Only hydrogen-powered trains will run on a German regional line in 'world first' Patrik STOLLARZ AFP/File
a culture that inspires people to believe all sorts of nonsense that makes them rash, violent, and vengeful is an inferior one, not only in the domain of facts but in the moral domain as well. insofar as religion promotes ignorance and superstition, it makes people more evil than they would be otherwise. the belief in demons, witches, and wizards is an integral part of christianity that explains why that religion has inspired the zealously devout to behave so badly.
by shadia b. dury, free inquiry
CHRISTIANITY
timothy frekke: christianity is a myth that has been literalised
---
RELIGION: A THOUSAND YEARS INSTITUTION BASED ON MYTHS, LEGENDS, MISINTERPRETED NATURAL PHENOMENON HAS SERVED AS THE BASIS FOR MANKIND'S HYPOCRISY, WARS, AND OPPRESSION.
---
STEPHEN HAWKING: "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works."
----
INCREASINGLY, THE ONLY THING RELIGION HAS LEFT TO JUSTIFY ITSELF IS THAT IT PROVIDES COVER FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO HAVE BIGOTED, SELFISH BELIEFS BUT WANT TO BELIEVE THEY ARE GOOD PEOPLE ANYWAY. AS THESE SOCIAL TRENDS CONTINUE, WE CAN EXPECT THE ALIGNMENT BETWEEN PUBLIC PIETY AND GROTESQUELY SELFISH POLITICAL BELIEFS TO GET WORSE, NOT BETTER.
---
karl marx: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions, it is the opium of the people.”
january 2023
|
|
Fundamentalism, racism, fear and propaganda: An insider explains why rural, Christian white
America will never change
Forsetti FORSETTI'S JUSTICE, ALTERNET
...In deep-red white America, the white Christian God is king, figuratively and literally. Religious fundamentalism is what has shaped most of their belief systems. Systems built on a fundamentalist framework are not conducive to introspection, questioning, learning, change. When you have a belief system that is built on fundamentalism, it isn’t open to outside criticism, especially by anyone not a member of your tribe and in a position of power. The problem isn’t “coastal elites don’t understand rural Americans.” The problem is rural America doesn’t understand itself and will NEVER listen to anyone outside their bubble. It doesn’t matter how “understanding” you are, how well you listen, what language you use…if you are viewed as an outsider, your views are automatically discounted. I’ve had hundreds of discussions with rural white Americans and whenever I present them any information that contradicts their entrenched beliefs, no matter how sound, how unquestionable, how obvious, they WILL NOT even entertain the possibility it might be true. Their refusal is a result of the nature of their fundamentalist belief system and the fact I’m the enemy because I’m an educated liberal....
Racism, fundamentalism, fear and propaganda: An insider explains why rural, white Christian America will never change
Forsetti FORSETTI'S JUSTICE, ALTERNET
...When a 3,000-year-old book that was written by uneducated, pre-scientific people, subject to translation innumerable times, edited with political and economic pressures from popes and kings, is given higher intellectual authority than facts arrived at from a rigorous, self-critical, constantly re-evaluating system that can and does correct mistakes, no amount of understanding, no amount of respect, no amount of evidence is going to change their minds, assuage their fears...
*today's hypocrisy*
Chris Hedges argues that the "Christian fascists are clear about the society they intend to create":
In their ideal America, our "secular humanist" society based on science and reason will be destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of the legal system. Creationism or "Intelligent Design" will be taught in public schools, many of which will be overtly "Christian." Those branded as social deviants, including the LGBTQ community, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals and those dismissed as "nominal Christians" — meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible — will be silenced, imprisoned or killed. The role of the federal government will be reduced to protecting property rights, "homeland" security and waging war. Most government assistance programs and federal departments, including education, will be terminated. Church organizations will be funded and empowered to run social welfare agencies and schools.
The poor, condemned for sloth, indolence and sinfulness, will be denied help. The death penalty will be expanded to include "moral crimes," including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. Women, denied contraception, access to abortion and equality under the law, will be subordinate to men. Those who practice other faiths will become, at best, second-class citizens. The wars waged by the American empire will be defined as religious crusades. Victims of police violence and those in prison will have no redress. There will be no separation of church and state. The only legitimate voices in public discourse and the media will be "Christian." America will be sacralized as an agent of God. Those who defy the "Christian" authorities, at home and abroad, will be condemned as agents of Satan.
