'Toxic Christianity': the evangelicals creating champions for Trump

'Toxic Christianity': the evangelicals creating champions for Trump (Guardian)

The evangelical women who reject Trump (BBC)

'I’m not anti-Trump, I’m just pro-Jesus': the evangelicals stumping for the Democrats (Guardian)

Meanwhile (!):

GOP Lawmaker Matt Shea Releases Christian Manifesto Calling For Biblical Law
Michael Stone | November 1, 2018

GOP lawmaker calls for Biblical law: Washington state Rep. Matt Shea publishes manifesto calling for the execution of all males who refuse to follow “Biblical law.”

In a disturbing development, Washington state Rep. Matt Shea releases a four-page Christian manifesto titled “Biblical Basis for War*” The document calls for “Biblical law”, and suggests that those men who support gay marriage and abortion rights should be executed.

...In an email to The Spokesman-Review newspaper, Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said that he sent the manifesto to the FBI for investigation, noting:

The document Mr. Shea wrote is not a Sunday school project or an academic study. It is a ‘how to’ manual consistent with the ideology and operating philosophy of the Christian Identity/Aryan Nations movement and the Redoubt movement of the 1990s.

The goal of these groups has always been to create a white homeland consisting of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington. The ideas presented in the (biblical war) document are how these groups intend to seize control, by force, should there be a governmental collapse or civil war.

However, Rep. Shea sees nothing wrong with his manifesto calling for Biblical law and the execution of those who oppose it. In a Facebook Live video released earlier this week Shea defended his manifesto while making ridiculous claims that he is being persecuted and that the U.S. is really a Christian nation...

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2018/11/gop-lawmaker-ma...

*Biblical Basis for War (4 p)
http://ftpcontent.worldnow.com/khq/SHEAWAR.pdf

ETA___________________________________________________________________

AT&T, Washington Realtors seek Shea campaign refunds over ‘Biblical Basis for War’ manifesto
Nov. 1, 2018

Shea also has faced backlash from some of his own donors. The political arm of the Northwest Credit Union Association...The Washington Association of Realtors, AT&T, The Washington Hospitality Association...

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/nov/01/att-washington-realtors-seek-shea-c...

>4 margd:

We have one of those on our doorstep in East Africa. His name is Joseph Kony and his movement is the Lord's Resistance Army. Its manifesto is supposedly based on Old Testament law. Kony's reign of terror has lasted for decades across five or six nations and has been marked by killing, rape, mutilation, child soldiers, sex slaves, looting and other atrocities on a grand scale. He is an indicted war criminal and is recognised as an international terrorist. The USA sent troops to the region to try to hunt him down, but so far they have failed, and I think they might have packed up and gone home now.

It seems incredible that the USA is now spawning its own variant of Kony. Will US troops be used to hunt down the homegrown US clone?

One good outcome of Trump is that people like Shea are emboldened to reveal themselves...
His Biblical War manifesto reads a bit like Boko Haram strain of Muslim fundamentalists?

I think our conservative Christians have been visiting Africa, fomenting anti-homosexual attitudes?
The conservative minister who represents my gerrymandered district visited countries once part of USSR on similar mission.
I read that's useful to Putin because EU/NATO won't have members with anti-homosexual laws?

Rumor in Moscow is that US is on threshold of civil war...

"GOP lawmaker calls for Biblical law..." (4)

The Bible itself doesnʻt "call for Biblical law"! Peter, in fact. calls for obedience to secular rulers ("Honor the King.") Samuel,and Jesus did take a dim view of secular monarchy -- (of the native secular monarch Saul in Samuelʻs case and of rulers he didnʻt deign to name, in Jesusʻs case), but didnʻt offer the alternative of a scriptural monarchy

Church of Trump (Al Jazeera)

An insight into the Trump administration's relationship with the religious right and implications for US politics.

Apparently someone forgot to tell the Founding Fathers that we are a Christian nation. Those guys omitted from the U.S. Constitution mention of God, Jesus, Christianity, Sin, or the Bible. They even had the gall to write in Article VI that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

If only they had had the good luck to meet Rep. Shea and the people who thought it a good idea to elect him. They’d have made those heathens writing the Constitution toe the line.

Sheesh.

Reposted from another thread:

Hey GOP: You’re dead around here. Time to dump Trump, and look to the ‘Nones’ (Seattle Times)

Is Mike Pence Loyal? Trump Is Asking, Despite His Recent Endorsement
Maggie Haberman and Katie Rogers | Nov. 16, 2018

...Some of Mr. Trump’s evangelical supporters feel particularly strongly that making a (VP 2020) change would be a mistake.

“Mike Pence is an invaluable asset to President Trump politically, on shaping policy and personnel, and in cementing the epoxy-like bond with evangelicals,” said Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “He is also fiercely loyal, which is the coin of Trump’s realm. The president has said he plans to keep Pence, and that is an infinitely wise decision.”

But some who have studied evangelical voters and their political activity say losing Mr. Pence wouldn’t necessarily be a disaster.

Robert P. Jones, the chief executive of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, said that the president faced an “at best moderate risk” if he were to drop Mr. Pence from the ticket.

Mr. Jones said that while Mr. Pence may have served as a validating figure for white evangelicals, recent research showed that 7 out of 10 white evangelicals who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party would prefer Mr. Trump over any alternative Republican candidate in 2020.

A third of white evangelicals who support Trump, Mr. Jones said, indicated there was virtually nothing the president could do to shake their trust — which theoretically includes selecting a new running mate.

“At the end of the day evangelicals have become sold not just on Pence but on Trump himself,” Mr. Jones said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/mike-pence-trump-administration.h...

Diana Butler Bass @dianabutlerbass Follow Read on Twitter (https://twitter.com/dianabutlerbass/status/1066714267045511176)
A #SundayMorning thread:

Today is the final Sunday in the Christian year. Liturgical churches have adopted the custom of calling this day the Feast of Christ the King...

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1066714267045511176.html

Fr Conroy who survived effort to oust him under Paul Ryan just cast out spirits of darkness from the House of Congress:

House chaplain prays to cast 'spirits of darkness' from Congress
Daniel Burke | July 18, 2019

(CNN)You know things are bad in Congress when the chaplain's morning prayer on the House floor sounds like an exorcism...

... House Chaplain Pat Conroy’s opening prayer: "This has been a difficult and contentious week in which darker spirits seem to have been at play in the people's house. In Your most holy name, I now cast out all spirits of darkness from this chamber, spirits not from You."...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/politics/house-chaplain-demons/index.html

THIS is what bothers Evangelicals?? (Gnats. Elephants.)
I can see a D election ad consisting of bleeped out Trump utterances...
CAPs mine:

‘Using the Lord’s name in vain’: Evangelicals chafe at Trump’s blasphemy

A Trump-supporting West Virginia state senator who represents many evangelicals got three phone calls from constituents complaining about Trump’s profanity after a recent rally.
GABBY ORR | 08/12/2019

...Paul Hardesty...a Trump-supporting West Virginia STATE senator, a conservative DEMOCRAT who supports Trump...(constituents) were calling to complain that Trump was “using the Lord’s name in vain...The third phone call is when I actually went and watched his (N CAROLINA rally) speech because each of them sounded DISTRAUGHT” said Hardesty, who describes himself as a conservative Democrat.

Here’s what he would have seen. Trump crowing, “they'll be hit so GODDAMN hardd,” while bragging about bombing Islamic State militants. And Trump recounting his warning to a wealthy businessman: “If you don't support me, you're going to be so GODDAMN poor.”

To most of America, the comments went unnoticed. Instead, the nation was gripped after the rally by the moment when a “send her back” chant broke out as Trump went after Somali-born Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, an American citizen. But some Trump supporters were more fixated on the casual use of the word “GODDAMN” — an off-limits term for many Christians — not to mention the numerous other profanities laced throughout the rest of the speech.

...“I’ve had people come to me and say, ‘You know I voted for Trump, but if he doesn’t tone down the rhetoric, I might just stay home this time,’” Hardesty said in an interview, adding that he has yet to hear back from anyone inside the White House after urging the president in a formal LETTER to “reflect on your comments and never utter those words again.”

Coarse language is, of course, far from the president’s only behavior that might turn off the religious right. He’s been divorced twice, faced constant allegations of extramarital affairs, previously supported abortion rights and has stumbled when trying to discuss the specifics of religion, once saying “two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” Yet to this point, Trump has maintained broad support from evangelicals, including the unwavering backing of prominent conservative Christian leaders.

...One of the pastors said he was “appalled” by the president’s remarks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in March, in which he accused his political rivals of trying to run him out of office with “BULLSHIT” investigations and oversight actions. | “You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump boasted at the time. The rest of his speech was littered with cursing, as he promised to “keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of country” and throw undocumented immigrants “the HELL out.” | “I’m not going to get into private conversations, but I MADE SURE HE KNEW THAT TYPE OF RHETORIC IS UNACCEPTABLE. This was not just an event for adults,” said one of the pastors, who is close with several members of the Trump administration...“Carrying that type of language from behind the presidential seal is offensive.”

...Evangelicals are also more likely to vote than other demographic groups, and gravitate toward Republican candidates when they do. And in swing states like Florida, North Carolina and Michigan, evangelicals dominate the religious composition, eclipsing Catholics, mainline Protestants and other Christian denominations.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/12/trump-evangelicals-blasphemy-profanity...

The Immoral Majority review: how evangelicals backed Trump – and how they might atone (Guardian)

As a scandal-ridden presidency lurches towards impeachment, Ben Howe offers valuable insight into how it came to this...

Bringing Grievances to His Conservative Base, Trump Assails Impeachment Inquiry
Annie Karni | Oct. 12, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Saturday night took his post-impeachment message of grievance and political warfare directly to the religious right, telling a group of social conservatives that Democrats were trying to undo the results of the 2016 campaign and “stop our movement and impose their agenda by any means necessary.”

...At the event put on by the Family Research Council, Mr. Trump was introduced with a prayer for the Lord to “expose and reverse the plans of those who would hurt President Trump.”...

...he promised the audience that he would continue to defend religious liberty and that “we will win massive victories for family, faith — just like the victory we had in 2016.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/us/politics/trump-impeachment-values-voter.ht...

______________________________________________________________________

Students protested Barr's proposed appearance, which Notre Dame defended as free speech.
A few days ago Barr visited Rupert Murdoch, and two days later newsman Shep

Attorney General Barr Rages Against Secularist “Assault” on Religion
Barr blames society’s problems, including “a deadly drug epidemic,” on a lack of faith.
Pema Levy |10/12/2019

...In a speech at University of Notre Dame’s law school Friday, Barr blamed “secularists” and “so-called progressives” for wreaking havoc on American society. Barr’s depiction of a war between the non-religious and people of faith shocked legal experts, who saw Barr’s defense of religious freedom as an assault on the First Amendment’s protection against the government’s establishment of any religion.

“This is not decay,” Barr said. “This is organized destruction. Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion & traditional values.” (Barr spent years profiting off of these same industries he is attacking. He served as general counsel at Verizon for eight years, held a had a paid position on the board of Time Warner for nine, and represented telecoms giant GTE in the 1990s.)...

...legal experts reacted to Barr’s speech with dismay...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/10/attorney-general-barr-rages-against...

________________________________________________________________________

Pat Robertson: Trump Will Lose His ‘Mandate of Heaven’ if He Pulls Out of Syria
Justin Baragona | Updated 10.07.19

The ultra-conservative televangelist on Monday joined a growing chorus of Republican critics of Trump’s decision on Syria...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pat-robertson-trump-will-lose-his-mandate-of-heave...

'A threat to democracy': William Barr's speech on religious freedom alarms liberal Catholics
Philip Shenon | 10/20/2019

Prominent liberal Catholics have warned the US attorney general’s devout Catholic faith poses a threat to the separation of church and state, after William Barr delivered a fiery speech on religious freedom in which he warned that “militant secularists” were behind a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order”.

...C Colt Anderson, a Roman Catholic theologian and professor of religion at Jesuit-run Fordham University, said in an interview that he was unaware until this week that Barr was a fellow Catholic. Now, after reading the speech, Anderson believes the attorney general, in revealing his devotion to an especially conservative branch of Catholicism, is a “threat to American democracy”... a “dog whistle” to ultra-conservative Catholics who, he says, have aligned themselves to Donald Trump in a campaign to limit the rights of LGBTQ Americans, immigrants and non-Christians, especially Muslims, and to criminalize almost all abortions. “The attorney general is taking positions that are essentially un-Democratic” because they demolish the wall between church and state, Anderson said. (he was now concerned the attorney general intends to use his authority to put the United States on the path of increasingly authoritarian European nations like Poland, where democratically government leaders have cited their devout Catholicism to justify a crackdown on free speech and the purging of judges.)

... similar furor among some Catholics employees (of Justice Dept) who answer to Barr. “I was shocked by the speech and all this fire and brimstone,” said a senior department career official who considers himself a devout Catholic..."At least it helps me understand why Barr has been so willing to put his own reputation on the line to defend Trump so fiercely in every battle,” beginning with the congressional investigation that is likely to end in the president’s impeachment, he said. “Trump is Barr’s imperfect vessel in serving a much higher cause: the gospel.”

...The reaction to Barr’s address came as another Trump cabinet member, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, was drawing fire from civil liberties groups over the state department’s decision this week to promote his recent speech (to a meeting of the American Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville) titled Being a Christian Leader on the department’s online homepage...Americans United for Separation of Church and State said...the decision to promote Pompeo’s speech on the department’s official website sends “the clear message that US public policy will be guided by his personal religious beliefs”.

...a fact often overlooked in analysis of Trump’s political base – that while the president enjoys the support of many high-profile right-wing Christian evangelical leaders, he has also surrounded himself with conservative Roman Catholics associated with organizations that some others in the faith consider extreme.

...Barr and Patrick Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel, have both served on the board of directors of a Washington-based organization staffed by priests from the secretive, ultra-orthodox Catholic sect Opus Dei.

...in his Senate confirmation hearings in January ...Barr was not questioned in any detail...about his membership on the board of directors of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, the Opus Dei-linked group that offers as a meeting place for prominent Catholics in the capital.

The center’s board has also included Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, the right-wing legal group tasked by Trump to help him pick federal judges, including members of the supreme court. Leo led campaigns to support of the supreme court nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh, all of them Catholics, who now serve on the court.

...professor David Campbell, chairman of the (Notre Dame) university’s political science department...said...the attorney general was wrong in one of his central arguments: that so-called secularists, a term generally applied to people who want a strict separation between church and state, were a threat to the freedom of Catholics or others to worship as they please.

