live in a way that illustrates that they understand that fact. Oh, many in those pews will say it- especially when they are church. But too many of them don’t live their lives like they know it. In fact, often it’s just the opposite.”
Yup. And those people need to go to church more, and listen better. And their homilists need to preach better. But the best preacher in history faces an uphill climb, people being people.
Persuading human beings not to be a__holes is a huge, challenging, more-than-full-time job, and people need to be exposed to everything that might help…
The REAL 10 Commandments (for Conservative America)
Thou shalt …
remember the Sabbath (Friday evening thru Saturday afternoon) with prayer before all ballgames.
seek lower taxes and reduced regulation.
see that your lawn and/or garden is neatly manicured and replace the roof every 30 years.
stand up for the flag and put your hand on your heart for the national anthem.
keep a gun in the nightstand drawer – to protect His Chosen from evil in this world.
properly maintain your automobile(s) and other vehicles, incl. rotating your tires.
protect from invaders the land which the Lord your God has given unto you.
invest wisely and well to achieve a good rate-of-return and year-on-year earnings.
speak no evil against a fellow conservative — at least not while they’re within earshot.
have no other party before God’s Own Party (GOP), which will bring you out of bondage.
Ken, these are good but number 9 might be on the way out. Just ask Liz Cheney.
I never meant to imply they all were honored. Just look at the other set of 10: Are all those being kept faithfully? Seems like lots of folks these days are really into bearing false witness. Just to take one example.
The ten commandments of liberalism:
1. You don’t own anything. Everything you own is open to confiscation in the name of the the greater good
2. Competition is sinful. Nobody is better than anyone else. Participation trophies are the same as gold medals.
3. Creating companies that create tens of thousands of jobs is evil.
4. You are whatever identity as.. unless you are a white male, then you are scum
5. The government is the solution to every problem. Do not ever look at performance. Accept it
6. If you are white, you are racist. If you are male, you are a misogynist. If you have money, you are a greedy sob.
7. War is wrong unless a Democrat is president.
8. Thou shalt have no other gods except Hillary.
9. Five government workers doing the job that one private employee can do is called efficient
10. Wait to form an opinion until you are instructed by MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, and the Daily Kos.
No. They. Shouldn’t. Why adapt to an organization that you are fundamentally in disagreement with. That’s makes churches cults. Young people are the least likely to attend church. And they are the least likely to support Trump. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Churches push the nonsense of young earth creationism. A theory that is far more nonsensical than Trumps claim of winning the 2020 election. So it really isn’t that difficult to understand Trumps support if you can accept the notion that young people should adapt. Trumpism is a cult. But so are many organized religions.
And don’t forget, churches also push snake-handling! So unless we want more snake-handling, we have to condemn anything called a “church!”…
Only a tiny fringe religion promotes snake handling as a tenet of their religion. But a large majority of Christian and Jewish churches infer, if not outright declare, that the universe is less than 10,000 years old. A plurality of Americans also subscribe to that belief. That bizarre worldview suggests there is a large potential population that would be susceptible to a man like Donald Trump. Given the level of gullibility of the American electorate, as evidenced by the level of young earth creationism believers it comes as little surprise to me that a man like Trump could be successful. This scary possibility is further exacerbated by the odious electoral college. Those who are surprised by Trump just haven’t been paying attention to the malleable nature of their fellow Americans.
Well, this seems a bit of an exaggeration: “a large majority of Christian and Jewish churches infer, if not outright declare, that the universe is less than 10,000 years old…”
Hmmm… since I doubt that is verifiable — especially since you said “infer” — maybe we should just set that aside and move on.
It doesn’t fit with my experience, but then, it’s never occurred to me to quiz my co-religionists on their attitudes toward, say, evolution. That ones-and-zeroes argument between “faith and science” has always seemed absurd to me. I see no conflict. And if the person sitting next to me in a pew thinks the world is 6,000 years old, I’m not sure I even want to know. It’s not why we’re there in the pew.
I find it interesting to talk about how our species developed, but I don’t see any such discussion as in any way in conflict with faith…
Of course it conflicts. Christian teachings clearly, unambiguously stipulate the earth and its life forms were created in 6 days. That is what is stated from the pulpit. I think you’re in denial. There are, of course, denominations that view the 6 day story as an allegory. But that is a minority view. There have been numerous surveys that give people 3 options: 1. The biblical account is literally factual and the earth is very young. 2. The biblical account is an allegory and God created the earth over billions of years – the guiding hand view. 3. The God referenced in the Bible played no role in creation. These surveys show a large plurality is Americans regard number 1 as the truth. I find that both disturbing and clarifying. It suggests a willingness of Americans to embrace a charlatan like Trump. It also suggests churches act as more important political actors than is healthy for a functional democracy.
No, it doesn’t conflict. And it doesn’t conflict even if 99 percent of Christians believe it (which they don’t; I’m just exaggerating the point for effect).
I could at this point go off on a diatribe about the great simple-mindedness of the human race, which is a phenomenon just as common among believers as among heathens, and go on and on and on about it…
But then everyone would get on my case, yet again, for being an elitist. And I’d probably hurt a lot of people’s feelings as well, which I don’t want to do.
So I won’t…
From a 2019 Gallup poll: Fully 68% of weekly church goers believe the young earth creation view. Churches created Trump, NOT social media.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx
Uh-huh.