The poor, condemned for sloth, indolence and sinfulness, will be denied help. The death penalty will be expanded to include "moral crimes," including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. Women, denied contraception, access to abortion and equality under the law, will be subordinate to men. Those who practice other faiths will become, at best, second-class citizens. The wars waged by the American empire will be defined as religious crusades. Victims of police violence and those in prison will have no redress. There will be no separation of church and state. The only legitimate voices in public discourse and the media will be "Christian." America will be sacralized as an agent of God. Those who defy the "Christian" authorities, at home and abroad, will be condemned as agents of Satan.
Catholicism
Revealed: New Orleans archdiocese concealed serial child molester for years
Lawrence Hecker confessed to superiors he had molested multiple teenagers but he was never prosecuted, secret documents show
Ramon Antonio Vargas in New Orleans
yhe guardian
Tue 20 Jun 2023 06.00 EDT
The last four Roman Catholic archbishops of New Orleans went to shocking lengths to conceal a confessed serial child molester who is still living but has never been prosecuted, a Guardian investigation has found.
Upon review of hundreds of pages of previously secret church files, the Guardian has uncovered arguably the most complete account yet about the extremes to which the second-oldest Catholic archdiocese in the US went to coddle the admitted child molester Lawrence Hecker.
Back in 1999, Hecker confessed to his superiors at the archdiocese of New Orleans that he had either sexually molested or otherwise shared a bed with multiple teenagers whom he met through his work as a Roman Catholic priest.
The admitted conduct occurred during a 15-year period, beginning in the mid-1960s, which Hecker says “was a time of great change in the world and in the church, and I succumbed to its zeitgeist”. In a two-page statement given to local church authorities serving a region with about a half-million Catholics, Hecker says, “It was a time when I neglected spiritual direction, confession and most daily prayer.”
Hecker confessed to the misconduct or abuse of seven teenagers between about 1966 and 1979, including “overtly sexual acts” or “affectionate … sex acts” with at least two individuals. In other cases, Hecker reported either fondling, mutual masturbation, nudity or bed sharing, including once on another overnight trip to a Texas theme park.
Hecker’s confession said the late New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan spoke with him about an accusation of sexual abuse in 1988. In 1996, Hannan’s successor as archbishop, the late Francis Schulte, received another allegation which the organization deemed unsubstantiated.
Hecker’s 1999 admission arrived after one of his victims came forward with another complaint to the archdiocese. The organization responded in part by sending Hecker to an out-of-state psychiatric treatment facility which diagnosed him as a pedophile who rationalized, justified and took “little responsibility for his behavior”.
The facility also recommended that the archdiocese prohibit Hecker from working with children, adolescents or other “particularly vulnerable” people.
But Hecker did not stop working. In fact, after a sabbatical of a few months, the church ultimately allowed him to continue until his retirement in 2002 – which happened after a Catholic clerical molestation and cover-up scandal that ensnared the archdiocese of Boston prompted worldwide church reforms.
When attorneys for the archdiocese – pressured by the Boston scandal – reported Hecker alongside a handful of other clerics to New Orleans police, they only informed investigators about a single one of the cases cited in his confession. And they didn’t mention the confession at all.
Law enforcement authorities have never charged Hecker with a crime, even though his number of accusers has only swelled with the passage of time. Despite transparency policies that the Catholic church generally adopted after the 2002 scandal in Boston, New Orleans’s archdiocese waited until it released a 2018 list of dozens of priests and deacons whom it considered to be strongly suspected of sexually abusing minors before it publicly acknowledged that Hecker was a predator.
Notably, the archdiocese only stopped paying Hecker retirement benefits in 2020. Citing a moral obligation it had to all clerics, the archdiocese waited until after it filed for federal bankruptcy protection that year (in part because of litigation in the wake of the clergy abuse list) to stop paying these benefits to Hecker and other abusive clerics. The judge overseeing the bankruptcy ordered it.
The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an attorney for the organization last week said in court that the city’s archbishop since 2009 – Gregory Aymond – “is taking every step possible to protect children”.