In fact, Campbell, who is just about to publish a book on the subject, said that opinion polls and other reliable scientific research showed that Americans who describe themselves as secularists are “quite supportive of the free exercise of religion, particularly when it comes to minority religions”. The attorney general and other conservative Catholics might believe that secularists are some sort of threat to their religious freedom, Campbell said, “But, the truth is, it’s a myth.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/threat-democracy-william-barrs-speech-060051908.html

Nothing Will Persuade White Evangelicals to Support Impeachment
Emma Green | Oct 21, 2019

New polling suggests that Trump’s base is totally unified behind the president, no matter what investigations might reveal.

...In mid-September, 94 percent of Republicans opposed impeachment. A month later—after the news about Trump’s fateful phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and after House Democrats formally launched an impeachment inquiry—their views are essentially unchanged. Even with these revelations, 93 percent of Republicans remained opposed to impeachment in mid-October, according to data released today from the Public Religion Research Institute. Of all Republican voters, two subgroups stand out for their unwavering support of Trump: those who primarily get their news from Fox, and white evangelical Christians...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/10/trump-white-evangelical-imp...

If only it would help...

https://twitter.com/minhtngo/status/1190059389899563008/photo/1
(Official White House Photo by Joyce Boghosian)

In wake of Christianity Today editorials:

What It Would Take for Evangelicals to Turn on President Trump
Michael Luo | December 23, 2019

...(D. Michael Lindsay, a former sociologist at Rice University and currently the president of Gordon College)’s focus is on documenting the emergence of the élite class of evangelicals. He devotes less attention to the root causes of differing cultural and political attitudes between cosmopolitan and populist evangelicals—though those causes may hold the key to understanding evangelicalism’s turn toward Trumpism. Earlier this year, James L. Guth, a political scientist at Furman University, published a study on the prevalence of populist traits among white evangelicals, including distrust of political institutions, preference for strong leadership, and commitment to majority rule. Guth finds that these qualities—characteristics that lead to support for populist leaders like Trump—permeate white evangelicalism. It is a disquieting conclusion and suggests that evangelical support for Trump may be far more deeply entrenched than previously understood. Guth suggests that evangelical backing of Trump is less transactional—about his ability to, say, deliver conservative appointments to the Supreme Court—and more about certain shared cultural beliefs. Guth writes that “white evangelicals share with Trump a multitude of attitudes, including his hostility towards immigrants, his Islamophobia, his racism and nativism, as well as his ‘political style,’ with its nasty politics and assertion of strong, solitary leadership.”

The crucial question, then, is: What is driving these attitudes? In a forthcoming book, “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” the sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead, a professor at Clemson University, and Samuel L. Perry, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, propose a cultural framework for understanding support for Trumpism that goes beyond religious categories. Through extensive survey work, they discover that an amalgam of cultural beliefs—fusing Christianity with American identity and centered on the belief that America is, and should be, a Christian nation—is a better predictor of support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction, political party, ideology, religion, or a host of other possible determining factors. Whitehead and Perry call this framework “Christian nationalism” and argue that the popularity of these beliefs among white evangelicals explains their support for Trump.

Notably, Whitehead and Perry find that about a quarter of white evangelicals hold beliefs that do not align with Christian nationalism. They also find that though greater religiosity is correlated with Christian-nationalist beliefs, once those beliefs are accounted for, Americans who engaged in more frequent religious practice—church attendance, prayer, and bible reading—were less likely than their less observant peers to subscribe to political views normally associated with Christian nationalism, such as believing that refugees from the Middle East pose a terrorist threat to the United States, or that illegal immigrants from Mexico are mostly dangerous criminals. In other words, Whitehead and Perry find that the threat to democratic pluralism is not evangelicalism itself but the culture around evangelicalism. The true motivator for Christian nationalists is not actually their religious beliefs but the preservation of a certain kind of social order, one that is threatened by racial minorities, immigrants, and Muslims. “Where Christian nationalists seek to defend particular group boundaries and privileges using Christian language, other religious Americans and fellow Christians who reject Christian nationalism tend to oppose such boundaries and privileges,” they write.

Their findings highlight serious obstacles for anyone hoping that white evangelicals will abandon Trump, but they also suggest a path forward. Within evangelicalism, cultural influence in the secular world is highly prized as part of advancing the message of Christianity. Christians concerned about Trumpism and worried about the future of their faith, however, may need to turn their focus inward, to reshape the culture of evangelicalism and counter the corrosive influence of Fox News and other demagogic forces that sow division and breed suspicion. Cultural change is daunting—much of what ails the evangelical faithful is not entirely under the control of their leaders—but the challenge is not so different from the one Graham contemplated more than sixty years ago, in the middle of the night, as he launched his movement to unify Christian believers and transform them into a positive force for society.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/what-it-would-take-for-evangelicals-t...

One surprisingly simple reason evangelicals love Trump
It’s his immigration policy.
Nicole Narea@nicolenarea | Dec 27, 2019, 8:10am EST

...Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan P. Burge: ...“white evangelicals...are incredibly conservative on immigration.”

...60,000 participants (were)...asked five different questions: whether they supported withholding federal funds from sanctuary states and cities; increasing border funding by $25 billion; detaining those who cross the border without authorization multiple times; ending a visa lottery program and family-based immigration, both of which have been the subject of President Donald Trump’s ire; and rolling back the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has offered deportation protection and work permits to over 700,000 young unauthorized immigrants since 2012.

Burge’s analysis, published Thursday, finds that on issues ranging from border security to immigration detention, white evangelicals — a group that includes dozens of individual denominations, from the Southern Baptist Convention to the Pentecostal movement — are substantially more conservative than the average American and even the next most conservative religious group.

...findings are in line with prior polling on evangelicals’ positions on immigration issues...

Evangelicals’ attitudes toward immigrants don’t seem to have much basis in religious scripture, as Tara Isabella Burton wrote for Vox:

The Bible contains numerous passages that seem to straightforwardly exhort care for the poor, immigrants, and refugees. Isaiah 10, for example, sees God excoriating those who “turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right.” In Matthew 25 (which a Methodist pastor quoted to Jeff Sessions Monday while protesting his speech), Jesus warns his followers that those who withhold care from the poor or the refugee — “the least of these” — are seen as having done it to Jesus himself. Plenty of other verses — Leviticus 19:33–34, Jeremiah 7:5–7, Ezekiel 47:22, Zechariah 7:9–10 — express similar sentiments.

But since at least the 1970s, American evangelicals have generally been reluctant to count immigrants among those the Bible calls on them to aid. Trump has further fueled that reluctance...

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/27/21038031/white-evangelicals-t...

____________________________________________________________________-

Just How Far Are White Evangelicals Out of the Mainstream? A Case Study of Immigration and Abortion
Ryan P. Burge, Eastern Illinois University | Dec 26, 2019

...This is not a group that is just to the right of center. As I’ve written before, white evangelicals are now three times further away politically from the average white person than they were in 1990. And, I have to believe that a lot of that recent movement has to do with immigration. It’s hard to call evangelicals anything other than extreme, when they are 25-30 points more likely to favor punitive measures toward sanctuary cities and giving a huge budget boost for border security. It’s often easy to think that we are the normal ones, and everyone else is crazy. The data is clear: white evangelicals hold to positions that are very much at odds with the average American and hope to isolate America from the rest of the world. If they are successful, their ability to follow the Great Commission and spread the message of Jesus to all nations is impaired.

https://religioninpublic.blog/2019/12/26/just-how-far-are-white-evangelicals-out...

Olivia Nuzzi (NY Magazine) @Olivianuzzi | 4:09 PM · Dec 28, 2019
...the President of the United States posted this on Instagram 17 hours ago

Image ( https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/1211031355875897346/photo/1 )

Trump bids to shore up evangelical support with visit to Miami megachurch (Guardian)

Donald Trump will be praying with the religious right at his first campaign event of 2020 in Miami on Friday, where his Evangelicals for Trump “coalition launch” will take place at a Hispanic megachurch in a clear attempt to shore up the support of one his most loyal voting blocs.

The rally was hastily put together in the wake of a blistering December editorial in Christianity Today calling for the “morally lost and confused” president’s removal from office. Stung by the criticism from an unexpected quarter, Trump attacked the influential Christian newspaper as a “far-left magazine”.

Yet in attempting to put out that fire by assembling dozens of evangelical leaders from across the nation to speak with and for him in Miami, Trump has ignited another controversy over immigration.

His choice of venue – a Hispanic church in the south of a city with the nation’s largest foreign-born population – angered activists already upset with his hardline immigration policies, such as terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program for so-called Dreamers, which the US supreme court will rule on this year, and placing immigrant children in cages at America’s southern border.

Even Guillermo Maldonado, the pastor of the King Jesus international ministry and Trump loyalist who has prayed with the president at the White House, felt the need to reassure concerned members of his congregation who were not legal immigrants that they would not be at risk of deportation if they attended...

In Miami Speech, Trump Tells Evangelical Base: God Is ‘on Our Side’
Jennifer Medina and Maggie Haberman | Jan. 3, 2020

MIAMI — In his first public appearance since the strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran, President Trump rallied his evangelical Christian base of supporters on Friday, portraying himself as the restorer of faith in the public square and claiming that God is “on our side.”...

8:34 PM · Jan 3, 2020

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ | 8:34 PM · Jan 3, 2020:
False. God is neither Republican nor Democrat.
Neither conservative nor liberal.
Neither American nor Iranian.
If God is on anyone's side, God is on the side of the poor.

The MAGA Church (2:43)
The Lincoln Project (https://lincolnproject.us/) | Jan 9, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoglNFN5-Js

_________________________________________________

John Weaver @jwgop | 52m:
We appreciate the courage of Billy Graham's granddaughter and welcome her. @ProjectLincoln

Quote Tweet
jerushah duford @jerushahruth · 58m
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” Matthew7:15.
Thank you @ProjectLincoln for this well done but heart breaking & scary video.
Church -lets do a better job representing Jesus. Who’s in?
https://twitter.com/jerushahruth/status/1215378196117557255

It's time to change the abortion debate in America
Patrick Carolan, Brian McLaren | Jan 9, 2020

...The current framing of the debate is wounding our nation and may in fact become our undoing, dividing us so deeply that in seeking to win elections, we lose our nation's soul.

...First, we would stop demonizing each other.

...Second, we must acknowledge that there aren't only two positions on abortion.

...Third, we must shift the debate from making abortion illegal to making abortion less and less necessary...

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/its-time-change-abortion-debate-america

Why was Franklin Graham schmoozing with a sanctioned Russian official this month (March 2019)?
Casey Michel | Mar 20, 2019

Graham described his meeting with one sanctioned Russian official as an "honor"—and claimed Mike Pence signed off on it.

...According to interviews in Russian media and photos on his own social media accounts, Graham, currently the chair of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, traveled to Moscow earlier this month to meet with a number of prominent Russian figures. Most notably, Graham had a sit-down meeting with Russian Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who is close to President Vladimir Putin and who has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2014 for his role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Per a captioned photo re-posted from the Duma Instagram account to Graham’s own Instagram account, the meeting with Volodin focused “on the current state of U.S.-Russia relations,” including “the possibility of intensifying contacts between the State Duma and the U.S. Congress.”

...Graham himself has a track record of praising the Kremlin, such as when he lauded Putin for “protecting Russian young people” via Moscow’s virulently anti-LGBTQ policies. He has previously called for the U.S. to “ally” with Russia in the “fight against Islamic terrorism,” and, in 2015, traveled to Russia to complain about former President Barack Obama “promoting atheism.”

During that 2015 trip, Graham met directly with Putin. It was around the same time that Russia began launching its social media interference operations, that Russian agent Maria Butina began infiltrating the highest ranks of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and shortly before Russian hackers stole Democratic emails that were then funneled to Wikileaks for public dissemination...

https://thinkprogress.org/why-was-franklin-graham-schmoozing-with-a-sanctioned-r...

Yikes: https://twitter.com/NightlyPolitics/status/1219111656455696384

Trump’s “spiritual adviser” Paula White:
“You need to send $35,000, you need to send $100,000 check.
If you don’t send the money, you’ll never see sustainment in your life and your dream will die”.

>28 margd: Trump spiritual advisor, Paula White, contd. "Satanic wombs"? Dems', no doubt... :(

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons @GuthrieGF | 6:10 PM · Jan 25, 2020
“We command all satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now” — Special Adviser to the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative Paula White

1:26 ( https://twitter.com/GuthrieGF/status/1221208783411650560 )
From Right Wing Watch

The disordered belief represented by these parking lot Christians is, unfortunately, not counteracted by legitimate churches.

>29 margd: That sounds as if she is praying for abortions. I thought evangelicals were against them.

SacuShi_II @True_McD |9:06 AM · Feb 15, 2020:

The Christian voice. Yeah...
Image ( https://twitter.com/True_McD/status/1228681949235044354/photo/1 )

ETA________________________________________________

James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ | 9:11 AM · Feb 15, 2020:

Gospel: How does Jesus deal with desperate people looking for food?

"If I send them away hungry to their homes," he says, "they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a great distance" (Mk 8).
He feeds them. He doesn't turn them away or blame them for being in need.

Image ( https://twitter.com/JamesMartinSJ/status/1228683301621288960/photo/1 )

Meet the evangelicals pushing back against Trump (Al Jazeera)

Activists are trying to convince fellow believers that President Donald Trump is unworthy of their adulation...

The president's behaviour... is so far out of synch with the teachings of Jesus Christ that they have a moral imperative to vote him out of office...

Majority of white evangelical Protestants in US believe Trump serves their interests (Guardian)

Almost two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants in the US believe “their side” is winning politically under the Trump administration, according to a new survey...

a big majority of white evangelical Protestants in the US – a key part of Trump’s electoral base – believed the president was good for their interests, but they had more mixed views on his personal attributes...

In general, 83% of white evangelicals identify with or lean towards the Republican party, the survey found. White evangelical Protestants form 16% of the US population...

I find it sad that so many Christians apparently believe that Christianity is about "their side" and "winning". I believe that Christianity is not about identity politics (and thus exclusivity), but about loving one's neighbour (and thus inclusivity).

Messaging from these guys--and the WH and Fox--will kill people this time...
They're a long way from early Christian practices (caring for one another) that actually saved more Roman Christians from plague c.f. their non-Christian neighbours: Darwin's Cathedral.

Trump and His Religious-Right Allies Continue To Send Mixed Messages on Coronavirus
Peter Montgomery | March 12, 2020

Religious-right leaders and media outlets have been sending mixed messages about the coronavirus pandemic. For some, it is a sign of God’s judgment or evidence that we are living in the End Times. And for others, it is something that has been blown out of proportion by media and politicians who will do anything to bring down President Donald Trump.

As Right Wing Watch has reported, some religious-right leaders have said that Christians should not give in to fear of the virus because God has given them supernatural healing power and protection from plagues. Some believe that God will spare Christians from the virus and that will become evidence of God’s power and a potent tool for evangelization. Evangelist Jonathan Shuttlesworth has mocked “loser” pastors who cancel services and said Christians should be holding mass gatherings to demonstrate the power of their faith. Organizers of two “prophetic” conferences scheduled for early April announced this week that the events will not be canceled...

