Republicans in the Texas legislature want a month dedicated to God. In what Lyndon B. Johnson called the land of “blondes, bourbon, and beefsteaks,” how will a month for God find a place deep in the heart of Texas? These elected officials remind me of Southern Baptists passing resolutions, taken seriously mostly by the preachers who wrote them. As my Baptist deacon dad put it, “It didn’t please God to build his kingdom on resolutions by preachers who probably know they are lying.”
Rodney Kennedy
Republican State Representative Carrie Isaac is the bill’s sponsor. She has been in the Texas House since 2022. Her webpage highlights her support for President Trump’s border wall, her allegiance to the National Rifle Association (a picture of he shooting a pistol), her “pro-life” stance, her opposition to COVID-19 vaccines, and a photo of her lifting weights. Her bill “honors God’s promises” and includes Bible verses, achieving salvation through Jesus, and remarks on the Christian history of the United States.
The words of Isaac’s resolution suggest something less than honesty: “The Declaration of Independence clearly reveals the fact that America was founded upon biblical principles and Christian values; the Bible had great influence on the founding of our great nation.” The resolution is not only bad government — it is bad history. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t reveal America as a Christian nation. Biblical principles are never mentioned. Christian values are submerged in Enlightenment values. The Bible had little influence on our nation’s founding.
I would bet you a pair of Laredo alligator skin cowboy boots that David Barton influenced this resolution. Barton, a political operative from Aledo, Texas, is the champion of the false narrative of American history reflected in the resolution of Rep. Isaac. She has surely matriculated at his fake history school. The resolution not only violates the U.S. Constitution, but it is also, frankly, not Christian. These evangelicals can’t stand having to participate on a level playing field with all other truth claims. Having failed to “convert” America to their beliefs, they have turned to an attempt to legislate. People unable to persuade often fall back on coercion.
MAGA evangelicals are fighting back, not with preaching the gospel, personal testimony, or asking people to believe in Jesus, but with legislation, stickers, and slogans. My reactions to the proposal for a God month in Texas run the gamut from satire, sarcasm, and serious reflection. Dedicating a month to God will not make Texans any more Christian. Evangelicals will find in the month one more way to “lord it over others.” Will there be parades? Will there be a gold statue of Jesus? Will there be billboards? An internet advertising blitz?
Texas already fills with churches turning the worship of God into a religious shindig. Robert Jeffress has an annual Fourth of July worship filled with American flags, Christian Nationalism, exuberant praise, and fireworks in the sanctuary to proclaim that God made America as a Christian nation.
Photo by Vitalii Onyshchuk on Unsplash
Christianity becomes weird when it gets entangled in the perversities of legalism and moralism. With or without more laws, Christianity is going to get watered down. There’s only one ideology in America: money (Mammon). That ideology will absorb all others. When the “cows come home,” I have confidence in American commitment to secularism to co-opt every legal attempt to brand God on the hearts and minds of an unwilling, unrepentant people.
I have suggestions for what looks like the inevitable God Month in Texas. In the name of God, Texas could open the doors of the prisons and let all the prisoners go and end capital punishment. Feed every hungry person in Texas, house every houseless person, offer cities of refuge to immigrants instead of the governor packing them on planes and flying them to liberal cities.
They could declare April as Texas Jubilee month. What a powerful Jewish/Christian response Texas could give to the current determination of Republicans to dismantle the social safety net for the poor. Interfaith worship services could take place at the First Baptist Church of Dallas. After all, Robert Jeffress could use some remedial coursework in God’s love for all nations.
The Texas legislature is doing a line dance to the tune of “The Sidestep.” The Texas sidestep was made famous in a song by the governor in the 1982 Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds musical comedy “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
Now my good friends,
I’m for goodness and for profit and for living clean and saying daily prayer. You can trust me, for I promise, I shall keep a watchful eye upon ya’ll… Ooh I love to dance a little sidestep, now they see me now they don’t — I’ve come and gone and, ooh I love to sweep around the wide step, cut a little swathe and lead the people on.
God Month is a sidestep, an attempt to slide around the First Amendment. This is one more in a long line of Southern states, no longer worthy of the title, “Bible Belt states,” to disregard and neuter the separation of church and state. From satire dipped in indignation to an imagined holy Month for God to the stark reality of its fake, fraudulent, fractious nature, and a dose of reality, I can only conclude: God Month is tacky.
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div. from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. The pastor of 7 Southern Baptist churches over the course of 20 years, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio — which is an American Baptist Church — for 13 years. He is currently professor of homiletics at Palmer Theological Seminary, and interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, New York. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, is out now from Cascade Books.