The Orleans parish district attorney, Jason Williams, confirmed that on 14 June the archdiocese turned over “voluminous documents” pertaining to Hecker. He would not say whether his office compelled the church to hand over the files through a subpoena.
That production came after Williams’s office spoke with a man who alleged being choked unconscious and raped as a child by Hecker after meeting the priest through a Catholic institution, according to an attorney representing the accuser.
Child rape cases in Louisiana have no filing deadlines, and they could carry life imprisonment. Yet it is not clear when or if Hecker may ultimately be charged.
Hecker’s attorney, Eugene Redmann, has declined to speak with the Guardian about claims against his client. But he alluded to how Hecker was 91, said the claims were generally from “decades ago” and added that people of advanced age “lose a lot of memory”.
“We will address any charges if they are brought,” Redmann said.
Reached by phone last week and asked for comment on his 1999 statement to the archdiocese, Hecker paused for several moments before saying: “I am running behind on time and have to get to an appointment.”
He then hung up.
Read the Guardian’s full investigation here.
Upon review of hundreds of pages of previously secret church files, the Guardian has uncovered arguably the most complete account yet about the extremes to which the second-oldest Catholic archdiocese in the US went to coddle the admitted child molester Lawrence Hecker.
Back in 1999, Hecker confessed to his superiors at the archdiocese of New Orleans that he had either sexually molested or otherwise shared a bed with multiple teenagers whom he met through his work as a Roman Catholic priest.
The admitted conduct occurred during a 15-year period, beginning in the mid-1960s, which Hecker says “was a time of great change in the world and in the church, and I succumbed to its zeitgeist”. In a two-page statement given to local church authorities serving a region with about a half-million Catholics, Hecker says, “It was a time when I neglected spiritual direction, confession and most daily prayer.”
Hecker confessed to the misconduct or abuse of seven teenagers between about 1966 and 1979, including “overtly sexual acts” or “affectionate … sex acts” with at least two individuals. In other cases, Hecker reported either fondling, mutual masturbation, nudity or bed sharing, including once on another overnight trip to a Texas theme park.
Hecker’s confession said the late New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan spoke with him about an accusation of sexual abuse in 1988. In 1996, Hannan’s successor as archbishop, the late Francis Schulte, received another allegation which the organization deemed unsubstantiated.
Hecker’s 1999 admission arrived after one of his victims came forward with another complaint to the archdiocese. The organization responded in part by sending Hecker to an out-of-state psychiatric treatment facility which diagnosed him as a pedophile who rationalized, justified and took “little responsibility for his behavior”.
The facility also recommended that the archdiocese prohibit Hecker from working with children, adolescents or other “particularly vulnerable” people.
But Hecker did not stop working. In fact, after a sabbatical of a few months, the church ultimately allowed him to continue until his retirement in 2002 – which happened after a Catholic clerical molestation and cover-up scandal that ensnared the archdiocese of Boston prompted worldwide church reforms.
When attorneys for the archdiocese – pressured by the Boston scandal – reported Hecker alongside a handful of other clerics to New Orleans police, they only informed investigators about a single one of the cases cited in his confession. And they didn’t mention the confession at all.
Law enforcement authorities have never charged Hecker with a crime, even though his number of accusers has only swelled with the passage of time. Despite transparency policies that the Catholic church generally adopted after the 2002 scandal in Boston, New Orleans’s archdiocese waited until it released a 2018 list of dozens of priests and deacons whom it considered to be strongly suspected of sexually abusing minors before it publicly acknowledged that Hecker was a predator.
Notably, the archdiocese only stopped paying Hecker retirement benefits in 2020. Citing a moral obligation it had to all clerics, the archdiocese waited until after it filed for federal bankruptcy protection that year (in part because of litigation in the wake of the clergy abuse list) to stop paying these benefits to Hecker and other abusive clerics. The judge overseeing the bankruptcy ordered it.
The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an attorney for the organization last week said in court that the city’s archbishop since 2009 – Gregory Aymond – “is taking every step possible to protect children”.
The Orleans parish district attorney, Jason Williams, confirmed that on 14 June the archdiocese turned over “voluminous documents” pertaining to Hecker. He would not say whether his office compelled the church to hand over the files through a subpoena.
