The Sickness of Christian Politics & Christian Nationalism

[goldenvalley]

From that NYT article on the quest for power:

Mr. Trump gained power in large part by offering to preserve the influence of white evangelicals and their values just as many feared that the world as they knew it was rapidly disappearing.

The fact that Mr. Trump, whom they saw as their protector, is no longer president intensifies feelings for many conservative Christians that everything is on the line. About 60 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump, according to a Public Religion Research Institute survey conducted late last year. White evangelicals are also the most likely religious group to be believers in QAnon, according to the survey. QAnon refers to a complex conspiracy theory involving a Satan-worshiping, child-sex-trafficking ring, and the F.B.I. has previously warned that some of its adherents could turn violent.

This baffles me. In reality, they used him to get Federalist Society folks on the bench. They used him to gain power and they protected him by ignoring all the things they would have called out on someone who identified as a Democrat.  And the monied people who back candidates for Congress and the presidency were happy to help them so that government remains paralyzed and weakened.  

[jackd]

Perhaps they're afraid of losing what they've gained.

[LFC]

Yes, we're subsidizing these sickos' lobbying efforts. The corruption of the GOP and America's brand of Christianity goose steps on.

The Family Research Council’s multimillion-dollar headquarters sit on G Street in Washington, D.C., just steps from the U.S. Capitol and the White House, a spot ideally situated for its work as a right-wing policy think tank and political pressure group.

From its perch at the heart of the nation’s capital, the FRC has pushed for legislation banning gender-affirming surgery; filed amicus briefs supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade; and advocated for religious exemptions to civil rights laws. Its longtime head, a former state lawmaker and ordained minister named Tony Perkins, claims credit for pushing the Republican platform rightward over the past two decades.

What is the FRC? Its website sums up the answer to this question in 63 words: “A nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to articulating and advancing a family-centered philosophy of public life. In addition to providing policy research and analysis for the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government, FRC seeks to inform the news media, the academic community, business leaders, and the general public about family issues that affect the nation from a biblical worldview.”

In the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, though, it is also a church, with Perkins as its religious leader.

According to documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and given to ProPublica, the FRC filed an application to change its status to an “association of churches,” a designation commonly used by groups with member churches like the Southern Baptist Convention, in March 2020. The agency approved the change a few months later.

The FRC is one of a growing list of activist groups to seek church status, a designation that comes with the ability for an organization to shield itself from financial scrutiny. Once the IRS blessed it as an association of churches, the FRC was no longer required to file a public tax return, known as a Form 990, revealing key staffer salaries, the names of board members and related organizations, large payments to independent contractors and grants the organization has made. Unlike with other charities, IRS investigators can’t initiate an audit on a church unless a high-level Treasury Department official has approved the investigation.

[pnwguy]

Coming to a Red State near you!

idahocapitalsun.com/2022/07/15/at-idaho-gop-convention-lobbyist-advocates-for-state-sponsored-christian-education/

Conzatti bases his arguments on statements from America’s Founding Fathers about Christianity. While historians argue the nation’s founders explicitly wanted religion out of government after declaring independence from the religiously dominated England, Conzatti singled out quotes about how human laws must conform to God’s laws.

“How do we preserve a constitutional government in the United States? Through education based upon the Christian religion,” Conzatti said. “Again, what’s the purpose of a public education? Love of God, love of country.”

Conzatti discussed several lightning rods in right-wing politics, such as sex education in schools and policies on what bathrooms a student can use based on their biological sex.

He also said the center is against state funding for early childhood education, which is meant for children between 3 and 5 years old, because he said the idea is rooted in Marxism.

Idaho does not have a state-funded early childhood education program.

According to the National Education Association, children who attend early childhood education programs are less likely to repeat a grade, less likely to have special needs and are more likely to graduate from high school.

“I would encourage you, as you are thinking about who to vote for, as you’re thinking about policy solutions, how to make (Idaho) a better place for families,” Conzatti said. “Let’s pursue true north, which is God’s truth.”

[LFC]

Why yes, these organizations do need to be stripped of their tax exempt status.

Pastor Ron Tucker took the stage one weekend in early July at Grace Church in the St. Louis suburb of Maryland Heights to deliver a sermon on Romans.

In the first 15 minutes, Tucker railed about antifa, Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, feminism, gun laws, abortion, protesters disrupting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dinner at a D.C. steakhouse, and promoted the baseless claim that the Capitol riot was a hoax.

“Their woke ideology is separating people into groups and taking our nation apart, and it’s being taught in our schools under the heading of critical race theory,” Tucker said. “The way you get promoted in a woke business is based on your degree of victimhood. If you’re a Black lesbian, you’re at the top of the heap. I mean, would you trust someone to fly your plane just because they’re part of a minority?”

