This is a strange time.

This may turn out to be the quiet before the storm, the days before the fall, the last light before darkness comes.

In just 11 days, we may lose that which so many have died to save: our democracy.

I used to think Germany must have been a truly perverse nation to elect Hitler.

(Yes, he was elected.)

In 1932, the Nazi Party won only 33 percent of the vote, but that was enough for Hitler to insist that he be appointed Chancellor.

That 33 percent looks pretty good compared to us.

Nearly half of our people are vulnerable to the same prejudicial hatreds that drove the Germans.

Germans hated Jews and gay people.

In our country, the reviled groups are still the Jews and gay people, but add immigrants.

Germany was a mostly Christian nation, the land of Martin Luther. But as in America today, Christians in Germany held onto their hatreds and fears of anyone different.

Recently, millions of Methodists left the UMC so they could continue to marginalize gay people.

Millions of American Christians today support someone who called immigrants “vermin.”

(That, by the way, was Hitler’s word for Jews.)

However things go in 11 days, we are looking at a massive failure of the church.

I will tell you again: at the root of our problem is biblical inerrancy.

A majority of Christians worship the Bible, not Jesus. They have never accepted his call to love all people. Now we face the cost of that failure.

May God help us.