The Sickness of Christian Politics & Christian Nationalism

[LFC]

"Radicalized Christian nationalism is one of the biggest threats facing the US." Amen! As this article points out the Muslim religious community was hammered on endlessly about their need to decry and fight against terrorism and extremism. Now it's the Christians' turn to step up to the plate. No, not just those attached to the crazies but ALL Christians.

Today, right-wing extremism is arguably the biggest terrorist threat facing America. Recent warnings from the Department of Homeland Security confirm as much. And similar to violent extremist movements throughout the Muslim world that have come into focus since the 9/11 attacks, the growing right-wing insurgency in America is entangled with religion.

At the Capitol riot, the presence of Christianity was undeniable. Footage shows insurrectionists inside the Senate chamber praying at the Senate podium. They held signs reading, "Jesus 2020," a white cross declaring "Trump won", and marched through the halls of Congress yelling "The blood of Jesus covering this place." Many of the rioters were participants in the Jericho March earlier that day.

What is crucial to recognize is that although the mob at the Capitol may have lacked any centrally-organized leadership, the movements that fostered the extremism on display do rely on leaders. And just as Muslim heads of state and Imams around the world have been expected to condemn the acts of terrorists, Christian leaders in America should now be expected to condemn the extremists of Christian nationalism and work to root out extremism from their communities.

Although some Christian leaders have spoken out against the events at the Capitol, many more have stayed silent. Others have even doubled-down on their support for President Trump, criticizing Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted for his impeachment. GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a born-again Christian, received threatening hate mail from fellow evangelicals. Franklin Graham, the son of the famous pastor Billy Graham, compared Kinzinger and his Republican colleagues who voted for impeachment to Judas, the biblical disciple who betrayed Jesus.

Taking a strong vocal stance is important, but no one should be under the illusion that statements of condemnation are enough. As Muslim communities around the world have learned in the decades since the 9/11 attacks, successful deradicalization efforts require sustained, grassroots engagement at the community level. This means Christian leaders who object to the kind of violent Christian nationalism that was on display at the Capitol need to start doing the hard work of pulling their flocks back from extremism.

Like Muslim extremists, Christian extremists harbor a theocratic worldview, in which they believe their values are superior and they must upend the balance of power and impose their beliefs by any means necessary. They believe the ends justify the means.

Much has been written about how the doctrines of groups like al-Qaida and ISIS deviate from the teachings of Islam. Yet much less has been said about how much the dogmas of Christian nationalism depart from the teachings of the Bible.

Christian nationalists like GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and the extremists who find inspiration in his words do what they do because they think it will help them gain the power they need to make the changes they believe will make society better. But for Christians, immoral means should never justify moral ends. The teachings of Jesus could not be more clear: followers of Christ are supposed to live their lives a certain way and be a certain type of person — not achieve certain ends. To ignore that crucial precept is to miss the forest for the trees.

[LFC]

Christian scandals and politics is taking its toll on membership. For the first time since Gallup tracked church membership in 1937 the percentage of Americans belonging to a church, synagogue, or mosque dropped below 50%.

Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.

U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century.Gallup asks Americans a battery of questions on their religious attitudes and practices twice each year. The following analysis of declines in church membership relies on three-year aggregates from 1998-2000 (when church membership averaged 69%), 2008-2010 (62%), and 2018-2020 (49%). The aggregates allow for reliable estimates by subgroup, with each three-year period consisting of data from more than 6,000 U.S. adults.

Most of the change comes from the unaffiliated, of course, but even those with a religious preference are attending in lesser numbers.

The decline in church membership is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years.

As would be expected, Americans without a religious preference are highly unlikely to belong to a church, synagogue or mosque, although a small proportion -- 4% in the 2018-2020 data -- say they do. That figure is down from 10% between 1998 and 2000.

Given the nearly perfect alignment between not having a religious preference and not belonging to a church, the 13-percentage-point increase in no religious affiliation since 1998-2000 appears to account for more than half of the 20-point decline in church membership over the same time.

Most of the rest of the drop can be attributed to a decline in formal church membership among Americans who do have a religious preference. Between 1998 and 2000, an average of 73% of religious Americans belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque. Over the past three years, the average has fallen to 60%.

Contrary to Rod Dreher's blaming falling membership and adherence to orthodoxy on the sexual revolution, left-wing culture, and general laziness the fact is that the religious leaders themselves are the biggest cause. Religion in America and many other nations has a cultural machine gun and a seemingly endless supply of immoral bullets which they insist on continually pumping into their own foot. And younger generations in particular, but not solely, have noticed. Most people aren't too distracted or lazy to go to church. They're horrified at the immorality they've seen pouring out of one church after another. The result is that they have no interest in even considering finding out about religion.

"You have got to clean your own house first before you tell other people that they aren't doing it right."

Specks and beams, people. Specks and beams.

[Bact PhD]

Alas, this is hitting home these days. The steep drop off among Catholics can be traced directly to the abuse scandals that hit the media in the ‘aughts. Many of my own age cohort, a number of whom attended Catholic school with me BITD, left Catholicism in middle age.

