Whatley said it was imperative to recruit “moral” people to run for office, because “I’ve never seen someone who became a more moral person after they got elected.”
The intense sinew it must take -- or a total innocence of irony -- for Whatley to keep the negative example of Trump from scrambling his brains while he uttered such sterling religiosity above and just incidentally spread out the truth as it pertains to Trump: the presidency has not improved that man's character. 
Michael Whatley in Gastonia.
Photo Carolina Journal
July 31st, Michael Whatley, freshly anointed for the Senate race by Hisownself, launched his campaign for the Senate seat that MAGA forced Thom Tillis out of. At the Loray Mill Taproom in Gastonia, the Rev. Shawn Griffith, Whatley’s pastor at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, gave a "nonpartisan invocation," asking for God’s blessing on Whatley and his family.
“We pray that you give Michael wisdom in seeking your will in the decisions he will face,” Griffith said. “We pray that you give him strength and courage to choose and do the right things rather than those that are popular.”
According to Raw Story, Whatley’s 18-minute speech "eschewed religion, but referenced Trump nine times." Meanwhile, the Rev. Griffith was standing aside, listening closely, possibly enjoying his own ironies, for his particular Episcopal Church is woke and proud of it:
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Gastonia describes itself as “a progressive parish” whose members volunteer for programs “to combat hunger, homelessness, racism and other significant issues.” The St. Mark’s website notes that the Episcopal Church embraces “inclusion,” and that “people of all genders and sexual orientations serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church.”
Meanwhile, as Chair of the RNC Michael Whatley got his holy-roller on courting the MAGA evangelicals, acting a part that Episcopalianism did not really prepare him for, preying on the naivete and the seduceability of ardent believers.
In Charlotte in 2022, addressing the Salt & Light Conference — hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, led by longtime political strategist Ralph Reed — Whatley said: “I work hard every day to make sure the North Carolina Republican Party is going to be the party of faith … I pray that I can use this platform that I’ve been given by the voters of North Carolina, and the Republicans of North Carolina to be an instrument of God.”
The Raw Story piece makes hay out of Whatley's religious slumming, puncturing it with all the ways the national Episcopal Church has confronted Trump, which doesn't deter Whatley from being very involved in the governance of his local Episcopal church. He's the treasurer for St. Mark's in Gastonia, and previously served as a senior warden on the vestry. So watching the national Episcopal power structure denounce everything to do with raw trumpism, the very policies that Whatley has so fulsomely embraced -- does that make the St. Mark's Sunday morning coffee hour a tense situation?
Remember this moment at the National Cathedral one day after Trump's inauguration, with Trump sitting in the pews:
The Rt. Rev. Marian Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop for the Diocese of Washington, D.C. directly pleaded with Trump to “have mercy” on “gay, lesbian and transgender children in both Republican and Democratic families who fear for their lives.”
Budde went on to admonish Trump that while some “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”
There's show religion and then there's real religion. Seems like Whatley has followed Trump to the showy side.
1 comment:
Gastonia is exactly the crux of "meaness" government. Whatley is Mr. What?
A person who seeks respectability but derives his living from "downpressing"
on victims. The cooling center issue this summer was typical. Whatley did not set out some old dusty fans and 3 chairs next to a chain link fence, but he did not disapprove. It was between the lines in Project 2025, the default platform of MAGA. So MAGA is Fascism. The word they used in 1775 is Tyranny, government by terror. If you're a totally enclosed subject (citizen?) at the mercy
of a government managed market, it amounts to terror (tyranny) when your
medical care (Medicaid/Medicare/ACA) and maintenance income (Social Security/SNAP are being attacked. But the saddest part is that Roy Cooper
is another Mr. What, a bureaucrat pretending to live in a lost past where
people were allowed to care about each other. The parishioners at St. Marks
are very good at pretending and looking the other way. America is increasingly
Gastonia, a place conditioned by Tyranny.
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