Tucker founded Grace Church, a nondenominational congregation, in 1978. These days, it’s not unusual for him to use his time in the pulpit to unleash a torrent of right-wing grievances and stoke fears of an imminent “Marxist takeover.” But according to some of his congregants, it’s a stark departure from his old preaching style.

“It’s honestly weird because it never used to be like that,” said Emily Lynch, 33, whose family joined Grace Church when she was 5 years old. “I can remember the sermons growing up, and they never spoke about politics. It was a quote-unquote ‘feel-good’ church.”

Noelle Fortman, 23, and her mother had similar early experiences with Grace Church, which they joined in 2010. “It was a pleasant community. It was welcoming and diverse,” she said. “The sermons were just very uplifting, and, you know, biblical.”

Now, instead of talking about compassion and loving your neighbor, Tucker is preparing his 1,500-strong flock for a bloody “final battle” where “the bullets are real.”

[snip]

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Tucker’s radicalization began, but Fortman said she first started noticing politics creeping into his sermons around the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. Initially, she said, it was easy to shrug off. Tucker was a trusted pastor and had been a consistent voice in her life for years. Plus, she and her mom weren’t that involved in the church community itself. They came for the Bible stories and the concert-quality music performances.

“He’d start his sermons with this rambling 30- to 40-minute rant that sounded like it was taken straight from, like, Fox News,” she said. “One time we went there, he referred to the COVID vaccine as the ‘mark of the beast’ that we needed to fight against. And I was like, ‘yo, this is crazy.’”
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Another time, she saw a Black family get up and leave halfway through one of Tucker’s rants about critical race theory. She began noticing a lot of churchgoers doing the same. At the same time, she began seeing new faces, older and whiter than before. Fortman and her mother both left the church that year.

The radicalization of American Christianity is an unhinged from reality, straight up threat to democracy and people from around the nation who attend have noticed.

This story is not unique to Grace Church. Politics and culture wars have crept into pulpits and pews across the U.S. in recent years. It’s not just the Evangelical church, whose ties to the GOP have been the target of heavy scrutiny for decades. It’s churches and parishes across denominations, state lines, and socioeconomic status.

Christians from around the country who spoke to VICE News said they’ve witnessed their congregations lose focus and slide into Christian nationalism.

Here's another story of somebody seeing how awful these people are.

Noah Jones, 23, from Dalton, Georgia, was raised in the Southern Baptist Convention, the world’s largest Baptist denomination. Jones said he was on track to become a preacher and served as a youth pastor for a stint and as an assistant choir director. He also voted for Trump in 2016.

Jones loved—and still loves—the stories from the Bible. But when preachers started sprinkling in references to Trump while talking about those stories, he felt like something wasn’t right. He became increasingly concerned that church leadership was cherry-picking Scripture to make political points or to promote lawmakers like Trump or Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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“I began seeing the way those stories were interpreted and being used almost as a means to—and I don’t say this lightly—but to control people,” Jones said.

Like for Fortman, 2020 was also the breaking point for Jones. When COVID-19 hit, Jones felt that the church was prioritizing politics over people’s health by continuing to hold in-person services.

When Jones and many other members of the community in Dalton—which has twice the poverty rate of the U.S. as a whole—lost their employment as a result of lockdowns, he says the church wasn’t helpful, despite having millions of dollars in the bank.

And when nationwide racial justice protests broke out in response to police murdering George Floyd, Jones said his church turned its back.

“The church was not showing love in any capacity. That’s where I really drew the line, because in my own idea, Christianity is about love, it’s about loving your neighbor,” he said. “It’s about showing compassion to every single person.”

Jones left the church that year, and while he still identifies as a Christian, he said he’s been unable to find a local congregation that adequately reflects his faith.

“It feels to me that the churches in this area are no longer true Christian churches. They’ve morphed into something that’s completely unrecognizable,” he said. “And I don’t think a lot of people know that they’ve been radicalized.”

Lots more in the full piece.

[Bact PhD]

Jul 18, 2022 22:07:37 GMT LFC said:

Why yes, these organizations do need to be stripped of their tax exempt status.

Pastor Ron Tucker took the stage one weekend in early July at Grace Church in the St. Louis suburb of Maryland Heights to deliver a sermon on Romans.

In the first 15 minutes, Tucker railed about antifa, Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, feminism, gun laws, abortion, protesters disrupting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dinner at a D.C. steakhouse, and promoted the baseless claim that the Capitol riot was a hoax.

