The Judas Effect Quotes

“According to Jesus, the gospel can be contaminated by at least two common attitudes, which can spread throughout the church and ruin the whole batch of dough. Some of the Pharisees were judgmental and hypocritical. Their religious instruction was heavy on control and rules and legalism and hoop jumping, and had a convenient way of overlooking the log in its own eye while barring entrance to God’s kingdom for others. For example, a gospel contaminated by such a yeast might condemn a gay, married, and monogamous person for sexual immorality, while simultaneously saluting a twice-divorced, thrice-married, unrepentant serial adulterer and sexual assailant who sleeps with porn stars while his wife is home tending to their infant son. This is the type of hypocrisy Jesus can’t stand.”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“You Lust for What You Don’t Have” An unbridled lust for cultural, political, or religious dominance means we have fallen under the wrong spirit. It’s a scheme of the enemy as old as the garden. He promises control, he promises power, he promises us a win in the “culture wars”—and then he convinces us that God wants us to have it. If the enemy can make us obsessed with having power, he will have achieved his goal of throwing us off mission. God promises none of these things, because none of these things is necessary for our earthly assignment, which is simply to reconcile the world to a loving God by showing sacrificial love. God has a strategy for this reconciliation, and it has nothing to do with creating a “God-fearing nation” in which every constituent must comply with our beliefs. Rather, it has everything to do with creating an environment of love and compassion as we devote ourselves to welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, and standing alongside the oppressed. Giving God’s kingdom away through acts of love and service is what blesses the heart of God.”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“violent rhetoric and ill treatment of people. Anything less than a swift and hearty rebuke from the evangelical church is an inaccurate, gross misrepresentation of the Lord we serve.”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“In the same way, God doesn’t need a Trump for Christianity to prosper in America. And this may come as a shock to white American Evangelicals who have been conditioned to believe otherwise, but he also doesn’t need a United States of America. We are no more or less special to him than any other country on planet Earth.57 Love of country is wonderful, but idolatry of country is quite a different matter. America could dissolve tomorrow, and the kingdom of God would be unconcerned. The gospel does not begin and end on American soil. It originates in heaven, and when God has a mind to bring his kingdom to earth, he can use any people he wills, any nation he wills, any time, any old way he chooses. *”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“There is no greater distortion to the true gospel of Christ than to hold up a leader who bullies, lies, threatens, and promotes violence, and assert that God appointed him. A church that exalts any leader—political, religious, or otherwise—who regularly stirs up division and violence, unleashes anger and hatred, lies incessantly, threatens reporters, and belittles women, is not a church. It’s a cult.”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“If we spend our lives listening to fearmongering agitators, we will find ourselves becoming constantly offended, constantly angry, and constantly cynical.”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“Judas Iscariot was a follower of Jesus. He walked with him. He talked with him. He ate with him. Presumably, he participated with him in sharing the good news. He did everything a good follower of Jesus is supposed to do. But somewhere along the way his heart was tempted to go off mission. He became greedy for gain. It doesn’t matter whether he wanted money or political”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“By now we’ve seen the wreckage left by the religious right’s efforts: alliances with morally bankrupt politicians, a compromised public witness, and a generation of millennials who feel betrayed by their parents’ generation and want nothing to do with their faith.280”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“Biblically speaking, if my fervor for the first nine months of life isn’t matched by equal fervor for protecting and advocating the years after, I’m not truly pro-life. I’m just pro-pregnancy.”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“It’s not wrong to want unborn babies to have a chance at life. It’s not wrong to want a strong military and protected borders. It’s not wrong to want a healthy economy and high-paying jobs. It is wrong if we have to align ourselves with evil in order to get those things. It is wrong if we have to excuse abuse, misogyny, sexism, racism, violence, perversion, and lies. It is wrong, if, in pursuit of the good, we preach morality at the same time we align ourselves with the blatantly immoral. The Bible has a word for the giving up of one’s dignity, respect, and integrity in exchange for a commodity (or platform). It’s called prostitution. “Therefore repent and turn back so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and so that he may send the Messiah appointed for you—that is, Jesus.”316”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“It’s one thing if political power comes to us decently and morally. But if we lust so much for what we don’t have that we are willing to enable a man like Trump to get it, the world is right to question our judgment. About everything. Including the gospel.”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“with our religious and political ideologies. We don’t need political power to preach a pure gospel. We need spiritual power. And what the church “gains” in political power via an alliance with a bully like Herod, it will lose in spiritual power.”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.101”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power

“In the end, Trump’s strategy of threatening reporters didn’t work. The truth came out, and it continues to unravel around him. That’s because God is the ultimate truth teller, and uncovering darkness is the Lord’s work. Those who try to silence people who bring darkness into the light will be called to account, and that includes leaders in the evangelical church who aimed to convince people that they should ignore or falsify Trump’s misdeeds. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”73”
― Amy Hawk, The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power