The Sickness of Christian Politics & Christian Nationalism

[Deleted]

BRAVA BRAVA BRAVA - yes, I'm shouting. When I'm disgusted at the state of this sorry world along comes a story that fills me with the hope that perhaps this world is safe in the hands of young people like this woman There is a war on my body - shove that in yer pipe and smoke it Greg!!

[RichTBikkies]

Jun 4, 2021 11:00:24 GMT @islander said:

BRAVA BRAVA BRAVA - yes, I'm shouting. When I'm disgusted at the state of this sorry world along comes a story that fills me with the hope that perhaps this world is safe in the hands of young people like this woman There is a war on my body - shove that in yer pipe and smoke it Greg!!

Ten thousand Likes? One hundred thousand Wows!

[LFC]

Someplace I mentioned that utter nutter "Pastor" Rick Wiles was hit with COVID after being all in on COVID denial. Despite being sent to the hospital and being put on oxygen his despicable "news" outlet TruNews is still spreading the lies.

In March last year, the anti-Semitic broadcaster Rick Wiles said the spread of COVID-19 in Israel’s synagogues was a sign from on-high.

“God’s dealing with false religions,” Wiles said on a webcast from his site, TruNews. “God’s dealing with people who oppose his son Jesus Christ. He’s dealing with the forces of antichrist.”

That was just the start: As documented by the watchdog group Right Wing Watch, Wiles (above, center) and TruNews played into every angle of the pandemic, from speculating that it was staged in China to promoting the theory that the virus originated in a lab, to, more recently, warning that COVID-19 vaccinations are really an attempt at genocide.

What Wiles might not have planned for was an outbreak of his own: Since late last month, the host and several TruNews staff and family members have been hit hard with COVID-19, TruNews has said publicly.

“Trunews was hit suddenly by a cluster of flu and Covid among some employees and their relatives,” a May 28 newsletter from the website said. The following day, another newsletter reported that Wiles had been taken to the emergency room and was on oxygen.

On the social network Gab and dispatches from the TruNews newsletter in recent weeks, Wiles and TruNews have described the symptoms of Wiles’ daughter, as well as those of his wife and daughter-in-law. Wiles noted symptoms that other members of his family were experiencing, and said that TruNews personality Edward Szall “is very sick” and “three members of our team are recovering.”

Just a week before that update, Szall (above, right) hosted a TruNews segment on “JAB CROW LAWS: UNVACCINATED FACE SEGREGATION AND PERSECUTION BY TRIAGE TYRANTS.”

But first-hand experience hasn’t stopped TruNews. Even as fill-in hosts man the set as Wiles recovers, the site is still pumping out anti-vaccine misinformation to hundreds of thousands of followers.

[AnBr]

[Deleted]

It's just a substitution. The real complaint is not IP violation, it's loss of marketshare.

[Traveler]

Brilliant Prob.

[LFC]

This f***wit religious zealot is a product of Pennsylvania. I'm so proud.

On May 9, the New Yorker published a feature story by Pulitzer winner Eliza Griswold about Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who could well be the Republican nominee for governor next year, as a flagship example of the swelling power of Christian nationalism within today's GOP. That's an issue I focused on in a 2018 story largely driven by a paper called "Make America Christian Again," co-authored by sociologist Andrew Whitehead. I described this phenomenon as "an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, and sharpening the divide with those who are excluded from it," and quoted from the paper:

Christian nationalism … draws its roots from "Old Testament" parallels between America and Israel, who was commanded to maintain cultural and blood purity, often through war, conquest, and separatism.

Despite the "Old Testament" slant, this version of Christianity has no room for Exodus 22:21: "You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt," or numerous other biblical passages — which is why Christian nationalism can't be considered synonymous with Christianity per se. Many people in Trump's base perceive it that way, however, as that paper first showed. And Griswold rightly chose Mastriano as a shining — and troubling — example of what that means in practice today.