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-and-his-religious-right-allies-continu...

___________________________________________________________________

Kenneth Copeland healed viewers of the coronavirus through their televisions last night.
(1:30 https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1238110096334479364 )

- Right Wing Watch @RightWingWatch 10:30 AM · Mar 12, 2020

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Full Interview: Preacher Kenneth Copeland Defends Lavish Lifestyle
Inside Edition • May 20, 2019

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland enjoys a life of luxury. He has his own airport next to his mansion in Newark, Texas, where he keeps his private jets. When Inside Edition’s Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Guerrero caught up with him in Branson, Missouri, he spoke to her at length about his lifestyle and why he says the jets are important to his ministry. “If I flew commercial, I’d have to stop 65% of what I’m doing," he said. Guerrero asked him about a previous comment he made saying he doesn’t fly commercial because he doesn’t “want to get into a tube with a bunch of demons.” “Do you really believe that human beings are demons?” she asked. “No, I do not and don’t you ever say I did,” Copeland responded as he pointed his finger at her. Watch Guerrero’s full interview above and see the investigation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZmGmGnkBVM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LtF34MrsfI

_____________________________________________________

ETA
How one Catholic parish is handling viral challenge:
https://www.dioceseoflansing.org/news/advisory-bishop-earl-boyea-re-coronavirus-...

e.g.,

...All Catholics within the Diocese of Lansing are dispensed from the grave obligation of attending Holy Mass on a Sunday. This applies to everybody and is particularly aimed at those groups most at risk from infection, including the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

...While we are not cancelling Sunday Masses, we will attempt to comply with the Governor’s new Executive Order limiting public gatherings to 250 souls.

...new guidelines apply to our Sunday Liturgy aimed at reducing the risk of viral transmission. These include the omission of the Sign of Peace via a handshake and the temporary cessation of Holy Communion via the chalice.

...Parishes should cancel any non-liturgical events that will attract over 250 people or any non-liturgical event that will see people gathered in a space without the appropriate social distancing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest a distance of six-feet in appropriate. As a practical example of this, our popular Lenten fish fries should become take-out only.

...Parishes should embrace the corporal work of mercy that is visiting the sick and attempt to ensure that parishioners who are self-isolating do not go without companionship, essential provisions and, most importantly, Holy Communion. *

* ETA--Darwin's Cathedral attributed this behavior as improving survival of early Christians during a Roman plague.

US Christian leaders criticise Trump’s Easter coronavirus deadline (Guardian)

US Christian leaders have criticised Donald Trump’s Easter coronavirus deadline – by which he wants to see much of the country reopened and churches full. One described it as the “height of hypocrisy”.

As US coronavirus cases and deaths continued to soar, the president said on Tuesday he wanted to reopen “large sections of the country” by Easter Sunday – 12 April – when there would be “packed churches all over our country”...

“It is the height of hypocrisy for Trump to suggest that Easter is a time to defy public health recommendations and ‘reopen’ America,” said pastor and activist the Rev William J Barber II.

“Jesus challenged oppression and cared for the poor, while Trump ignored the pandemic of poverty and tragically dismissed intelligence about the coronavirus. We need a resurrection of Jesus’s concern for the most vulnerable, not a capitulation to corporate greed that could cost millions of lives.”

The Rev Al Sharpton said that if Trump was going to use biblical language, the president “needs to know the whole Easter story”. “You cannot get to Easter Sunday without first going through the crucifixion on Friday. A crucifixion precedes the resurrection, Mr President, and we have not even got up Calvary’s mountain yet to the crucifixion, we just have the cross on our back”...

The Rev Laura Everett, a pastor and executive director of Massachusetts Council of Churches, told of her anger with Trump. “Still fuming about Trump co-opting Easter for capitalism,” she tweeted. “Are his Christian followers going to follow him down this path? Do you not remember how Lent begins, when the devil takes Jesus to the heights of the city and shows him all the glittery things ‘if you but worship me?’”

Christianity Today published a critical editorial following Trump’s comments in which it warned that even with good hygiene and physical distancing, congregating during a pandemic “mars our witness”...

In the Catholic church, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles tweeted on Tuesday night, after the president’s announcement, that all its churches would remain closed until “at least” 19 April – a week after Trump’s suggested deadline... The Archdiocese of New York, which includes St Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, said it would celebrate Holy Week and Easter Sunday via live stream or broadcast.

Bishop Michael Curry, who gave the sermon at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, has recommended the suspension of in-person public services in the Episcopal church – including during Holy Week – and encouraged people to worship online...

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland takes on SARS-CoV-2:

1:37 ( https://twitter.com/theJeremyVine/status/1244579281331773441 )
1:10 ( https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1246466629808066561 )

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kenneth Copeland: The Holy Spirit Is Guiding ‘King’ Trump Through the Coronavirus Crisis
Kyle MantylaBy Kyle Mantyla | March 30, 2020
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/kenneth-copeland-the-holy-spirit-is-guiding-...

Kenneth Copeland Net Worth: Evangelist Is Richest Pastor In The World
Ernesto Soliven | 04/03/20
https://www.ibtimes.com/kenneth-copeland-net-worth-evangelist-richest-pastor-wor...

Trump’s Good Friday tweet shows his ignorance about Christianity (Washington Post)

Anyone who has ever attended a Good Friday service knows it is not a joyous holiday. The “good” nomenclature dates back centuries to its use as a synonym for “holy,” and the day is perhaps the most somber and sorrowful one in the Christian calendar, commemorating Jesus’ crucifixion by Roman authorities and the day his followers believed they had lost their teacher and friend forever.

Wishing someone a happy Good Friday is like saying “Happy Pearl Harbor Day!” or “Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Day!” It demonstrates a recognition that a day is important but without grasping the significance. That was why, even by his own standards, President Trump’s tweet commemorating one of the holiest days of the year for most Christians was jarring. “HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY TO ALL!” read the message, written on the president’s iPhone in his signature all-caps-and-an-exclamation-point style.

For a president who enjoys a high amount of support from white conservative evangelical Christians, Trump has displayed a remarkable unfamiliarity with Christian practice and language and has shown little desire to learn more about the faith of his most ardent followers...

It looks like the erosion in Trump's hard-core base is very real.
His favorability has dropped 11 points among white evangelicals, from 77% in March to 66% now.
It's dropped 12 points among noncollege whites, from 66% to 54% now.

New @PRRIpoll:
https://prri.org/research/president-trumps-favorability-ratings-recede-from-marc... *
Image ( https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1256178342052626432/photo/1 )

- Greg Sargent @ThePlumLineGS | 7:07 AM · May 1, 2020

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
*
President Trump’s Favorability Ratings Recede from March’s Peak
PRRI Staff | 04.30.2020

...Religious Groups

Trump’s favorability ratings have retreated back to 2019 levels among most demographic groups, with a few exceptions. Currently, two-thirds (66%) of white evangelical Protestants, nearly half (48%) of white Catholics, and 44% of white mainline Protestants hold a favorable view of Trump, a significant decline from their March 2020 ratings (77%, 60%, and 62%, respectively). Among nonwhite Protestants, Trump’s favorability ratings have not significantly changed (from 40% in March to 36% in April 2020).3 The same is true for religiously unaffiliated Americans. Nearly four in ten (37%) religiously unaffiliated Americans express favorable views of Trump, and these numbers have not changed notably since 2019.

Among all white Christians, there is a divide based on living in counties below or above the median number of coronavirus cases. White Christians in less affected counties are more likely than those in more affected counties to say they view Trump favorably (63% vs. 50%). There is no such difference among other religious groups. (see graph at link)...

https://prri.org/research/president-trumps-favorability-ratings-recede-from-marc...

Pastor Paula White-Cain, White House Spiritual Advisor:
"I declare divine intervention and supernatural turnaround. You will restore this land."

0:40 ( https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1258556471119187968 )

- The Hill @thehill | 8:37 PM · May 7, 2020

“An Abuse of Sacred Symbols”: Trump, a Bible, and a Sanctuary
Evan Osnos | June 2, 2020
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/an-abuse-of-sacred-symbols-trump-a-...

(margd: To give him credit, VP Pence was not in Trump's procession to photo-op at St. John's Church.)
___________________________________________________

'He Did Not Pray': Fallout Grows From Trump's Photo-Op At St. John's (Episcopal) Church
Bill Chappell | June 2, 2020

...(Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington) "He used violent means to ask to be escorted across the park into the courtyard of the church...He held up his Bible after speaking an inflammatory militarized approach to the wounds of our nation...He did not pray...He did not offer a word of balm or condolence to those who are grieving. He did not seek to unify the country, but rather he used our symbols and our sacred space as a way to reinforce a message that is antithetical to everything that the person of Jesus, whom we follow, and the gospel texts that we strive to emulate ... represent."

...Budde says her diocese had no warning of Monday's visit. "There was no reaching out, no sense that it would require some sort of authorization before using the church as a backdrop in that way"...

The president had used the Bible, and her church, as a prop, she said. "I was outraged that he felt that he had the license to do that, and that he would abuse our sacred symbols and our sacred space in that way"...

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/02/867705160/he-did-not-pray-fallout-grows-from-trum...
___________________________________________________

Ahead of Trump Bible photo op, police forcibly expel priest from St. John’s church near White House
Jack Jenkins | June 2, 2020

...Authorities also expelled at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church’s patio.

“They turned holy ground into a battleground,” said the Rev. Gini Gerbasi.

Gerbasi, who serves as rector at a different St. John’s Episcopal Church, in nearby Georgetown, arrived at St. John’s Lafayette earlier that day with what she said were at least 20 other priests and a group of laypeople. They were organized by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington to serve as a “peaceful presence in support of protesters.”

The volunteers and clergy offered water, snacks and hand sanitizer to demonstrators who were gathered in Lafayette Park across the street — which sits directly in front of the White House — to denounce racism and police brutality after the death of Floyd.

But sometime after 6 in the evening, when volunteers were packing up supplies, Gerbasi said police suddenly began to expel demonstrators from the park — before the 7 p.m. curfew announced for Washington residents earlier in the day.

“I was suddenly coughing from the tear gas,” she said. “We heard those explosions and people would drop to the ground because you weren’t sure what it was.”

The Rev. Glenna J. Huber, rector of the Church of the Epiphany, another downtown Washington church, was at St. John’s but left as the National Guard arrived. She said she watched as police rushed into the area she had just fled. Concerned, the priest sent a frantic email to clergy at the church urging them to be careful.

Back at St. John’s, Gerbasi said she was dressed in clerical garb and standing on church grounds as police approached.

“I’m there in my little pink sweater in my collar, my gray hair up in a ponytail, my reading glasses on, and my seminarian who was with me — she got tear gas in her eyes,” she said.

Gerbasi said that as she and the seminarian watched, police began to expel people from the church patio.

“The police in their riot gear with their black shields and the whole bit start pushing on to the patio of St. John’s Lafayette Square,” she said, adding that people around her began crying out in pain, saying they had been shot with nonlethal projectiles.

Gerbasi and others eventually fled the scene, leaving emergency medical supplies behind. By the time she reached K Street several blocks away and checked her phone, Trump was already in front of the church holding a Bible.

“That’s what it was for: to clear that patio so that man could stand in front of that building with a Bible,” said Gerbasi...

...Asked what she would tell Trump if given the chance, Gerbasi said: “You want to be living your life by the words in that book (the Bible), not toting it around as a photo opportunity.”

The priest later posted about her experience on Facebook, concluding her account with the defiant decree “I am now a force to be reckoned with.”

https://religionnews.com/2020/06/02/ahead-of-trump-bible-photo-op-police-forcibl...
___________________________________________________

Hopefully without flash bangs, teargas, and rubber bullets, on to a Catholic shrine...

.@WashArchbishop Gregory has released a statement* on the president's visit to the Saint John Paul II National Shrine.
Image ( https://adw.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/060220-ADW-Press-Release.pdf )
- DC Archdiocese @WashArchdiocese | 11:15 AM · Jun 2, 2020

*Here is a statement from Washington Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory regarding the planned visit today from the president at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine:

I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree. Saint Pope John Paul II was an ardent defender of the rights and dignity of human beings. His legacy bears vivid witness to that truth. He certainly would not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter or intimidate them for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace.

I think Mr and Mrs Trump before the altar at https://www.jp2shrine.org?
(Photographer behind the altar?)

This is the weirdest photo op of all time. How does it make you feel?
Image ( https://twitter.com/clairecmc/status/1268227282390462465/photo/1 )
Claire McCaskill clairecmc | 1:05 PM · Jun 3, 2020

42, contd.

Trump’s Bible photo op splits white evangelical loyalists into two camps
Matthew Teague | Thu 4 Jun 2020

Ardent supporters saw the photo op as a blow against evil while others saw the gesture as cynical and a ploy

...Trump can’t afford to lose evangelicals, even by the handful. A record 81% of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016, and he only narrowly won the presidency, sometimes by just a few thousand votes in crucial areas. His gesture with the Bible outside St John’s was meant to shore up that support, reminding his base of a tacit agreement.

“It’s a contract between him and evangelical voters,” (John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College), said. In exchange for their ballots, he said, Trump has packed the courts, including the supreme court, with conservative judges who agree with them on social issues.

...Fea said it was unclear what happens next: whether evangelicals will stay by Trump, or make a significant split. But whatever happens, he said, is unlikely to be peaceful.

“Here’s a good rule of thumb,” he said. “Looking back through history, whenever you see someone in authority using the Bible to justify law and order, it ends badly.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/04/trumps-bible-photo-op-splits-whi...

'He wears the armor of God': evangelicals hail Trump's church photo op

The president’s appeal to his base amid protests was derided by some Christians. Others saw a victory in a world of evil...

Seems his stunt has been roundly condemned by what most of the world thinks of as mainstream Christians - Anglican/Episcopalian, Catholic, etc - but found support amongst evangelicals. Mind you, in the USA, I suppose evangelicals are mainstream.

43, contd.

Twitter pounded the Knights of Columbus for opening St John Paul II shrine for photo op--Knights must have some authority over the shrine?

One person noted that crucifix on altar had been turned around for the photo.

Oh nice (NOT!): CatholicVote.org, which petitioned the Supreme Court re Little Sisters for the Poor fight with ACA and which recently distributed pamphlet "The Democrats' WAR on Catholics" (its emphasis) as part of its "2020 Election Project", features photo of the Trumps on its website--in front of a huge statue of benevolent JP2...

I read somewhere that this visit was long planned in connection with an executive order supporting religious liberty throughout the world, but I saw no confirmation elsewhere(?)

Bible, altar, saint...

>46 margd:

The Knights of Columbus are notorious within the Catholic Church for being extremely conservative. I've met Catholics in the USA who support Trump. I have to say that of all the US Catholics that I know, the Trump supporters are a tiny minority, but then the ones I know are generally likely to be of the more progressive variety, so it's not a representative sample.