That production came after Williams’s office spoke with a man who alleged being choked unconscious and raped as a child by Hecker after meeting the priest through a Catholic institution, according to an attorney representing the accuser.
Child rape cases in Louisiana have no filing deadlines, and they could carry life imprisonment. Yet it is not clear when or if Hecker may ultimately be charged.
Hecker’s attorney, Eugene Redmann, has declined to speak with the Guardian about claims against his client. But he alluded to how Hecker was 91, said the claims were generally from “decades ago” and added that people of advanced age “lose a lot of memory”.
“We will address any charges if they are brought,” Redmann said.
Reached by phone last week and asked for comment on his 1999 statement to the archdiocese, Hecker paused for several moments before saying: “I am running behind on time and have to get to an appointment.”
He then hung up.
Read the Guardian’s full investigation here.
Report details ‘staggering’ church sex abuse in Maryland
By LEA SKENE, BRIAN WITTE and SARAH BRUMFIELD - ap
4/6/2023
BALTIMORE (AP) — More than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused over 600 children and often escaped accountability, according to a long-awaited state report released Wednesday that revealed the scope of abuse spanning 80 years and accused church leaders of decades of coverups.
The report paints a damning picture of the archdiocese, which is the oldest Roman Catholic diocese in the country and spans much of Maryland. Some parishes, schools and congregations had more than one abuser at the same time — including St. Mark Parish in Catonsville, which had 11 abusers living and working there between 1964 and 2004. One deacon admitted to molesting over 100 children. Another priest was allowed to feign hepatitis treatment and make other excuses to avoid facing abuse allegations.
The Maryland Attorney General’s Office released the findings of their yearslong investigation during Holy Week — considered the most sacred time of year in Christianity ahead of Easter Sunday — and said the number of victims is likely far higher. The report was redacted to protect confidential grand jury materials, meaning the identities of some accused clergy were removed.
“The staggering pervasiveness of the abuse itself underscores the culpability of the Church hierarchy,” the report said. “The sheer number of abusers and victims, the depravity of the abusers’ conduct, and the frequency with which known abusers were given the opportunity to continue preying upon children are astonishing.”
Disclosure of the redacted findings marks a significant development in an ongoing legal battle over their release and adds to growing evidence from parishes across the country as numerous similar revelations have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years.
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, in a statement posted online, apologized to the victims and said the report “details a reprehensible time in the history of this Archdiocese, a time that will not be covered up, ignored or forgotten.”
“It is difficult for most to imagine that such evil acts could have actually occurred,” Lori said. “For victim-survivors everywhere, they know the hard truth: These evil acts did occur.”
Also on Wednesday, the state legislature passed a bill to end a statute of limitations on abuse-related civil lawsuits, sending it to Gov. Wes Moore, who has said he supports it. The Baltimore archdiocese says it has paid more than $13.2 million for care and compensation for 301 abuse victims since the 1980s, including $6.8 million toward 105 voluntary settlements.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, who took office in January, said the investigation shows “pervasive, pernicious and persistent abuse.” State investigators began their work in 2019; they reviewed over 100,000 pages of documents dating back to the 1940s and interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses.
ABUSE RECALLED AS A ‘LIFE SENTENCE’
Victims said the report was a long-overdue public reckoning with shameful accusations the church has been facing for decades.
Jean Hargadon Wehner said she was abused in Baltimore as a teen by A. Joseph Maskell, a priest who served as her Catholic high school’s counselor and chaplain. She said she reported her abuse to church officials in the early ’90s, when her memories of the trauma finally surfaced about two decades after she was repeatedly raped.
“I expected them to do the right thing in 1992,” she told reporters Wednesday. “I’m still angry.”
Maskell abused at least 39 victims, according to the report. He denied the allegations before his death in 2001 and was never criminally charged. The Associated Press typically doesn’t name victims of abuse, but Wehner has spoken publicly to draw attention to the issue.
Kurt Rupprecht, who also experienced abuse as a child, said he was in his late 40s when he pieced together his traumatic memories. He said the realization brought him some relief because it explained decades of self-destructive behavior and mental health challenges, but also left him overwhelmed with anger and disbelief.
