This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1358235
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1358235
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When didn’t an authoritarian political system not use mythology of past faith and glory to bolster their lie? It’s one of the strongest ways to link the misinformed. It’s symbols are propaganda devices used to stir up the rabble and gives a focal point. They are often repeated and morphed for the times.
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We have met the Taliban and they are some of us.
They are giving all religions a bad name.
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Christian Nationalism is . . .
. . . . .An ultimate oxymoron.
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They have been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years now. With Pat Robertson and Christian Broadcast Network
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Anybody who believes in the 21st century that the earth is 10,000 years old and that Adam and Eve had vegetarian T-Rexes for neighbors in the Garden of Eden 5,000 years ago can be convinced to believe literally anything. It’s not a hard push to also convince them that Italy conspired with Dominion to steal votes, and that Hillary Clinton wears a skin mask that Houma Abedin cut off a baby’s face.
What should be kept in mind is that the vast, vast majority of these Christian Nationalists come out of the Southern Baptist-derived evangelical churches that espouse a form of Biblical Literalism. There’s a component of extreme conservative Opus Dei Catholics working with them, but the shock troops are primarily Evangelicals. They’re not mainstream Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, or Episcopalians, and obviously not Unitarians or Quakers.
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It certainly helps with getting in the right mindset for wishing political genocide on your opponents if you start from a Calvinist “I am one of the chosen and everyone else is destined to burn for eternity” place.
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“Science averse”
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“These people have no place in politics, they scare the hell out of me”, Barry Goldwater on Jerry Falwell and “Values” voters.
“Simply put, if American Evangelicalism is disproportionately southern, then it’s more likely to carry the South’s racial baggage into broader American life”, David French.
“The overwhelming support of White Evangelicals for Donald Trump proves beyond all doubt that “values” in front of the word “voter” is and has always been code for race”, everyone with an IQ over 50.
With the above said, religion is the last place that racism, sexism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, are still tolerated in America. Perhaps that is why White Evangelicals feel persecuted and have to hold conventions about it at the Ritz Carlton.
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My bestfriend growing up was the son of a Baptist minister. Both his parents were as Authoritarian Christian as you can get. My friend eventually became a drug addict, he had a lifetime worth of awful stories about his family while growing up and died of an overdose when we were both 24.
Over the years I’d get Xmas cards from his parents here and there and once in 2010 or 2011 I got one with a printed letter that clearly went out to many and I’m not quite sure it was supposed to be included in mine.
In it the parents railed against Obama, Democrats, homosexuals, the media, Catholics, Mormons and spoke of sedition with lines talking about not losing faith and understanding that it was all God’s plan and that soon “we’d all have war stories to share.” That line always stuck with me.
I have not spoken to or heard from them since receiving this card.
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And when they die and nothing has changed, I wonder what their last thoughts are. Sometimes I feel sorry for them. Some try to be good people.
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4004 BC, so 6000 years old, according to the Archbishop of Ussher long ago. But 10K and 5K are good enough numbers for people who have literally never read anything but the Bible and TV Guide.
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When you are a total loser, how else are you going to find something that you believe makes you “superior” to others? It is such a foolproof con.
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Ninety percent of them have never read the Bible, certainly not in the original language. Instead, they’ve simply been told what the Bible says, often by preachers who went to second rate Seminaries and have also never read the Bible in the original language.
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Jesus was all about white, America-first Christian Nationalism. Ask any white America-first Christian Nationalist. I believe it’s outlined in John.
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Who here can read Aramaic? Several-centuries-BC Hebrew to the extent it existed beyond an oral language? First-century Greek?
Who here can read medieval church Latin, which may have been your meaning?
But any of us can read what some English version says after centuries of oral history (for the oldest parts) and multiple rounds of mistranslation. It says a heck of a lot of things, many contradictory. A few old bits say to keep bondsmen by certain rules, and get used to justify slavery. A bunch of old bits say to hate people who lie with the same gender, or to hate those with the wrong faith. Yesu bin Yosef said to love everyone and help everyone, especially the poorest and neediest, all through his career so far as we know, and did it all nonviolently, other than angrily driving the usurous moneylenders out of the Temple.
We see which of those portions are emphasized in speech and practiced in deed by these Christian nationalists.
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Help was needed?
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Nixon got in bed with these greedy sleaze bags. Raygun consummated the marriage.
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In my opinion, all religions are just a con game for money, with the “born-again” assholes being the worst. Too many people fall all over them selves when told something stupid to do by a pastor, priest, rabbi, or iman. Over the centuries more people have died because of religion than politics. If it was up to me, churches would be taxed as businesses.
I wish Elmer Gantry was required reading in every high school, for any students able to read.
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I appreciate having this piece on TPM. Saw some of the Christian signs at the Capitol insurrectionary riot, but must have missed quite a bit of it.
The author’s ties to Reverend Barber in N.C. are a reminder of how different strands of Christianity continue to compete about theology, race, the place of religion in national life, and what the highest ideals of the nation ought to be.
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