Dennis Reynolds is on the record with this statement as supporting the idea that American voters shouldn’t have the right to determine their own laws. He wants that power to be given over exclusively to Christian preachers like himself.

The statement Reynolds signed dismissed the right of American citizens to defy the commands of Christian preachers, no matter how unpopular those commands are. “The religious man believes the first cause of natural law must be the Lawgiver. Others may believe any number of things, but everything about homosexuality conflicts with natural law. There is no amount of anger, no level of vocal indignation that can ever change that fact.”

Specifically, on the issue of sexuality, the statement insisted that the only acceptable position is complete intolerance, without exceptions. “There is no room for compromise on the issue of homosexuality,” it declared.

Who is Dennis Reynolds, that he thinks he should have the power to tell everyone else who they can have sex with?

The Confused And Out Of Control God Of Dennis Reynolds

Dennis Reynolds is in the habit of insisting that all Americans obey the rules set down by the Christian god, whether they are Christians or not. His own statements about the Christian god, however, reveal the character of an ultimately impotent supernatural being who feels out of control and unable to do what he really wants.

Reynolds has this to say of his Christian god: “He is merciful and does not want to punish us (Romans 5:8).  He is just and holy and must punish sin (Romans 6:23).”

First, Reynolds says that the Christian god doesn’t want to punish people. Then, Reynolds says that the Christian god must punish people, even though he doesn’t want to do it.

The obvious conclusion is that the Christian god Dennis Reynolds believes in is not in control. Someone or something else is making up rules that the Christian god is forced to follow, because the Christian god is too powerless to stand up for himself.

So, who is in control of the Christian god, then? Who is the master that sets the rules that the Christian god has to obey? What does this theology make the Christian god into, other than a cosmic middleman who receives commands from something more powerful, and then executes them without any choice in the matter?

If this Christian god doesn’t have the power to determine the rules and doesn’t have the courage to talk back to his mysterious, unnamed master, and it’s from this god’s master that the Christian rules about things like sexuality, marriage, and American law come from, why should we follow those rules?

Somebody has to stand up to the cosmic bully who has made the Christian god into nothing more than a simpering manservant, right? The fact that there’s someone powerful who demands our obedience doesn’t mean that we have to give it.

The patriotic American point of view is that no strong man, no autocratic bully, whether that bully is a political demagogue, a middle-management god, or a king, has the right to boss us around with arbitrary rules that contradict simple respect for other people.

So, if this strange character who is bossing around the Christian god has a peculiar obsession with controlling the sex lives of human beings in the United States of America, we Americans have the right to turn around and say, “Who elected you leader? Not me! Here in America, we don’t have kings. We elect our leaders, so mind your own business. We’ll have sex the way we want to, no matter how many times you threaten us!”

Dennis Reynolds’s idea of a divine authority figure who is obsessed with sex and punishment could be dismissed as just some kind of kinky subculture, if it wasn’t being harnessed in support of a real human autocrat who wants to impose his own values on all Americans. Donald Trump’s bizarre, angry, unforgiving need to punish and control people is a mirror image of the beliefs Dennis Reynolds has described in a mysterious being who makes the Christian god into a whipping boy.

It all seems strangely reminiscent of the warped loyalties of a young boy who has literally been beaten by a cruel father, but insists nonetheless that his father really loves him somehow, saying, “My dad doesn’t want to beat me. He has to beat me up, but he doesn’t want to do it.”

American adults have the right to this kind of desperate bondage sadomasochistic fantasy, if that’s what they really want. To use this twisted worship of pain, suffering, and control as the foundation of American politics, however, seems profoundly unwise.

Dennis Reynolds has used his position as pastor of the Nevada Baptist Church to endorse the partisan political campaign of Donald Trump to be elected President of the United States in 2024. He isn’t making that endorsement as a private citizen, but as a pastor of the Nevada Baptist Church, as a “faith leader” who belongs to the Trump campaign’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition. That’s a violation of the law Pastor Reynolds agreed to when he claimed the special benefit of being exempt from the taxes the rest of us have to pay.

It sounds like Dennis Reynolds has a lot of personal issues about sexuality, marriage, punishment, and loss of control. He is too psychologically troubled to be a reliable source of political advice about the 2024 presidential election.

It would be better for everyone if Pastor Reynolds settled these issues in private with his wife, or maybe with a therapist, and leave American democracy alone.