“Their woke ideology is separating people into groups and taking our nation apart, and it’s being taught in our schools under the heading of critical race theory,” Tucker said. “The way you get promoted in a woke business is based on your degree of victimhood. If you’re a Black lesbian, you’re at the top of the heap. I mean, would you trust someone to fly your plane just because they’re part of a minority?”

Tucker founded Grace Church, a nondenominational congregation, in 1978. These days, it’s not unusual for him to use his time in the pulpit to unleash a torrent of right-wing grievances and stoke fears of an imminent “Marxist takeover.” But according to some of his congregants, it’s a stark departure from his old preaching style.

“It’s honestly weird because it never used to be like that,” said Emily Lynch, 33, whose family joined Grace Church when she was 5 years old. “I can remember the sermons growing up, and they never spoke about politics. It was a quote-unquote ‘feel-good’ church.”

Noelle Fortman, 23, and her mother had similar early experiences with Grace Church, which they joined in 2010. “It was a pleasant community. It was welcoming and diverse,” she said. “The sermons were just very uplifting, and, you know, biblical.”

Now, instead of talking about compassion and loving your neighbor, Tucker is preparing his 1,500-strong flock for a bloody “final battle” where “the bullets are real.”

[snip]

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Tucker’s radicalization began, but Fortman said she first started noticing politics creeping into his sermons around the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. Initially, she said, it was easy to shrug off. Tucker was a trusted pastor and had been a consistent voice in her life for years. Plus, she and her mom weren’t that involved in the church community itself. They came for the Bible stories and the concert-quality music performances.

“He’d start his sermons with this rambling 30- to 40-minute rant that sounded like it was taken straight from, like, Fox News,” she said. “One time we went there, he referred to the COVID vaccine as the ‘mark of the beast’ that we needed to fight against. And I was like, ‘yo, this is crazy.’”
Advertisement

Another time, she saw a Black family get up and leave halfway through one of Tucker’s rants about critical race theory. She began noticing a lot of churchgoers doing the same. At the same time, she began seeing new faces, older and whiter than before. Fortman and her mother both left the church that year.

The radicalization of American Christianity is an unhinged from reality, straight up threat to democracy and people from around the nation who attend have noticed.

This story is not unique to Grace Church. Politics and culture wars have crept into pulpits and pews across the U.S. in recent years. It’s not just the Evangelical church, whose ties to the GOP have been the target of heavy scrutiny for decades. It’s churches and parishes across denominations, state lines, and socioeconomic status.

Christians from around the country who spoke to VICE News said they’ve witnessed their congregations lose focus and slide into Christian nationalism.

Here's another story of somebody seeing how awful these people are.

Noah Jones, 23, from Dalton, Georgia, was raised in the Southern Baptist Convention, the world’s largest Baptist denomination. Jones said he was on track to become a preacher and served as a youth pastor for a stint and as an assistant choir director. He also voted for Trump in 2016.

Jones loved—and still loves—the stories from the Bible. But when preachers started sprinkling in references to Trump while talking about those stories, he felt like something wasn’t right. He became increasingly concerned that church leadership was cherry-picking Scripture to make political points or to promote lawmakers like Trump or Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Advertisement

“I began seeing the way those stories were interpreted and being used almost as a means to—and I don’t say this lightly—but to control people,” Jones said.

Like for Fortman, 2020 was also the breaking point for Jones. When COVID-19 hit, Jones felt that the church was prioritizing politics over people’s health by continuing to hold in-person services.

When Jones and many other members of the community in Dalton—which has twice the poverty rate of the U.S. as a whole—lost their employment as a result of lockdowns, he says the church wasn’t helpful, despite having millions of dollars in the bank.

And when nationwide racial justice protests broke out in response to police murdering George Floyd, Jones said his church turned its back.

“The church was not showing love in any capacity. That’s where I really drew the line, because in my own idea, Christianity is about love, it’s about loving your neighbor,” he said. “It’s about showing compassion to every single person.”

Jones left the church that year, and while he still identifies as a Christian, he said he’s been unable to find a local congregation that adequately reflects his faith.

“It feels to me that the churches in this area are no longer true Christian churches. They’ve morphed into something that’s completely unrecognizable,” he said. “And I don’t think a lot of people know that they’ve been radicalized.”

Lots more in the full piece.

As a card-carrying mainstream Protestant, I NEVER thought I would be verbalizing that sentiment, but here I am. I haven’t yet read the full piece, but I can corroborate that it ain’t just the Southern Baptist/ Fundamentalist/ Ultra-conservative Evangelical bodies that has leadership that’s turned in this direction. Our tiny, not-quite-suburban-not-quite-rural mainstream Protestant parish has undergone what one friend describes as a “coup de cathedral” by what had always been a vocal borderline Fundie minority and has become all but unrecognizable from what it was a half-decade ago. It is both sad…and frightening. We’re holding on for now, but that’s subject to change without notice.