First elected to the State Senate in a special election in May 2019, Mastriano has quickly gained prominence over the past year, as Griswold explains:

[H]e has led rallies against mask mandates and other public-health protocols, which he has characterized as "the governor's autocratic control over our lives." He has become a leader of the Stop the Steal campaign, and claims that he spoke to Donald Trump at least fifteen times between the 2020 election and the insurrection at the Capitol, on January 6th.

Since Griswold's story was published, Mastriano has claimed to have Trump's endorsement for governor, along with a promise to campaign with him (though a Trump adviser has disputed this), while new evidence casts doubt on his claims of non-involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection. On June 2, he was one of three Pennsylvania lawmakers who toured the Arizona election "audit," calling for the Keystone State to follow suit, the latest front in Trump's effort to delegitimize Biden's election.

Griswold's story is important and compelling, drawing attention to a perennially undercovered phenomenon whose importance is only growing as much of the GOP's traditional issue package has fallen to the wayside — but certainly not its culture war component. Griswold touches base with a wide range of relevant experts, and brings much-needed attention to the under-appreciated power of Christian nationalism within today's GOP, even as Mastriano and others involved with it disingenuously reject that identification.

But right-wing religious politics is so poorly understood by outsiders that any story will inevitably leave a lot out. Beyond that, journalists must navigate layers of deception and denial — reflected in repeated televangelist scandals, for example — that have made the religious right such a perfect epistemic fit for Trump's gaslighting style. That fit, and what lies behind it, was highlighted by retired intelligence analyst James Scaminaci III in a 2017 essay, "Battle without Bullets: The Christian Right and Fourth Generation Warfare." (The confusion of Christian nationalism with Christianity on the one hand and American democracy on the other reflects the main thrust of what "fourth-generation warfare" is all about, as I'll describe below.)

To avoid such deception, the term "Christian nationalism" could be more sharply clarified, to dispense with its adherents' denials. The religious movement Griswold mentions — the New Apostolic Reformation — could be more clearly defined, and doing that can shed light on Christian nationalism's lesser-known, but more nefarious fellow-traveler, Dominionism — a creed that adds two more elements: a belief in "biblical law," as adherents define it, and the religious supremacy of their version of Christianity.

All of these are not just threats to American democracy but are also biblically questionable, to say the least, which should be a focus of primary concern to those they appeal to most strongly. At a more granular level, there's a need to illuminate the groundwork for the emergence of figures like Mastriano that's been laid over time — for example, through the state-level organization of Project Blitz, devoted to passing three tiers of increasingly theocratic laws. It's also important to examine Mastriano's Christian nationalist deceptions prior to entering politics, as well as the role of fourth-generation warfare. Let's consider each of these in turn.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 14, 2021 22:17:02 GMT LFC said:

This f***wit religious zealot is a product of Pennsylvania. I'm so proud.

Read the Salon piece in its entirety. This crowd is getting ever-closer to what they’ve been itching for since at least the mid-1980s, when “secular humanism,” rather than “critical race theory,” was the boogeyman of the day. The casting of any who oppose them, or criticize their tactics and methods, as “lacking faith” or outright “opposing the Gospel” is a maneuver that likewise goes back at least that far.

Scary shit.

[LFC]

These are Orthodox Jews, not Christians, but if you want a look at what ruling theocratically at the local level looks like this is an excellent example.

A school board composed mostly of Orthodox Jewish parents has favored students in private religious schools over mostly black and Latino students in public schools, civil rights groups have alleged in federal court.

The groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP, blame a school board election system that is common across the US and that, they say, disenfranchises minorities.

Since 2005, the East Ramapo school board, which covers a few small towns an hour’s drive north-west of New York City, has been controlled by members who represent private yeshivas, or Jewish religious schools, according to a report by the New York state education department. The vast majority of the 26,500 children who attend private schools in the district are white. In contrast, 91% of the 9,000 or so children enrolled in public schools are black and Latino.