Mainstream Protestantism, OTOH, had its big drop off when the Baby Boomers came of age. What seems to be occurring now is merely a continuing decline as the Traditionalists die off without either children or grandchildren replacing them in the pews. Evangelical Protestantism is about to suffer the fate its mainstream counterpart did 40+ years ago.

Even the middle-aged are tiring of the BS among so-called religious leadership, whether it’s pedophile priests, Falwell Jr.’s pool boy, or clerics living the high life, or local church political gamesmanship; the young ones are having none of it.

Were I andydp, I would be inserting a Gandhi quote about now...

[LFC]

[LFC]

Whoa! A guest on Jim Bakker's TV show turned out to be an utter nutter. Who could have seen that coming?

On Tuesday, Right Wing Watch flagged a segment on televangelist Jim Bakker's show in which a Steve Quayle, a far-right conspiracy theorist, suggested COVID-19 nasal swabs are a government plot to collect DNA to turn Americans into a Satanic army of the undead.

"Zombies that are on the earth are a disease like any other disease, that affects people, and they become like zombies," said Bakker. "Is that right?"

"Forgive me, but that's only part of the story," said Quayle. "Zombies also have the evil spiritual entity known as demon possession, okay? Because there is no rationale with a zombie. The best way to explain zombies' bloodlust is this: the appetite of demons expressed through humans. It should be astonishing to people that the richest people in the world — not all of them, but some of them — are into occult ceremonies where they have to drink blood that's extracted from a tortured child."

Quayle went on to say that "they can induce zombieism" and that "The whole subject of zombies could be just boiled down at one end to a genetically modified human that is no longer human on the level that you and I or a living being is."

[LFC]

Once again we see an Evangelical leader "following the prophet profit." What a sicko. If only he was a one-off.

Mississippi pastor Shane Vaughn has followed up viral election conspiracy theories by claiming that former President Donald Trump is responsible for the $1,400 stimulus checks that some Americans will be receiving after Democrats passed the latest COVID-19 relief bill.

Vaughn made the remarks during a broadcast on his YouTube channel over the weekend.

"This was Donald Trump's idea," Vaughn told his followers. "Donald Trump said if we're going to blow this money anyway then blow it on our people. And so ladies and gentleman, that bill that passed today where you're getting all this money, that was an offering from our late president to every one of you."
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"Now you are getting the rest of what he fought for," he continued. "$1,400 more equals $2,000 a person. So even as Donald Trump has left office, his blessing to America has continued."

Vaughn, however, said that he opposed the idea of a stimulus bill.

"I don't know where we got the idea that government was there to bail out the people in hard times," he opined. "We have turned the government into a big nanny. She has become the breast of the nation. Everyone is sucking off of socialism."

"I'm still a conservative and I still believe that this nation should not be in the business of taking care of all of her citizens," he added.

Vaughn made news last year after he claimed in a viral video that Trump would be sworn into office for a second term despite losing the election.

[LFC]

This sicko is telling people to buy guns to serve Jeebus! The only way this kind of "Christian" turns the other cheek is if they fire left-handed. His kids managed to escape his insanity.

Rev. Rick Joyner is calling for Christians to buy weapons for a coming "civil war." But according to a New York Times column, the pastor is labeling his own children as being "evil." He's the same pastor who in 2016 compared Donald Trump to the disciples of Jesus. He also told his followers in 2013 that he was praying for a military coup against former President Barack Obama.

Columnist Nicholas Kristof noted in his Sunday piece that Rev. Joyner suggests liberals are allies of the devil.

"But this is the awkward part," wrote Kristof. "His five children would be on the other side of that civil war, as he and his kids all acknowledge. Just as America is torn asunder by politics and polarization, so is the Joyner family. The Joyners love each other, are there for each other — and despair for each other."
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"He talks about Democrats being evil, forgetting that all five of his kids vote Democratic," his eldest child Anna Jane Joyner said. "Who is he asking his followers to take up arms against? Liberal activists? That's me."

She and her family are concerned that such right-wing rhetoric could ultimately get people killed. After the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, those demanding followers take up arms against Democrats are drawing an increasing amount of scrutiny.

"I think it's completely possible that some of my dad's followers could pick up guns and cause violence because they think they're defending the country," she said.

Her youngest brother, Sam Joyner, agrees, "He's causing harm in my view, and he's being incredibly irresponsible."

"I think what he does is morally wrong, but I love him," their brother Ben Joyner said. "I don't want to hurt him, but when he's spreading dangerous ideas, it gets complicated."

[LFC]

I can't even. The toxic mix of patriarchal condescension, misogony, sexual repression, and failure to think logically has left these people stunted and incapable of functioning in the modern world. They need to time travel back to the days of bloodletting and witch burning. That's more their speed. This particular example of insanity is over winning a f***ing fishing trip.

A Pennsylvania woman says she was insulted by a pastor after she won a fishing trip during an event.

Emily Smaniotto went to the Wild Game Dinner on Saturday at Bethel Baptist Church in North Union Township, where she thought the organizer was joking when he said contests were for men only -- and she entered after seeing another woman put her name in, reported WTAE-TV.

