How Christian Nationalism Poisons Christianity
Added 2023-11-02 23:26:49 +0000 UTCHowdy, friends! There's been a lot of talk lately about Christian Nationalism. It's been called "the greatest threat to religious freedom" our country has faced, and we've got far-right lawmakers openly identifying as Christian Nationalists. So...what exactly is this ideology? Hope you enjoy!
Comments
What about a new Christian movement promoting green policies
Greenlach7
2024-03-15 01:29:54 +0000 UTCIt is the Council for National Policy that deserves the scrutiny and where one will find the clero fascists. A secret organization up until Trump, when they outted many of their members in the service of the clero fascist King. https://spitfirelist.com/news/the-eyes-over-mike-johnson-the-cnps-texas-template-for-gods-power-grope/ "Here’s a quick review of the article excerpts we’re going to be reviewing in this post: * November 5, 2023: Mike Johnson Admits He and His Son Monitor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resurfaced Video It’s shocking. Except not really. The new Speaker of the House actually bragged about how he had the “Covenant Eyes” software installed on his phone, along with his son’s phone. That way, they could keep each other ‘accountable’ by getting updates house should the other browser any unacceptable websites or pornography. In other words, the new Speaker of the House installed theocratic spyware on his phone. * September 22, 2022: The Ungodly Surveillance of Anti-Porn ‘Shameware’ Apps You can call it ‘spyware’. But as this WIRED article warns, perhaps ‘discipleship shameware’ is a more apt description of the kind of app Mike Johnson has running on his phone. An app that doesn’t just send warnings about the viewing of pornography. It monitors almost everything you do on your phone and sends that data back to the company. And while users are allowed to select their own personal “accountability buddy” who will receive notifications of any ‘impure’ actions, the reality is that church leaders are frequently the ones tapped to play that ‘buddy’ role, which has resulted in stories like teens getting questioned by church elders over activities like reading an article about atheism. It’s app-powered ‘discipleship’, and therefore particularly popular with SBC churches like Gracepoint, where ‘discipleship’ is heavily practiced. * November 3, 2023: Texas activist David Barton wants to end separation of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speaker. For all the uproar over Mike Johnson’s anti-porn ‘shameware’, there was a far more disturbing story about the new Speaker’s theocratic orientation. It turns out Mike Johnson is a huge fan of David Barton. He even recently declared Barton’s “profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do” as an event put on by Barton’s WallBuilders organization. And with Texas Republicans already on board with Barton’s agenda too, it’s easy to see why Texas is poised to become the Christian Nationalism template for the rest of the nation. Barton is a superstar among Texas Republicans, where his brand of Christian Nationalism is already the mainstream. * May 4, 2023: Conservative Christians want more religion in public life. Texas lawmakers are listening. With the Texas Republicans already fully embrace David Barton’s brand of Christian Nationalism, what’s standing their in way? Well, a lot less than before thanks to a series of recent Supreme Court rulings. In 2020, the court ruled 5–4 in favor of a Montana woman who argued that her state’s Department of Revenue improperly barred her from using a tax-credit scholarship at a Christian school. And in 2022, the court similarly ruled that Maine could not bar religious institutions from public funding. It’s reminder that tearing down the separation of church and state is unlikely to come in a single blow. It will be a death by a thousand cuts. And with Texas Republicans actively working on legal challenges to the laws currently blocking tax exempt entities like churches from engaging in partisan activity, it appears to be just a matter of time before the Supreme Court delivers another one of those cuts. * November 1, 2023: Mike Johnson is not the only David Barton fan to be Speaker of the House of Representatives And while Mike Johnson’s improbable Speakership might seem like the improbable rise of a close Barton ally, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not actually that improbable to find out a Republican Speaker of the House is a big Barton fan. Former Speaker Paul Ryan once said of Barton, “I listen to him all the time, even in my car while driving.” Ryan went on to elaborate that, because of Barton’s teachings, Ryan is very knowledgeable of the 1954 Johnson Amendment that put restrictions on the political activities of pastors from their pulpits, which has done so much damage to American culture. So what appears to be a final push taking place now to the end the restrictions on churches engaging in direct political action is the culmination of long ongoing efforts. * May 23, 2016: Southern Baptist, other evangelical leaders to meet with Donald Trump: Reports And as a reminder that we can’t really separate the current remarkable power held by the movement from the impact of the Trump administration and the profound role it played in reshaping the Supreme Court, it’s worth taking a little at a fascinating May 2016 article describing plans for a delegation of leaders — including many SBC leaders — who were planning on meeting then-candidate Trump. The delegated included: * CNP Founding Member James Dobson * CNP member Ralph Reed * CNP member Penny Nance * CNP Executive Directo Bob McEwen * CNP member Tim Wildmon * CNP member (and CNP VP starting in 2020) Kelly Shackelford, who also happens to be Mike Johnson’s mentor. * CNP member (and CNP President in 2018) Tony Perkins * CNP member Bill Dallas" "“I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me” Those were the kinds of words John F. Kennedy had to use when running for the president in 1960. Words that feel almost quaint in 2023. Painfully quaint, as we’re going to see in this post. Because as we’ve seen, Christian Nationalism isn’t simply on the rise in the United States. It’s already at the