In 2009, the board began gutting the public-school system, the report states. Between 2009 and 2014, the board fired over 450 staff, including 160 teachers, three guidance counselors and all social workers. It also cut budgets for athletic and extracurricular activities in half.

Children have had to attend classes with no teachers, which the school called “study hall” or “home room”, said Terry Rodriguez, a parent with three children in the school district. Her son, 17, was in one of these classes for his first three months at Spring Valley high school.

“My children weren’t getting the proper education they need,” she said.

But as public schools suffered, funding for the private yeshivas went up. Between 2010 and 2014, spending for private school buses increased from $22m to $27.3m. The school board also increased funding for special education in private schools by 33% while laying off 15 special education teachers in public schools, according to the NYSED report.

[LFC]

I'm putting this here to illustrate the kind of thing that drives these people.

In America, much like God, Satan works in mysterious ways. Just how mysterious depends on who you talk to.

For instance, a good number of Christians became convinced that Satan made an appearance at last month’s Grammy Awards. While Christians detecting Satan’s presence at large music gatherings is hardly novel, the fact that Satan showed up right smack in the middle of a performance by Katy Perry and Juicy J. caused this particular sighting to be deemed more buzzworthy than most. Some evangelicals even speculated about whether or not Perry, while singing “Dark Horse,” had enacted an ancient satanic ritual, one that had actually summoned the Prince of Darkness to join her on the Grammy stage.

So, did Perry & Co. really usher in forces of demonic destruction? Nobody knows for certain. The presence of Satan is difficult to confirm. Besides, among most Satan-fearing Christians, things like confirmation and proof are overrated.

That said, not only did Perry’s alleged invite to Satan cause a gnashing of tweets, but the spectacle was demonic enough to send one well-known Christian artist in attendance darting for the exit, tweeting to her fan base as she bolted. One religious broadcaster called the performance satanic and then blamed the Beatles. Jesus-loving conspiracy theorist, Mark Dice, called Perry a “Babylonian bimbo” and then went on to declare her a “slithering servant of Satan.”

In 2013, a poll conducted by YouGov found that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe in a literal Devil. It’s no surprise that, of those surveyed, believing in Satan was most popular among those who identified as Protestant, Catholic, or Christian. Eighty-six percent of the participants who identified as the latter answered “yes” to believing in Satan. But much like belief in God is weaved throughout our country’s history, so to is our national history intertwined with a strong belief in the Devil.

Behold the power of ... convenience! (Bold mine.)

But who is Satan among today’s American Christians? W. Scott Poole, a professor of history at the College of Charleston and author of Satan in America: The Devil We Know, told me, “In the United States over the last forty to fifty years, a composite image of Satan has emerged that borrows from both popular culture and theological sources.” Most of America’s Christians, according to Poole, don’t or can’t “separate what they know from the movies from what they know from various ecclesiastical and theological traditions.”

Poole is right: today’s Christians do seem to have a wide and varied understanding of who Satan is and what role he plays in people’s lives. According to today’s believers, Satan can be anything from an evil spirit who gets called up from hell by Katy Perry to one that dwells in the heart of President Obama to one that is warring against men via feminism to one who possesses the bodies of Beyonce, Oprah, Denzel Washington, and Nicki Minaj to one that leads American media in revolt against Russian policies. Faith-based prophet Bob Larson made a mighty good living casting out Satan and demons from the bodies of the possessed—sometimes via Skype. Even John Piper, one of Reformed theology’s chief American cheerleaders, seems to possess an entire theology about Satan, a spiritual thinking that makes Satan not only a scholar of the Bible but positions the Evil One as basically God’s fall guy, the force that gets bad things done.

“Our culture turns to [Satan] for language of evil because he’s much more fun than real-world social problems,” Poole writes. Rather than becoming weighted down by real issues, most Christians would rather “read about Lucifer in all his lurid majesty instead.”

[goldenvalley]

Jun 17, 2021 17:24:57 GMT LFC said:

I'm putting this here to illustrate the kind of thing that drives these people.