"She was the first name to be called," Smaniotto said. "As soon as they called her name the pastor immediately shut her down. He said, 'Absolutely not, this is a male-only trip. Females are unable to attend so we're just going to keep drawing names until we get a male.' So, surprisingly enough, my name was the second one to be drawn and I got the same letdown."
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"They pretty much scolded us for being female," she added.

The pastor tried to explain in a statement to the TV station by saying the giveaway was donated by another sponsor, and he feared having men and women on the same trip might invite scandal.

"The church gives away door prizes every year which are available to all in attendance so long as they are of legal age and no criminal record in the case of a firearm," said Rev. Bryan Kelley.

"Aside from what the church offered, the speaker on his own offered separate gifts apart from the church for men only and made it clear that was the stipulation," he added. "Living in the days of sexual scandals and accusations, many pastors, including myself, take the personal position that we will not put ourselves in a position that could bring about a false accusation and thus bring a multitude of problems, hence why he personally offered them for men only. It was a matter of personal standards and protection and there was no intent of discrimination."

That's pretty awful and personally insulting, right? So what did "man of God(tm)" do? He tries to contact the woman's FATHER! I guess the first two kicks to the uterus weren't enough so he decided to explain it to her daddy who I guess could explain it to her. What a sick bastard.

[LFC]

Here's a pastor who actually did the right thing and left when a number of his parishioners decided theirs should be the First Church of Q.

In an interview with NPR, an evangelical pastor from Virginia admitted he felt the need to quit his church after many of his parishioners became obsessed with QAnon conspiracy theories and other blatantly false stories they picked up from social media and conservative news outlets.

According to the report, Jared Stacy gave up his post at Spotswood Baptist Church in Fredericksburg, Va., last year after four years because partisan politics kept creeping into the church, causing a rift among members.

In his interview, he worried about the evangelical community's close ties to conservative politics -- including the affection some Christian leaders have for Donald Trump.

"If Christians in America are serious about helping people see Jesus and what he's about and what he claims, then the label 'evangelical' is a distraction because it bears, unfortunately, the weight of a violence. I would not use that term because of its association with Jan. 6," he said referring to the riot at the U.S. Capitol incited by the former president.

Which brings him back to why he gave up on his church after watching a change in the membership under Trump.

"During the protests over summer after George Floyd's killing, Stacy noticed his congregation making a turn towards a conspiracy theory about child sex trafficking," NPR's Dalia Mortada reported, with Stacy adding, "I began to see on social media people ignoring or pushing away Black Lives Matter by saying, you know, oh, well, no one's over here talking about trafficking."

"He saw some people in his own congregation — mostly the parents or elders of the young adults he worked with — elevating the idea of sex trafficking of kids and what he called 'Democrat pedophilia,'" the report states with the pastor suggesting, "This is about a wholesale view of reality — what is real, what is true. It was people who I respected, and that's even more complicated because they were [my] elders."


According to the pastor, the more the conspiracy theories were discussed, the more pressure it was putting on younger members of his congregation -- even though he did his best to dissuade his flock from believing them.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 7, 2021 20:55:38 GMT LFC said:

I can't even. The toxic mix of patriarchal condescension, misogony, sexual repression, and failure to think logically has left these people stunted and incapable of functioning in the modern world. They need to time travel back to the days of bloodletting and witch burning. That's more their speed. This particular example of insanity is over winning a f***ing fishing trip.

A Pennsylvania woman says she was insulted by a pastor after she won a fishing trip during an event.

Emily Smaniotto went to the Wild Game Dinner on Saturday at Bethel Baptist Church in North Union Township, where she thought the organizer was joking when he said contests were for men only -- and she entered after seeing another woman put her name in, reported WTAE-TV.

"She was the first name to be called," Smaniotto said. "As soon as they called her name the pastor immediately shut her down. He said, 'Absolutely not, this is a male-only trip. Females are unable to attend so we're just going to keep drawing names until we get a male.' So, surprisingly enough, my name was the second one to be drawn and I got the same letdown."
Tired of ads? Want to support our progressive journalism? Click to learn more.

"They pretty much scolded us for being female," she added.

The pastor tried to explain in a statement to the TV station by saying the giveaway was donated by another sponsor, and he feared having men and women on the same trip might invite scandal.

"The church gives away door prizes every year which are available to all in attendance so long as they are of legal age and no criminal record in the case of a firearm," said Rev. Bryan Kelley.

"Aside from what the church offered, the speaker on his own offered separate gifts apart from the church for men only and made it clear that was the stipulation," he added. "Living in the days of sexual scandals and accusations, many pastors, including myself, take the personal position that we will not put ourselves in a position that could bring about a false accusation and thus bring a multitude of problems, hence why he personally offered them for men only. It was a matter of personal standards and protection and there was no intent of discrimination."

That's pretty awful and personally insulting, right? So what did "man of God(tm)" do? He tries to contact the woman's FATHER! I guess the first two kicks to the uterus weren't enough so he decided to explain it to her daddy who I guess could explain it to her. What a sick bastard.