At the very least, maybe do away with the crazy-ass tax breaks members of the clergy get (they get quite a few).

[Bact PhD]

Jul 19, 2022 15:35:50 GMT Bact PhD said:

As a card-carrying mainstream Protestant, I NEVER thought I would be verbalizing that sentiment, but here I am. I haven’t yet read the full piece, but I can corroborate that it ain’t just the Southern Baptist/ Fundamentalist/ Ultra-conservative Evangelical bodies that has leadership that’s turned in this direction. Our tiny, not-quite-suburban-not-quite-rural mainstream Protestant parish has undergone what one friend describes as a “coup de cathedral” by what had always been a vocal borderline Fundie minority and has become all but unrecognizable from what it was a half-decade ago. It is both sad…and frightening. We’re holding on for now, but that’s subject to change without notice.

At the very least, maybe do away with the crazy-ass tax breaks members of the clergy get (they get quite a few).

Further from the article. This describes our sitch almost to a “T”.:

As soon as Trump took office, Jonathan Coate sensed a shift among his fellow parishioners. At that time, he was serving as a youth minister in an Episcopal church in an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C.

“Typically, the Episcopal Church is one of the last places you’d expect to see a lot of themes of Christian nationalism,” Coate said. “It’s usually one of the more progressive churches, but it’s also got a bit of a legacy. Tucker Carlson was an Episcopalian. Throughout the 50s and 60s, if you were rich, white, and Protestant, there was a good chance you were an Episcopalian.”

Coate said some prominent Republican lawmakers attended his parish. But even still, his church leadership were committed to maintaining distance from the culture wars that began bubbling up during the Obama administration. The approach was, according to Coate, “We will be polite, we won’t intentionally misgender people, we are fine with same-sex marriage, as long as it’s not something our parish has to do.”

The “facade”—as Coate described it—of tolerance, seemed to fade when Trump took office. Coate began to detect some deep-seated resentment from parishioners who felt like they’d been strong-armed into acceptance “under the barrel of a cancel culture gun” during the Obama years. Trump gave them permission to be blunt and bigoted.

For a while, Coate and his wife thought they had a responsibility to stay in the church and be a “moderating force” in the congregation.

But in 2021, they left and sought out a new parish in a different part of town. Two sermons in particular finally drove them away. One was about vaccines, and the other bemoaned LGBTQ rights.

“It was clear that we were no longer pretending to be passive witnesses to culture, we are no longer pretending to be withdrawn from culture. We are suddenly going on the attack,” Coate said.

In our sitch, the last paragraph would read, “It was clear that the mindset of ‘There is far more that unites us than divides us, and we can agree to disagree on the issues that divide us’ is no longer operative and that intellectuals who dare to question things are far less welcome than they once were.”

[Bact PhD]

Oh, and Meidas Touch put out a video on this recently; I dug around for a few more details. Another long read, but scary AF.

onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/the-watchman-decree-is-a-scary-vision-of-christian-nationalism-in-action/

During the event, host Gene Bailey urged the Christian audience and everyone watching the livestream to join together and recite what he called the “Watchman Decree.”

Watchmen, in this case, refer to people who pledge to watch over the nation and make sure it’s run according to conservative Christian principles. Writer and activist Nick Knudsen shared the clip that went viral, but you can see it for yourself at the 1:24:00 mark in this video.

[snip]

After explaining how conservative Christians are “God’s governing Body on the earth” and have “legal power from heaven” to “destroy every attempted advance of the enemy,” they declare the following:

We decree that America’s executive branch of government will honor God and defend the Constitution.

We decree that our legislative branch (Congress) will write only laws that are righteous and constitutional.

We decree that our judicial system will issue rulings that are biblical and constitutional.

We declare that we stand against wokeness, the occult and every evil attempt against our nation.

We declare and we now take back our God-given freedoms, according to our Constitution.

We declare that we take back influence at the local level in our communities.

We decree that we take back and permanently control positions of influence and leadership in each of the *Seven Mountains.

We decree that the blood of Jesus covers and protects our nation. It protects and separates us for God.

We declare that our nation is energy independent.

We declare that America is strong spiritually, financially, militarily and technologically.

We decree that evil carries no power, authority or rights in our land nor over our people.

We decree that we will operate in unity, going beyond denominational lines in order to accomplish the purposes of God for our nation.

While some of that is just a rehash of conservative talking points (e.g. “wokeness,” “God-given freedoms,” etc), there’s no mistaking the idea that these people want total control of the government or at least believe the government must adhere to biblical practices… as interpreted by them and them alone.