Behold the power of ... convenience! (Bold mine.)

But who is Satan among today’s American Christians? W. Scott Poole, a professor of history at the College of Charleston and author of Satan in America: The Devil We Know, told me, “In the United States over the last forty to fifty years, a composite image of Satan has emerged that borrows from both popular culture and theological sources.” Most of America’s Christians, according to Poole, don’t or can’t “separate what they know from the movies from what they know from various ecclesiastical and theological traditions.”

Poole is right: today’s Christians do seem to have a wide and varied understanding of who Satan is and what role he plays in people’s lives. According to today’s believers, Satan can be anything from an evil spirit who gets called up from hell by Katy Perry to one that dwells in the heart of President Obama to one that is warring against men via feminism to one who possesses the bodies of Beyonce, Oprah, Denzel Washington, and Nicki Minaj to one that leads American media in revolt against Russian policies. Faith-based prophet Bob Larson made a mighty good living casting out Satan and demons from the bodies of the possessed—sometimes via Skype. Even John Piper, one of Reformed theology’s chief American cheerleaders, seems to possess an entire theology about Satan, a spiritual thinking that makes Satan not only a scholar of the Bible but positions the Evil One as basically God’s fall guy, the force that gets bad things done.

“Our culture turns to [Satan] for language of evil because he’s much more fun than real-world social problems,” Poole writes. Rather than becoming weighted down by real issues, most Christians would rather “read about Lucifer in all his lurid majesty instead.”

Everyone likes to have a bad guy as a scapegoat.  All bad things belong to him; we don't have to take responsibility for anything because he did it.

[LFC]

A so-called pastor and historian praises the rising autocracy in Hungary for bashing gays.

Speaking on The Victory Channel this Wednesday, right-wing pastor and self-proclaimed "historian" David Barton praised legislation recently passed by Hungary's National Assembly, which bans portrayals of LGBT people to those under 18-years-old.

According to Barton, an influential figure in the evangelical movement, Hungary is a former Soviet bloc nation "that we would describe as very young Christian nations."

"They're heavily Christian, heavily influenced by Christian teaching values," Barton said in a video flagged by Right Wing Watch. "You have Hungary, you have the Czech Republic, you have Romania, you have Ukraine, and you have Poland, and they are trying to have their policy line up with traditional biblical values. They believe that God will bless their nation if they do those things."

Barton praised Hungary, saying that "most American Christians" wouldn't have publicly supported the legislation "because we're so scared of getting beat up on by media and others."

"But that is a biblically correct position that you have; there are moral rights and wrongs and sexuality, and those are five nations in Eastern Europe that have been trying to uphold biblical standards on morality, and good for them."

Dreher is touching himself as he defends Orban's crushing of Hungary's democracy. Interestingly I don't remember him heaping this much praise and mounting this much of a defense for Erdogan of Turkey. Gee, I wonder what the difference is between the two leaders.

It is no secret that my time this late spring and summer in Hungary has made me a fan of the country. Whenever I’m online, or traveling abroad (as I have done a bit this summer, promoting my book), and I hear someone bashing the country or its government, I ask them what they know about Hungary, and how they know it. Inevitably it’s based entirely on what they’ve heard in their media.

So I invite them to come to Hungary with an open mind to see for themselves (when Covid is over, I mean; you still can’t travel here as a tourist). There is plenty for liberals to criticize about the Orban government, but I’ve found that much of the criticism from both liberals and conservatives is based on a seriously distorted idea of what this country is like, and what its government does. This is very much on my mind after a couple of conversations I had last week in Spain with people who are conservative, and upon finding out that I live temporarily in Hungary, came out with the usual complaints about how oppressive the country is. When I challenged them, it turned out that they were only parroting what they had been told by the media.

Rod either doesn't or refuses to grasp that visiting a country without access to actual data on what is happening doesn't mean a thing. He repeatedly quotes the Hungarian members of his own tribe and claims in-depth knowledge. Listen to these anecdotes, not actual reporting by actual journalists who are getting it all wrong! Yeah. Right.