Everybody knows that girls don't like fishing.  The only reason the shameless hussies would want to go fishing was to tangle up with the men in a sexual way.  The men, of course, would be defenseless against such shameless hussies.  Segregation of male and female is the only way to protect those men.  It's in the Bible somewhere.

[goldenvalley]

The SCOTUS Religious 5 strikes again and with a midnight ruling release. Are they afraid to be part of the work week news cycle?

In another late-night ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday blocked another California coronavirus restriction on religious gatherings, saying the state’s limits on home-based Bible study and prayer sessions violated constitutional rights.

Kagen dissents:

The First Amendment requires a state to treat religious conduct as well as it treats comparable secular conduct, Kagan wrote. California “does exactly that,” she wrote, adding that it adopted a blanket restriction on home gatherings to three households, “religious and secular alike.”

“California need not, as the [majority] insists, treat at-home religious gatherings the same as hardware stores and hair salons — and thus unlike at-home secular gatherings, the obvious comparator here,” Kagan wrote.

The free exercise clause is becoming like the 2nd Amendment...yell you're violating my right to religious freedom and you win every time.

[andydp]

Further proof Jesus was a closet "Commie Pinko Socialist":

Acts 4:32 The multitude of believers was one in heart and soul. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they owned. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. All the believers were united in heart and mind.

Would love to see Pat Robertson use this.

[Bact PhD]

Apr 12, 2021 11:59:59 GMT andydp said:

Further proof Jesus was a closet "Commie Pinko Socialist":

Acts 4:32 The multitude of believers was one in heart and soul. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they owned. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. All the believers were united in heart and mind.

Would love to see Pat Robertson use this.

Yesterday’s lection. My reaction to this passage is roughly identical. The “prosperity gospel” crowd routinely blows this passage off (but they LOOOVE the “jealous God” of the OT.

[AnBr]

Just like the Constitution they cherry pick what they like and disregard the rest. 2nd Amendment, only the last bit applies. 10th Amendment? Lose the "or to the people" part.

[LFC]

Probabilistic posted this from Ross Douthat on the old TRS and I felt the need to fisk it. Since I wanted to make sure it was saved I moved it over here. (Mea culpa, Prob, if I overstepped.)

Posted 11 April 2021 - 07:46 PM
Can the Meritocracy Find God?

The secularization of America probably won’t reverse unless the intelligentsia gets religion.
By Ross Douthat

Most of these people — my people, by tribe and education — would be unlikely models of holiness in any dispensation, given their ambitions and their worldliness. But Jesus endorsed the wisdom of serpents as well as the innocence of doves, and religious communities no less than secular ones rely on talent and ambition. So the deep secularization of the meritocracy means that people who would once have become priests and ministers and rabbis become psychologists or social workers or professors, people who might once have run missions go to work for NGOs instead, and guilt-ridden moguls who might once have funded religious charities salve their consciences by starting secular foundations.

Ah, what a lovely way to begin my evening reading Ross. Thank you.

Now, how can this process be accelerated?

As a Christian inhabitant of this world, I often try to imagine what it would take for the meritocracy to get religion. There are certain ways in which its conversion doesn’t seem unimaginable. A lot of progressive ideas about social justice still make more sense as part of a biblical framework...

You're overlooking one important factor, Ross. The hocus-pocus explanatory framework provided by religions are just bronze age garbage. These just don't work. Their functions are better fulfilled by science, philosophy and ethics, and politics, In order for the progressive ideas of social justice to arise and to prevail one does not need a biblical framework. Have you noticed religious people are the most opposed to ideas of social justice when justice rendered reduces their power?

All the good deeds of religions can be done without harkening to superstitions, the need of belief without evidence. The only ways for religions to regain their place of prominence are through bamboozlement and force. Surely enough, those are the paths most taken by religions

[LFC]

Here's my response to Ross. Sorry, not sorry, for the length.

"One problem is that whatever its internal divisions, the American educated class is deeply committed to a moral vision that regards emancipated, self-directed choice as essential to human freedom and the good life. The tension between this worldview and the thou-shalt-not, death-of-self commandments of biblical religion can be bridged only with difficulty — especially because the American emphasis on authenticity makes it hard for people to simply live with certain hypocrisies and self-contradictions, or embrace a church that judges their self-affirming choices on any level, however distant or abstract."

I find this to be a fascinating look at the religious mind and its infinite ability to only see in only one direction. Ross is pretty bright and definitely level-headed (compared to the ever melting down professional perpetual victim that is Rod Dreher) yet he still can't help but frame this as a failure of the non-religious to reconcile their views with his and not his failure to reconcile religion with reality. The fact is that many of us have intentionally chosen to REPLACE his views because we find so much in both its morals and its adherents to be lacking. That's a tough pill to swallow for the religious and I've seen this denial over and over from Ross, Rod, and Andrew Sullivan. There's always a reason other than the failures of religion itself.