Rupprecht said his abuser was assigned to the Diocese of Wilmington, which covers some counties on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
“We’re here to speak the truth and never stop,” he said after the news conference. “We deal with this every day. It is our life sentence.”
The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, noted the report lists more names of abusers than have been released publicly by archdiocese officials. The organization called on the archbishop to explain the discrepancies.
Other investigations involving the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, which both include parts of Maryland, are ongoing.
ARCHDIOCESE TOOK STEPS TO PROTECT THE ACCUSED
The Baltimore report says church leaders were focused on keeping abuse hidden, not on protecting victims or stopping abuse. In some situations, victims ended up reporting abuse to priests who were abusive themselves. And when law enforcement did become aware of abuse allegations, police and prosecutors were often deferential and “uninterested in probing what church leaders knew and when,” according to the report.
The nearly 500-page document includes numerous instances of leaders taking steps to protect accused clergy, including allowing them to retire with financial support rather than be ousted, letting them remain in the ministry and failing to report alleged abuse to law enforcement.
In 1964, for instance, Father Laurence Brett admitted to sexually abusing a teenager at a Catholic university in Connecticut.
He was sent to New Mexico under the guise of hepatitis treatment and then to Sacramento, where another teenage boy reported being abused by Brett, the report said. He was later assigned to Baltimore, where he served as chaplain at a Catholic high school for boys and abused over 20 victims.
After several students accused him of abuse in 1973, Brett was allowed to resign, saying he had to care for a sick aunt. School officials didn’t report the abuse to authorities and dozens more victims later came forward. He never faced criminal charges and died in 2010.
The report largely focuses on the years before 2002, when an investigation by the Boston Globe into abuse and coverup in the Archdiocese of Boston led to an explosion of revelations nationwide. The nation’s Catholic bishops, for the first time, then agreed on reforms including a lifetime ban from ministry for any priest who commits even a single incident of abuse. While new national policies significantly improved the internal handling of reported abuse in the Baltimore archdiocese after 2002, significant flaws remained, according to the report.
Only one person has been indicted through the investigation: Neil Adleberg, 74, who was arrested last year and charged with rape and other counts. The case remains ongoing. Officials said he coached wrestling at a Catholic high school in the ’70s, then returned to the role for the 2014-2015 school year. The alleged abuse occurred in 2013 and 2014 but the victim was not a student of the school, officials said.
COURT TO CONSIDER RELEASING MORE NAMES IN THE FUTURE
Lawyers for the state asked a court for permission to release the report and a Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled last month that a redacted version should be made public. The court ordered the removal the names and titles of 37 people accused of wrongdoing — whose names came out during confidential grand jury proceedings — but will consider releasing a more complete version in the future.
Lawmakers’ passage of a bill to end the state’s statute of limitations Wednesday came after similar proposals failed in recent years. Currently, victims of child sex abuse in Maryland can’t sue after they turn 38. The bill would eliminate the age limit and allow for retroactive lawsuits.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore has long faced scrutiny over its handling of abuse allegations.
In 2002, Cardinal William Keeler, who served as Baltimore archbishop for nearly two decades, released a list of 57 priests accused of sexual abuse, earning himself a reputation for transparency at a time when the nationwide scope of wrongdoing remained largely unexposed. That changed, however, when a Pennsylvania grand jury accused Keeler of covering up sexual abuse allegations while serving as bishop of Harrisburg in the 1980s.
The report paints a damning picture of the archdiocese, which is the oldest Roman Catholic diocese in the country and spans much of Maryland. Some parishes, schools and congregations had more than one abuser at the same time — including St. Mark Parish in Catonsville, which had 11 abusers living and working there between 1964 and 2004. One deacon admitted to molesting over 100 children. Another priest was allowed to feign hepatitis treatment and make other excuses to avoid facing abuse allegations.
The Maryland Attorney General’s Office released the findings of their yearslong investigation during Holy Week — considered the most sacred time of year in Christianity ahead of Easter Sunday — and said the number of victims is likely far higher. The report was redacted to protect confidential grand jury materials, meaning the identities of some accused clergy were removed.