[LFC]

Victimhood is strong with this snowflake.

A Tennessee school board member threw a written temper tantrum after a parent asked whether second-graders should learn about sexism and racism.

Jody Wallace, a mother of two students at Williamson County Schools, emailed school board member Dan Cash to ask why he believed that civil rights were not an appropriate topic for elementary students to learn about, and she was stunned by his reply, reported the Tennessean.

"Thank you for sharing what you really have in your heart," Cash wrote. "You hate white men and white little boys and Christians. I hope I didn't miss anything. My family has crossed cultural lines for many years. Including Hispanic, Black and family members from Malta. And I must say of all the conversations we have had knowone (sic) has ever demonstrated the amount of hate that I see in this email. I will pray that you look at people as individuals rather than by race and look at the content of their character vs what has happened before. Focus on all the great accomplishments we have had in race relations in our Country."

Wallace had written Cash after he complained about so-called "critical race theory" being taught in schools, a concern manufactured by right-wing activists and hyped by Fox News, and pointed out that children in the district's schools had been subjected to racial bullying and taunted with Donald Trump's name.

[LFC]

The Southern Baptist Convention regains a shred of sanity ... but barely.

On Tuesday, June 15, some supporters of former President Donald Trump were bitterly disappointed when the Southern Baptist Convention chose the Rev. Ed Litton, an Alabama pastor, as its president and rejected some of the more extreme Trumpians who were competing for the position — including the Rev. Mike Stone, who was supported by the far-right Conservative Baptist Network. Journalist Molly Olmstead analyzes this development in an article published by Slate on June 17. As Olmstead sees it, Litton's narrow victory shows a move away from Trumpism among Baptists.

"The SBC has been going through something like an identity crisis this year," Olmsted explains. "Southern Baptists, like most White evangelicals, voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, but in the run-up to the 2020 election, critics began to chafe at the frequently conspiracy theory-laden partisan politics within their churches. After last summer's racial unrest, many of the denomination's Black pastors — actively courted by a Convention uncomfortably aware of its overwhelming whiteness and deeply racist history — began to protest the SBC's unwillingness to recognize the extent of modern-day racism. At the same time, an organized group of Southern Baptists has pushed for a second conservative resurgence to correct what it sees as a loosening of the core Southern Baptist identity."

Baptists who believe that the Southern Baptist Convention should be MAGA through and through favored Stone, a Georgia-based pastor. But 52% of the vote went to Litton, who is White and politically conservative but believes that Baptists should have at least have a conversation about race. The Trumpians at the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention were pushing for things like an official position against critical race theory, which has become a boogieman in right-wing media. Critical race theory is a field of study that examines the history of racism in the U.S. and the ways in which racism of the past has an effect on institutions of the present.

"Critical race theory has been a contentious topic within the SBC for months longer than its more recent turn in the media spotlight," Olmstead observes. "When Donald Trump was nearing the end of his presidency this fall, he launched a sudden attack on the teaching of critical race theory, an academic approach to analyzing the systems that have created and perpetuated racial inequality. As the anti-CRT sentiments quietly percolated in certain circles thanks to the president's comments, the conservatives of the SBC seized on the issue."

Although many Baptists identify with the far-right White evangelical movement, some African-American Baptists are outspoken supporters of liberal and progressive causes — the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, for example. The far-right Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., the late founder of the Moral Majority and a one-time segregationist and supporter of Jim Crow laws, was a Baptist — but so was Dr. Martin Luther, King, Jr., a civil rights icon. There were heated debates among Baptists during the 1950s and 1960s, and there are still heated debates among Baptists in 2021.

[pnwguy]

If the zygote, embryo, and fetus worshippers get the upper hand, this kind of zealotry will become the norm.

www.al.com/news/2021/06/alabama-mom-faces-jail-for-filling-doctors-prescription-while-pregnant.html

Obviously we need monthly government reporting requirements of menstruation from any potentially fertile woman! Blessed be the fruit.