On the "thou-shalt-not" issue let's look at those of the 10 Commandments which do not deal with worship; don't murder, steal, lie, commit adultery, or covet various things (depending on the version). Also be nice to your parents. I don't know any non-religious people who are against these things. They just don't believe there will be divine punishment. (They do believe in non-divine punishment for a number of them.)

"Then, too, the manifest failure of many churches to live up to their own commandments, the pulse of scandal in religious life, makes their claim to offer a higher, harder wisdom seem self-discrediting."

This is not a "then, too." This is a Big Truth and one that deserves to be called out as its own obstacle. The number of people who embrace the spiritual but reject religion is growing, and its organized religion's own fault.

"A second obstacle is the meritocracy’s anti-supernaturalism: The average Ivy League professor, management consultant or Google engineer is not necessarily a strict materialist, but they have all been trained in a kind of scientism, which regards strong religious belief as fundamentally anti-rational, miracles as superstition, the idea of a personal God as so much wishful thinking.

Thus when spiritual ideas creep back into elite culture, it’s often in the form of “wellness” or self-help disciplines, or in enthusiasms like astrology, where there’s always a certain deniability about whether you’re really invoking a spiritual reality, really committing to metaphysical belief."

That's because believing in the supernatural requires a leap of faith yet history is littered with "supernatural" phenomenon that were quite natural (Can you say eclipse?), those that were manufactured as shams, or people who can't tell the difference between supernatural and coincidence. As the old question goes how come a disaster that kills 100 can't be explained but the one baby that survives is due to a miracle? They have been "well trained in a kind of scientism" because, Richard Dawkins once so eloquently put it, "it works ... bitches." Show us the large-scale failures of their scientism that rejects self-correction and then you can put it on equal footing with religion.

"My sense is that these two obstacles effectively work together to block people from religious faith. If someone has an experience that calls their unbelief into question, their association of traditional religion with sexual prohibitions or bigotry or scandal is often enough to keep them from being drawn by that experience to a church or synagogue."

There's truth to that but to me, perhaps because I'm a non-believer, viewing religion with suspicion is the well thought out position supported by mountains of evidence. Ross is quickly moving past thousands of years of immorality across hundreds or thousands of religions. That is a position that requires blinders and hand waving. Believers have an enormously heavy lift with their "yeah but..." position.

"Alternatively, if they feel drawn by a desire for community or moral formation to experiment with churchgoing — maybe in a community that’s liberal or “seeker-sensitive," rather than reactionary or Republican — then their materialist bias makes it hard for them to persevere, to get up early to perform rituals or recite creeds whose claims they can’t actually believe."

Tying non-belief to materialism is a red herring and separation of materialism from religion flies in the face of reality. Tying rituals and creeds to non-materialism is equally bad. There are certainly some religious people here in America who aren't particularly materialistic but then there are also many non-religious people who have opted for a non-materialistic simpler way of life. For example, if Ross was more involved with those who love the outdoors he'd likely know more non-religious non-materalists. I personally know dozens of them. I'm sure it's due to my social network but I know very few religious ones.

BTW a quick check shows Ross, born in 1979, already has a net worth of about $1M which is not bad for a man who is just over 40. That drops him in the top 10% of wealth for the 40-44 year old age group. That doesn't necessarily make him materialistic but it's not a bad accumulation for somebody who clearly believes they are a non-materialistic person.

"I don’t know exactly how this blocking pattern might be broken. But I will say that the second obstacle seems by far the weaker one. That is, I think I understand pretty well why my secular neighbors doubt the godliness of churches that seem to treat gay people or women unfairly or that appear to be led by fools and hypocrites. But I am more puzzled by secular-minded people who think the rationality of religion has, under modern conditions, somehow been disproved."

"Rationality of religion?" Religion is based upon faith which, on its face, is not rational. That doesn't make it necessarily bad until it erects barriers to reality but "rational" it is not. I'm not saying that a religion is incapable of bringing benefits to its believers, just that it must be acknowledged that there is no rational basis to believe in any specific tenet or group of tenets. Yet most religions demand an all or nothing approach. Since Ross believes he understands why his secular neighbors reject some of the most basic tenets of his religion he should grasp why they're leery of the rest of them.

"Yes, science has undercut some religious ideas once held with certainty. But our supposedly “disenchanted” world remains the kind of world that inspired religious belief in the first place: a miraculously ordered and lawbound system that generates conscious beings who can mysteriously unlock its secrets, who display godlike powers in miniature and also a strong demonic streak, and whose lives are constantly buffeted by hard-to-explain encounters and intimations of transcendence. To be dropped into such a world and not be persistently open to religious possibilities seems much more like prejudice than rationality."

This is so far off the rails that I don't even know how he came up with it. It's almost like he skipped over the overwhelming majority of the history of man and picked up at maybe 500 years ago when the modern scientific method allowed us to really start to "unlock its secrets." Until rather recently the world that "inspired religious belief in the first place" was FAR from viewed as "a miraculously ordered and lawbound system that generates conscious beings who can mysteriously unlock its secrets, who display godlike powers in miniature." It was a wondrous but also scary and often capricious place that both brought bounty and life only to switch at an instant and kill indiscriminately. The conscious beings were rightfully scared of these things that they didn't understand. Religion and superstition are much the same thing: explanations for those things which we cannot understand. Some may explain the inspiring but many more try to give meaning to the terrifying.