>47 John5918: Would you were correct about Trump support among US Catholics. If a tiny minority, they sure make their presence known...

Found the executive order on White House page:

Executive Order on Advancing International Religious Freedom
Issued on: June 2, 2020
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-advancing-intern...

>48 margd:

No, I have to admit it's not a tiny minority of US Catholics in general, only a tiny minority of the few hundred US Catholics that I know personally. I suspect it's a much more significant percentage of US Catholics in general, and as you say, they are a particularly vocal and visible mob, pretty media-savvy. The vast number of US Catholics who are serving the poor, working for social justice, helping immigrants, doing humanitarian work at home or overseas, don't get much publicity, but then they're not looking for publicity, just trying to get the job done.

A flyer from a Catholic parish in New York state:

Circle the City with LOVE - Stand Against Racism

Standing in solidarity against Racism our Parish... invites you to circle the city with LOVE. Together, we wish to unite as faithful Catholics on Thursday, June 4th, between 6:30 - 7:00 pm with religious leaders and government officials... along with the... Police Department. We will conclude with the big clap and the ringing of our church bells for all Essential Workers. As a parish, we invite you to gather at 6:15 pm in front of the convent next to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church... Please note: Masks will be required. Following the directives on social distancing, we will stand six feet apart. Please consider this simple gesture of solidarity.

The flyer also makes reference to bible verses on justice and love (Deuteronomy 16:20 and Leviticus 19:18) and mentions that other religious leaders and the Mayor are joining them.

Interview with Katherine Stewart author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

The Power Worshippers: A look inside the American religious right
An insight into the history and present of Christian nationalism, the movement behind Donald Trump's religious support.
Paul Rosenberg | 2 Jun 2020

...She argues - echoing Karen Armstrong's argument about the nature of fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam - that (Christian nationalism) is not premodern, as both adherents and critics commonly assume.

It is, in fact, modern in its methods and doctrines, which "notwithstanding their purported origins in ancient texts have been carefully shaped to serve the emotional needs of its adherents, the organisational needs of its clerical leaders, and the political needs and ambitions of its funders".

Stewart is hardly alone in writing about Christian nationalism, but this formulation of how it fits together as a powerful power-seeking movement is uniquely clarifying, and provided the starting point for this interview with her...

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/power-worshippers-american-religious-...

Fake news paid for by a so-called Christian group:

Tennessee newspaper runs full-page ad claiming ‘Islam’ will detonate nuclear bomb in Nashville (Independent)

Tennessee’s largest newspaper has announced an investigation into its own misconduct after it published an anti-Muslim advertisement this weekend warning that “Islam” would soon detonate a nuclear bomb over Nashville.

The advertisement that appeared in The Tennessean on Sunday also claimed that Donald Trump was “the final president of the USA”, illustrated with a picture of the US president and Pope Francis.

Fringe Christian association Future for America paid for the advert, which warned about an “Islamic” nuclear attack on Nashville... Jeff Pippenger, a ‘speaker' of the Ministry of Future for America, told The New York Times the group expected a full refund and that, “I stand by all the content in the ad.”

A church in Arizona is holding a political rally today that benefits one politician and one political party - it's past time to admit the farce that they are removed politically and make them pay taxes.
- Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule | 8:56 PM · Jun 23, 2020·Twitter Web App

IRS regulation prohibits political campaign activity by charities and churches by defining a 501(c)(3) organization as one "which does not participate in, or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office."
- Lisa Gerrish @GerrishLisa · 12h

OhhSherri @Mikells_Mom · 11h
Not anymore. Trump used an executive order back in 2017, that allows churches to support a candidate of a certain party without losing their tax exempt status. Like Bolton said, every decision, including executive orders, is done based on helping him getting reelected.

The church was allegedly rented by the group, Students for Trump. The church claims they didn't know it was rented for a Trump rally.
- Wrath of Dawn @Dawn_Koontz · 12h

________________________________________

And in this church, Trump did not wave the Bible.
He insulted Asians (kung flu), blacks (punks), and Hispanics (rapists)?
W.W.J.D.?

Just received a large envelope from "Catholic Vote", which included a very leading "survey" with a picture of Trump, Reagan and St John Paul v sketchy composite of Biden, Schumer, Pelosi and Rep Omar... How did this group get my address, I wonder? How many people will assume it's a legitimate mailing from the RC Church?

__________________________________________

The man who uses Christianity as a prop says he’s never asked God for forgiveness.
1:48 ( https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1276171797864603650 )
- The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln | 11:14 AM · Jun 25, 2020

US election 2020: Trump says opponent Biden will 'hurt God' (BBC)

US President Donald Trump has said Joe Biden is "against God", ramping up attacks on his Democratic rival and foreshadowing an ugly election battle...

"He's against God. He's against guns," said the president, a Republican.

Mr Biden, an avowed Catholic, will take on Mr Trump in November...

Hm. Conflating God and guns in the same breath. Christians might also wish to notice that Biden is by all accounts a practising Catholic, whereas Trump appears to have no religious convictions except that Christianity is a useful campaigning tool for him.

My Statement on Faith
Joe Biden | Aug 6, 2020

Like so many people, my faith has been the bedrock foundation of my life: it’s provided me comfort in moments of loss and tragedy, it’s kept me grounded and humbled in times of triumph and joy. And in this moment of darkness for our country — of pain, of division, and of sickness for so many Americans — my faith has been a guiding light for me and a constant reminder of the fundamental dignity and humanity that God has bestowed upon all of us.

For President Trump to attack my faith is shameful. It’s beneath the office he holds and it’s beneath the dignity the American people so rightly expect and deserve from their leaders. However, like the words of so many other insecure bullies, President Trump’s comments reveal more about him than they do about anyone else. They show us a man willing to stoop to any low for political gain, and someone whose actions are completely at odds with the values and teachings that he professes to believe in.

My faith teaches me to love my neighbor as I would myself, while President Trump only seeks to divide us. My faith teaches me to care for the least among us, while President Trump seems to only be concerned about his gilded friends. My faith teaches me to welcome the stranger, while President Trump tears families apart. My faith teaches me to walk humbly, while President Trump teargassed peaceful protestors so he could walk over to a church for a photo op.

As I’ve said so many times before, we’re in the battle for the soul of our nation, and President Trump’s decision today to profane God and to smear my faith in a political attack is a stark reminder of what the stakes of this fight truly are.

https://medium.com/@JoeBiden/my-statement-on-faith-265fae90511d

>56 margd:

Thanks. That's a powerful statement.

Jerry Falwell Jr to take leave of absence after racy photo (BBC)

The president of one of the world's largest evangelical Christian colleges has agreed to step aside after posting a photo of himself, trousers unzipped. Jerry Falwell, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, said he would take an indefinite leave of absence from Liberty University in Virginia...

>58 John5918: It got weirder, apparently...but I don't want to read past headlines.

_____________________________________________

@297_Aruba_Lover_Jo_Anne @297_ArubaLover | 5:52 PM · Aug 24, 2020:
DT/45 supporters are sharing this on FB.
I don't have the desire to tell them than the man cloaked in white is Charles Manson.
Image ( https://twitter.com/297_ArubaLover/status/1298015402837118987 )

The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln | 3:50 PM · Aug 26, 2020
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.

Matthew 7:15
1:08 ( https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1298709365449355270 )
From George Conway

“We thank you that you chose to answer her prayers to you through a great president named Donald Trump. A great leader who, yes, believes in law and order, he believes in justice, but he also believes in mercy.”

0:55 ( https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1299431606126620672 )
From Aaron Rupar

- Aaron Rupar @atrupar | 3:40 PM · Aug 28, 2020

Evangelicals are looking for answers online. They’re finding QAnon instead.
How the growing pro-Trump movement is preying on churchgoers to spread its conspiracy theories.
Abby Ohlheiser | August 26, 2020

...Around a quarter of American adults identify themselves as evangelical Protestants, including parts of the Baptist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian denominations. This makes evangelicalism larger than any other religious stream in the US, including Catholicism or mainline Protestantism. But although QAnon has always carried religious overtones, its rising presence in evangelical circles is a relatively new development. In late February, the last time Pew Research polled American adults on QAnon, just 2% of white evangelical Protestants said they’d heard a lot about it, and another 16% said they knew just a little.

Kristen Howerton, a writer and family therapist who grew up evangelical, says that she began seeing more QAnon-related content from evangelical friends on Facebook about a year ago. Some were talking about Q, repeating and promoting the core tenets of the conspiracy theory. Many others, she guessed, didn’t know the totality of the QAnon beliefs, or even that the reason they were being exposed to the conspiracy theory was its vast social-media network. But they knew they agreed with what they were hearing—that liberals were evil, and that Trump was going to stop them—and they found that good enough reason to share QAnon’s ideas on their own social feeds, helping them spread.

“These are not the people who were spending time on 4chan or 8chan four years ago,” Howerton says. “They’re getting their info from other Facebook posts. It’s not a primary-source crowd.”

This is why social media makes such a great mission field for QAnon. Facebook and Twitter give its evangelists the easiest and best chance of reaching new people with their message (or more mainstream-friendly versions of it)—powered by the platforms’ recommendation algorithms, which are designed to show people things they’re likely to have an affinity for.

The platforms have started trying to dampen the influence of QAnon, particularly after it began to intersect with pandemic conspiracy theories. Facebook shut down hundreds of QAnon pages and accounts last week after an internal study revealed that QAnon-associated groups had millions of members, while Twitter has banned thousands of accounts for “coordinated harmful activity.”

Some say it’s too late. QAnon has manipulated Twitter hashtags and been amplified by the president, who has retweeted QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts more than 200 times. It also has its own celebrities, a kind of priest class of influencers with YouTube channels and Patreons who promise to show their fans the way. Among them is David Hayes, “the Praying Medic,” whom the Atlantic called “one of the best-known QAnon evangelists on the planet.” In one recent video, he told his 379,000 YouTube subscribers, “The movement that Q has started is drawing a lot of people to consider God.”

Another popular QAnon influencer, Blessed2Teach, whose followers are known as “Christian Patriots,” recently told them in a YouTube livestream that “the cabal spends more money trying to infiltrate pastors than anything,” and that “many many of the megachurches have taken cabal funding.” As The Conversation noted in May, there are pastors who have begun bringing QAnon into their Zoom sermons. And Frailey, the Oklahoma pastor, found that even though many colleagues in the Facebook group where he had posted were worried about the spread of QAnon in their churches, others defended it...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/26/1007611/how-qanon-is-targeting-evang...

Jerry Falwell Jr.'s fatal miscalculation (CNN)

In recent years he has tweeted racist photos and told students that if more people carried guns "we could end those Muslims before they walk in." He has called a parent concerned about coronavirus on campus a "dummy" and told a pastor to "grow a pair." He has posted pictures from a party on a yacht suggesting activities that would violate his own school's honor code. And he has fervently supported Donald Trump, comparing him to Jesus and excusing all-manner of un-Christlike behavior...

A non-toxic election resource from within the Catholic family, as an antidote to some of the toxic stuff coming from some so-called Christian circles:

2020 U.S. Election Briefs: Faithful Voting and Global Concerns

The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns offers a series of two-page briefs and webinars on global issues to help voters prepare for the 2020 U.S. elections... the Faithful Voting and Global Concerns series uses the See-Judge-Act Method of pastoral-theological social analysis. Through this method, people of faith are invited to see, or observe a situation or issue at hand, particularly as it is experienced by the most marginalized or vulnerable; judge, or seek to understand the situation in light of their faith, through attention to Scripture and Church teaching; and act, or respond to the call to help build God's kingdom in that particular context...

It contains sections on Nuclear Disarmament, Welcoming Refugees, Climate Change, Sanctions, U.S. Immigration Policy, U.S. Trade Policy ("Putting People and Planet First"), Peacebuilding and Food Security.

In new book, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen describes alleged episodes of racism and says president likes how Putin runs Russia
Ashley Parker and Rosalind S. Helderman | September 5, 2020 at 8:26 p.m. EDT

...Cohen writes that before winning the presidency, Trump held a meeting at Trump Tower with prominent evangelical leaders, where they laid their hands on him in prayer. Afterward, Trump allegedly said: “Can you believe that bulls--t? Can you believe people believe that bulls--t?”

“The cosmic joke was that Trump convinced a vast swathe of working-class white folks in the Midwest that he cared about their well-being,” Cohen writes. “The truth was that he couldn’t care less.”...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cohen-trump-book/2020/09/05/235aa10a-ef9...

-------------------------------------------------------

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/...

https://twitter.com/Debora46882624/status/1302419983851499520/photo/1

Holy Joe: How Catholic is Biden? (Tablet)

On Ash Wednesdays, Joe Biden’s forehead carries a tell-tale smudge. If he wins in November, he will be the second Catholic President of the United States, after John F. Kennedy. Yet his pro-choice position aggravates those who see abortion as the pre-eminent issue in public life...

The Republican National Con­vention last month saw legendary Notre Dame football coach, Lou Holtz, claim that former Vice President Joe Biden and politicians like him are “Catholics in name only”. Fr John Jenkins, president of the university, not only disassociated Notre Dame from Holtz’s remarks, but chastised the former coach. “We Catholics should remind ourselves that while we may judge the objective moral quality of another’s actions, we must never question the sincerity of another’s faith, which is due to the mysterious working of grace in that person’s heart,” Jenkins said...

people who know Biden know that he takes his faith very seriously... If you were a Washington Catholic during the Obama years, you knew that the Bidens sometimes went to Mass at Holy Trinity, the Jesuit parish in Georgetown, and that sometimes, if Biden was getting home late from a trip, a priest would be dispatched from the Vatican nunciature across the street from his residence to say Mass. He was famous for “working his beads” in the White House Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. When interviewed on Ash Wednesday, the tell-tale smudge of ashes was always on his forehead... “I’ve seen him at Mass several times, seen the rosary in his pocket. More importantly I’ve heard the sincerity in his voice when he talks about his faith – away from the cameras, away from reporters. It’s the real deal, believe me”...

"Save the children" (from trafficking) is compelling hook into world of shadowy, sometimes violent, conspiracy:

With #SaveTheChildren Rallies, QAnon Sneaks Into The Offline World (23:20)
Aug 26, 2020

This past weekend, more than 200 cities saw modest events organized by believers in the dangerous conspiracy theory.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm

_______________________________________________

Related?

"The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate for.
Dave Barnhart | June 20, 2018

Image ( https://twitter.com/3nigmatic_01/status/1304995203275661314/photo/1 )

>67 margd:

"Save the Children" is of course also the name of a very respectable international aid agency which works all over the world to improve the lot of children.

>68 John5918: Right. STC is also supported by Bill Gates? Dunno how one would sue QAnon, who or whatever it is (GRU?), but apparently it's moved on to "save OUR children" and other such permutations. An appeal to kind motives and familiar words that leads the unwary down the rabbit hole...

