The Sickness of Christian Politics & Christian Nationalism

[goldenvalley]

Feb 13, 2023 22:24:07 GMT LFC said:

Yes, they have weaponize Christianity. Where the f*** are all of non-crazy Christian leaders calling this out? There are a few but the overwhelming majority seem to be silent over bearing false witness and flat out blasphemy.

Oh Mr Jackson, when were crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) ever bombed...ever even got a phoned in bomb threat...ever surrounded by people yelling at the women as they walked into the door of the center?  Never that I'm aware of.  

Now in CA they got all upset when a law was passed requiring them to disclose that they didn't have trained, licensed medical personnel in their facilities and requiring them to post the phone number of state agencies that could provide information about all of reproductive and maternity care on a wall along with numerous other postings they might have to have under law.  Not the equivalent of showing pictures of 38 week old fetuses to women asking for abortions.  The way the CPC folks howled you'd think a bomb was being set in their centers. Unfortunately the Supreme Court struck the latter part down.  

[LFC]

What is WRONG with these people?

Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦
@ronfilipkowski

MAGA “prophet” Julie Green, who does the Reawaken tour with Eric Trump & Michael Flynn, says God just told her that Canada, Iran and Iraq are going to join forces against the US, but He has set traps for them and they will fail.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 15, 2023 19:07:35 GMT LFC said:

What is WRONG with these people?

Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦
@ronfilipkowski

MAGA “prophet” Julie Green, who does the Reawaken tour with Eric Trump & Michael Flynn, says God just told her that Canada, Iran and Iraq are going to join forces against the US, but He has set traps for them and they will fail.

The real question is what's wrong with our society that makes gullible people send these grifters enough money to grift some more. Folks like Trump, Flynn, and Green have escaped the humdrum life of going to a job every day in favor of running a grift in which people send you money to travel around to make speeches and to write whatever BS comes into your head.  Unfettered capitalism works for them as long as they remain outrageous enough to satisfy the fear triggered part of the brain, plus the ego driven parts that say "I know something you don't know." 

[pnwguy]

Feb 15, 2023 19:07:35 GMT LFC said:

What is WRONG with these people?

Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦
@ronfilipkowski

MAGA “prophet” Julie Green, who does the Reawaken tour with Eric Trump & Michael Flynn, says God just told her that Canada, Iran and Iraq are going to join forces against the US, but He has set traps for them and they will fail.

Never trust those Canadians.  Justin is a socialist dictator, and those Canucks just want to invade the US to spread out into warmer climates.  Every American will be forced at gunpoint to eat poutine and watch ice hockey.

[LFC]

Yes, they really do want the theocracy. Welcome to the right-wing American version of "Christianity", which doesn't remotely resemble Jesus's teachings.

More than half of Republicans support Christian nationalism and believe the United States should be a strictly Christian nation — that’s according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution.

Christian nationalism is an extreme and divisive worldview rooted in the belief that the U.S. is an inherently Christian nation and that the country’s laws should be rooted in Christian values.

The view has been prominent in white evangelical spaces for decades, but it gained significant national attention following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and throughout the Trump presidency. Now, according to researchers — who surveyed more than 6,000 Americans — the public’s view on Christian nationalism is divided mostly along political party lines.

The survey found that most Republicans surveyed view themselves as either Christian nationalist sympathizers (33%) or adherents (21%). While most Democrats lean toward rejecting Christian nationalism, with 36% of them indicating they are skeptics of the ideology and 47% saying they reject it.

In fact, Republicans are about four times as likely as Democrats or independents to identify as adherents of Christian nationalism, according to the survey.

As its popularity among Republican voters has grown in recent years, some far-right lawmakers have been embracing Christian Nationalism more publicly.

Last August, during an interview at a Turning Point USA event, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), said GOP leaders need to be more responsive to Christian nationalists, which she claimed is the base of the Republican party.

“We need to be the party of nationalism,” Greene said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

But surveyors found that despite its popularity among Republicans, Christian nationalism remains unpopular nationwide.

Only 10% of Americans surveyed in total view themselves as adherents of Christian nationalism and around 19% said they sympathize with these views, according to the PRRI and Brookings study. That’s a stark difference from the 21% of Republicans who say they are adherents and 33% who say they are sympathizers.

[LFC]

There is no bottom for these people. No wonder they not just fit with but drive the Republican Party.