"And my anthropological understanding of my secular neighbors particularly fails when it comes to the indifference with which some of them respond to religious possibilities, or for that matter to mystical experiences they themselves have had."

I don't know why this is hard for anybody who speaks to us non-believers to understand if they truly listen to our responses. First, why does Ross have a problem with those of us who can accept that something happened to us which we will never understand? Second, why by all that is holy (just kidding) would we reach out to the world's religions, thousands of which are in direct conflict with one another, for an answer? I see nothing but a giant pool of thousands of uninformed guesses. It's the last place I'd go to to seek answers.

"Like Pascal contemplating his wager, it always seems to me that if you concede that religious questions are plausible you should concede that they are urgent, or that if you feel the supernatural brush you, your spiritual curiosity should be radically enhanced."

See above. You can't grasp that many of us aren't like you. We feel no urgency to find answers to questions we believe have no answers. And we certainly don't see the place where you found your answers to be the source of truth and knowledge, especially when there are several thousand more that disagree with you.

"But clearly many highly intelligent people disagree. Which perhaps makes it a mistake to focus too much on overt obstacles to upper-class belief. They could be partially removed, rolled back a little way, and for a revival you would still need the impulse, the push, that makes people seek and knock and ask."

Hope on. The fact is that as people have become enlightened and knowledgeable they have turned their back on religion as a source of truth, and rightly so. There are many people who find something worthwhile in a non-orthodox version of their faith. It's more than possible to find spirituality, joy, contentment, and community without clinging to the orthodox rules created by man. Ross's personal need for that type of orthodox framework makes it impossible for him to understand that.

[LFC]

Should we just call it the religion of White Christianity at this point?

It would be charitable to call the white religious right’s continuous attacks on Rev. Raphael Warnock, beginning from the moment he launched his successful bid to become the first Black U.S. senator from Georgia, merely un-Christian.

Most recently, Georgia Baptist minister and Donald Trump loyalist Doug Collins, who once claimed Warnock’s stance as a “pro-choice pastor” is an oxymoronic “lie from the bed of hell,” blamed the senator’s condemnation of Georgia’s new voting restrictions—but not the racist law itself—for MLB’s decision to relocate its All-Star Game from the state, crying that “woke” Warnock “spread lies” about the legislation. Just a week ago, a now-deleted tweet from Warnock’s account—which stated that the “meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves”—so enraged very-online white evangelicals that they spent the holiest day in the Christian calendar casting judgment, labeling Warnock a “heretic,” a “narcissistic heretic,” and an “actual heretic.” Leading the charge was Jenna Ellis, an attorney for Trump’s failed coup d’état and proponent of the racist Kamala Harris birther lie. Beyond branding Warnock a “heretic,” Ellis voiced the real ideological truth underlying the attacks on the Georgia senator.

“He should delete Reverend in front of his name,” Ellis tweeted about Warnock, a doctoral graduate of Columbia University’s theological seminary. “People who don’t know Jesus pretend he was a soft-spoken philanthropist… If Warnock’s church were truly biblical and Christian, he would not be a pastor. His theology and practice is inconsistent with the Bible.” She was backed up by gun enthusiast and Christian podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey, who compared the senator’s faith to a kind of “social justice moralism” in which “Jesus is not a savior but a ‘liberator’—and not from sin, but from ‘systems’... Jesus/Christianity is a means to their political and social activist ends, which they like to categorize as ‘helping others’ (what they typically mean is government programs).”

Warnock’s church, which Ellis dismisses as insufficiently godly, is Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist, one of the oldest Black churches in the country and the former pulpit of Martin Luther King Jr. It is perhaps too on-the-nose that white Republican evangelicals who publicly assert that delegitimizing Black votes is doing God’s work and believe “All Lives Matter” is a Christly rebuff against assertions of Black humanity—and who, of course, selectively cite the de-radicalized MLK of white comfort and apathy—attack not only MLK’s pastoral heir, but the Black church writ large and the theology that springs from it.

Those attacks are at their core about the fundamental conflict between white evangelical Christianity in America, which is both steeped in and deeply protective of the white supremacist capitalist status quo, and the traditional Black Christian church, a site of transformative racial justice.

In his book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, Robert P. Jones traces the development of white American Christianity, demonstrating the foundational centrality of white supremacy to the early white Christian church. He highlights the split between both Northern and Southern Methodists and Baptists in 1845 over the issue of Black enslavement, the Catholic Church’s tradition of brutal global colonialism “justified by the conviction that white Christians were God’s chosen means of “civilizing” the world,” and the Native genocide of this country’s white settler colonizers. Across denominations, those churches in America—including those that argued against slavery—espoused a gospel of white supremacy and Black subordination.