top, thanks in no small part to the decades long efforts of the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the myriad of groups operating under its theocratic umbrella. The Supreme Court is dominated by a hard right majority likely to be in place for decades to come at the same time Christian Nationalism is wholly mainstream inside the contemporary Republican Party. We even have the CNP’s planned mass purges — starting with the government but not ending there — under the ‘Schedule F’/Project 2025 label that is being openly reported and discussed in the news. The mask dropped a while ago. That’s all part of the grim context surrounding a series of reports around the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. The kind of reports that should raise serious questions about just how much influence the leading Christian Nationalist hold over new Speaker of the House. For starters, the whole intra-party kerfuffle that resulted in Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as speaker appears to have the CNP’s fingerprints all over it. Recall how it was the CNP-backed Freedom Caucus that orchestrated the giant intra-party showdown over Kevin McCarthy’s speakership nomination back in January with extensive CNP support. Flash forward to the new showdown over the Speakership, and it was again the Freedom Caucus leading ‘anti-establishment’ opposition, with CNP affiliates like Amy Kremer and Russ Vought again playing a supporting role. And at the end of it all, backbencher Mike Johnson emerges as the party’s consensus candidate with unanimous party support. Someone who happened to call CNP Vice President Kelly Shackelford his mentor during an October 2019 speach at a CNP conference. Johnson isn’t really hiding his theocratic sentiments." Oh, and there is much, much more if you go to the site. 92 pages worth of news that never hits legacy press. The US is now truly a theocratic fascist country.
Maricata
2023-11-16 22:20:25 +0000 UTCAll appeals to irrationality, which religion and metaphysics iare (be it the belief in ghosts, Gods, rabbit's feet, etc.), steals our stockpile of 'reason' and of course this is the point. Pie in the sky when you die! “The sleep of reason,” as Francisco Goya said, “brings forth monsters.”
Maricata
2023-11-04 14:19:49 +0000 UTC"Very few of the legal rulings that benefit corporate power have popular support. The corporate disemboweling of the country, therefore, is increasingly given cover by Christian fascists, who energize their base around abortion, prayer in schools, guns and breaking down the separation of church and state. These issues are rarely addressed in cases before federal courts. But they distract the base from the slew of pro-corporate rulings that dominate most court dockets. Corporations such as Tyson Foods, Purdue, Walmart, and Sam’s Warehouse have poured millions into institutions that indoctrinate these Christian fascists, including Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School. They fund the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which campaigned for Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Barrett opposes abortion and belongs to People of Praise, a far-right Catholic cult that practices “speaking in tongues.” She and the other far-right ideologues are hostile to LGBTQ rights. But this is not why she is so beloved by corporations, who are not interested in abortion, LGBTQ equality or gun rights. Barrett and the Christian fascists embrace an ideology that believes that God will take care of the righteous. Those who are poor, those who are sick, those who go to prison, those who are unemployed, those who cannot succeed in society do so because they have failed to please God. In this worldview there is no need for unions, universal health care, a social safety net or prison reform. Barrett has ruled consistently in favor of corporations to cheat gig workers out of overtime, green-light fossil fuel extraction and pollution and strip consumers of protection from corporate fraud. The watchdog group Accountable.US found that as a circuit court judge, Barrett “faced at least 55 cases in which citizens took on corporate entities in front of her court and 76% of the time she sided with the corporations.” The Christian fascists, allied with organizations such as the Federalist Society, under the Trump administration gave lifetime appointments to nearly 200 judges, roughly 23 percent of all federal judgeships. That included 53 to the nation’s appellate courts, the court immediately under the Supreme Court. The American Bar Association, the country’s largest nonpartisan coalition of lawyers, has rated many of these appointments as unqualified. There are currently six Federalist Society Supreme Court justices, including Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, who Nader calls “a corporation masquerading as a human being.” Two Federalist Society Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, who was an original faculty advisor to the organization founded by conservative law students in 1982, were supported in the nomination process by Joe Biden." https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-anonymous-executioners-corporate-state/278642/ See the fascist Christian rights ongoing attempt at takeover of the US military in an interview with Mikey Weinstein. Add the police and other law enforcement agencies like prison guards, etc. and we have the beginning of a fascist movement becoming a fascist state. U.S. POLITICS Christian Nationalism Unleashed in the U.S. Military – Mikey Weinstein https://theanalysis.news/christian-nationalism-unleashed-in-the-u-s-military-mikey-weinstein/ There is no hate like Christian love. And as Goethe stated, "There is nothing more dangerous than ignorance in action."
Maricata
2023-11-04 14:10:18 +0000 UTCi know being honest about these things doesn't serve the cause, but i personally think freedom of religion is like freedom of math (ok on an artistic level, but not very practical in day to day life). 'religious nutter' is a tautology, imo, and when a religion is 'established', it means it serves empire (almost exclusively). religions are often the anti-democratic blueprint for empire's minority rule.
Martin
2023-11-04 11:41:47 +0000 UTC