“The staggering pervasiveness of the abuse itself underscores the culpability of the Church hierarchy,” the report said. “The sheer number of abusers and victims, the depravity of the abusers’ conduct, and the frequency with which known abusers were given the opportunity to continue preying upon children are astonishing.”
Disclosure of the redacted findings marks a significant development in an ongoing legal battle over their release and adds to growing evidence from parishes across the country as numerous similar revelations have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years.
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, in a statement posted online, apologized to the victims and said the report “details a reprehensible time in the history of this Archdiocese, a time that will not be covered up, ignored or forgotten.”
“It is difficult for most to imagine that such evil acts could have actually occurred,” Lori said. “For victim-survivors everywhere, they know the hard truth: These evil acts did occur.”
Also on Wednesday, the state legislature passed a bill to end a statute of limitations on abuse-related civil lawsuits, sending it to Gov. Wes Moore, who has said he supports it. The Baltimore archdiocese says it has paid more than $13.2 million for care and compensation for 301 abuse victims since the 1980s, including $6.8 million toward 105 voluntary settlements.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, who took office in January, said the investigation shows “pervasive, pernicious and persistent abuse.” State investigators began their work in 2019; they reviewed over 100,000 pages of documents dating back to the 1940s and interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses.
ABUSE RECALLED AS A ‘LIFE SENTENCE’
Victims said the report was a long-overdue public reckoning with shameful accusations the church has been facing for decades.
Jean Hargadon Wehner said she was abused in Baltimore as a teen by A. Joseph Maskell, a priest who served as her Catholic high school’s counselor and chaplain. She said she reported her abuse to church officials in the early ’90s, when her memories of the trauma finally surfaced about two decades after she was repeatedly raped.
“I expected them to do the right thing in 1992,” she told reporters Wednesday. “I’m still angry.”
Maskell abused at least 39 victims, according to the report. He denied the allegations before his death in 2001 and was never criminally charged. The Associated Press typically doesn’t name victims of abuse, but Wehner has spoken publicly to draw attention to the issue.
Kurt Rupprecht, who also experienced abuse as a child, said he was in his late 40s when he pieced together his traumatic memories. He said the realization brought him some relief because it explained decades of self-destructive behavior and mental health challenges, but also left him overwhelmed with anger and disbelief.
Rupprecht said his abuser was assigned to the Diocese of Wilmington, which covers some counties on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
“We’re here to speak the truth and never stop,” he said after the news conference. “We deal with this every day. It is our life sentence.”
The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, noted the report lists more names of abusers than have been released publicly by archdiocese officials. The organization called on the archbishop to explain the discrepancies.
Other investigations involving the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, which both include parts of Maryland, are ongoing.
ARCHDIOCESE TOOK STEPS TO PROTECT THE ACCUSED
The Baltimore report says church leaders were focused on keeping abuse hidden, not on protecting victims or stopping abuse. In some situations, victims ended up reporting abuse to priests who were abusive themselves. And when law enforcement did become aware of abuse allegations, police and prosecutors were often deferential and “uninterested in probing what church leaders knew and when,” according to the report.
The nearly 500-page document includes numerous instances of leaders taking steps to protect accused clergy, including allowing them to retire with financial support rather than be ousted, letting them remain in the ministry and failing to report alleged abuse to law enforcement.
In 1964, for instance, Father Laurence Brett admitted to sexually abusing a teenager at a Catholic university in Connecticut.
He was sent to New Mexico under the guise of hepatitis treatment and then to Sacramento, where another teenage boy reported being abused by Brett, the report said. He was later assigned to Baltimore, where he served as chaplain at a Catholic high school for boys and abused over 20 victims.
After several students accused him of abuse in 1973, Brett was allowed to resign, saying he had to care for a sick aunt. School officials didn’t report the abuse to authorities and dozens more victims later came forward. He never faced criminal charges and died in 2010.
The report largely focuses on the years before 2002, when an investigation by the Boston Globe into abuse and coverup in the Archdiocese of Boston led to an explosion of revelations nationwide. The nation’s Catholic bishops, for the first time, then agreed on reforms including a lifetime ban from ministry for any priest who commits even a single incident of abuse. While new national policies significantly improved the internal handling of reported abuse in the Baltimore archdiocese after 2002, significant flaws remained, according to the report.
