(RNS) — A Christian fundraising site, Give Send Go, has earned more than $192,000 of it’s $200,000 goal for the alleged Kenosha shooting suspect Kyle Rittenhouse as of Saturday evening (August 29).
A scrolling ticker on the website shows who has recently donated to trending campaigns, many of whom are supporting the Rittenhouse fundraiser.
Rittenhouse, 17, was arrested on Wednesday, August 26, and is being charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree homicide and one count of attempted homicide, according to published reports. He also faces charges of recklessly endangering two other victims and possessing a weapon while under the age of 18.
“I believe evangelicals who support Donald Trump are being both blind and foolish to do so, and that labeling them as such is not sinful but appropriate and necessary,” Thurman asserts. “By support, I’m not referring to evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016; I’m referring to those evangelicals who continue to hold Trump up as a great leader, say he is God’s chosen one for the presidency, applaud his appalling words and actions, ignore his glaring moral defects, and enable his dangerous presidency to continue by giving him their time, talents and treasures.”
“Christian psychologist Chris Thurman, in some blistering op-eds for the Christian Post, denounces [t]rump’s far-right white evangelical supporters as ‘fools’ who have been taken in by an opportunist.
…”[F]ellow Christian Post contributor Michael Brown … wrote on December 6 that Thurman is ‘blind to [t]rump’s strengths and his potential to help America greatly.’ But Thurman didn’t back down. Instead, he doubled down in an equally blistering op-ed for the Christian Post on December 10.
“Thurman names some specific white Christian fundamentalists who have been taken in by [t]rump, and they include Graham, Falwell, Ralph Reed (chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition) and Vice President Mike Pence. Denouncing their support of [t]rump as ‘blind and foolish,’ Thurman writes that they have been ‘bewitched by an exploitative, pathologically lying snake oil salesman’ — and Thurman warns those four evangelicals, ‘Your unrestrained support of [t]rump has not only turned off untold numbers of non-believers to the cause of Christ, but brought great dishonor on Christianity.’
”’Evangelicals and Republicans in general,’ according to Thurman, ‘have hitched their wagon to someone with a severely disordered personality, about whom nothing good can be said characterologically.’
…“The term ‘evangelical,’ Thurman writes, ‘now refers to someone who excuses the inexcusable, believes the ends justify the means, feels entitled to getting what they want, believes in their own moral superiority, exploits others to achieve their goals, and lacks empathy for how their actions negatively impact others.’”