Right Wing Watch
@rightwingwatch

Trump cultist/MAGA pastor Shane Vaughn says that Satan used Sen. John Fetterman to help the Democrats keep control of the Senate "and now that Satan's done with him, now we send him to the mental nuthouse. He just checked himself in for being crazy."

[LFC]

I'm nauseated by the sheer hatred of these people for those not interfering in their lives in any way.

The official newspaper for the City of Evansville is facing mounting criticism from members of the community after disseminating several anti-LGBTQ publications to all Evansville residents.

In various ads, editorials and letters obtained by 27 News, the Evansville Review willingly published speech that accused the LGBTQ community of "grooming children" and acting in "perverted" sexual behavior.

It's led to outcry in the Evansville community — particularly among queer residents.

"I know several families who have left specifically because of the Review," one woman who wished to remain anonymous said. "It's terrifying."

The woman who spoke with 27 News has two children in the LGBTQ community. She says since the Review started sending these negative ads to every household in town, it's had a serious effect on her children.

"They've been harassed all over town," she said. "They didn't want to return to the Evansville School District. They didn't feel safe around the students."

How very Christian.

The man who pays for the anti-LGBTQ ads to run is local pastor Ronald Gay. He currently lives in Evansville and presides over Grace Independent Baptist Church.

Gay admits that he can see how his language can be hurtful but says that's not necessarily a bad thing.

"If I speak truth and it hurts somebody, I have no intention to hurt people," Gay said. "I intend to help them. I also know that if the conscience speaks to a person, it's a good thing, even if it hurts."

Can I pay for an ad that says Pastor Gay (yes, really) is a hate-filled servant of Satan pretending to be a Christian? After all, if I speak truth and it hurts somebody...

[LFC]

Oh, gee. Another one of Trump's "best people." Even the Vatican wasn't able to overlook and hide away this clown, and now it turns out he's a pervert too.

Frank Pavone, a defrocked priest who was formerly a Catholic adviser to Donald Trump, is engulfed in a sex scandal that is rocking the anti-abortion movement.

Pavone, 64, is the director of Priests for Life, a non-profit that funnels millions of dollars a year into the anti-abortion movement.

He is also an outspoken activist whose political activities have brought him into repeated conflict with the Catholic Church. In December 2022, he was defrocked by the Vatican after repeated clashes with his bishop over his use of social media to advocate conservative political causes.

Now, at least four different women have accused Pavone of sexual misconduct according to reporting by The Pillar. Pavone and Priests for Life have strongly denied the accusations.

The women, some of whom gave their accounts anonymously, accuse Pavone of inappropriate behavior in the workplace, ranging from unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual touching, grooming and lewd suggestions.

The allegations span a period of almost twenty years, from the late 1990s until 2018.

Two former members of Priests for Life have made public statements condemning Pavone’s alleged actions and calling for him to step down.

[LFC]

This is a classic case of cowardice until it comes homes to roost. Notice that the decision to speak up against the white supremacists was made after it impacted their own. Before that? Well, let's just say there's little evidence that white Christianity is fighting against this evil very much, if at all.

The president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has called for the excommunication of unrepentant white supremacists in the church’s ranks, rebuking an extremist effort to exert influence within the conservative Lutheran denomination.

In a letter dated Feb. 21, LCMS President Matthew Harrison said he was “shocked to learn recently that a few members of LCMS congregations have been propagating radical and unchristian ‘alt-right’ views via Twitter and other social media.” He noted far-right members were causing “local disruption” for congregations and alleged that LCMS leadership and deaconesses had fallen victim to online threats, some of which he described as “serious.”

“This is evil. We condemn it in the name of Christ,” Harrison writes.

Harrison went on to rebuke the “horrible and racist teachings of the so-called ‘alt-right,’” listing ideologies such as “white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, even genocide.”

He noted that while the LCMS is “not a top-down institution,” he would work with local pastors and district presidents “to address this matter wherever it arises among us and reject it.” Citing Scripture, he called on those spewing hateful ideologies to repent.

“Where that call to repentance is not heeded, there must be excommunication,” he writes.

The letter comes in the wake of an article published this month by antifascist group Machaira Action alleging the “rise of a white supremacist faction within the Lutheran faith.” The post singled out Corey Mahler, who has reportedly been active in far-right circles for years and has posted about whiteness and “white genocide” on Twitter. Mahler also identifies as a Christian nationalist.

[LFC]

It takes one hell of a suspension of reality and history, and even of religion, to say that more religion reduces violence. And yet that's what we get from this AZ state senator.

