It's Sunday

 

Next level religious bias

 

There is no bottom.

It's Sunday

 

What's the over/under for them faking Trump's death and then having him "rise from the dead" three days later?  Easter's coming up, and Trump's getting pretty decrepit.  They should hurry if they're going to do it this year.

It's Sunday

 

Christian nationalists, eager for the end of the world, are running this show

“This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be “afraid” as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” — MRFF active duty NCO client, writing on behalf of themself and 15 other unit members [including at least 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew].

MRFF has received over 200 calls from more than 50 military installations across all the services since Saturday reporting similar disturbing pronouncements from their Christian zealot commanders.

[...]

The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations.

[...]

MRFF clients report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new “biblically-sanctioned” war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian “End Times” as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation.

[...]

[T]he Iran war has been sanctioned by the fundamentalist Christian nationalist version of our Lord and Savior and the New Testament in specific order to bring about the end of the world and usher in the 1000 year reign of Jesus Christ.

[...]

Any military members seeking to take advantage of their subordinates by advancing their blood-soaked, Christian nationalist wet dreams upon the flames of this latest non-Congressionally sanctioned attack against Iran, should be swiftly, aggressively and visibly prosecuted for numerous violations of the military criminal code known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

  Military Religious Freedom

But they won't be.

The new American ethos: punch 'em while they're down. 

"Death and destruction from the sky" sounds very Armageddon-like.  I don't think that's a coincidence.

Jesus Christ, these people are running the country

 And this cretin is in charge of the military.

Christian naionalism is not Christian.  

We have a bunch of Nazis in charge.  

Project 2025: Mission Accomplished

[Russell] Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist who served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget in Trump’s first term, was known for his provocative public pronouncements. But he went even further in private, envisaging a Trump presidency in which regulatory agencies would be shut down and career civil servants would be too depressed to get out of bed.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in one recording. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

“We want to put them in trauma.”

  ProPublica

Mission accomplished. And a reminder that Christian Nationalists are not Christian.

“We have detailed agency plans,” he said. “We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.”

Who claimed, while running, that he didn't know anything about Project 2025.

“The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said in one speech. “Our adversaries already hold the weapons of the government apparatus, and they have aimed it at us. And they are going to continue to aim it until they no longer have to win elections.”

Every accusation is a confession.

A lot of what we do as reporters is akin to squinting through opaque windows at events unfolding in a very dimly lit room. We can see who is inside and how they’re moving, but our lack of context often prevents us from understanding what’s really happening. We default to assuming that the future will be roughly like the past, guessing that, say, Trump 47 will be roughly like Trump 45 with fewer guardrails.

[...]

Vought has returned to his post as the budget office’s director, and his plans for eviscerating entire agencies and decimating the morale of federal workers have turned into reality. Trump 47 looks very different from Trump 45, just as Vought told his audiences that it would.

[...]

It seems appropriate to give Vought the last word since the worldview he described has proven so accurate. What sounded grandiose in the preelection days seems today like a reasonable summary of the path Trump and his allies have chosen.

“We are here in the year of 2024, a year that very well [could] — and I believe it will — rival 1776 and 1860 for the complexity and the uncertainty of the forces arrayed against us,” Vought said, citing the years when the colonies declared independence from Britain and the first state seceded over President Abraham Lincoln’s election.

“God put us here for such a time as this.”

The Nazis are running the show

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Full speed ahead

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blph_2RSBno

It's Sunday

Missouri has a job to do.

Project 2025: Creating Gilead in America

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07:11 am:

It's Sunday

And Easter, to boot.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Authoritarian promises

And this is exactly what Trump has been saying he'll do if you elect him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Careful, Mike

Is stepping on Trump's divine claim a good idea?  

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

In a normal world, a self-proclaimed historian who published a book so full of errors that the publisher pulled it would not be given any more platforms. But not so with [David] Barton, who continues to influence evangelical leaders.

[...]

[Thomas] Jefferson definitely was not a proponent of Christian nationalism, said Warren Throckmorton, co-author of Getting Jefferson Right, the second edition of a book first published in 2012.

