A religion professor from Columbia University and Yale Divinity School told megachurch pastor Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley that Christians who refuse to wear masks are possessed by “the spirit of the antichrist.” He specifically named Franklin Graham, Paula White, and Robert Jeffress on the grounds of their support of former President Trump, though all three have expressed support for COVID-19 vaccines and have adhered to mask mandates.
Professor Obery M. Hendricks made the comment on Wesley’s #CanIPushIt podcast earlier this month. The podcast is meant to dive into and examine some of the “contrary, diversive, and divisive issues” within one’s faith.
“My job is not to make you think what I think,” Wesley said regarding his podcast. “My job is to just always make sure we’re thinking.” By thinking and examining different positions, it helps us develop a “tolerance and an appreciation” for people who differ on certain theological convictions.
Before Hendricks appeared on the podcast, Wesley, who pastors Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia (8,000 members), told his listeners it is a mistaken belief in the body of Christ that in order to be a “true Christian,” one needs to believe the same things and have similar speech as another Christian brother or sister.
“The beauty of our faith is that we can unfold an entirely wide spectrum of different beliefs and yet still challenge one another to grow,” Wesley said in his introduction.
Wesley promoted Hendricks’ new book titled “Christians Against Christianity,” in which the professor talks about how right-wing evangelicals are destroying the nation and Christianity. Hendricks specifically challenges widely held positions on LGBTQIA, immigration, Muslims, and NRA partnerships, arguing that they distort the Bible.
The professor said he wrote the book because he was angry, outraged, and sad at what he saw going on in the United States in the name of Jesus. “There had to be a push back on right-wing evangelicals,” he said.
Right-wing evangelicals have “so distorted the meaning of the gospel,” Hendricks told the pastor. According to Hendricks, those evangelicals have unknowingly turned so many people against the gospel, because they are doing “evil in the name of Jesus.”
Hendricks said that the book, though it doesn’t explicitly describe it as such, fights against the demonic trend of “Trumpism.” Further, Hendricks intends for the book to remind people what the gospel really says and what gospel responsibilities really are, because it has not been clear in the “public sphere” in recent times.
The professor defined right-wing evangelicalism as a “Christian supremacist movement.” Hendrick uses the term “right-wing” to describe an underlying stratum of white supremacy that ties patriotism to Christianity, “which is blasphemous.” That group is a very divisive and poisonous force in today’s world, because it’s anti-democratic, Hendricks continued.