Arizona State Senator Rick Gray embarrassed himself and the state of Arizona on May 25, 2022 by claiming that forced religion would be the solution to mass shootings.

Even a cursory review of the Old Testament will show that the deity that Senator Gray claims would prevent mass killings is one of the greatest mass murders in all of literature. He killed a million Ethiopians and half a million Israelites after destroying every human on earth but eight, reducing entire cities to rubble, and ordering genocide and rape. (For more, see “God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction“)

In an opinion piece on May 27, 2022, political writer Steve Benen points out the lack of logic in claiming we cannot ask politicians to solve gun violence, but we can ask them to tell us what our spiritual beliefs should be. While Gray and his ilk claim America has problems because of lack of religion, the facts are completely the opposite.

Religion Does Not Lead to a Safe, Crime-Free Society

America is easily the most religious among the wealthy democracies; weekly church attendance is higher than Europe. If religion brought safety and a crime free country, America should be the safest.

It is not.

Rather, we are the only country where these kinds of mass shootings occur on a frequent basis. As the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman put it, “[If] the United States is simultaneously the most religious wealthy country and the most violent, a lack of religion clearly isn’t our problem.”

Nick Fish of American Atheists compiled a scattergram comparing church attendance and gun violence using the CDC’s firearm mortality rates and weekly church attendance statistics from Pew Research.

As shown, the higher the weekly church attendance, the higher the firearm mortality rates. Senator Gray’s admonition would result in more firearm deaths, not less.

[LFC]

Republicans constitute most of the problem but Democrats aren't entirely immune. This turns my stomach.

The Recount
@therecount

“When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”

— NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) speaking at the New York Public Library interfaith breakfast

That's the problem with "faith" and religion. It's hard for many of these people to separate the two and fulfill their oath to uphold the Constitution.

[Bact PhD]

Mar 1, 2023 22:08:28 GMT LFC said:

Republicans constitute most of the problem but Democrats aren't entirely immune. This turns my stomach.

The Recount
@therecount

“When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”

— NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) speaking at the New York Public Library interfaith breakfast

That's the problem with "faith" and religion. It's hard for many of these people to separate the two and fulfill their oath to uphold the Constitution.

That Adams quote is, unfortunately, a standard line that the Xtian Right has been parroting for decades. In this worldview, it’s a straight line from Madelyn Murry O’Hair to Sandy Hook, Parkland Stoneman Douglas, ad infinitum.

[LFC]

He named his bill after what would literally be murder. Welcome to American Christianity. And where's the continuous outrage from the supposed non-extremists? Where are the pastors standing up for their religion? They seem to be few and far between.

A biblical death sentence. In America, in 2023, a legislator has proposed The Millstone Act, which he openly confesses “was named in reference to Matthew 18:6, ‘but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depths of the sea.’”

America embraced the separation of church and state as a core, fundamental value precisely to prevent religious despots from abusing government power to impose their personal religion on all of us. But Oklahoma State Senator David Bullard is a Christian nationalist out to make Oklahoma into a Christian state.

Forged in the fires of Oklahoma State Senator David Bullard’s violent Christian imaginary, this bill is one of a horde of anti-trans bills sweeping our country. Bullard’s bill purports to protect children while threatening medical professionals. It declares a state of emergency and bans gender-affirming care in the name of Bullard’s god. As with other such bills, it dehumanizes and demonizes trans people. Unlike other bills, Bullard christened his with a biblical name that threatens—that promises—violence and death.

Bullard typifies the modern genre of Christian Nationalist politician. Oleaginous facial hair—a pathetic grab at the masculinity conservative politicians are so desperate to cosplay these days—hides a weak chin, but the beard cannot camouflage Bullard’s dearth of original thought or of genuinely helpful policy proposals. He and his party lack any substantive policy positions, any original ideas that might actually help the people of Oklahoma—not to mention basic empathy. The sole concern for Bullard and his dull ilk seems to be imposing their conservative version of the Christian religion on the rest of the state by abusing a legislative power that is, constitutionally speaking, entirely secular. This is Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalist politicians have almost nothing to offer their constituents other than the bitter sectarianism of Christian nationalism. The Republican takeover in Congress, which is focused on petty retribution, pointless and performative “investigations,” and possibly cratering the global economy, proves the point. Instead of doing good, such politicians seek to strip women and minorities of every protection, support, aid, assistance, and basic dignity, and then call themselves “pro-life.”

[LFC]

A bit of history about white Christians and rampant racism. I guess this is Critical Race Theory since the long-standing racist history of America's toxic brand of Christianity isn't the best when it comes to self reflection.