[LFC]

Jun 22, 2021 16:20:07 GMT pnwguy said:

If the zygote, embryo, and fetus worshippers get the upper hand, this kind of zealotry will become the norm.

www.al.com/news/2021/06/alabama-mom-faces-jail-for-filling-doctors-prescription-while-pregnant.html

Obviously we need monthly government reporting requirements of menstruation from any potentially fertile woman! Blessed be the fruit.

The incubators have no rights.

[LFC]

I'll just leave this here.

Father-and-Son Ministers Arrested for Storming the Capitol

[LFC]

This is an excellent description of how American Christians interpret the bible.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 25, 2021 1:29:22 GMT LFC said:

This is an excellent description of how American Christians interpret the bible.

Quoth Dear Daughter: As the kids say, “Mic Drop.”

[indy]

I've always been a little disappointed with the devil's tradecraft. The multitudes seem to freely admit that the ways of God are mysteriously beyond human understanding, but the devil's ways are apparently transparently obvious. I mean, really, how is this an eternal conflict at all? Shouldn't God be wiping the floor with him?

[LFC]

White Gen X And Millennial Evangelicals Are Losing Faith In The Conservative Culture Wars

Much like the political climate (and the actual climate!) we have today it appears the best chance of redemption is coming from the younger generations. The Boomers have failed America in many ways.

My research consists of hours of participant observation within younger evangelical faith communities, along with 50 in-depth, qualitative interviews with individuals who were raised in the politically charged evangelicalism in the southeastern United States, a region dominated by evangelicals.

Taken together, this research indicates increasing disaffection among white millennial and Gen X evangelicals with the cultural and political preoccupations that have strongly motivated their parents and grandparents. There is a growing number of “Exvangelicals” who disavow their previous stances on same-sex marriage, race and sexuality.

Evangelicals, often citing the biblical text, typically maintain that marriage is between one man and one woman. Over 75% tend to worship in racially segregated congregations and favor gun rights and ownership more than other faith groups.

But my interviewees tend toward intense critiques of their previous religious tradition, as well as rejecting the evangelical faith completely.

These younger evangelicals are trying to reform their communities from within the tradition as loyal but highly critical members. Sometimes these groups are called “emerging evangelicals” or “progressive Christians,” with some debating whether “evangelical” as a label is redeemable.

I observed several younger evangelicals working within their religious communities to encourage acceptance of those outside of the Christian tradition as co-religionists on similar faith paths. They herald interfaith interactions as positive. One interviewee proudly detailed to me how her church partnered with the local imam and Muslim community to educate each other on their religious practices and volunteered together at a local food bank. This kind of attitude typically is resisted by their older evangelical counterparts, as I learned in previous research. Many traditional evangelicals believe that their faith is the sole path to religious redemption, and interfaith cooperation might harm their followers.

Additionally, some younger evangelicals tend toward adopting spiritual resources outside of the Christian tradition. Whether incorporating meditation techniques or yoga, my interviewees highlighted the ways in which they are exploring their religious and spiritual beliefs.

This contrasts with older evangelicals who perceive their tradition as providing all necessary resources for spiritual growth and reject any outside or Eastern influences. One interviewee noted that she had to change evangelical churches after her evangelical church prohibited her from being both a church member and a local yoga instructor.

[LFC]

Here's another view of Christianity from somebody who grew up in an extreme form of it. They warn us not to divide Christianity into cult vs. non-cult. They say if you start digging into "mainstream" beliefs the distinction crumbles pretty quickly.