Trump’s overtures struggle to register with religious voters
ABBY ORR | 09/10/2020

While it’s unlikely Joe Biden will pull in a majority of Catholic or evangelical voters on Election Day, President Donald Trump could find himself in serious jeopardy if the Democratic nominee shaves off even a couple percentage points in his support among white evangelicals and CatholicsG 04:30 AM EDT

...Months after worries first exploded inside the Trump campaign over his eroding support among white evangelicals and Roman Catholics, some of the president’s top religious allies are now in a panic — concerned that Joe Biden’s attentiveness to Christian voters, whom Democrats largely ignored in 2016, is having an impact where the president can least afford it.

One prominent evangelical leader close to the White House said Biden’s policy positions on abortion and religious freedom, which would normally spoil how some religious voters view the Democratic presidential nominee, have been overshadowed by the contrast between the former vice president’s palpable faith and Trump’s transactional view of religion. Another chided Trump for his “cold response” to the nationwide reckoning over systemic racism, claiming the president’s law-and-order messaging has given Biden an opening to connect with churchgoing Americans who are accustomed to calls for courage and justice...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/10/trump-religious-voters-411248

Vote Common Good* @VoteCommon · 12:34 PM · Sep 22, 2020:

It’s time to stand up, step forward, and VOTE for change on Election Day.
As the rev. Billy Graham said, “This may be the last moment that you’ll ever have. And NOW is the moment.”
Are you ready to rise to this moment? Learn more at http://votecommongood.com
1:00 ( https://twitter.com/VoteCommon/status/1308444575736958976 )

* We are flipping the White House from fear to faith for the common good because of our faith. Will you join us?

The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln | 6:29 PM · Oct 8, 2020:

That's some holy sh*t.
1:00 ( https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1314332229875593216 )

_____________________________________

Wale Gates @walegates | 2:46 AM · Oct 9, 2020:

To which Paula replies....
1:00 ( https://twitter.com/walegates/status/1314457195455614978 )

Faith leaders back Biden in sign that evangelical support for Trump is waning (Guardian)

More than 1,600 faith leaders in the US have publicly backed Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate in next month’s presidential election, amid signs that some evangelical voters are turning away from Donald Trump. The Biden endorsements mainly come from Catholics, evangelicals and mainline Protestants...

And an interesting reflection from the Catholic America Magazine on how the US political culture wars play out within the Catholic Church:

Anti-Catholicism is real—and it’s turning Catholics against one another

Can Catholics be real Americans? This question has vexed many of us since 1776... Some Catholics have pushed back against this narrative, however... much that passes for “anti-Catholicism” today is political theater. It is predictable, scripted outrage. But it is trading on a very real history that serves to divide Catholics...

Divisions between U.S. Catholics mean some actions will count as “anti-Catholic” to some Catholics and not others. Phrased differently: Some actions are intended to mobilize only some Catholics. Massimo Faggioli has recently called this “cafeteria anti-Catholicism.” Perhaps anti-Catholicism was originally meant to divide Catholics from “real Americans.” But now its primary effect seems to be to divide Catholics against themselves... This is where we get at the heart of today’s controversies... U.S. Catholics are virtually indistinguishable “from the general population in terms of their political behavior, including their pathologies”...

And who benefits from this arrangement? Not Catholics. It is rather the guardians of the two-party status quo who are all too happy to secure their respective shares of the Catholic vote. As the Canadian theologian Brett Salkeld noted, “How convenient that both parties can take for granted that their Catholic members will put so much time into justifying their own political compromises and vilifying those of their neighbors that little is left for challenging the parties themselves with the message of the Gospel!”...

Antiabortion groups say they stand behind Trump's use of a drug tested on cells derived from an aborted fetus because the president 'was not involved with that abortion'
Julia Naftulin | Oct 9, 2020

An antibody cocktail President Trump received for his COVID-19 treatment was tested using stem cells derived from a fetus that was aborted in 1972 in the Netherlands.

Antiabortion organizations have spoken out against the use of these stem cells, which have been lab-engineered and duplicated, to test vaccines. Trump has also restricted use of these stem cells in research.

Three leaders of antiabortion organizations told Insider that though the testing wasn't ethical, they stood behind Trump's decision.

One said Trump has been "sensational on the life issues."...

https://www.businessinsider.com/anti-abortion-groups-dont-mind-trump-drug-tested...

>74 margd: "sensational on the life issues"

Which actually means "sensational" on the single issue of abortion only, not on all the other issues which most of us would argue are part of respect for life, eg death penalty, war, extrajudicial execution, small arms and light weapons in the hands of civilians, family planning in general, poverty reduction, health care which is accessible to everyone, taking COVID-19 seriously, etc, etc...

Billy Graham's grand daughter on voting:

Vote Common Good @VoteCommon | 12:40 PM · Oct 16, 2020:
Voting for a Republican is not as important as listening to that Spirit inside of you. I
It’s okay to go against what you’ve always done.

We don’t have to give an account for what we do in the voting booth to anyone but the Lord.
Character is what we do when nobody is watching.

1:45 ( https://twitter.com/VoteCommon/status/1317143276483477511 )

Why Christians Should Dump Trump
Matt Kaufman | October 25, 2020

I spent years working for a conservative Christian organization (Focus on the Family, founded by James Dobson). But I believe that supporting Trump damages the country—and Christianity, too...

https://thebulwark.com/why-christians-should-dump-trump/

Shared by a US Catholic priest today, Wednesday,  November 4, 2020 (link):

A Call to Be One

I return once again to the prophetic words of Sister Joan Chittister who calls us to make an unflinching commitment to act with integrity—out of the fullness of our being—not simply our pragmatic, comfortable, or fearful selves.

As a people, we are at a crossover moment. It is a call to all of us to be our best, our least superficial, our most serious about what it means to be a Christian as well as a citizen. . . .

Where in the midst of such polarization and national disunity is even the hope of oneing, of integrating the social with what we say are our spiritual selves? . . .

Even the ghost of an answer makes serious spiritual demands on us all: To heal such division means that we are obliged to search out and identify our own personal value system. It requires us to admit to ourselves what it is that really drives our individual social decisions, our votes, our political alliances. Is it the need to look powerful? The desire for personal control? . . . Do we have the courage to confront the debased with the ideal—even in the face of ridicule and recrimination—or is cowardice our secret spiritual sickness? In that case, our national health can only get worse.

A national cure also surely demands that we begin to see tradition as a call to return to the best of the past, not a burden to be overcome in order to secure the best of the present. It is the sense of a commonly held tradition of the common good—once a strong part of the American past—that we clearly lack in the present. . . .

{We must} make “Love one another as I have loved you” (see John 13:34) the foundation of national respect, the standard of our national discernment, the bedrock of both our personal relationships and a civilized society. . . .

To be one, we don’t need one party, one program, one set of policies. What could be duller, more stagnant, more destructive of the soulfulness it takes to create and preserve the best of the human enterprise than such a narrow-minded view of planetary life? What we need is one heart for the world at large, a single-minded commitment to this “more perfect union,” and one national soul, large enough to listen to one another for the sake of the planet—for the sake of us all.

So where can we look for oneing in the political arena? Only within the confines of our own hearts. Politics—government—does not exist for itself and, if it does, that is precisely when it becomes at least death-dealing if not entirely evil. . . .

In the end, politics is nothing more than an instrument of social good and human development. It is meant to be the right arm of those whose souls have melted into God.

Joan Chittister, “A Moment for Something More Soulful Than Politics,” “Politics and Religion,” Oneing, vol. 5, no. 2 (CAC Publishing: 2017), 30, 32, 33, 34.

White evangelical Christians stick by Trump again, exit polls show (Guardian)

White evangelical Christians in the US again threw their support behind Donald Trump’s bid to retain the presidency in this week’s election, although there was a significant fall compared to 2016. Exit polls showed that 75% of white evangelicals voted for Trump this year, compared with 81% four years ago...

The 6% fall in support for Trump between 2016 and 2020 may have been critical in key battleground states...

From Giuliani and Trump's mouths to this joker's...
AP began calling elections since 1848 (wikipedia) btw.

Ashton Pittman @ashtonpittman | 2:39 PM · Nov 8, 2020
This dude and his whole congregation appears to be going through a hysterical mass psychosis event over the election results.
0:41 ( https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1325523448811180037 )
From Right Wing Watch

Right Wing Watch @RightWingWatch | 9:42 AM · Nov 9, 2020:
Former congresswoman Michele Bachmann calls on God to
"smash the delusion, Father, that Joe Biden is our president. He is not."

0:46 ( https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1325811083492401152 )

I note that evangelical preachers love smashing and striking things. I guess it is the modern version of smiting, but it seems very aggressively Old Testament. As far as I recall, the only thing Jesus smashed and struck was the property of those engaged in financial fraud under cover of religion.

'How Did We Get Here?' A Call For An Evangelical Reckoning On Trump
Rachel Martin | January 13, 20215:08 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition (7-Minute Listen)

As fallout continues from the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol, Ed Stetzer, head of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, has a message for his fellow evangelicals: it's time for a reckoning.

Evangelicals, he says, should look at how their own behaviors and actions may have helped fuel the insurrection. White evangelicals overwhelmingly supported President Trump in the 2020 election.

"Part of this reckoning is: How did we get here? How were we so easily fooled by conspiracy theories?" he tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "We need to make clear who we are. And our allegiance is to King Jesus, not to what boasting political leader might come next."

In the interview, Stetzer also laments that evangelicals seem to have changed their view of morality in order to support Trump.

"So I think we just need to be honest. A big part of this evangelical reckoning is a lot of people sold out their beliefs," he says...

https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-electoral-college-tally-live-updates/2021/...

_________________________________________________________

Trump faith advisers condemn insurrection, but say benefits of presidency will last longer than ‘controversies’
Michelle Boorstein | Jan. 8, 2021

Faith advisers to President Trump are condemning this week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, but few were willing to blame the president for inciting it, saying their partnership with him over the past four years was worth it despite the president’s flaws.

By Friday, with the growing numbers of members of Trump’s Cabinet quitting and former staffers calling for his removal, some prominent conservative evangelicals outside the Trump advisory group were criticizing the president in unusually sharp terms.

“Mr. President, people are dead. The Capitol is ransacked. There are 12 dangerous days for our country left. Could you please step down and let our country heal?” tweeted Russell Moore, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Baptists, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, overwhelmingly lean conservative and voted for Trump.

Jason Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary — one of the convention’s six seminaries — tweeted that Wednesday’s riot was not comparable to Black Lives Matter-related disobedience last year. This was instigated, he wrote, by the president and mingled nooses and Confederate flags with crosses. “God help us.”

But members of Trump’s advisory group, who won unprecedented evangelical access to the White House, said they didn’t regret putting a Christian imprimatur on his administration.

...To the White evangelicals who advised Trump, their blessing of his presidency is just part of a decades-long movement to secure social conservatism’s legal place and power. Along the way, in their mind, they have dealt with flawed politicians in a system they see as inherently amoral. A transactional approach that focuses on laws and policies — rather than a broad prophetic one that includes other crucial scriptural issues such as poverty, immigration and honesty — is justified, some of them said. (Ralph Reed, a longtime Christian conservative activist who was part of the loosely organized faith group; Influential Dallas mega-preacher Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s early prominent evangelical backers and a member of his advisory group)

...The vast majority of White evangelicals voted for Trump, though no prominent faith leaders — including members of Trump’s advisory group — appeared at rallies in D.C. this week for the president.

...The past four years have also given White evangelicals — including segments unaccustomed to political power, such as charismatic and Pentecostal figures like Paula White — credibility by placing them up and down the administration ladder, from Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and former education secretary Betsy DeVos to sub-Cabinet appointees and senior staff.

...Reed said: “Ironically, a president without a history of working with evangelicals ended up being the vehicle to both credential and empower more conservative Christian policymakers. Those individuals are now credentialed and will be ready to serve future Republican presidents.”

The attempted insurrection at the Capitol seemed to give at least one Trump faith adviser real pause — or a kind of pause. Mike Evans, an author and Zionist activist, on Friday said evangelicals are in a “Dietrich Bonhoeffer moment,” referring to a German Lutheran pastor and Nazi critic who was executed in the 1940s for anti-Hitler activism. Evans said he wasn’t equating Trump with Hitler, but rather was thinking of the German icon who said Christianity requires speaking truth to power. Evans cited Bonhoeffer’s famed quote: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.”...“We evangelicals are in a painful predicament. On the one hand, we think the world of the president and his policies because he’s been astonishingly good to us. On the other hand, we have based our own whole life on truth and the word of God,” Evans said. “He gave us a seat at the table. He honored us like we’ve never been honored, so I have nothing but gratitude for that. But Wednesday has put us in a moral dilemma.”

Johnnie Moore, an author and religious freedom advocate who served as the unofficial spokesman for the advisers, said the events at the Capitol were “inexcusable and in some cases criminal,” and that he had told the White House of “my dissatisfaction with the President’s role in it.” However, ... his appreciation for Trump and his administration’s achievements isn’t changed...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/01/08/evangelical-trump-support-abo...

Trump's Christian supporters and the march on the Capitol (BBC)

For some Christians, seeing religious symbols alongside Confederate flags was shocking. But for others, Mr Trump is their saviour - someone who was "defending Christians from secularists" as Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, told the BBC...

Two thoughtful perspectives on "conservative" and "liberal" Christianity--evangelicals AND Catholics--and their relationships with Trump and Biden presidencies:

William Barber*, and the Question of Faith and Politics
New Yorker Radio Hour | 29 Jan 2021 16:00:00 -0500

The North Carolina pastor William Barber, who spoke at the inaugural prayer service at the start of the Biden Administration, wants politics to be guided by faith and morality. But conservatives, Barber thinks, are deeply confused about Christ’s teachings. Then Paul Elie** considers Biden as only the second Catholic President. Elie thinks that Catholics demoralized by decades of the Church’s abuse scandals are welcoming Biden as a “moral authority” outside the religious hierarchy.

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/458929150/the-new-yorker-radio-hour

---------------------------------------------------------

* William J. Barber II is an American Protestant minister and political activist. He is the President and Senior Lecturer at Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. (Wikipedia)

** Paul Elie is a senior fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and the director of the American Pilgrimage Project, a university partnership with StoryCorps based in the Berkley Center. His work deals primarily with the ways religious ideas are given expression in literature, the arts, music, and culture in the broadest sense. In the American Pilgrimage Project he examines the ways religious beliefs inform the experiences of the American people at crucial moments in their lives. Elie is also the moderator of Georgetown's Faith and Culture Lecture Series, a series of public conversations about the interaction of religion, art, literature, and society. ( https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/people/paul-elie )

Evangelical leaders condemn role of Christian nationalism in Capitol attack (Guardian)

More than 100 prominent evangelical Christian pastors and church leaders have spoken out against what they call the “perversion” of Christian nationalism and the role it played in enabling the violent insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January. In an open letter released on Wednesday, the evangelical leaders say they are speaking out now because they do not want to be “quiet accomplices in this ongoing sin”. They call on all church people to clarify that Christianity is incompatible with “calls to violence, support of white Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and all religious and racial prejudice...