These people have been working diligently for over four decades to reach this stage of being tantalizingly close to getting everything they want.

[LFC]

But if you ask Dreher, Sullivan, and their ilk the problem is wokeness. They simply can't provide the hard warnings and criticisms about what the right is doing because they like the results. (Well, Sullivan will until states tell him and his husband that they don't recognize their marriage. Then he'll screech like crazy. Too little, too late.) Maybe they'll blame theocratic fascism on the woke libs because "they made us do it!" Part of being an American conservative is never admitting that it's your side's fault.

Dreher will never grasp that many younger people are seeing what's going on and that's why they're turning their backs on organized religion. Nope, it's all about sex. It's ALWAYS about sex.

[Bact PhD]

Jul 19, 2022 18:55:24 GMT LFC said:

But if you ask Dreher, Sullivan, and their ilk the problem is wokeness. They simply can't provide the hard warnings and criticisms about what the right is doing because they like the results. (Well, Sullivan will until states tell him and his husband that they don't recognize their marriage. Then he'll screech like crazy. Too little, too late.) Maybe they'll blame theocratic fascism on the woke libs because "they made us do it!" Part of being an American conservative is never admitting that it's your side's fault.

Dreher will never grasp that many younger people are seeing what's going on and that's why they're turning their backs on organized religion. Nope, it's all about sex. It's ALWAYS about sex.

B-b-but wasn’t it about SECULAR HUMANISM?!?? (That was the screech in the 1980s when much of the reality had more to do with school integration)

[LFC]

Jul 19, 2022 19:07:27 GMT Bact PhD said:

B-b-but wasn’t it about SECULAR HUMANISM?!?? (That was the screech in the 1980s when much of the reality had more to do with school integration)

I always viewed secular humanism as a desperate attempt by Christians to brand any set of secular views as a "religion" so they could engage it on their preferred field of battle. It was all a lie, of course, but since their religious defenses fell flat outside their own club they desperately tried to create a false equality. Even today they try to equate a "belief" in science with a belief in religion because that puts them on equal footing. Of course "belief" in those two contexts have very different meanings but when did the truth ever get in their way?

[LFC]

More sickness. An honest man doesn't fight this hard to keep his public records under wraps.

A federal judge ruled this Thursday that Arkansas GOP state Sen. Jason Rapert must turn over a trove of documents to the non-profit American Atheists, the Arkansas Times reports.

In 2018, American Atheists accused Rapert of discrimination and violating their free speech when he blocked them from his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Judge Kristine Baker ordered Rapert to turn over his social media data.

"Judge Baker saw through Rapert’s desperate attempts to avoid accountability and sided with us on every issue we raised," Legal Counsel American Atheists Geoffrey T. Blackwell said. "It's outrageous that he wasted the court’s time—and our own—to try to deny us access to basic documents. If his decision to censor our clients wasn’t illegal and discriminatory, he should have nothing to hide."

Judge Baker set the trial date for October 3, 2022.

"Jason Rapert’s attempts to delay and obstruct didn’t work, and now we’re heading toward trial," said Blackwell. "Rapert and other government officials should take note: actions have consequences, and there are risks to violating constituents' civil rights. No one is above the law—certainly not a would-be theocrat who can’t handle criticism."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has blasted Rapert as "a Christian nationalist who relies on historical revisionism and division." Rapert is the leader of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which he has said is fighting to "restore the Judeo-Christian foundations of our government that were intended from the very beginning.”

[LFC]

The complete integration of right-wing religion and politics continues.

Forty members of Congress on Monday asked the IRS and the Treasury to investigate what the lawmakers termed an “alarming pattern” of right-wing advocacy groups registering with the tax agency as churches, a move that allows the organizations to shield themselves from some financial reporting requirements and makes it easier to avoid audits.

Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., raised transparency concerns in a letter to the heads of both agencies following a ProPublica story about the Family Research Council, a right-wing Christian think tank based in Washington, D.C., getting reclassified as a church. Thirty-eight other lawmakers, including Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., signed onto the letter.

“FRC is one example of an alarming pattern in the last decade — right-wing advocacy groups self-identifying as ‘churches’ and applying for and receiving church status,” the representatives wrote, noting the organization’s policy work supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its advocacy for legislation seeking to ban gender-affirming surgery.

“Tax-exempt organizations should not be exploiting tax laws applicable to churches to avoid public accountability and the IRS’s examination of their activities,” they wrote.

