The evangelical brother-in-law of Pete Buttigieg called on him to “repent” for using the Bible to justify late-term abortion and claimed the presidential candidate is “weaponizing” Christian teachings to promote a false religion.
Pastor Rhyan Glezman, 34, who serves a church in small-town Michigan, told the Washington Examiner that he was very alarmed by Buttigieg’s claim on Friday that the Bible teaches life does not begin until a baby first draws breath. “I feel a sense of responsibility and stewardship of my faith to stand up and say something, to say, ‘No, that’s not true,'” he explained.
“God places a very high value on all human life,'” Glezman continued. “Everyone is created fearfully and wonderfully in the image of God with intrinsic value. That doesn’t start at the first breath, it starts when we enter our mother’s womb.”
Glezman asserted that Buttigieg’s use of Scripture to defend abortion up to the point of birth was “outrageous,” adding, “If we’re going to say we’re for all people and we love all people, but we don’t value human life in the womb, that’s being a hypocrite. You’re hypocritical if you don’t stand up for all life. So that’s why I’m speaking out.”
Glezman, who is the elder brother of the South Bend mayor’s husband, Chasten, 30, believes Buttigieg’s continual use of Christian terminology to defend his liberal policies is an attempt “to seem appealing to the evangelical community,” while also falling in line with the dictates of the Democratic Party. “I think he’s just going along with the agenda of the Democratic Party: that if you want to be a Democrat, you have to be pro-choice.”
Reflecting on the 2020 Democratic candidates, Glezman said, “When I look at every single one of them, their policies, their beliefs, it’s very anti-American. It’s very anti-life. It’s very anti-God. They all have the same rhetoric, and that’s the path they’re deciding to go down. You see it right down the board. I don’t understand why a Democrat can’t come out and say, ‘I believe life in the womb is valuable.'”
Glezman said he believes Buttigieg is creeping into dangerous territory when he uses the Bible to buttress his radical positions on things such as late-term abortion. “This isn’t a little issue, especially when we’re talking about life,” he said. “This is not just a political conversation. We’re talking about human life. These are human beings.” Glezman maintains that his brother-in-law has “manipulated” and “weaponized” the Bible to appeal to a wider demographic of liberal Democrats, which makes him “a false teacher,” as far he’s concerned.
“What we see is a modern-day Pharisee,” said Glezman, referencing the 1st-century Jewish sect that was notorious for demanding its followers adhere to an exhaustive list of trivial laws to earn God’s favor. “Buttigieg is a person who’s making up their own rules and regulations and, basically, if we don’t celebrate and endorse their interpretation of Scripture, our religion is fallible. And that’s just not true.”
Glezman sees Buttigieg as indicative of a growing trend within the Democratic Party to silence dissent with all the fervor of a religion. “I can love someone who disagrees with me. I love my brother, I love Pete, I love all people, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to change my beliefs. In their eyes, if we don’t celebrate or endorse their marriage views or their abortion views, then all of a sudden we become the homophobic bigots, which is just not true. You can love people and have a disagreement.”
“And that’s what I’m seeing with this false religion,” Glezman clarified. “That’s why I compared them to the Pharisees of today, with their new laws that they’re trying to instill. And they’re saying, ‘If you don’t believe the way I do, then you’re a hateful, bigoted person; you’re homophobic, you’re anti-woman. It becomes this hostile division.”
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Still, Glezman hopes for Buttigieg that “he’d repent from teaching these false claims of Christianity; that he would just have an absolute encounter with God.” Offering one’s opinion, he said, is quite different than outright claiming that God supports things such as late-term abortion. “Anyone who makes those claims, anyone who’s going to weaponize the [Bible] in that way, I would say to anyone that you need to repent. This is leading people astray and it’s very, very dangerous.”
*see full story by The Washington Examiner