When a young Southern Baptist pastor named Alan Cross arrived in Montgomery, Ala., in January 2000, he knew it was where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had his first church and where Rosa Parks helped launched the famous bus boycott, but he didn't know some other details of the city's role in civil rights history.

The more he learned, the more troubled he became by one event in particular: the savage attack in May 1961 on a busload of Black and white Freedom Riders who had traveled defiantly together to Montgomery in a challenge to segregation. Over the next 15 years, Cross, who is white, would regularly take people to the old Greyhound depot in Montgomery to highlight what happened that spring day.

"They pull in right here, on the side," Cross said, standing in front of the depot. "And it was quiet when they got here. But then once they start getting off the bus, around 500 people come out – men, women and children. Men were holding the Freedom Riders back, and the women were hitting them with their purses and holding their children up to claw their faces." Some of the men carried lead pipes and baseball bats. Two of the Freedom Riders, the civil rights activist John Lewis and a white ally, James Zwerg, were beaten unconscious.

Though he had grown up in Mississippi and was familiar with the history of racial conflict in the South, Cross was horrified by the story of the 1961 attack on the Freedom Riders. Montgomery was known as a city of churches. Fresh out of seminary, Cross had come there to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

"Why didn't white Christians show up?" he recalled wondering.

To his dismay, Cross learned that many of the people in the white mob were regular churchgoers. In the years that followed, he made it part of his ministry to educate his fellow Christians about the attack and prompt them to reflect on its meaning.

"You think about the South being Christian, but this wasn't Christianity," Cross said. "So what happened here in the white church? How did we get to that point?" It's a question he explored in his 2014 book, When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus.

The answer to the question lies partly in U.S. history, beginning in the days of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, but not ending there. Elements of racist ideology have long been present in white Christianity in the United States.

This. America's white Evangelicals are masters at dodging social responsibility. If you go to church, pray a lot, and praise Jesus(tm) at every turn then that's good enough.

A theology of inaction

Some white Christian leaders have even provided moral and theological reasoning for their reluctance to challenge the existing system. Evangelicals in particular generally prioritize an individual's own salvation experience over social concerns. The primary mission of the church in this view is to win souls for Christ. Working for racial justice, in contrast, may be seen as a "political" issue.

"In that configuration, immorality only lives in the individual person," said Dupont, the religion historian who grew up in Texas. "There's no conception of systemic injustice and systemic sin."

Civil rights activists who cited the Bible in support of their cause were often dismissed as "a bunch of theological liberals," Dupont said. "And then it becomes an argument about who really believes the Bible. If Christianity is really about individual salvation, and the mission of the church is to win the lost, then [it is said that] these people who are telling us we need to get involved in the civil rights movement are just trying to lead us astray."

The rejection of a "social gospel" remains popular among those conservative evangelicals today who see advocating for Black Lives Matter or immigrant rights as political activities. It is an argument with roots extending back to the theology of Thornwell and like-minded religion scholars of the 19th century.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 7, 2023 20:18:37 GMT LFC said:

A bit of history about white Christians and rampant racism. I guess this is Critical Race Theory since the long-standing racist history of America's toxic brand of Christianity isn't the best when it comes to self reflection.

When a young Southern Baptist pastor named Alan Cross arrived in Montgomery, Ala., in January 2000, he knew it was where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had his first church and where Rosa Parks helped launched the famous bus boycott, but he didn't know some other details of the city's role in civil rights history.

The more he learned, the more troubled he became by one event in particular: the savage attack in May 1961 on a busload of Black and white Freedom Riders who had traveled defiantly together to Montgomery in a challenge to segregation. Over the next 15 years, Cross, who is white, would regularly take people to the old Greyhound depot in Montgomery to highlight what happened that spring day.

"They pull in right here, on the side," Cross said, standing in front of the depot. "And it was quiet when they got here. But then once they start getting off the bus, around 500 people come out – men, women and children. Men were holding the Freedom Riders back, and the women were hitting them with their purses and holding their children up to claw their faces." Some of the men carried lead pipes and baseball bats. Two of the Freedom Riders, the civil rights activist John Lewis and a white ally, James Zwerg, were beaten unconscious.

Though he had grown up in Mississippi and was familiar with the history of racial conflict in the South, Cross was horrified by the story of the 1961 attack on the Freedom Riders. Montgomery was known as a city of churches. Fresh out of seminary, Cross had come there to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

"Why didn't white Christians show up?" he recalled wondering.