God: “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange gods before Me”
CPAC: *wheels out a golden statue of Trump*

-Lindy Li (Biden delegate) @lindyli1:26 PM · Feb 26, 2021

---------------------------------------------------------

https://twitter.com/unicornwcats/status/1365380945650593794/photo/1

Vatican official concerned by populist leaders ‘hijacking’ religion (Crux)

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, head of the Vatican’s evangelization congregation, has expressed concern over the “hijacking” of religion by populist leaders who sow division and exploit the anger of those who feel excluded...

“There is a growing sense in the world today of divisiveness, and unfortunately religion is being used to further division; sometimes even within the same religious affiliation you have divisions.” Referring to the recent rise of populist leaders, Tagle described the phenomenon as “the return of the powerful big-boss-type of people,” some of whom “hijack religion.”

These so-called populist leaders know where the pockets of disgruntled people are, and they present themselves as messiahs, he said. They use religion as a “convenient way” of getting followers, he added. The president of Caritas Internationalis noted that in the encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis devoted several paragraphs to the matter of populist leaders who claim that they are defending the people, when in fact they are defending a certain group...

Leaders "who claim that they are defending the people, when in fact they are defending a certain group" - that's an important comment.

Proud Boys and other far-right groups raise millions via Christian funding site (Guardian)

A data breach from Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo has revealed that millions of dollars have been raised on the site for far-right causes and groups, many of whom are banned from raising funds on other platforms. It also identifies previously anonymous high-dollar donors to far-right actors, some of whom enjoy positions of wealth, power or public responsibility. Some of the biggest beneficiaries have been members of groups such as the Proud Boys, designated as a terrorist group in Canada, many of whose fundraising efforts were directly related to the 6 January attack on the United States Capitol...

'Allergic reaction to US religious right' fueling decline of religion, experts say
Adam Gabbatt | Mon 5 Apr 2021

Percentage of churchgoing Americans is steadily falling, and the swirl of rightwing politics and Christianity is playing a key role

...David Campbell, professor and chair of the University of Notre Dame’s political science department and co-author of Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics, said a reason for the decline among those groups is political – an “allergic reaction to the religious right”.

“Many Americans – especially young people – see religion as bound up with political conservatism, and the Republican party specifically,” Campbell said.

“Since that is not their party, or their politics, they do not want to identify as being religious. Young people are especially allergic to the perception that many – but by no means all – American religions are hostile to LGBTQ rights.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/05/americans-religion-rightwing-polit...

Radicalized Christian nationalism is a growing threat to American democracy (Guardian)

A relatively small but incredibly organized faction is working to turn the country into something resembling a theocracy...

The separation of church and state is supposed to be a pillar of US democracy: we should all be alarmed by politicians who seem to think they are actually preachers. Cawthorn, after all, isn’t the only high-profile figure who seems to be trying to advance a Christian nationalist agenda. Josh Hawley, a pro-Trump senator from Missouri, has spoken about the need to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations – of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.” And then, of course, there’s Michael Flynn, who served as Donald Trump’s first national security adviser in 2017. Last month Flynn made headlines by calling for the establishment of “one religion” in the US. “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion,” Flynn told a crowd in San Antonio. “One nation under God and one religion under God.”

I could go on and on: there are endless examples of influential leaders in the US calling for the creation of a “Christ-centered republic” and for the bible to influence policy. But while that rhetoric is alarming, it’s not as alarming as what’s been happening behind the scenes. In 2018 the researcher Frederick Clarkson exposed the existence of a Christian supremacist initiative called Project Blitz, that aimed to flood state legislatures with bills undermining the separation of Church and State. A 116-page strategy manual laid out the plan. 1) They’d smuggle Christianity into policy with covert strategies that gave the appearance they respected religious pluralism. “The playbooks advise legislators to cloak their religious mission in the guise of more secular intentions and they’ve renamed several bills to make them sound more appealing,” Clarkson reported. 2) They’d overwhelm state legislatures with so many bills that trying to fight them would be like a game of “whack-a-mole”. 3) They’d start with less controversial bills, such as those requiring or allowing the display of “In God We Trust” in public schools, and establish small victories first. Then they’d escalate.

Clarkson’s reporting on Project Blitz, and the various exposes that followed, forced the project’s organizers into stealth mode, but they haven’t disappeared. Far from it: radicalized Christian nationalism is a growing threat to American democracy, as a relatively small but incredibly organized faction working to turn the country into something resembling a theocracy...

Are white Christians under attack in America? No, but the myth is winning (Guardian)

The idea that the American way of life is under threat from a variety of ‘others’ is wildly overblown but widely believed...

Every evening, Fox News tells a story about America. It’s a story about how traditional American values are being undermined by radical leftists – how marginalized populations actually account for a huge portion of the country, and that they want to take America from white Christians. These radicals are atheists, Muslims, Jews. They are people of color, vegans, coastal city dwellers and, of course, Democrats. And it turns out this story is winning. Earlier this year, YouGov asked Americans to estimate what percentage of American adults fall under a certain identity group. On average, respondents assumed that 30% of Americans are Jewish, 27% are Muslim, 21% are transgender and 20% earn more than a million dollars a year. In reality, each of those groups account for less than 2% of the population...

Baltimore Loses Appeal To Block ‘Church Militant’ Rally Featuring Far Right Speakers
Paul Gessler | November 4, 2021

The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal ruling that Baltimore City can’t reject a request on behalf of the Catholic conservative group Saint Michael’s Media to rent out the MECU Pavilion.

The “church militant” group’s rally coincides with this month’s meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, planned next door in Harbor East.

The rally will be emceed by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, whose rallies have led to violence in the past, and feature former Chief Strategist for President Trump, Steve Bannon, who was recently held in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena in the probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection.

On his podcast last year, Bannon called for the beheading of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Dr. Anthony Fauci...

https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2021/11/04/church-militant-group-city-appeal/

Researchers warn that Christian nationalists are becoming more radical and are targeting voting
Michelle Boorstein | March 18, 2022

...a new, 66-page report about the role of Christian nationalism in the Capitol attack, and on its “implications for the future of Democracy,” an announcement for the event read. Its goal was to bring awareness to Americans about what the caucus sees as the threats of Christian nationalism, organizers told The Washington Post.

The report was released Feb. 9 and is a project of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). It chronicles in exhaustive detail the art, signs, flags, jewelry, spoken words and even a gallows that protesters brought Jan. 6 that cited Jesus and Christianity. It also talks about various nonprofit groups, lawmakers and clergy who worked together to adorn Jan. 6 and Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his electoral loss with theological fervor. It talks about the important role of race.

Andrew Seidel, one of the authors of the report and a spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, said he believes Jan. 6 was “the culmination but not the end. … Insurrectionists were given moral license for the attack, and since then a growing slice of Americans are justifying it.”...

...University of Oklahoma sociologist Samuel Perry...and other experts say new data does not indicate that an expanding percentage of the U.S. population hold these views. He says that is because of younger Americans being more secular and the Trump presidency heightening awareness of the issue.

However, it is wrong to see this group as “ineffective or in a dying grasp,” he said. Instead, they are becoming more angry and, he believes, dangerous. The book’s research showed that the same group more powerfully believed “it’s too easy to vote” after the 2020 election compared with before...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/03/18/white-christian-nationalism-r...
----------------------------------------------------------

Christian Nationalism and the January 6, 2021 Insurrection (66 p)
Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) | Feb 9, 2022

INTRODUCTION Amanda Tyler

WHAT IS CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM? Andrew Whitehead & Samuel Perry

WHAT IS WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM? Anthea Butler

THE PATRIOTIC WITNESS OF BLACK CHRISTIANS Jemar Tisby, Ph.D.

NETWORK OF CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM LEADING UP TO JANUARY 6 Katherine Stewart

EVENTS, PEOPLE, AND NETWORKS LEADING UP TO JANUARY 6 Andrew L. Seidel

ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL: EVIDENCE OF THE ROLE OF WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM Andrew L. Seidel

CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM AFTER JANUARY 6 Amanda Tyler

CONTRIBUTORS
ENDNOTES

https://bjconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Christian_Nationalism_and_the_J...

A recent book that tries to make sense of the phenomenon

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Ryan Burge (Baptist pastor and author) @ryanburge | 2:25 PM · Mar 26, 2022:
In a statistical model that tried to predict an evangelical identity, church attendance used to be the most predictive factor.
Until 2020.
Now, identifying as a Republican is a stronger predictor of an evangelical identity than church attendance.

Factors that predict born-again/Evangelical ( https://twitter.com/ryanburge/status/1507785855427039238/photo/1 )
---------------------------------------------------

Ryan Burge @ryanburge | 9:51 AM · Mar 24, 2022
In 2008, 16% of self-identified evangelicals attended church seldom or never.
In 2021, it was 29%.
The % who attended church less than once a month was 29% in 2008. Now, it's 42%.
Now, less than half of self-identified evangelicals are weekly attenders. It was 59% in 2021.

Bar graph-church attendance of self-identified evangelicals ( https://twitter.com/ryanburge/status/1506992049307930633/photo/1 )

NowThis @nowthisnews | 12:23 AM · Apr 21, 2022:
‘I want every child in this state to feel seen … not targeted because they are not straight, white, & Christian’ — Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow confronted a GOP lawmaker who she said accused her of 'grooming' children after she stood up for LGBTQ+ youth

Michigan State Sen. McMorrow Stands Up For LGBTQ+ Youth
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow confronted a GOP senator who she said accused her of 'grooming' and 'sexualizing' children after she stood up for LGBTQ+ youth
1:13 ( https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1516995894079414272 )

Wow...2:19 video of what passes for sermon is...something...

Pastor Greg Locke (Global Vision Bible Church) no longer has tax-exempt status after hateful rant against democrats
Carla Sinclair | May 23, 2022

https://boingboing.net/2022/05/23/pastor-greg-locke-no-longer-has-tax-exempt-sta...

>98 margd: Who is ravening? I think he meant “raving” but it doesn’t matter. He’s doing both.

How the Christian right took over the judiciary and changed America (Guardian)

Leaders of the movement understood very well that if you can capture the courts, you can change society...

BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan | 1:10 PM · Sep 16, 2022
This is HILARIOUS!
Republican Jesus is the funniest thing you will see on this site ALL DAY. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

2:42 ( https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1570822428422705153 )
From Marjorie Gaylor Queen 🏳️‍🌈

The prosperity gospel, explained: Why Joel Osteen believes that prayer can make you rich
The long, strange history of a quintessentially American theology.
Tara Isabella Burton | Sep 1, 2017

The prosperity gospel has its roots in an American occult tradition called New Thought
Today’s prosperity gospel was also shaped by pro-capitalist and Pentecostal thought traditions
Many of the evangelical leaders that surround Trump are proponents of the prosperity gospel

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/1/15951874/prosperity-gospel-explained-why...

Lauren Boebert is part of a dangerous religious movement that threatens democracy, experts say
“It’s time for us to position ourselves and rise up and take our place in Christ and influence this nation as we were called to do,” Boebert told a Woodland Park crowd in September
Conrad Swanson | September 14, 2022

...“We know that we are in the last of the last days,” Boebert later added. “This is a time to know that you were called to be part of these last days. You get to have a role in ushering in the second coming of Jesus.”

...“I believe that there have been two nations that have been created to glorify God. Israel, whom we bless, and the United States of America,” Boebert said in June. “And this nation will glorify God.”

In the same address Boebert said she was “tired of this separation of church and state junk” and claimed that God “anointed” Donald Trump to the presidency.

...The congresswoman told Christians at a right-wing religious conference last year to “speak up” for God and to remove “unrighteous politicians, these corrupt, crooked politicians” while installing “righteous men and women of God in their place.”

Boebert is perhaps best known for her gun-rights advocacy and said this summer that Jesus had been killed by Romans because he didn’t have enough assault rifles “to keep his government from killing him.”

She blamed a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, on “godlessness that is here overtaking America” and she frequently says drug use and violent crime are on the rise because of the Latin American people illegally immigrating through the southern border....

https://www.denverpost.com/2022/09/14/lauren-boebert-christian-nationalist-repub...

>103 margd:

The good lady appears to have forgotten the bit in the bible where one of Jesus' followers did draw his sword to prevent him being taken, and Jesus told him to put away his sword. If thousands of his followers had brandished assault rifles, Jesus would no doubt have told them to put away their guns.

You are being charitable to call her good lady...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Boebert

I always try to err on the side of charity!

Yikes...

Opening prayer today at Eric Trump and Michael Flynn’s QAnon event: “God, open the eyes of Pres Trump’s understanding, that he will know how to implement divine intervention. And you will not surround him with RINO trash, in the name of Jesus.”

0:53 ( https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1583834164226273281 )

- Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 @RonFilipkowski | 10:54 AM · Oct 22, 2022:
Attorney, Marine, Triathlete, Historian. Fmr Fed Prosecutor & Repub; now Defense Att & Democrat. Track & Report on the Right-Wing. Seen on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS

Zachary Petrizzo (The Daily Beast) @ZTPetrizzo | 12:01 PM · Oct 22, 2022

Far-right doctor Stella Immanuel tells attendees at the QAnon-friendly ReAwaken America event to pray that “demonic satellites” get destroyed and “holy ghost viruses” are released into voting equipment.

0:49 (https://twitter.com/ZTPetrizzo/status/1583851049051336705)

Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 @RonFilipkowski | Last edited 8:00 AM · Oct 28, 2022:
Attorney, Marine, Triathlete, Historian. Fmr Fed Prosecutor & Repub; now Defense Att & Democrat. Track & Report on the Right-Wing. Seen on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS

BREAKING: Julie Green has received another “prophetic word” from God. God says Herschel Walker will win, MAGA candidates will win every place elections were “stolen” in 2020, and Biden will be replaced. So sayeth the Lord. (Her video has 151,000 views since last night).

1:12 ( https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1585964796733947905 )

‘He was chosen’: the rightwing Christian roadshow spreading the gospel of Trump (Guardian)

At Michael Flynn and Eric Trump’s ‘Reawaken America’ event, they struck the ground with imaginary arrows 7 times to call upon God to bring victory to the Republican Party in the midterms.