Throckmorton and colleague Michael Coulter first wrote to debunk the widespread inaccuracies of amateur historian David Barton, who the month before had published The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson. In that book, as in Barton’s oft-quoted works, he fabricated a history of Jefferson that serves the narrative of Christian nationalism.

The inaccuracies were so egregious that Thomas Nelson publishers pulled the best-selling book, explaining: “Our conclusion was that the criticisms were correct. There were historical details — matters of fact, not matters of opinion — that were not supported at all.”

[...]

First Liberty Institute — famous for its role in cases such as that of high school football coach Joseph Kennedy — recently hosted a nighttime tour of the U.S. Capitol that was led by Barton. The group was joined at one point by new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who like Barton contends America was founded as a “Christian nation.”

And Family Research Council — the Focus on the Family advocacy spinoff in Washington, D.C. — continues to publish a video tour of the Capitol narrated by Barton.

[...]

“Christian nationalism is on the rise, and we felt the book would be timely if we brought it back out to respond to Barton.

[...]

“Despite the stated reverence for truth in evangelical circles, when it comes to politics, Barton’s got something there,” Throckmorton explained in an interview this week. “If you’re a political entity, you don’t admit errors. It’s all about politics, it’s not about religion. That’s another danger of bringing politics and religion together: you eventually don’t have religion. Winning at politics is your religion.”

[...]

Barton has refused to admit his errors, and he has powerful enablers, Throckmorton said.

“One of the cases I make is there is a conspiracy of silence. A lot of the rightwing influencers know there are problems with Barton’s stories, but he’s too useful to them, to the policies they want to enact, so they don’t do anything about it.”

  Baptist News

Throughout his decades of public life — working for the Republican Party, becoming a darling of Fox News, advising politicians such as new House Speaker Mike Johnson, launching a small propaganda empire, carving out a niche as the American right’s chosen peddler of nostalgic alternative facts — Barton had never been shy about his ultimate aims. He is an avowed Christian nationalist who favors theocratic rule; moreover, he is a so-called Dominionist, someone who believes Christians should control not only the government but also the media, the education system, and other cultural institutions.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

Hypocritical "Christians" are all too common.  It appears he might also be guilty of one of the 7 deadly sins.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

The Republican Party’s incessant reliance on evangelical Christianity as a worldview has given the game away, revealing that the rollback of the progress of the 20th century would be achieved using the faith as the means and rationale. Eventually, with enough momentum, the usefulness of evangelicalism would mix with the political project and give rise to Christian Nationalism.

[...]

After years of the GOP embracing Trumpism, during which the white evangelical community doted on Donald Trump and treated him as an agent of God or an impure messiah, we have reached a moment where the political divide is now considered a holy conflict between Good and Evil.

The crux of Christian Nationalism as an existential threat is this: by embracing a politicized faith, the wielders are able to justify any action, any oppression, any act of violence.

[...]

As this is a conflict between “revealed” (information handed down from God in the form of revelation or dictate) and empirical knowledge (measurable, objective information), even the most obvious facts and figures are rendered moot in comparison. It is, to put it mildly, an airtight and absolute power.

[...]

What ideologues are interested in isn’t just a Christian regime, but what the story and mythology of Christianity can accomplish. For some, this is about true belief. There are evangelicals who believe, without question and with full faith, that a Christian-based America is necessary should we not descend into a hellish, apocalyptic existence. And then there are others, including wealthy donors obsessed with destroying the “scourge” of democracy itself, who see the faith and its assorted features as incredibly useful in preparing a base of supporters to accept any and all reactionary options.

[...]

This new push for Christian Nationalism echoes previous moments in our history, including the evangelical drive in the 1980’s that partnered with Ronald Reagan to radically transform the nation. This iteration, however, is playing for all the marbles.

  Jared Yates Sexton @ Substack

It's Sunday

Excerpts from a review of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American by Andrew L. Seidel:

As a historian, I confess to a certain amusement when I hear the Judeo-Christian tradition praised as the source of our concern for human rights. In fact, the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense. They were notorious not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression but for enthusiastic justifications of slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, genocide.

[...]