"As the dominant cultural power in America,” Jones writes, the white Christian church has “been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect White supremacy and resist Black equality. This project has framed the entire American story. American Christianity’s theological core has been thoroughly structured by an interest in protecting white supremacy… not only among Evangelicals in the South but also along mainline Protestants in the Midwest and Catholics in the Northeast.”

“White evangelicals are the political quasi-religious heirs of the antebellum church,” I was told by Joseph Darby, senior pastor of Nichols Chapel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and president of the city’s NAACP chapter. “The antebellum Southern church said that slavery was moral because they were teaching Black people about Jesus and giving them an industrious life. You had people who called themselves Christian who owned human beings. How do you justify that? Well, you justify it by saying, "They're not really people like us. They are a different kind of people, and you need to be careful with them because they can be a dangerous kind of people." So there's been a cultivated racism that still drives white evangelical Christianity in large measure.”

[Deleted]

Bravo LFC. Very well stated.

[LFC]

This isn't religious belief, it's mental illness.

A controversial Wisconsin priest who made headlines last fall by calling Democrats "godless" is now telling his parishioners not to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.

The La Crosse Tribune reports that Father James Altman is telling members of his church that they should rely on God to save them from the novel coronavirus and should not trust any vaccine.

A flyer posted on Altman's church's website claims that it is "diabolical for anyone to virtue-signal/shame/compel you to take such an experimental drug, making you nothing other than a guinea pig," while also stating that "God is still the best doctor and prayer is still the best medicine."

Additionally, a church bulletin describes the COVID-19 vaccines as "an experimental use of a genetic altering substance that modifies your body — your temple of the Holy Spirit."

Additionally, video obtained by the La Cross Tribune shows that Altman's church is hosting packed services in which no parishioners are wearing masks.

Altman's latest antics are so extreme that the Diocese of La Crosse tells the LaCrosse Tribune that it is trying to "privately address" his behavior.

This is as well.

A C-SPAN caller explained on Monday that she is refusing the COVID-19 vaccine because she has "the best doctor in the world and his name is Jesus Christ."

During C-SPAN's Washington Journal program, Sylvia called in from Durham, North Carolina to complain about the cost of vaccinations.

"I have a question," she began. "I thought they said when you took the virus vaccine that you didn't have to pay for it. So now they're coming up and saying that they want the state and local governments to take taxes out for it -- to pay for it."

"I didn't take the shot," Sylvia revealed. "I'm not going to take the shot and I'm not paying for it. Anybody who wants to be stupid enough to pay for it, they can pay for it. But I'm not."

C-SPAN host Steve Scully asked the caller why she was refusing the vaccine.

"I don't trust Fauci, and I sure as hell don't trust Joe Biden and Kamala Harris," Sylvia replied. "So I've got the best doctor in the world and his name is Jesus Christ. So if I get it without being using common sense then I'll get it. But I'm not paying for it."

Sylvia went on to claim that the COVID-19 death toll has been falsely inflated.

"A lot of these people losing their lives have died because of natural causes or heart attacks or something," she said. "And they putting it down so I will talk to the governor of North Carolina [Roy Cooper] and I'm going to want an explanation wrote down of what I have to pay taxes on because I'm not paying for this."

[Deleted]

Apr 26, 2021 22:27:31 GMT LFC said:

This isn't religious belief, it's mental illness.       

Is-a relationship. Not isn't-a.

[HockeyDon]

Apr 26, 2021 22:27:31 GMT LFC said:

This isn't religious belief, it's mental illness.

So very, very much of religious belief is a mental illness. This is yet another example.

[andydp]

This showed up on my FB feed.  I have blocked Mr Graham but its worth looking at for the sheer hipocrity of the statement.

Franklin Graham Wishes Happy Birthday To Melania: “The Classiest First Lady Our Country Has Ever Had”


(SNIP)

And now today Graham is wishing happy birthday to Melania Trump, “the classiest first lady our country has ever had.”

You can be very sure that if Michelle Obama had ever appeared nude in lesbian porn shoots, Graham would have been standing outside the White House day and night with a flaming pitchfork.


www.joemygod.com/2019/04/franklin-graham-wishes-happy-birthday-to-melania-the-classiest-first-lady-our-county-has-ever-had/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=4d63473b98829e046673e253fe75747347d174e4-1619547617-0-AXXzrHH2aJ6CTl9Me0g6EcH7f5vm42iZYD4g-fxouPy6Ku2JyWZ2079bPIsPRjY8ga5rbhty7fDqkj0Ca4zWRj0yGeo7VUkCcJ1y18wZSMbzMsFQrO9QaZVuuBlG-zg73ruQzeXqLa3zqnH-7gkjFmYyQfzfpZZKQdPKlfVFRAOTdhn8CrgHveW-s-vMzIP4woFHtxcQehCvhJ86QGa-ZIGpBXRceT3oSV3pY3MV9w3aLSHZn2nyNXwwus_0oJtylnnFYBwxlpR3jlIP77MAZVbIcUwhweiWVzSK-mfbURCS2H3jtXtihbMgjLggyy1WFsVIV6yISoZXD8zmte8NSv02sTgS_dYIt3joz_UDK_14Z38fvnMqixJvczRz_44vxeYK81BdliRGIB_Mw2DSRF_QP4NSbNlXbGjIbg-xKrHMJ_Y4aKUYXAmSf66yLbDyc7qayKOXm-VQQMYFWltDzuvFx9qhzLR0TG4xTxNzDgvkszxV5LQbpLFtqS1uV_wl9RH3SGFQiUI-i4EZ_E190Y0K2u6qvFtb2NZAFy2UUa_W

[LFC]

Lyin' Mike Pence is testing the waters for a 2024 presidential bid with a sick and twisted Christianist group (paywalled). These are his people. If he runs they must be hung around his neck every day.