We had churches for the entire history of our nation — for much of it, we were the most church-going country in the Western world — and during all that time, if anyone like Trump had ever tried to run, he was laughed off the stage before he got anywhere near enough to the office for most people to have heard about it.
But in 2016, he got elected president of the United States. You sort of have to look around for something new that caused the country to go nuts. Church ain’t it…
“Church ain’t it.”
Rather sweeping. And far too facile. Especially in light of the support coming not just from rank-and-file Evangelicals, but from Evangelical church pastors and leaders, like Franklin Graham. And the concern over that support voiced by others, like Russell Moore and Andy Stanley. Christian nationalism is a real problem, a church problem.
bud,
Not sure which churches were polled but since I can remember the teaching of creation in church, it was always with the caveat that God’s time is not our time and only God knows or can reveal the actual time it took for creation to take place.
I only met a very few in church or outside that believed God created the earth in a literal 6 days. Even as a very young boy in church, it didn’t make sense and once it was pointed out to me in the Bible about God’s time, I knew the 6 day belief was wrong.
I agree with Bart here.
I’ve attended Southern Baptist Churches all my life and I almost always heard the creation story caveat of “we don’t always understand God’s timing” – which of course applies to lots of things- and I believe that is true myself.
I heard an SBC pastor in college tell our Baptist group that the bible wasn’t meant to be a science book and the audience a particular book was written for wasn’t looking for a science book and things like creation were written so we understand God designed creation and the general order of things- not some science detailed explanation that no one would have understood or even been able to understand.
Most Xtians I know think this the earth is around 35,6′,180,…
Wesley could write a hymn, couldn’t he?
First heard those at,”camp meeting”:
https://discoversouthcarolina.com/articles/visit-indian-field-methodist-campground
Amen!
That just applies to Conservatives and Republicans.
If you don’t ask me, just ask around at church.
“If you don’t believe me, just ask around at church”
Today’s Conservatives
A bill to name a federal courthouse in Tallahassee after Justice Joseph W. Hatchett, the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court — sponsored by the state’s two Republican senators and backed unanimously by its 27 House members — was set to pass the House last month and become law with broad bipartisan support.
Republicans abruptly pulled their backing with no explanation and ultimately killed the measure, leaving its fate unclear, many of its champions livid and some of its newfound opponents professing ignorance about what had happened.
Asked what made him vote against a measure that he had co-sponsored, Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, was brief and blunt: “I don’t know,” he said.
https://cbnc.com/house-g-o-p-kills-bid-to-honor-pioneering-black-judge/
Really interesting article. Personally, I think it’s too late and society will continue to fall part- and it’s already started and will quickly proceed soon
Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
“What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
Good headline.
I will definitely read it…
It was interesting this Sunday morning listening to retiring Republican Fred Upton talk about the death threats that he and his family received this year from Trumper‘s and right wingers when he voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
He said it was increasingly difficult to have good people run for Congress that wanted to get things done constructively.
Of course this was said as more and more extremists are running on the right.
Did anyone catch the Republicans from Tennessee this week talking about how Hitler overcame homelessness when he was young and how growing up homeless didn’t hold him back? The elected rep appeared to be 120 years old and was making the exact comparison you’d expect from a right winger in Tennessee.
Wonderful confrontation in the Missouri legislature this week.
In a passionate speech on Thursday, state Representative Ian Mackey, 35, blasted Representative Chuck Basye, 63, over his support of the Save Women’s Sports bill, which would allow school districts to ban those who are biologically male from participating in K-12 athletics with women. The legislation was an amendment to a different bill designed to audit the state’s voter rolls, the Springfield News-Leader reported.
(missouri has only had 2 trans children in their history participate in such a situation, with exemptions, as Missouri’s high school athletic policies prohibit such participation already)
“This is the legislation you want to put forward. This is what consumes your time… I was afraid of people like you growing up,” said Mackey, who is gay. “Thank God I made it out. I think every day of the kids who are still there who haven’t made it out, who haven’t escaped from this kind of bigotry. Gentlemen, I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
The Democratic lawmaker made his speech personal, referencing Basye’s gay brother.
“Your brother wanted to tell you he was gay, didn’t he?” Mackey demanded. When Basye responded that his brother had feared his family would “hold that against him,” Mackey asked the lawmaker, “Why would he think that?”
“I would have been afraid to tell you, too. I would have been afraid to tell you to because of stuff like this, because this is what you’re focused on,” Mackey said.
The bill passed with all republican support anyway. Of course it did.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/04/15/ian-mackey-chuck-basye-trangender-athletes-bill-missouri-house-of-representatives-orig-mh.cnn
Meet Rep. Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn. Scott is a “family values” Conservative that speaks about Conservatism in religious “us versus them” rhetoric.
Scott supports ending a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions over her own body with regards to abortion.
Scott has a problem though. Scott is a massive hypocrite who wears his Christianity on his sleeve but doesn’t give a crap about actually living it. It’s only for votes like it is for most right wing politicians.
The hypocrite Republican was recorded urging his mistress to have an abortion. During his divorce from his wife (a mistress will usually cause a divorce), court proceedings revealed he had paid for his ex wife to have 2 abortions.
Scott, a medical doctor, was recorded as telling his mistress (who was his patient,
“You told me you’d have an abortion, and now we’re getting too far along without one,” DesJarlais told the woman in a recorded phone conversation, according to a transcript by The Associated Press. “If we need to go to Atlanta, or whatever, to get this solved and get it over with so we can get on with our lives, then let’s do it.”