To his dismay, Cross learned that many of the people in the white mob were regular churchgoers. In the years that followed, he made it part of his ministry to educate his fellow Christians about the attack and prompt them to reflect on its meaning.

"You think about the South being Christian, but this wasn't Christianity," Cross said. "So what happened here in the white church? How did we get to that point?" It's a question he explored in his 2014 book, When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus.

The answer to the question lies partly in U.S. history, beginning in the days of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, but not ending there. Elements of racist ideology have long been present in white Christianity in the United States.

When I watch film and see stills of that era I am always shocked at the looks on the faces of the whites in response to a lunch counter sit down, a protest walk, or a black child going to school.  Contorted faces all but drooling sometimes in a sort altered psychological state. And photos of lynching, OMG. Was it cathartic for them and then they went home and kissed the kids and had dinner...went to church as LFC says?  I wrongly thought we had evolved as a society away from that but apparently not.

[LFC]

Yes, the politics of the apocalypse are still strong. Yes, this is Trump whose influence is waning, but is there a sane person who has seen Ron DeSatanist in action who believes he'd hesitate to pick up this weapon and use it against America?

Donald Trump has, in the past, dallied with apocalypticism in his rhetoric and policy, but it was usually interpreted as a sop to his evangelical base. He made an excellent secular hero for evangelicals like Rick Perry, who referred to him as “the chosen one.” Rapture-focused evangelicals also saw him as fitting into biblical fan fiction like the “Left Behind” series. And he found a coterie to support him who also viewed apocalypticism as part of their identity: Mark Meadows texting Ginni Thomas, “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it”; Robert Jeffress and John Hagee’s comments on the movement of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem; and, of course, Steve Bannon’s apocalyptic vision for the world. Apparently he was even good for the “apocalypse economy.”

All of this, of course, is the Trumpian zeitgeist—it’s not Trump, it’s the way the world around him sees him. It’s QAnon, it’s Jericho March, it’s the ongoing White Christian nationalist obsession with him. And despite all of his bombast and rhetoric, all of his violence and self-obsession, Donald Trump doesn’t usually get all apocalyptic himself. Until last week at CPAC.

Many have focused on Trump’s statement “I am your retribution,” and that angle of divine vengeance is certainly worrisome. But we should perhaps pay more attention to the aggressively apocalyptic bent of his speech, full throated and violent and accelerationist. Because again, Donald Trump does not usually lean into the apocalyptic. It’s all around him, but that’s usually not what he is vomiting forth. The people around him hold him up as an apocalyptic totem, and he either conveniently ignores it or makes jokes.

The former president opened his speech—after a long list of far-right celebrity shout outs—by framing the 2024 election as a battle: “the greatest in our history, most important battle in our lives is taking place right now as we speak. For seven years, you and I have been engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it.” The stakes aren’t just political control—though political control is part of it—but existential. It’s more than a victory in the election, it’s a victory about the future, about survival, a zero sum game:

But we have no choice. If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever. People are tired of RINOs [Republicans in name only] and globalists. They want to see America first. That’s what they want. It’s not too complicated. This is the final battle. They know it, I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. This is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.

This is the final battle. An epic struggle, the most important battle, against “the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it.” This is the framework for Trump’s entire speech, an apocalyptic confrontation, the final battle between good and evil.

[LFC]

Christian nationalist Lauren Boebert is going to be a grandmother at age 36. Looks like she and her hubby passed their stupidity on to their offspring. Bonus points for being against sex education in schools, a topic that she clearly isn't qualified to teach to her kids. Sad.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) announced this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference that she’s going to be a 36-year-old grandmother. At the very same gathering, the anti-abortion lawmaker also said that she wants to ban comprehensive sex ed in public schools. Huh!

Boebert won the Mothers of Influence Award at the CPAC Women’s Breakfast last weekend, and shared in her acceptance speech the news that her 17-year-old son, Tyler, had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and they’re having a boy. It’s not known how old his girlfriend is, but Tyler turns 18 on March 21, and Boebert said the baby is due in April.

Boebert—who came very close to losing her seat in November—herself dropped out of high school during her senior year when she was pregnant with Tyler and later earned a GED. She has four boys with husband Jayson, who exposed himself to a teenager at a bowling alley, for which he served jail time and two years’ probation.