But, only a couple years ago, Franklin Graham, son of "America's Pastor," Billy Graham, declared any criticism of former president Donald Trump to be the work of demonic powers. The following year, one of the president's closest evangelical advisors, Paula White, publicly commanded "all satanic pregnancies to miscarry." Polling in recent decades indicates that around half of all Americans continue to believe that the Devil and demonic possession are very real, and though some recent numbers suggest that figure may be lower among Democrats, the percentage of Americans who believe in the Devil rose from 55 percent in 1990 to 70 percent in 2007 — as of 2018, even Catholic exorcisms appear to be on the rise. Around half of all Americans believe the Bible should influence U.S. laws, and 68 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe the Bible should take precedence over the will of the people. In other words, if you find yourself talking to an American Christian, chances are they have been reared in the fear of making a wrong move, of choosing the wrong side, and believe that doing so could have nightmarish results in this life and the next. Chances are that fear is so deeply ingrained that it no longer registers as fear. Fear is simply the lens through which they view the world.

I had a friend in college who liked to call me Jonestown after she heard my story. But she'd grown up in Kentucky like I did after my family left communal life, and the longer I knew her, the more I came to understand that the preachers of her childhood were virtually interchangeable with Brother Sam, that the only difference between her church and mine was devotion, the degree of commitment to doctrine. In my church, we were instructed to live out our beliefs one step at a time, then another, then another, but they were the same beliefs my friend had. Long after my family "left" The Body, whether we were holding home church, attending Body Conventions, or going to regular services in Pentecostal, Baptist and Methodist churches, I was 19 and in college before I encountered a single person who challenged the doctrine I was raised in, and I've since had similar experiences in urban Virginia, rural New Hampshire, and suburban Indiana where I now live. Classifying American Christians into the imaginary phyla of cults and not-cults, of dangerous, fringy, irregular churches and a safe, mainstream, religious majority is a terrible mistake and just as dangerous as extremism itself.

In fact, religious extremism has been if not the then a national norm for the duration of my lifetime. In my experience, you only need press most Christians for a few minutes before you encounter many of the "strange and sinister" beliefs that are supposed to be a marker of cults. This is why unlearning religious extremism in America is so difficult, and often takes a lifetime — akin, I imagine, trying to be sober in a brewery. If more than three quarters of all American evangelicals believe we are living in the End Times described in the Bible, then it is not only probable but inevitable that some of those believers will take action and remove themselves and their families from the corrupt, materialistic, Babylonian world. Likewise, if the Bible was written by the finger of God, as I was taught, then questioning it — in fact, questioning anything about the church and church leaders, from the authenticity of teachings by men like Brother Sam to the sincerity of whichever right-leaning politicians are being praised in the pulpit, might render a believer vulnerable to unseen "powers and principalities" that circle above us like vultures, eager for our destruction.

[andydp]

High Schooler orders "multi colored" birthday cake.  Schools expels her  "the reason Kayla was being made to leave the school that she loved so much was because administrators, including Jacobson, believed the cake was representative of LGBTQ pride."


abolt.newsweek.com/s/girl-expelled-photo?as=6dap23848579222580530&utm_source=fb&utm_campaign=6dap23848579222580530&utm_medium=z020111&fbclid=IwAR0j2NnTDQgrWpDlxNhY4yKko73V2hTc56jSkZ7849WnTrWfWJhSPlgqjV0&bdk=0

[LFC]

Jun 29, 2021 13:06:45 GMT andydp said:

High Schooler orders "multi colored" birthday cake.  Schools expels her  "the reason Kayla was being made to leave the school that she loved so much was because administrators, including Jacobson, believed the cake was representative of LGBTQ pride."

Welcome to Christian Cancel Culture, the best kind of cancel culture!

[Bact PhD]

Jun 29, 2021 13:44:12 GMT LFC said:

Jun 29, 2021 13:06:45 GMT andydp said:

High Schooler orders "multi colored" birthday cake.  Schools expels her  "the reason Kayla was being made to leave the school that she loved so much was because administrators, including Jacobson, believed the cake was representative of LGBTQ pride."

Welcome to Christian Cancel Culture, the best kind of cancel culture!

Yup, shunning "evildoers" since 34 A.D.