0:45 ( https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1589232505584254977 )

-Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 @RonFilipkowski | 7:25 AM · Nov 6, 2022:
Attorney, Marine, Triathlete, Historian. Fmr Fed Prosecutor & Repub; now Defense Att & Democrat. Track & Report on the Right-Wing. Seen on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS

------------------------------------------------

1:39 ( https://twitter.com/BrianKaylor/status/1589075848363401216 )

The Atlantic @TheAtlantic | 4:15 AM · Sep 7, 2023:

"Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist," @DanielKWilliam4 writes:
theatlantic.com

What Really Happens When Americans Stop Going to Church
People hold on to their politics when they stop attending church.
Daniel K. Williams | 3 Sept 2023

Millions of Americans are leaving church, never to return, and it would be easy to think that this will make the country more secular and possibly more liberal. After all, that is what happened in Northern and Western Europe in the 1960s: A younger generation quit going to Anglican, Lutheran, or Catholic churches and embraced a liberal, secular pluralism that shaped European politics for the rest of the 20th century and beyond. Something similar happened in the traditionally Catholic Northeast, where, at the end of the 20th century, millions of white Catholics in New England, New York, and other parts of the Northeast quit going to church. Today most of those states are pretty solidly blue and firmly supportive of abortion rights.

So, as church attendance declines even in the southern Bible Belt and the rural Midwest, history might seem to suggest that those regions will become more secular, more supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights, and more liberal in their voting patterns. But that is not what is happening. Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/christianity-religion-america-...

>114 margd: Christian nationalist

To my mind this is a contradiction in terms. Christianity is, by its nature, universal rather than nationalist, and in any case nationalism is a relatively modern political phenomenon, not a religious ideal.

There needs to be a better understood distinction between Christianity and Christianism, as between religious Islam and political Islamism. Christianism is used a mask and banner by European nationalisms, as Islamism is used by those of the Middle East.

>116 MyopicBookworm: Yep. Eric Hoffer's excellent little analysis after WW2, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, makes point that the power hungry utilize religion to remake communities?

Trump Shares Surreal Courtroom Sketch of Him Sitting Next to Jesus
Dan Ladden-Hall | October 3, 2023
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/trump-shares-surreal-courtroom-sketch-094724195.html

'The Exorcism of Donald Trump': Video of pastors praying over former POTUS has Internet wondering if 'they're doing it right'
Piyush Arora | Dec 2, 2023
https://meaww.com/the-exorcism-of-donald-trump-video-of-pastors-praying-over-for...

Sounded more like a blessing to me? Audio, Trump's breath in this version on Internet doctored?
0:52 ( https://twitter.com/JustVent6/status/1731119120890974708 )

‘You better pray’: Christian nationalist groups are mobilizing before the 2024 elections (Guardian)

‘Patriot’ groups – which deny Trump’s 2020 defeat and are pressing for voting restrictions – are proliferating...

Evangelical Christian, What The Hell Did You Expect Me To Do?
December 5, 2022 / Chris Kratzer

What the hell did you expect me to do?

You told me to love my neighbors, to model the life of Jesus. To be kind and considerate, and to stand up for the bullied.

You told me to love people, consider others as more important than myself. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.” We sang it together, pressing the volume pedal and leaning our hearts into the chorus.

You told me to love my enemies, to even do good to those who wish for bad things. You told me to never “hate” anyone and to always find ways to encourage people.

You told me it’s better to give than receive, to be last instead of first. You told me that money doesn’t bring happiness and can even lead to evil, but taking care of the needs of others brings great joy and life to the soul.

You told me that Jesus looks at what I do for the least-of-these as the true depth of my faith. You told me to focus on my own sin instead of trying to police it in others. You told me to be accepting and forgiving.

I paid attention.
I took every lesson.
And I did what you told me.

But now, you call me a libtard. A queer-lover.
You call me “woke.” A backslider.
You call me a heretic. A child of the devil.

You call me a false prophet. A reprobate leading people to gates of hell.
You call me soft. A snowflake. A socialist.

What the hell did you expect me to do?

You passed out the “WWJD” bracelets.
I took it to heart.

I thought you were serious, apparently not.

We were once friends. But now, the lines have been drawn. You hate nearly all the people I love. You stand against nearly all the things I stand for. I’m trying to see a way forward, but it’s hard when I survey all the hurt, harm, and darkness that comes in the wake of your beliefs and presence.

What the hell did you expect me to do?

I believed it all the way.
I’m still believing it all the way.
Which leaves me wondering, what happened to you?

Grace is brave. Be brave.

https://chriskratzer.com/evangelical-christian-what-the-hell-did-you-expect-me-t...
-------------------------------------------

Chris Kratzer -- pastor, and author of Leatherbound Terrorism. Shelby, NC.

I don't often watch this type of YouTube video, but this one is quite instructive - and chilling.

MAGA Bible Beater CRUMBLES After Hearing This Bible Story

>123 brone:

Just for the record, I think you would have to look very hard to find any significant Marxist organisations in mainstream USA. Both your main parties are right of centre, your economic system is free market capitalism, and I've yet to see a "marxist corporation" in the USA. There is, however, a great deal of bigotry, even from Christians, as many of the posts in this thread demonstrate.

>125 brone:

Whether or not one uses the term "Christian nationalism", that does sound like an impassioned plea for a Christian theocracy in your country. I find that rather odd given your disdain for the fact that Great Britain does have an established Church, a "state Church" as you sometimes call it, whose bishops are part of the upper house of Parliament, even though much of it is largely symbolic and it falls far short of a true theocracy

As I frequently mention, I have lived under a theocracy, in my case an Islamist one. We've seen the results of extremist Hindu nationalism in India, of Jewish nationalism, of the support by some Christian denominations for apartheid in South Africa and racism in the USA, and in my younger days Northern Ireland's violent "Troubles" were an example of the mix of politics (nationalism) and religion (competing Christian denominations). Theocracies tend to become oppressive and exclusive, forgetting the "self evident truth that all men {sic} are created equal, that all are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness", and instead applying those fine ideals only to certain classes of human being. What about the "unalienable rights" of millions of citizens who are not part of the dominant religious, political and other identity groups favoured by the theocracy?

Theocracies generally lead to violence. The fact that many of those calling for theocracy in the USA support an extreme right wing political ideology and a leader who is a sexual abuser (something which you rightly abhor in others) and a convicted fraudster who tried to overthrow the result of a democratic election, who has promised to take revenge on all his political enemies and who only yesterday said, "Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it... It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country” (link) does not bode well for your great country.

But apparently you are only supportive of a theocracy based on your own particular religious and political views? One remembers the words of Rev Martin Niemöller: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." Just recently even many right wing Members of Parliament in the UK are concerned about a new definition of "extremism" which their own far-right government is promoting because, while they are happy to use it against their political opponents, they are savvy enough to realise that it might also be used against themselves (cf my posts 119 and 128 in this parallel thread). Niemöller himself initially supported some of the repressive measures instituted by the Nazi party, as he had no sympathy for the sort of people they were oppressing, but as time went on, he realised that the same repressive laws could be used against everybody, including himself. A timely warning to those who support theocracy, religious nationalism and other extreme political ideologies in our own era.

PS: And let me wish you a blessed St Patrick's feast day. I know you are rightly proud of your Irish heritage, as I am of mine, and as a missionary from Britain I also draw inspiration from Patrick, likewise a missionary from Britain. During my morning prayer today I listened to a beautiful recording of St Patrick's Breastplate, an inspiring prayer and hymn.

>127 brone: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
-------------------------------------

"...The source of this quotation is a journal kept by James McHenry (1753-1816) while he was a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. {Ben} Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” Then McHenry added: “The Lady here alluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.”

The journal is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress..."
https://blogs.loc.gov/manuscripts/2022/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-elizabet...

>127 brone: Theocracy will never be an American form of Government

Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, although a lot of what you write does sound very much like theocracy, and there are many within the Christian right wing who openly espouse theocracy without using the term (cf eg >4 margd:).

"No one can be at the same time, a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist"

This quote from the good Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (120), written in 1931, needs unpacking and contextualising. At that time the word "socialism" was associated with Stalin's autocratic communist and atheist regime in the USSR, while the fascist regimes of Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy both used the term "national socialist"*. Clearly it would be difficult for a sincere Catholic to identify with those leaders and their ideologies, just as many would argue that it is difficult for a sincere Christian to identify with the excesses of modern free market capitalism and all that goes with it. A key theme of QA is subsdidiarity in the face of autocratic regimes. Pius XI says in that same paragraph that "socialism... contains some truth", and since the demise of the USSR and its replacement with another violent capitalist regime in Russia the word "socialism" is understood differently in this new context. Christianity cannot be identified with nor subsumed into any political ideology, but one has to say that many of the "truths" of modern socialism (without its Soviet communist baggage) are closer to Catholic and Christian teaching than those of modern free market capitalism. This includes the primacy of the "common good" in relation to the right to private property, a sense of community in creative tension with individualism, and the powerful exhortation to Christians in Acts of the Apostles: "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need" (4:32-35). Also worth remembering that QA was promulgated forty years after Pope Leo XIII's groundbreaking Rerum Novarum, "On Capital and Labour", itself issued as a critique of capitalism, affirming the dignity of labour and the rights of workers but also critiquing the alternative political and economic ideology of communism and socialism as they were then understood. That was the beginning of modern Catholic Social Teaching, and like many other popes up to and including Francis it demonstrates that Christianity does not support any one particular political ideology over another but teaches us values that we can apply universally.

* Worth noting how many authoritarian right wing regimes incorporated the concept of "nationalism" into their ideology, not only Hitler and Mussolini but also Salazar, Franco, Metaxas and the later Greek junta. A warning, perhaps, to those who identify as "Christian nationalists" and MAGA?

>129 John5918: theocracy

In case of interest,

Catholics in Maryland were among those leading the US toward separation of church and state. I can't imagine MD would have joined a union that imposed the kind of strictures they had just escaped in England. Their Toleration Act* may have been directed to Christians**, but it was the first legal instrument of toleration in the colonies.

Just before MD passed its Toleration Act, The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, one of the original Thirteen Colonies, was founded by Roger Williams, himself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Puritans) under religious persecution. Williams and his fellow RI settlers agreed on an egalitarian constitution providing for majority rule "in civil things" with liberty of conscience on spiritual matters.***

* The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, the first law in North America requiring religious tolerance for Christians. It was passed on April 21, 1649, by the assembly of the Maryland colony, in St. Mary's City in St. Mary's County, Maryland. (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland_Toleration_Act

** Witchcraft in Colonial America — Witches and Trials in the 13 Original Colonies, 1607–1783 https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/witchcraft-colonial-america/

*** Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_of_Rhode_Island_and_Providence_Plantations

>131 brone:

You often end your posts with JMJ, which I understand refers to "Jesus, Mary and Joseph", so let me today wish you a blessed feast of St Joseph, a feast day which I celebrate as I have long been associated with a Catholic missionary group whose patron saint is St Joseph. In these troubled times I think of St Joseph the refugee, fleeing to a strange foreign country to protect his young family from persecution and death. God put that thought into his mind in a dream, and surely many of today's refugees are also prompted by God to leave everthing behind in order to raise their families in peace and safety.

And as papal teaching on the rights of workers has come up in recent posts in this thread, I think of Joseph's other feast day, St Joseph the Worker on 1st May, established by Pope Pius XII in 1955 as a Catholic interpretation of the workers' May Day, celebrated throughout the world on 1st May.

This feast extends the long relationship between Joseph and the cause of workers in both Catholic faith and devotion. Beginning in the Book of Genesis, the dignity of human work has long been celebrated as a participation in the creative work of God. By work, humankind both fulfills the command found in Genesis to care for the earth (Gn 2:15) and to be productive in their labors. Saint Joseph, the carpenter and foster father of Jesus, is but one example of the holiness of human labor. Jesus, too, was a carpenter. He learned the trade from Saint Joseph and spent his early adult years working side-by-side in Joseph’s carpentry shop before leaving to pursue his ministry as preacher and healer. In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II stated: “the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide {social} changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society.” Saint Joseph is held up as a model of such work. (link)

>134 brone:

Well, I would respectfully suggest that this is just semantics. While the Roman Empire covered a vast area, it was still made up of recognisable different communities, and the concept of a state with defined borders is a relatively modern one. The fact remains that Joseph and his family had to flee from their homeland to a strange and alien land to escape from being killed by the civil authority in their own land, just as many people are doing today. For a young family with a baby to venture out alone across the desert to get to this strange and (to them) unknown land also bears some similarities to the hardships faced by people fleeing in the present day. Now we have a name for them - refugees, or asylum seekers - but in those days there was no such term. It bears no relation to choosing to relocate within one's own land (however one wants to define that word), nor even to relocating to a far-off foreign land as I did nearly fifty years ago as a positive choice, not because I was in mortal danger from anything, let alone from my own government.

The Incarnation teaches us that our God is not a distant God, but is Emmanuel, "God with us". Our God has shared our human condition and faced many of the hardships that humanity faces, including unjust detention, torture and death. It is surely a comfort to Christian refugees to know that our God also shared their experience, and St Joseph stands as an exemplar and a symbol of the hard choices which young men and women today have to make to bring up their families in peace and safety, just as Joseph did. And whether Matthew's description of the Holy Family's exile in Egypt is a historical fact or a literary tool being used to teach a particular truth makes no difference to the truth which it reveals.

>136 brone:

I'm not sure what you mean by a "modern political view" of refugees. They are human beings fleeing their homeland to escape oppression and death, often inflicted on them by their own governments, in order to bring up their families in peace and safety - exactly the same as Joseph did two millennia ago.

But whatever one thinks of refugees, you're right that Matthew 25 teaches us very clearly how to handle them: "I was a stranger and you welcomed me... When you did this to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me". Amen.

Speaking of refugees, Gunmen continue to ensure that hundreds of Christian churches and schools remain closed in Nothern Nigeria and other parts of the country. 237 children kidnapped from one school this month all in the name of Isam introducing Islamic Sharia law. Abducting boys is quite popular with Jihadists to force them into armed slavery. A Bishop in the region said the other day that the islamic terrorist group and its ally Fulani herders (herders of boys and girls) "the kidnappings and killings are aimed at finishing Christians despite such killings the "government" has never arrested anyone".... In Burkina Faso it might even be worse for Christians practicing their faith, BIshop Kientega said, "despite difficulty and persecution Catholics have defied Jihadists terrorists demands to embrace Islam". Saying this after the murder of 12 people at a prayer service last month. Kientega further said, In this situation some of us accept death", " we are always trying to find ways to live our Faith", "Faith has grown", " we pray for terrorists everday that God may soften their hearts", "men are forced to grow beards,women are veiled". "Sometimes they take one person and kill him in front off everyone". I wonder what our overweight bishops would do in the same circumstances. What they are doing this year is placing a pamphlet in the pews denouncing Anti Semitism as if the guy in that pew is out painting swastikas on synogues, When they should be denouncing the murder of Christians and yes my dear co-religionist and moslems in Africa....JMJ.... PS an example of an American Cardinal in pictured in Rome obvisously at some banquet celebrating his birthday, sitting in non clerical garb with a bottle of wine and a big cake in front of him, he is sitting two feet away from the table to allow his pot belly room to digest the huge meal he just ate, meanwhile Our Catheral in Newyork is desecrated how I wish we had Bishop Kientega in NewYork...