In her comments, Boebert didn’t actually seem all that pleased about becoming a grandmother the year after she could legally run for president. “When I approached him and told him, ‘Tyler, I’m going to be a 36-year-old grandmother,’ he said, ‘Well, didn’t you make granny a 36-year-old granny?’ I said, ‘Yes, I did.’ He said, ‘Well then it’s hereditary.’ Nice try buddy.”

But then she tried to spin it into a nice little story about rural teenagers being more pro-life than their urban peers.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 10, 2023 18:52:34 GMT LFC said:

Christian nationalist Lauren Boebert is going to be a grandmother at age 36. Looks like she and her hubby passed their stupidity on to their offspring. Bonus points for being against sex education in schools, a topic that she clearly isn't qualified to teach to her kids. Sad.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) announced this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference that she’s going to be a 36-year-old grandmother. At the very same gathering, the anti-abortion lawmaker also said that she wants to ban comprehensive sex ed in public schools. Huh!

Boebert won the Mothers of Influence Award at the CPAC Women’s Breakfast last weekend, and shared in her acceptance speech the news that her 17-year-old son, Tyler, had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and they’re having a boy. It’s not known how old his girlfriend is, but Tyler turns 18 on March 21, and Boebert said the baby is due in April.

Boebert—who came very close to losing her seat in November—herself dropped out of high school during her senior year when she was pregnant with Tyler and later earned a GED. She has four boys with husband Jayson, who exposed himself to a teenager at a bowling alley, for which he served jail time and two years’ probation.

In her comments, Boebert didn’t actually seem all that pleased about becoming a grandmother the year after she could legally run for president. “When I approached him and told him, ‘Tyler, I’m going to be a 36-year-old grandmother,’ he said, ‘Well, didn’t you make granny a 36-year-old granny?’ I said, ‘Yes, I did.’ He said, ‘Well then it’s hereditary.’ Nice try buddy.”

But then she tried to spin it into a nice little story about rural teenagers being more pro-life than their urban peers.

So I guess she was 19 when she became his mother.  And see early motherhood isn't a barrier to advancement.  She got to own a gun themed restaurant and get elected to Congress!

[LFC]

Interesting research that makes the case J. Edgar Hoover was a white, Christian nationalist. The more we learn about this historical figure the more he looks like a real piece of shit, not in the light of society today but straight up.

Lerone Martin’s new book began with a cup of coffee that led him to sue the FBI.

While working on a book about religious broadcasters, a colleague suggested over coffee that Martin, a religion scholar, research the FBI to see if they had any related files. At the time, the colleague, scholar William J. Maxwell, author of “F.B. EYES,” had been studying the FBI’s surveillance of Black writers. Perhaps the FBI had been keeping an eye on religious broadcasters as well.

Martin, then living in St. Louis, began filing Freedom of Information requests. Around the same time, he was also hearing from local pastors in St Louis who had been contacted by the FBI in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. The FBI, they told Martin, wanted to know what the pastors were going to do to calm protests in that city.

“That got me thinking,” said Martin. “This is not a surveillance story. This is a story of partnership.”

Martin began thinking about the kinds of pastors the FBI might want to partner with. Chief among them was the late evangelist Billy Graham, known for his crusades for Jesus and against communism and liberals.

When Graham died in 2018, Martin asked for his FBI file. The Department of Justice said no. So, Martin sued in federal court and three years later settled with the FBI and got the files. He also obtained files on other Christian leaders and organizations, most notably more than a thousand pages of documents outlining the relationship between longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and the editors of Christianity Today, the flagship publication of Graham’s evangelical movement.

What Martin, now an associate professor of religion at Stanford, found in those files was this: Hoover was perhaps the most influential Christian leader in America during his tenure in office, promoting a gospel of America as a Christian nation and labeling anyone who threatened the power of white Christian men as communists and a threat to God’s will.

“Hoover saw his politics as nothing more than an extension of his faith,” said Martin, author of “The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism.“ “And because America is a Christian nation, the FBI is charged with defending and perpetuating that ideal.”

Unlike early Christian nationalists, like Father Charles Coughlin — a star of early broadcast radio — or Gerald L.K. Smith, longtime editor of “The Cross and the Flag,” Hoover had the institutional power and discipline to make his beliefs stick. And he had a gift for convincing conservative Christian leaders to join his crusade.

When the Nation magazine ran a series of articles critical of the FBI and Hoover, legendary Christianity Today editor Carl Henry rode to his aid, offering to run one of Hoover’s essays in the magazine. When the essay arrived, Henry was effusive in his praise.