[LFC]

F***ing Catholics. As if the anti-constitution religious zealots they have on the Supreme Court weren't bad enough they spent millions of dollars to support the Kansas anti-abortion vote. Remember how they whined they were bankrupt and couldn't pay damages to the children their priests raped? But yeah, they've got TONS of money to involve themselves directly in politics.

My religious freedom is up for sale, and the Catholic church is buying. Since January 2022, three Catholic dioceses—the Archdiocese of Kansas City, the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salina—have primarily funded the Value Them Both campaign—the campaign that urges voters to “Vote Yes” on August 2 to ban abortions in Kansas. Those three Catholic dioceses contributed over $3,100,000 to fund Value Them Both—over 66% of the $4,461,596 in cash donations. Value Them Both has spent much of that money on advertising, marketing, and paying campaign workers.

The Catholic church opposes abortions, and many Catholics (though not all) believe that getting an abortion violates their religion. Indeed, the Catholic church teaches that allowing any woman to get an abortion violates the Catholic religion. Catholic priests preach that abortions violate fundamental tenants of the Catholic religion, and that’s a religious belief to which Catholics are perfectly entitled.

But Catholic leaders are buying their way to imposing their religion on me, even though I’m not Catholic. Most of us Kansans—75%—are not Catholic. Yet, the well-funded Catholic church has given millions of dollars towards this massive effort to impose a Catholic belief—that abortions should be banned in all cases—on the other 75% of us. Many of us in that 75% believe that abortion should remain legal, at least in some cases, like rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person.

[LFC]

This reverend is standing up to defend his religion from the poser white Christian nationalists. There are a lot more that need to grow a pair and do the same.

As a pastor, if there’s one thing I understand, it’s that Christian nationalism is unchristian and unpatriotic. Academic researchers define the authoritarian ideology as a political worldview—not a religion—that unconstitutionally and unbiblically merges Christian and American identities, declaring that democracy does not matter because America is a “Christian nation” where only conservative Christians count as true Americans.

If there’s any doubt that this is the heart of Christian nationalism, consider these two examples. First, last fall former Trump aide Michael Flynn stood in a Texas megachurch known for its antisemitic pastor and told a crowd chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” that America should have only “one religion.” Then only last month, America First Legal—whose board includes top Trump allies Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows—issued a statement asking the Supreme Court to let the 50 states create official state churches and “establish religion within their borders,” claiming that the First Amendment only applies to the federal government.

The clear goal of Christian nationalism is to seize power only for its mostly white evangelical and conservative Catholic followers, no matter who else gets hurt or how many elections have to be overturned. This is the unholy force that incited the failed coup of Jan. 6, 2021, brought us the recent spate of theocratic Supreme Court opinions, and has inspired multiple wave upon wave of dangerous misinformation about elections, climate change, and COVID-19—all in direct contrast to Jesus’ teachings of love, truth, and the common good.

Whether they speak from the halls of power or the front of a sanctuary, Rep. Greene and her ilk know exactly what they are doing when they so proudly embrace the label of Christian nationalist. Each explicit declaration of Christian nationalism is a blatant attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes and make the anti-democracy extremist ideology seem safe and more palatable, distracting us from the right’s project of seizing power to remake America into a theocracy in their image—a nation where the LGBTQ community, people of color, and non-Christians all lose rights while evangelicals and conservative Catholics are put permanently in charge.

They are America’s false prophets. And Jesus warned us about them.

[LFC]

Huh. Maybe there is a god and he/she/it stepped in on this one.

The Roys Report reports:

Jeff Jansen, a self-declared “prophet” and former leader of Global Fire Ministries in Tennessee, died unexpectedly on Tuesday, his family and former church announced. The cause of death wasn’t made public. He was 60.

Jansen left his wife last year. Court records show a divorce case is ongoing. TRR previously reported Jansen had a history of driving under the influence. At the time of his death, he was facing a theft charge in the local courts.

Jeff Jansen was jailed July 29, 2021, on a charge of theft of property between $10,000 and $60,000, according to Lisa Marchesoni, public information officer for the Rutherford County (Tennessee) Sheriff’s Office.

He had quite the track record.

Jansen last appeared on JMG in August 2021 when he declared that Trump had “secretly” been inaugurated months earlier.

Before that we heard about him when his church fired him for making “unbiblical moral choices.”

In April 2021, Jansen appeared here when he declared that other American churches have “turned effeminate, almost homosexual” but at his church all the ushers “are packing,” so don’t try anything “because they’ll kill you.”

In February 2021, Jansen declared that the United States was operating under a “secret military tribunal” under Trump’s power.

He first appeared here in late January 2021 when he prophesied that Trump “will be back in power by June.”

[goldenvalley]

Aug 16, 2022 21:32:11 GMT LFC said:

Huh. Maybe there is a god and he/she/it stepped in on this one.