The former Veep is speaking at a carefully chosen podium this evening.

He’s giving his first speech post-Trump administration tonight, in a less-than-coincidental state (South Carolina) to a less-than-coincidental audience (the conservative Christian Palmetto Family Council).

Palmetto is an organization that has long advocated for the intersection of “biblical values” and government. It has a long history of advocating at the state level against abortion, same-sex marriage, and sex education, and has even stood up against vaccinations for sexually transmitted infections. Pence has advocated for the same types of conservative Christian values throughout his political career. The group is a state-level affiliate of the national evangelical organization Focus on the Family, a group whose leadership played a small, but not insignificant role, in fueling the Big Lie and stolen election falsehoods.

It’s an interesting correlation given what we now know about the insurrection and the imminent danger that former President Trump put his vice president into while a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol. Pence lost favor with some of the fervent members of Trump’s base when he refused to overturn the results of the election, which he and other Republicans maintained he didn’t have the power to do. “Hang Mike Pence” chants ensued during the Capitol attack.

Most speculate that the location and audience could signify Pence getting his toes wet for a possible 2024 bid if Trump doesn’t run. It could also be an opportunity for Pence to make amends with the type of voters a hypothetical Trump-Pence 2024 ticket would need in order to win.

The former VP is expected to compare the Trump-Pence administration’s work with Biden’s first 100 days in office and criticize Biden for shifting too far left to appease progressive, according to Politico Playbook. He’ll also discuss what’s needed policy-wise for Republicans to take back Congress and will highlight a career with Christianity at its center.

[LFC]

This is the very kind of freak who would say gay people shouldn't be allowed to teach children because they could influence them to become like they are. This guy should be hit with a restraining order keeping him 500 feet from children for the rest of his life. Here's the first part. It gets worse. MUCH worse.

Kansas state Rep. Mark Samsel was arrested on charges of misdemeanor battery on Thursday after getting into a physical altercation with a student while substitute teaching in Wellsville.

Samsel, 36, was booked into the Franklin County Adult Detention Center after 3:30 p.m. Thursday. He has since been released on $1,000 bond, Sheriff Jeff Richards said.

Superintendent Ryan Bradbury said that Samsel will no longer be allowed to work for the district.

On Wednesday, Samsel, R-Wellsville, was substitute teaching at the Wellsville school district’s secondary school. Throughout the day, high school students began recording videos of the lawmaker talking about suicide, sex, masturbation, God and the Bible.

In one video shared with The Star, Samsel tells students about “a sophomore who’s tried killing himself three times,” adding that it was because “he has two parents and they’re both females.”

“He’s a foster kid. His alternatives in life were having no parents or foster care parents who are gay,” Samsel tells students. “How do you think I’m going to feel if he commits suicide? Awful.”

In another video, Samsel is recorded telling students, “make babies. Who likes making babies? That feels good, doesn’t it? Procreate ... You haven’t masturbated? Don’t answer that question....God already knows.”

[LFC]

"Pastor" Rick Wiles is on the crazy train again.

Conservative pastor Rick Wiles took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci in a recent episode of his TruNews program, saying that the prominent public health official should be tortured.

Wiles, the pastor of the Flowing Streams Church in Vero Beach, Florida, regularly makes controversial and inflammatory statements. In March 2020, he made highly anti-Semitic remarks, claiming that God was "spreading" COVID-19 in synagogues as punishment for Jews opposing "his son, the Lord Jesus Christ."

During a program on TruNews last week, Wiles claimed that Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had worked directly with China to create the coronavirus pandemic.

"You're a liar!" Wiles said, directing his remarks at Fauci in the episode last Thursday. "You know what you did, Fauci. You worked with the Chinese Communist Party for years. And you used our own taxpayer money to work on a coronavirus with bats. And you did it behind our backs, deceiving the American people, and you participated in the creation of this virus."

Wiles said that Fauci "should be taken to Guantánamo Bay and waterboarded" until he coughs up "the truth." Fauci must also give the names of "the other traitors who have helped China damage the United States of America with this virus," the pastor said. Right Wing Watch first reported Wiles' remarks.

"We've been sold out by traitors inside America," the pastor claimed at another point in the program.

Uh, OK. I have to admit that last sentence is pretty factual. Not in the way Ricky thinks it is but still give the man a tiny bit of credit for saying something true, even if it was by accident.