Baptist minister flattens Falwell Jr's blind loyalty to president: 'Trump is not the standard of right and wrong'

Alan Cross, a Southern Baptist minister based in Alabama, has written a scathing essay ripping Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr.'s declaration that Christians who don't support President Donald Trump might be "immoral."

Writing at The Bulwark, Cross takes issue with Falwell's "confused" theological underpinnings that Cross says are a serious misreading of Martin Luther's Two Kingdoms Doctrine from the Protestant Reformation.

"Luther’s teachings were misunderstood by many," Cross explains. "Instead of those belonging to Christ being free to prophetically critique the state (while also being subject to its authority) many took this Two Kingdoms Doctrine of the separation of eternal and temporal estates to mean that the church had nothing at all to say to the state—except to submit to it and to support it in its earthly duties."

Given that the church's role is not to be a passive bystander in national affairs, Cross continues, it makes no sense for Christians to simply sit back and let Trump do whatever he wants even if it violates their consciences.

"Trump is not the standard of right and wrong," he writes. "He, is like all of us, subject to a Higher Standard. The role of the church is to speak to that Higher Truth as revealed in Scripture and in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And we are to speak it to Donald Trump as well as every ruler and authority figure on the planet."

The whole essay can be found here.