In his book, Martin documents how Hoover saw anyone who upset the status quo and pushed for goals like “love, justice, and the brotherhood of man” or “personal freedom” as part of an atheistic communist plot. He used the power of his office to investigate those who opposed him, including religious leaders like the National Council of Churches and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

He turned his office into a bully pulpit, writing essays for major Christian publications, saying that all the nation’s problems — including issues of race — could be solved if only everyone gave their hearts to Jesus. The FBI then reprinted those essays, adding an FBI seal as if they reflected official government policies, and shared them with churches, Sunday schools and almost anyone who wanted them.

Some preachers even preached them word for word on Sundays, Martin recounts, complete with Hoover’s warnings of disaster if America strayed from its spiritual roots and the Marxists took over.

“We are today threatened by twin menaces,” he wrote in a 1961 essay for Christianity Today. “Materialism has fathered both crime and communism. The criminal statistics for the year just past attest to the steady growth of the one evil. The progress of the other — and the intensity of the struggle in which we are engaged with it — does not yield to such forthright measure.”

Many evangelical leaders were eager to join Hoover’s crusade against communism and liberals. They also saw the advantages of having Hoover as an ally, said Martin in an interview.

“What better way in the midst of a cold war to authenticate your organization than to have the approval of the FBI — the organization that knows all and sees all?” said Martin.

Evangelicals embraced Hoover even though he shared few of their theological convictions. He did not believe in being “born again,” said Martin, and never had the kind of conversion experience that is so essential to evangelical life. He also did not share evangelical prejudice against Catholics, which was common in the middle of the 20th century. Instead, Martin writes, he saw Catholics as essential partners.

[LFC]

Christianity, in particular white Evangelicals, have been enemies of American democracy for a long time.

The Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith loved Jesus so much he built a seven-story statue on the top of an Ozark mountain to honor his savior.

Smith loved America, too, but despised many of his fellow Americans. Especially those who were Black, Jewish or immigrants.

An ordained Disciples of Christ pastor, master showman, skilled fundraiser, prolific writer and “minister of hate,” Smith spent decades warning white Christians that they were in danger of losing their country to devious forces conspiring against them.

To combat those forces, Smith founded a political party, ran for U.S. Senate and churned out tens of thousands of copies of The Cross and the Flag, a monthly magazine dedicated to the cause of Christian nationalism.

For Smith, that work was defined not by Jesus or the Constitution. His main concern was preserving Christian power and what he called “traditional Americanism.”

“The first principle for which we stand is: Preserve America as a Christian Nation being conscious of the fact that there is a highly organized campaign to substitute Jewish tradition for Christian tradition,” he wrote in “This Is Christian Nationalism,” which outlined the 10 pillars of his movement.

Among the other pillars of Christian nationalism: outlawing communism, destroying the “bureaucratic fascism” of income tax and the Supreme Court, and preserving racial segregation forever.

Smith aimed to take the latent prejudices and anxieties of American society and fan them into flames, wrote the late Glen Jeansonne, a longtime University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history professor and Smith’s biographer. For Smith, the fear of communism was an excuse to embrace prejudice and pursue power.

“His life illustrates that the career of a person of remarkable talents can be tragic if it is guided by a lust of power and fueled by a bigotry that appeals to latent hatred,” wrote Jeansonne in his 1988 biography, subtitled “Minister of Hate.”

While Smith’s name is mostly forgotten, his ideas — and the strategies he used to promote them — still haunt America today.

“America has a long history, unfortunately, of this kind of Christian nationalism,” said Lerone Martin, associate professor of religion at Stanford University and director of its Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.

[LFC]

Grifter grifting. There are sheeple to be sheared; dumb, ignorant, gullible sheep.

“You can build your life on sand and be woke, it will fall. You can build your church on woke, it’s gonna fall. Or you can build it on the rock, which is the kingdom of God.

“And it will stand no matter what happens – winds, floods, rain, egg prices, inflation, a fake administration – 46 that does not exist. Interesting that God said that from the very start, November 4th, that this is a fake administration, it doesn’t exist. Why would he say that?

“And then you got a guy, when I look at pictures, I don’t know how many guys are trying to be him. All you conspiracists know I’m a realist. I’m a cartoonist, I can recognize when somebody doesn’t look the same.

“First of all, you got different looking eyes, different looking head, different looking earlobes. Well pastor, you’re just one of those conspiracists. I don’t read conspiracies, I don’t even listen to the news.