The Roys Report reports:

He had quite the track record.

Jansen last appeared on JMG in August 2021 when he declared that Trump had “secretly” been inaugurated months earlier.

Before that we heard about him when his church fired him for making “unbiblical moral choices.”

In April 2021, Jansen appeared here when he declared that other American churches have “turned effeminate, almost homosexual” but at his church all the ushers “are packing,” so don’t try anything “because they’ll kill you.”

In February 2021, Jansen declared that the United States was operating under a “secret military tribunal” under Trump’s power.

He first appeared here in late January 2021 when he prophesied that Trump “will be back in power by June.”

No big storm with lightening strikes?

[LFC]

Out of 50 asked on 2 answered. MTG isn't an outlier. Liar, yes, but there are others that "think" like her.

[LFC]

Republicans weaponized those in Congress who would use their power only to attack Democrats, driving out many normal legislators. Then they cozied up to the political crazies and racist ignorati and more normal legislators. Then they went full metal Trumpism and drove out even more. Next up? The remaining legislators who won't openly embrace the holy war. And, as in each step, you'll have those who helped enable the previous step cluelessly lamenting, "how did we get here?"

[LFC]

They're at it again, defending the indefensible for God's Imperfect Instrument. To quote Rod Dreher, "live not by lies." Not that he ever meant to apply that to his side.

Right-wing Christian media kicked into high gear in the days following the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, coalescing around a defense of former President Donald Trump based on a smorgasbord of persecution complexes, whataboutism, conspiracy theories, lies, and misinformation about law enforcement and the judicial process. The Christian right and its GOP allies are counting on their base consuming a steady diet of these radio shows, podcasts, social media posts, and email blasts, tuning out any coverage that conflicts with their image of Trump as both a virile hero and a victim besieged by radical leftists at the FBI. For them, God anointed Trump, choosing an “unlikely” leader to restore Christian America. It is precisely because Trump is singularly capable of resurrecting the Christian nation, this thinking goes, that the radical leftists of the deep state want to bring him down.

On the night of the raid, Tony Perkins, president of the leading Christian right political organization the Family Research Council, tweeted, “Who trusts the FBI to pursue justice? The agency has become so politicized that even if their actions were justified half the nation still would not trust them.” The next day, Franklin Graham, scion of the evangelist Billy Graham, also stoked distrust of the FBI, invoking the 1992 standoff at the Ruby Ridge compound of the anti-government, white supremacist extremist Randy Weaver. “Last night as we watched the events that unfolded at Mar-a-Lago, I couldn’t help but think that the FBI and DOJ are losing credibility and the trust of the American people again,” Graham wrote on Facebook. He then invoked the conspiracy theory, now pervasive in right-wing circles, that new funding in the Inflation Reduction Act to boost collection of taxes owed by the wealthy was “a step in weaponizing the IRS to act against people, organizations, and businesses who have a voice of dissent against government agendas.”

A central theme of the Christian right’s coverage is that the raid was politically motivated to stop Trump from running for president again in 2024, and to dampen his influence in the 2022 midterms. “Was it driven by politics or national security? Why did we not see the same with Hillary Clinton?” asked Perkins on his radio program, Washington Watch, on August 12, the day after Attorney General Merrick Garland publicly explained the legal process by which the search warrant was obtained and executed. Just the fact that Clinton’s home was never the subject of a search warrant — never mind whether there was any basis to seek or obtain one — was evidence enough that Trump had received unequal treatment.

Perkins even lauded the Trump administration for not investigating Clinton because “they didn’t want to create a political circus like we see happening right now.” (Trump, of course, is well-known for not creating political circuses, and for his magnanimous treatment of Hillary Clinton.) Perkins went on to say that Clinton “was not paraded out in handcuffs,” a verbal sleight of hand that suggested (falsely) that Trump was. (He was not even present at Mar-a-Lago the night of the raid.) Then Perkins waved off the ubiquitous “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies, and said, “I don’t even think many conservatives would want political leaders, even of the other side, mistreated, or treated in such a fashion that shakes our very concept of justice and dignity in this country.”

[goldenvalley]

Aug 17, 2022 21:05:04 GMT LFC said:

They're at it again, defending the indefensible for God's Imperfect Instrument. To quote Rod Dreher, "live not by lies." Not that he ever meant to apply that to his side.

Further into the article that LFC cites was this:

Stephen Strang, an influential evangelical publisher and author of four laudatory books about Trump, wrote, “I believe God raised up Donald Trump and there is warfare going on — satanic activity that is trying to tear down the fabric of this country.”

Perhaps there is satanic activity here. But who is the satanic source?