It’s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been “sacralized violence”—violence that we treated as sacred, but which was, in fact, not. Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. They imagine they are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble: God, religion, truth, morality, their children, or love of country. It takes away all guilt, and one can even think of oneself as representing the moral high ground or being responsible and prudent as a result. It never occurs to most people that they are becoming what they fear and hate.

Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2008, 2022), 144–145.

There was a sprinkling of kids of other faiths--Jewish, Muslim, mainline Protestantism--in my sons' RC elementary and middle schools (US), but they CHOSE to be there, I assume for scholastics, after school care, and a non-insistent, ethical environment. (In our area, more rigorous religious instruction commences in HS.)

However, the Seven-Mountains-Mandate camel is seeking to poke its nose under the public-school tent (which my kids also attended), in a way that would seek to influence students that many (ME!) would find objectionable.

Seven Mountain Mandate
The Seven Mountain Mandate, also Seven Mountains Mandate, 7M, or Seven Mountains Dominionism, is a dominionist conservative Christian movement within Pentecostal and evangelical Christianity. It holds that there are seven aspects of society that believers seek to influence: family, religion, education, media, arts & entertainment, business, and government. (Wikipedia)

Though only the audio is currently available, already a best seller:
The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon.
--------------------------------------------

The Republican agenda to install religious chaplains in schools is appalling
Zeeshan Aleem | March 17, 2024

There’s a school counselor shortage. Republicans are trying to replace them with religious chaplains.

...The emerging crusade to install school chaplains should be understood as an outgrowth of rising Christian nationalism, and an alarming threat to America’s students. It violates the spirit of the First Amendment for public schools to hire religious administrators who have the opportunity to indoctrinate students with their religious beliefs...

...Public schools inviting chaplains onto campus raises obvious First Amendment questions. School districts will be picking and choosing religious figures to come onto campus to provide children with services that would typically be carried out by a school counselor — guidance on issues such as academics, relationships, mental health, trouble at home, bullying and future career ideas. But instead of drawing from education and training specific to counseling young people, chaplains would be drawing from their spiritual beliefs. At the bare minimum, this means schools would be priming students to think of specific religions as an educational resource. And it would effectively provide cover for chaplains to evangelize on behalf of their faith and indoctrinate young, impressionable children seeking help...

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/chaplains-schools-florida-school-cou...

Book of Donald: Trump hawks special ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles for $60 (Guardian)

Patriotic, prayerful and rightwing Americans are being offered the chance to purchase – for a mere $59.99 – a Bible endorsed by Donald Trump, in the latest example of the former US president touting wares to the American public. In a post to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, the current presumptive Republican nominee and 88-times charged criminal defendant said: “Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible”... Given Trump’s status as a thrice-married legally adjudicated rapist and billionaire New York property magnate nonetheless dependent on evangelical Christian support, his true relationship with and knowledge of the Bible has long been a subject of speculation... In his video on Tuesday, Trump said: “Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country and I truly believe that we need to bring them back and we have to bring them back fast. I think it’s one of the biggest problems we have. That’s why our country is going haywire. We’ve lost religion in our country. All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many.” In response, Gregory Minchak, of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, commented: “There’s not a cross nor a picture of Jesus on the page, but plenty of photos of Trump. Who do you think this $60 Bible is for? It sure isn’t for Jesus.” Sarafina Chitika, a senior Biden campaign spokesperson, issued a stinging statement. “The last time the American people saw Donald Trump hold up a Bible,” she said, “it was for a photo op after he teargassed American citizens demonstrating against white supremacy"...

The disdain progressive christians have for Traditional Catholicism has plenty of traction for a long time. They have the sheer volume the historical data mountain to rumage through. This mountain chronicles human error and stupidity as well as the endless reactions to them from age to age. This they offer an infinite number of nuances and little caveats diverting minds away from the clear supernatural truths taught by the Eternal Word Who is active in all time. They make the historical record an existential sense of pointlessness. Why waste time they say going over past history (pre Vatll) that path to truth is filled with potholes. The polished dogmatic treastes of the medieval scholastics are immeasurably superior and suffcient today as they were then. Why then open an examination of church teaching on Homosexuality for example. Progressives will use this teaching to feed us the impression that the teaching of the church on this subject is evolving in true Tielhardian evolutionary manner called the natural evolutionary process, rather than use a meditation upon the direct words of the Apostle and scripture itself....AMDG....

Al Sharpton: Trump’s $60 Bibles ‘a spit in the face of people that really believe’ (Guardian)

The spectacle of Donald Trump selling $60 Bibles is “a spit in the face of people that really believe”, the Rev Al Sharpton said, amid widespread backlash over the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s latest moneymaking scheme. “Blasphemy certainly comes to mind,” Sharpton told MSNBC. “I think that people ought to realise how offensive this is to those of us that really believe in the Bible. He’s doing this during Holy Week. Tomorrow is Good Friday, Sunday is Easter. Of all of the times you want to hustle using the Bible, why would you do it during Holy Week, which is really a spit in the face of people that really believe in the Bible from a Christian point of view?”...

>143 John5918: Surprising on Twitter how even non-Christian and non-religious people are shocked by Trump's selling Bibles. You could almost hear them gasp, "Is nothing sacred?!", "Have you no sense of decency?"

Next he'll be selling Korans for purpose of desecration...

Meanwhile while A NYPD policeman a father and husband is murdered on a routine traffic stop by a convicted felon with 23 "priors" The 60dollar bible man stands in the line to pay his respects while across town Biden, Obama and Clinton are pimping their Photographs for a $100,000 a piece at at glitzy cross town joint with holywood "celebrities" and billionaires raising money for their socialist agendas....JMJ....PS Thomas Jefferson wrote his own version of the bible, I would'nt buy a Trump endorsed Bible or a Thomas Jefferson version of the Bible because they do not have the Imprimatur.

Shoddy guardian reporting quoting the preeminent race hustler and antisemite in America. This habitual liar an inciter of riots hosts a Marxist TV show on MSNBC. Sharpton has been sanctioned 6 times on the floor of the house of representitives for his racists remarks and virulent anti-semitic diatribes. In terms of the current parlance of "election deniers" Sharpton was one of the first denying the legitimacy of the 2016 election falsely claiming the "Russians influenced the election". The Gaurdian should look at Sharpton's incendiary incidents that caused riots and in one case five people dead before they start quoting this "Rev"....JMJ....

The Christian reaction to Trump’s Bible endorsement goes deeper than you think
AJ Willingham | March 28, 2024

... Trump has been criticized before for his use of the Bible in public settings. In 2020, religious leaders from several Christian denominations condemned his display of the Bible in a “photo-op” in front of an Episcopal church near the White House as racial justice protests raged around the country.

“You just don’t do that, Mr. President,” televangelist and vocal Trump supporter Pat Robertson said of the incident. “It isn’t cool!” ...

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/us/donald-trump-bible-christianity-cec/index.html

Trump’s Backing of ‘Patriotic Bible’ Sparks Sharp Catholic Criticism, Some Praise (National Catholic Register)

Donald Trump’s Holy Week promotion of a pricey, patriotic-themed Bible has sparked sharp criticism from Catholics on social media. While political groups aligned with the former president such as CatholicVote and the Heritage Foundation praised him for promoting prayer, critics accused him of using Scripture to advance himself politically and financially... The president’s scriptural sales pitch received widespread criticism from Catholics, including those known for holding more conservative political views. “It’s an unholy blend of tacky Protestantism, messianic Americanism, and corporate consumerism,” said Eric Sammons, editor of Crisis magazine, in a social media post, adding that “stuff like this makes my skin crawl.” Brian Burch, president of Catholic Vote, a political advocacy group that has endorsed Trump, offered a different take... Catholics on social media criticized Trump for using the Bible to make a buck, with some saying that if the real estate mogul thought it was so important for every American to have a Bible, then he should give it away for free... “It’s giving moneychangers in the temple {vibes},” tweeted the American Solidarity Party, a small third party inspired by Catholic social teaching... “A sacrilege just in time for Holy Week,” tweeted Valerie Schultz, a columnist for America magazine... Bradley Gregory, a Biblical scholar at The Catholic University of America, told CNA that the God Bless The USA Bible marked a “potentially dangerous misunderstanding of how our Christian faith should relate to our politics” by pairing the Word of God with the Founding documents. “Whenever Scripture and something political are implied to be on the same level, even subconsciously, it makes it that much harder for the Church to see and challenge things that might be in conflict with the Gospel,” Gregory said... Some commentators have said that the Bible and Trump’s comments exemplified Christian nationalism, which holds that America should be governed by religious law... But the combination of perceived political and financial motivation in Trump’s God Bless the USA Bible promotion, as well as its timing just before Easter, has drawn a heightened degree of ire. “This is degenerate,” said Orthodox writer Rod Dreher, who described Trump’s sales pitch as “Holy Week marketing of a MAGA Bible”... The former president’s apparent unfamiliarity with sacred Scripture has helped fuel allegations that his frequent appeals to religion are motivated entirely by politics...

Damaan, AKA "Philly's Finest"! @Damaan4u33 | 7:06 PM · Mar 31, 2024:
Do you think that Donald Trump would stoop low enough to hire paid actors to pretend to be nuns...for a fake photo op to reel in Catholics to show them he's loved by them as well?

Yes 👍🏽 or No!👎🏽

Nuns who love Trump (https://twitter.com/Damaan4u33/status/1774573976037072942)

Just when you think Trump can’t get any weirder … he launches his own version of the Bible (Guardian)

Of course there’s extra material as well as the usual gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John... Donald Trump’s Bible costs $59.99, which puts it at the more expensive end of the King James editions, but it does have extra content: it’s called the God Bless the USA Bible, and includes a copy of the US constitution, the Bill of Rights and handwritten lyrics to the chorus of God Bless the USA, by Lee Greenwood... Greenwood’s lyrics have a load of other stuff about freedom, death and defence, which obviously makes them the ideal anthem to scripture... You would think Christians would object to this repurposing of their sacred text in the service of Maga, but the further Trump goes, the more like Jesus he appears to the evangelical right, with one conservative newspaper over Easter describing his court cases as a crucifixion, from which the only fitting resurrection is for him to become president again...

Trump vows to create 'Christian Visibility Day' following Biden's declaration of 'Trans Visibility Day'.
'Transgender Day of Visibility' happened to land on Easter Sunday this year.
Sarah Rumpf-Whitten | April 2, 2024

...The presumptive Republican nominee for president promised that Nov. 5 would be "Christian Visabiliy {sic} Day" if he is elected...

{margd: In 2024, Nov 5 just happens to be US election day. Surprise, surprise.}

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-vows-create-christian-visibility-day-foll...

Do we think President Joe Biden would call Easter Sunday National Transgender Vissibility day plus have no visible signs of anything religious at the White House on Transgender Visibility day....JMJ....

>152 brone:

As I understand it nobody specifically chose to "call" Easter Sunday National Transgender Visibility Day, it's simply that this year it happened to fall on Easter Sunday, which of course is a movable feast falling on a different date each year. Next year's National Transgender Visibility Day will not fall on Easter Sunday.

Yikes. This nun could have RC church--or at least her parish--paying taxes. Not a plant, apparently, though I hoped this was the explanation.

Gary 🏳️‍🌈🌊 @GayresisterGary | 6:42 PM · Apr 2, 2024:
I'm that Gay liberal Democrat! I believe democracy is worth saving.

🤔 This is another reason people are leaving churches in huge numbers and will continue to lose people.
1:39 ( https://twitter.com/GayresisterGary/status/1775292811325428026 )

Yep she is real.
Ad ( https://twitter.com/GayresisterGary/status/1775299377760026993/photo/1 )
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Albert Ebury Street @oftheDales | 7:50 PM · Apr 2, 2024:
For EQUALITY, Justice for ALL, Democrat, Anti-Fascism, Anti-Trumpism, Anti-Putinism.

Sister Miriam is not in good stead in the Catholic Church. Her "order" is not recognised by Rome. In November 2023 her bishop was removed from the pastoral governance of his diocese. He invited her into his diocese after she was removed from the St Louis Archdiocese.

I must confess I have met one elderly US Catholic nun who thinks Trump is great. Mind you, she grudgingly accepted that socialised health care was a good thing when her own elderly mother needed care and she discovered the government would provide it. But she's the only one supporting Trump out of the dozens of US Catholic sisters I know.

>155 John5918: I'm pretty sure more than a few religious and laypersons around here hold such views, but it's one thing to have personal political beliefs, even to use Catholic dog whistles, and quite another to podcast political views in full religious habit?

>153 John5918: Your de facto defense of supporting Transgender Visibility Day because it "simply falls on Easter this year" highlights what we American Catholics call "cafeteria catholics". I wonder like Joey you would defend the banning of all religious design on easter eggs and any depiction of it in the childrens art competion. This lame excuse of Biden is nothing but Apostasy, while faithful Catholics were saying the Exsultet in preperation for Easter Joey was preparing for Transgender Visiblity day. Even Cardinal Wilton Gregory a huge supporter of the LGQBTP++ empire scolded Biden saying He picks and chooses which dementions of his faith to highlight while ignoring other parts Gregory himself called him the classic "cafeteria catholic". This is not Joe's first dance with Apostasy, support of abortion up until birth, same sex marriages, Euthanasia to name a few. I ask you to rethink your hinted support given to this abomination and fake catholicism as people such as yourself rightly make comments on American Catholic issues, Cardinal Muller has publicly asked that Biden be excomunicated....JMJ....

>157 brone:

I wasn't aware I was defending anyone or anything, simply looking at it through a different lens, which is often helpful.

The term "cafeteria Catholics" used to come up regularly on the Catholic Tradition group a few years ago, an unwarranted ad hominem attack bandied about by a small minority of Catholics who, ironically, themselves pick and choose which articles of Catholic teaching they abide by. I thought we had moved beyond such meaningless labels.

Cardinal Wilton Gregory an outspoken critic a man who is thoroughly pro LGBTQP++ called him a cafeteria catholic not me. Cardinal Muller has said Biden should be excommunicated for Apostasy I happen to agree. To say anything against Transgenders is "ad hominem attacks bandied about" by a small group of catholics who pick and choose themselves, I love it gaslighting 101. It even appeared on your censored fake Traditional site a couple of years ago when you had more than 4 messages all by yourself... Meanwhile speaking against gender ideology JK Rowling from your own kingdom taunted Scottish police to arrest her for "Hate speech" for calling some UN delegate a man, this horrible crime could get Harry Potter's mum 7 years in the can... JK tweeted out. I trust all women irrespective of profile or financial means will be treated equally under the law. She worrys that because of her high profile Scottish police wont want the publicity. Since this law went into effect the other day Scottish police have been inundated with 3000 complaints of people hating one another. God save the UK....JMJ....