U.S. Senate

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"Why, oh God, why?" The question former Sen. Ben Sasse could have asked

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"Why, oh God, why?" The question former Sen. Ben Sasse could have asked

It's the question believers have asked for centuries when wars threaten nations, storms ravage cities and diseases strike loved ones: "Why, oh God, why?"

Former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, 53, elected not to ask that question in an X post just before Christmas that said: "I'll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

"Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it's a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too -- we all do. I'm blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, 'Sure, you're on the clock, but we're all on the clock.' Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all."

Sasse served as a Republican senator from 2015 until his resignation in 2023, when he became president of the University of Florida. He left that job in July 2024, after his wife, Melissa, was diagnosed with epilepsy, while also wrestling with memory issues.

Before reaching the Senate, Sasse taught at the University of Texas, served in the Department of Health and Human Services for President George W. Bush and was president of Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska. Sasse has a Yale University doctorate in history and has written bestsellers such as "The Vanishing American Adult."

The timing of the Sasse announcement was more than symbolic, said Daniel Darling, director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Sasse noted that he was writing at the end of the Advent season, with its message of Christmas hope for this life and the next.

"To many, this may come across as pie-in-the-sky, a comforting myth that helps you get away from the cold, hard reality of death," wrote Darling, in The Dispatch. "But Christians really believe there is another world coming, that this broken reality will give way to a world made right by the one who made it."

Thus, Sasse's letter is important in an age in which "tech entrepreneurs publicly muse about transhumanist utopias" and some politicos embrace "the advancing Orwellian horror of 'death with dignity.'"

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Sign of tense times: Half of Protestant pastors say QAnon era has reached their pews

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Sign of tense times: Half of Protestant pastors say QAnon era has reached their pews

Having reached the vice president's chair in the U.S. Senate, the self-proclaimed QAnon shaman, UFO expert and metaphysical healer removed his coyote-skin and buffalo horns headdress and announced, with a megaphone, that it was time to pray.

"Thank you, Heavenly Father … for this opportunity to stand up for our God-given inalienable rights," proclaimed Jake "Yellowstone Wolf" Angeli (born Jacob Chansley), his face painted red, white and blue and his torso tattooed with Norse symbols that his critics link to the extreme right.

“Thank you, divine, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator God for filling this chamber with your white light and love," he added, in a prayer captured on video by correspondent working for The New Yorker. "Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ. …

"Thank you, divine Creator God for surrounding and filling us with the divine, omnipresent white light of love and protection, of peace and harmony. Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists and the traitors within our government."

Many phrases in this rambling prayer would sound familiar to worshippers in ordinary churches across America, said Joe Carter, an editor with The Gospel Coalition and a pastor with McLean Bible Church near Washington, D.C. But the prayer also included strange twists and turns that betrayed some extreme influences and agendas.

"This is a man who has described himself as pagan, as an ordained minister, in fact," said Carter, reached by telephone. "The alt-right has always included some pagan influences. But now it's obvious that leaders with QAnon and other conspiracy theorists have learned that if they toss in some Christian imagery, then they'll really expand their base and their potential reach 100-fold."

Law-enforcement officials will soon present evidence attempting to prove who planned key elements of the illegal riot that crashed into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, after the legal "March to Save America" backing former President Donald Trump's claim that fraud cost him the White House.

This is just the latest example of how conspiracy theories, on the left and right, have soaked into public discourse about COVID-19 vaccines, Big Tech monopolies, sinister human-trafficking networks and, of course, alleged illegal activities in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

There is no way to deny that this digital tornado has shaken many Protestant churches, according to a new Lifeway Research survey that asked clergy to respond to this statement: "I frequently hear members of my congregation repeating conspiracy theories they have heard about why something is happening in our country."

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Remembering the real Mister Rogers -- as in the Rev. Fred Rogers

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Remembering the real Mister Rogers -- as in the Rev. Fred Rogers

America was divided, tense and angry in 1969, when Fred Rogers faced a U.S. Senate Subcommittee poised to grant President Richard Nixon his requests for deep budget cuts for public broadcasting.

The news was full of assassinations, riots and images from Vietnam. The pain even soaked into the gentle, calm, safe world of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

Rogers told the senators why he kept telling children they were unique and special. But he also talked about fear, anger and confusion -- because that's what children were feeling. 

Then he read the lyrics of one of his deceptively simple songs: "What do you do with the mad that you feel, when you feel so mad you could bite? When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right?" 

The song stressed that kids can make good choices: "I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. I can stop, stop, stop anytime. And what a good feeling to feel like this. And know … that there's something deep inside that helps us become what we can."

The senators nixed the cuts, and the Rev. Fred Rogers -- an ordained Presbyterian minister -- continued with his complex blend of television, child development and subtle messages about faith. The Senate showdown is a pivotal moment in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?", a Focus Features documentary just released to theaters nationwide.

"The bottom line for Fred Rogers was that the faith he had in God -- Christian tradition and his own beliefs -- infused everything that he did," said the Rev. George Wirth, a friend and pastor to Rogers for two decades. "He was not a grab you by the lapels man, obviously. He was more careful, and I would say prayerful, in terms of how he discussed faith."

In the documentary, Rogers summed up his approach: "Love is at the root of everything -- all learning, all parenting, all relationships. Love, or the lack of it. And what we see and hear on the screen is part of what we become." The space created by a TV lens, between himself and a child, was "very holy ground," he said.