[LFC]

DeSatanist accused the left of doing what he is doing i.e. being Satan.

[Bact PhD]

Aug 20, 2022 17:05:34 GMT LFC said:

DeSatanist accused the left of doing what he is doing i.e. being Satan.

This has been the Christian Nationalist M.O. for the last four decades—cast anyone who disagrees with their ideology as “Satanic.” Even back in the ‘80s when I briefly ran in ultra-Evangelical circles this rhetoric made me uncomfortable. However, I figured it would stay a small fringe movement; I NEVER conceived until relatively recently that a sitting Governor of one of the largest (and most ethnically diverse) states in the USA would engage in it.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 20, 2022 17:21:35 GMT Bact PhD said:

Aug 20, 2022 17:05:34 GMT LFC said:

DeSatanist accused the left of doing what he is doing i.e. being Satan.

This has been the Christian Nationalist M.O. for the last four decades—cast anyone who disagrees with their ideology as “Satanic.” Even back in the ‘80s when I briefly ran in ultra-Evangelical circles this rhetoric made me uncomfortable. However, I figured it would stay a small fringe movement; I NEVER conceived until relatively recently that a sitting Governor of one of the largest (and most ethnically diverse) states in the USA would engage in it.

It's all in the service of winning.  No line is too sacred or extreme to cross.  In fact there are no lines.

[LFC]

David French has finally fully accepted that Evangelicals have abandoned Christian morality.

Using an essay he wrote explaining that Christian political ethics have become extremely muddied during the Donald Trump years as a springboard, conservative writer David French appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" where he dropped the hammer on evangelicals who have excused the former president's transgressions for their own pursuit of political power.

Speaking with host Willie Geist, French expanded on his essay where he wrote, "American political culture is a toxic, hyperpartisan, corrupt, and increasingly violent mess," before adding, "The longer I live the more convinced I am that our Christian political ethic is upside down. On a bipartisan basis, the church has formed its members to be adamant about policies that are difficult and contingent and flexible about virtues that are clear and mandatory. "

"In 2016 and '17, David," host Geist prompted. "I know you heard this, when you'd ask about Donald Trump, 'How can you support a man who is so cruel, profane, and pays off porn stars after having affairs while his wife is pregnant?' The laundry list is long and they say, 'we are electing a president, not a saint, he is going to stand up for us and our way of life.' Boy, has that been exposed in the last few years."

"Yeah. I always hated that saying because no one was arguing that we are electing saints. But there's a world of difference between holding the standard of a saint and no standard at all," the author replied.

"This is what has happened, there is now no standard at all," he continued. "One of the things that I do in the piece is I contrast the movement that is dominating, for example, the MAGA right with the civil rights movement, which was Christian to its core. It was thoroughly Christian and confronting an injustice as grotesque as Jim Crow, and confronted it with an ethic of non-violence, with love and grace. I quote John Lewis in the piece to that effect."

"Here, we have a MAGA movement that is proclaiming some sort of national emergency," he elaborated. "It is nothing on the scale of Jim Crow it's not within shouting distance of that. Yet, they have utterly abandoned, in many ways, even the most basic requirements of human decency. Again, in their interactions with each other, interactions with political opponents, in their interactions with truth. This is turning that Christian political ethic utterly upside down."

More and more young Evangelicals are figuring it out.

There's a small but growing contingent of young evangelical Christians who are abandoning their religious communities due to their pro-Trump politics, reflecting a 2020 study that showed a sharp drop of people who identify as white evangelicals, NBC News reports.

In an October blog post, theologian Russell Moore wrote: “Many of us have observed, anecdotally, a hemorrhaging of younger evangelicals from churches and institutions in recent years.” The problem, he said, is “many have come to believe that the religion itself is a vehicle for the politics and cultural grievances, not the other way around.”

Jared Stacy, 31, who abandoned his job as a youth pastor after being disillusioned with the increasingly pro-Trump nature of his community, told NBC News that there are people "who say evangelical support for Trump is inevitable based on who we’ve been in our history."

“The question that stuck in my shoe was ‘Is it really inevitable?’” he said.

Kristin Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, says that many religious communities today are doing much more than spreading the Gospel.

“I’ve been told many times from people who attend highly politicized churches that nothing political happens inside those spaces,” she said. “They say, ‘We come, we worship.’ But then I attend and I hear prayers against the evils of big government.”

Chris Sosa, 32, says his church was not shy about mixing politics and religion even its website has a section which says, “Church and state should be separate.”

“I was taught that anyone who said they were separate just hated America,” he said.

But yeah, Rod, it's all about sex. Why are people like Dreher SOOOO incredibly obsessed with sex?