“I’m just telling you that I’ve seen pictures and you’re trying to pull the wool over our eyes. And I ain’t buying it, cause I ain’t deceived.” – Televangelist Hank Kunneman.

[LFC]

They're still clinging to their guns and Bibles, and child abuse. It doesn't matter how many studies find that corporal punishment of children creates mental health issues in them as adults. Nope, God(tm) loves smacking kids around. It didn't pass, but it was close.

A just society would not allow teachers to hit disabled kids at school. Sounds reasonable enough, right? Well, Oklahoma Republicans disagree.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House, in which Republicans have a supermajority, voted against House Bill 1028, which would have outlawed school district personnel from “using corporal punishment on any student identified with a disability in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.”

After lawmakers read Bible verses and talked about the need for physical discipline, the measure failed to proceed by a vote of 45-43 (though a narrow majority, the bill needed 51 votes to pass).

Current Oklahoma law only prohibits “deliberate infliction of physical pain” to discipline students with “the most significant cognitive disabilities.” Even then, schools can obtain permission from parents or guardians to supersede the ban.

“The rod and reproof give wisdom. But a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame,” said Republican Representative Jim Olsen. “So that would seem to endorse the use of corporal punishment. So, how would you reconcile this bill with scripture’s council on this matter?” he asked Representative John Talley, a proponent for the bill.

Olsen then asked “on what basis would we automatically conclude a special needs child should not get corporal punishment,” as if there’s some dangerous risk in allowing children to not be hit by their teachers.

Olsen proceeded to non-blushingly cite a constituent call he apparently received from someone who said their “special needs” child “did not respond to positive motivation, but that she responded very well to corporal punishment.”

According to his biography, Olsen himself serves as a Sunday school teacher.

[LFC]

Now that's a subject line.

Scamvangelist Leads Speaking In Tongues To Protect Trump From Arrest: “Reesala Baam Balalay Hosoo Pah!”

Here's some of his Trump worshiping speech. JMG also lists some of his past actions.

“We thank you for this Donald Trump that you’ve raised up. And lord, even now we lift up a voice on his behalf that you will cause your hand to come upon his head, you will cover his ears so that he only hears what you are saying.

“Your hand will be in his heart so that he only feels what you want him to feel. And I pray in the name of Jesus that as his enemies have dug a pit for him, that they will fall into it themselves.

“We rebuke every witchcraft curse, vex, spell that has been launched against him, his wife, his children and his enterprise. And we ask you to fill him with the holy ghost. Let him be filled with the power of the holy spirit.

“Now YOU pray in the holy ghost for Donald Trump. Reesala baam balalay hosoo pah! Eela baroom dalaboleesay moso patahla dey tah! Eebro salambay bolololo mana satana tey!

“We rebuke what they’re doing right now! We pray that this will become actually an embarrassment to them! When they try to arrest him, when they try to accuse him of stirring up insurrection! That you, lord, will cause your spirit to make the wheels on the chariot of pharaoh come off! – Pastor Lance “Bad Wig” Wallnau.

[andydp]

In looking at all the "holier than thou" screeds by "so called" Christians, THEY need to take a step back and remember:

A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

Abigail Van Buren

[LFC]

This is a perfect illustration of how dogmatic adherence to rules and writings can twist one's mind to the point that they become blind to the most fundamental basics of decency, morality, and humanity. Cardinal Vigano has lost his way on morality multiple times already but his written support of Vladimir Putin's endless series of war crimes is beyond "inside baseball" and is something that cannot be set aside. He described Russia and what its doing as "the last bastion of civilization against barbarism." If the Inquisition reappeared tomorrow, he'd be first in line to join it.

The man has sided with evil because it supports his vision of his religion's supremacy. He has no humanity left in him, only a hole in his soul that leaves him grasping for power. The fact is that multiple bishops backed this soulless "man of God" over Pope Francis and, as of this post, none had stood up against this written approval of murder, rape, torture, and terrorism. Where are their voices now? They are  just as soulless or they are utter cowards, either of which disqualify them from preaching morality at anybody.

Mike Lewis
@mfjlewis

Today's Moynihan Newsletter is 🤡🤪👽

Wherein the fugitive churchman welcomes the founding of the "International Movement of Russophiles."

TWO DOZEN US BISHOPS PUBLICLY VOUCHED FOR THIS GUY AGAINST POPE FRANCIS.

Not a single one has publicly retracted.

Think about that. 1

EDIT: Here's a link to the thread. Mike Lewis calls out the pro-Vigano bishops by name and deed.