Bible-bending in Alabama

A long, well written article by Stephanie McCrummen in the Washington Post offers a chilling insight into the way the members of one Alabama Baptist church have persuaded themselves that the current flawed and decidedly unBaptist "president" is actually doing God's work.

Perhaps the most distressing part of the article was a conversation with Sheila, a Sunday school teacher at the church, who offered a jaw-droppingly narrow definition of some core Christian teaching:

"Love thy neighbor, she said, meant 'love thy American neighbor.'
"Welcome the stranger, she said, meant the 'legal immigrant stranger.'"

In the story, Sheila discussed the admonition by Jesus in Matthew 25:36-41 that we should all care for "the least of these" among us. Sheila's version: "But the least of these are Americans, not the ones crossing the border."

With Sunday school teachers like that turned loose on the unsuspecting youth of Alabama, with weird biblical interpretations of who is a neighbor and who is worthy of our care, no wonder 81 percent of evangelicals supported this multiply divorced, crotch-grabbing, Playboy bunny-loving  "president."

God help us all.