What the article fails to mention is that the religious-right in the US has decided it can stomach any evil, intolerance, hate-crimes and simple tyranny as long as the GOP leadership continues to pay at least minimal lip service to their Abortion crusade. It’s completely binary as long as that lip-service is there, they will continue to send the entire spirit as well as letter of their entire christian foundation into the shredder.
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Yep, it’s a cover for their bigotry and intolerance of The Other.
Always has been. On occasion I’ve asked one when was the last time he gave anything of value to a charity. The response was always an evasion.
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The overwhelming support for Donald “grab um by the …” Trump proved what has been obvious since the founding of the Moral Majority and religious right. Namely that “values” in front of the word voter is and has always been code for race.
This article is very hard to read because it seems to be trying to explain to those using Christianity/religious bigotry to oppose immigration from almost all Christian Central and South America that what they are doing is actually reducing the percent of Christians to non Christians in America because of legal immigration from Asia. That is this article tries to explain the hypocrisy caused by racists cloaking themselves as religious bigots instead of racists. But what is obvious is that religious bigotry is the excuse or why they say they oppose immigration but racism is the reason or why they actually oppose not so much immigration but rather particular immigrants regardless of the immigrants religion.
I mean this article talks about legal immigration to Quote Trump from “shit hole countries” (India and Pakistan) as okay with Trump and his supporters who really will only accept immigration from Scandinavia or other White nations. That is the only real distinction made by Trump and his supporters on immigration is not religious so much as it is racial. That is it is factually wrong to think that racists are making a religious distinction between legal and illegal immigration when the only real distinction Trump and his supporters are making is between White and other immigration.
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Off topic, but wow.
If you have to demand respect, it’s because you’re not judged worthy of it.
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IRONY? calling it Irony … is … well … ironic
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If Trump or someone was able to actually isolate this country from all immigration for a period of time, we would experience the white birth rate dropping fast as well as the exodus out of religion that young white Americans are engaged in and end up with a smaller population that would be mostly atheist or agnostic. The loss of religion would be great but the population decrease would really make it hard to continue any socialist programs like social security or medicare or universal health care.
hahahahahahahahaha In other words, we’d be Europe, or at least southern Europe.
At another point in the 19th century, Protestants became worried about a different group of immigrants flooding across the border – Mormons coming from Canada.
Uh…they weren’t coming from Canada, they were coming from New York via Illinois.
This was the case for a long time but it’s generally faded away now. Especially since Catholics (or rather the clergy) are largely on the evangelicals’ side politically.
Steven Waldman:
It’s a stance we’ve come to expect, but there’s an irony to this. At a moment when more and more Americans are unaffiliated with religion, immigration is providing a counterbalance.
Waldman is right about the irony and you’re right about the hypocrisy.
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Verb. sap.
Well, if someone is planning to stop them, I hope they do it soon-ish.
One thing that I’ve learned from listening to ex-evangelicals is that calling them fake Christians can be counterproductive. The formulation cedes to Christians a moral high ground they do not deserve.
Another is distinction elided by the author between religious “freedom from” and “freedom to.” Previous battles for religious freedom focused on freedom from imposition of a dominant religion. Current battles focus on the demand by evangelicals that they have the freedom to discriminate against others based on their “deeply held beliefs.”
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Evangelical’s accepting Catholics as Christians is actually a relatively new development and has to do with the decision to disguise racism as religion. That is the Moral Majority was formed to oppose Jimmy Carter because he ended all Government funding to any institution, especially “colleges and universities” that discriminated based on race. Realizing that racism alone would not produce the policies they wanted, led by the biggest racist of the 1950s Jerry Falwell Sr., the “Moral Majority” in addition to supporting racists and racism adopted anti-abortion planks so as to both put lipstick on a pig (hide the fact that racism was their real reason for existing) and expand their base to include Catholics who until then Evangelicals hated second only to Blacks. Remember many states north of the Mason Dixon line that had few Blacks and Jews like Maine had huge KKK membership because of the hatred of Catholics and that the biggest Evangelical victory in American history, Prohibition, was first and foremost supported because it was perceived to be anti-Catholic.
This distinction between the excuse of abortion and the reason Racism for values voters is why Evangelicals had no issue supporting the most pro abortion president in American history, Ronald Reagan, first Governor in American history to sign a bill legalizing abortion, a bill that to this day is the most permissive on the subject, appointed Supreme Court Justices that sided with the South on race but made sure abortion was stayed legal and followed policies that caused the number of abortions during Reagan’s term as president to greatly increase.
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While I understand your desire not to be lumped with fraudulent right-wing pseudo-Christians, the reality is that as a national political force Christianity is overwhelmingly retrograde. With the exception of the AME and a few other black churches, there is no liberal or left Christian political influence at work in US politics. I think that this is intrinsic to the authoritarian mindset of rightwing Christians and the “cat herd” quality of the religious left. In any case, what it means is that for purposes of national political discussion, “Christian” now means and for the foreseeable future will mean bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. If genuine (Left) Christians want to live in a country where their identity means something different, they are going to have to confront and cast out the (immensely successful) fraudulent Christians that now define the term. It sucks but it is reality.
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In the conservative Bible White Jesus add the disclaimer “Does not apply to brown folks”.
Real Christians are protestant, white, Republican, and gun carrying. Although oddly, very conservative Jews, Mormons, and RCs as well as atheists are honorary Christians.
I wonder what Mrs. Thing was doing in Ukraine…
Don’t kid yourself, the evangelicals are not crazy about Catholics, oh there are some evangelicals among them but for the most part they are hard line Protestants, remember Catholics were targets of the KKK along with the blacks and Jews.
Actually, it’s those at the top of the hierarchy (Bishops and up) who tend to identify with right-wing authoritarians. Parish clergy tend to have center-left views. There is a tinge of authoritarianism that remains, but I think that’s a consequence of a very top-down organization.
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That’s like the right wing telling followers of Islam that if they don’t want to be associated with terrorism and want to be truly seen as a religion of peace, they should be denouncing terrorism in the name of Allah. Even though regularly, Muslims will come out saying those who commit atrocities in name of Islam are at best misguided or, at worst, traitors and impostors.
We all know the right wing totally ignores these voices. Let’s be better than that.
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