The threat of Christian nationalism, which frequently promotes white supremacy, racism, sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and bigotry, poses serious risks to our constitutional democracy. Seidel has effectively exposed and unreservedly debunked the myth that America was founded as a Christian (or later Judeo-Christian) nation. Indeed, he has made a powerful case that the fundamental principles on which Christianity is based are entirely antithetical to the Constitution and to the government it established.

[...]

Seidel pauses to devote a separate chapter to the fall-back argument of Christian nationalists that the moral, if not legal, foundation of America is Christianity. He argues that “America is quintessentially a human achievement” with credit going, not to God, but to the genius of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and thousands of others. Seidel rejects the “insidious rationale” that “only Christians are moral.” He cites the findings of Phil Zuckerman in an innovative 2009 study published in Sociology Compass: the least religious countries are the most peaceful and prosperous; have the lowest rates of violent crime and homicide, corruption, and intolerance against racial and ethnic minorities; the highest quality of life; and greatest protection of women’s rights and political and civil liberties. Within the United States, those states that are the most religious have the highest rates of poverty, murder, violent crime, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, and STDs; and the lowest percentage of college-educated adults.

Seidel next addresses the Christian nationalist argument that it is the Declaration of Independence (with four references to God, the Creator, the Supreme Judge, and divine Providence) which proves that America was founded as a Christian nation. Seidel begins by reminding us that while the Declaration declared independence — dissolving the colonies’ ties to Great Britain — it did not create the government of the United States; that was accomplished by the subsequent Constitution, which, as he has already convincingly established, did not create a Christian nation.

But Seidel goes further. He argues that the “Declaration of Independence is an anti-Christian document with snippets of religious-sounding language as window dressing.” This is one of Seidel’s most original insights. “The Christian bible stands directly opposed to the Declaration’s central ideas, including that it is ‘the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [their government], and to institute a new Government.” This revolutionary idea runs directly contrary to Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 13: 1–2):

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

[...]

Seidel points out that the biblical principle that holds that governments are “established by God” is directly contrary to the very text of the Declaration which declares that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.”

[...]

“When the framers, like James Madison, surveyed history,” Seidel writes, “they eschewed theocracy and intolerance, condemning the ‘torrents of blood’ spilled in the name of religion.” Jefferson “looked back on the ‘millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, [who] have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.’” Seidel concludes this analysis by observing that “[a]fter surveying this bloody history, the founders decided to build a wall that would forever separate church and state. They disestablished religion and abolished religious tests for public office. They invented the secular state.”

[...]

The Christian nationalist campaign to subjugate the Constitution to religious dogma has clear and present consequences as the Trump administration is demonstrating in spades. As this review was being written, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to allow a 40-foot Christian cross, commemorating the veterans of World War I, to remain on public property at public expense at a busy intersection in Blandenburg, Maryland (American Legion v. American Humanist Association). Conceding that the “cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol,” Justice Samuel Alito Jr., relying on “history” and “tradition,” wrote for the majority that the “passage of time gives rise to a strong presumption of constitutionality.” Did history, tradition, and the passage of time make racial and gender discrimination constitutional? In a sharply worded dissent, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that the decision “places Christianity above other faiths.” Politically and culturally Christian nationalists have convinced not only five conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents (including two by Trump), but two moderate justices, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, appointed by Democratic presidents, to uphold an admitted 40-foot Christian symbol erected on public property and maintained at public expense, thereby placing “Christianity above other faiths.” That’s a big victory for Christian nationalists.

[...]

Christian nationalists “have successfully persuaded too many Americans” — and one might add, too many Supreme Court justices — “to abandon our heritage, to spurn our secular foundations in favor of their myth.” “It is time to reclaim that heritage and refute these myths,” Seidel writes, and, citing John Kennedy, “We need to remind Americans that our Constitution demands absolute separation between church and state.” “We must raise hell when the wall of separation between state and church is breached,” he pleads. “We must, as Madison warned, take ‘alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.’”

  LA Review of Books

This is an interesting review of what is no doubt an interesting book. In one part, each of the ten commandments is shown to be contradicted by the Constitution. There's lots more. Check it out.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.