Only one person has been indicted through the investigation: Neil Adleberg, 74, who was arrested last year and charged with rape and other counts. The case remains ongoing. Officials said he coached wrestling at a Catholic high school in the ’70s, then returned to the role for the 2014-2015 school year. The alleged abuse occurred in 2013 and 2014 but the victim was not a student of the school, officials said.
COURT TO CONSIDER RELEASING MORE NAMES IN THE FUTURE
Lawyers for the state asked a court for permission to release the report and a Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled last month that a redacted version should be made public. The court ordered the removal the names and titles of 37 people accused of wrongdoing — whose names came out during confidential grand jury proceedings — but will consider releasing a more complete version in the future.
Lawmakers’ passage of a bill to end the state’s statute of limitations Wednesday came after similar proposals failed in recent years. Currently, victims of child sex abuse in Maryland can’t sue after they turn 38. The bill would eliminate the age limit and allow for retroactive lawsuits.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore has long faced scrutiny over its handling of abuse allegations.
In 2002, Cardinal William Keeler, who served as Baltimore archbishop for nearly two decades, released a list of 57 priests accused of sexual abuse, earning himself a reputation for transparency at a time when the nationwide scope of wrongdoing remained largely unexposed. That changed, however, when a Pennsylvania grand jury accused Keeler of covering up sexual abuse allegations while serving as bishop of Harrisburg in the 1980s.
christianity???
NO LONGER CONTENT WITH RIGHT TO OPT OUT, CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS ASKING COURTS TO ELIMINATE RIGHTS FOR OTHERS — AND THEY’RE WINNING
ELIZABETH REINER PLATT - RELIGION DISPATCHES
jANUARY 9, 2023
Last week, the Texas Tribune reported that 156 federally-funded family planning programs in Texas must now require parental consent in order to provide teen patients with contraceptive services. Why? Because one Texas parent wants to raise his daughters “in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality,” something he claims is not possible so long as anyone under the age of 18 has access to contraception.
How can a single faith practitioner’s right to “religious liberty” allow them to stymie an entire government program that provides healthcare to millions? This alarming prospect is now at issue, not just in the family planning case mentioned above, but in multiple lawsuits in which plaintiffs argue that the mere existence of government programs they oppose wrongfully burdens their religious exercise.
In most religious liberty lawsuits, it’s extremely clear when the government is placing a “substantial burden” (the legal term of art in these cases) on religious activity. Policies that bar a Sikh soldier from wearing a turban, require a Seventh Day Adventist government employee to work on Saturdays, or deny a Jewish or Muslim person access to kosher or halal food in prison have been extensively litigated. If and when such plaintiffs win their claim, they gain a right to personal accommodations that allow them to practice their faith—for example, an individual right to wear a turban or receive kosher food.
Seizing the opportunity to vastly expand religious rights in an era when the courts are increasingly sympathetic toward claims brought by conservative Christians, we’re now seeing plaintiffs argue that the existence of a government social or health program that benefits the public at large violates their religious exercise. Rather than requesting personal religious exemptions from government policies, they are demanding that entire government systems be altered or shut down to accommodate their religious beliefs.
In 2020, Texas father Alexander Deanda—represented by Jonathan F. Mitchell, the architect of Texas’s S.B. 8 abortion ban—filed a lawsuit in an attempt to obstruct Title X, the federal government’s long standing family planning program. Title X is a federal grant program created in 1970 by President Nixon to provide contraceptive and related healthcare to low-income and uninsured patients. Federal regulations state that while grant recipients should “encourage family participation” when treating teen patients, they are prohibited from requiring parental consent.
In his complaint, Deanda argued that the “administration of the Title X program substantially burdens the exercise of religion by subverting the ability of parents to raise their children in accordance with Christian beliefs on matters of sexuality, which require unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.”
While Deanda’s children never sought contraception from a Title X grant recipient he nevertheless claimed that the program’s operation burdens his religious rights, and removes the “assurance that his children will be unable to access prescription contraception or other family planning services that facilitate sexual promiscuity and pre-marital sex.”
What was his proposed solution to this supposed burden? Deanda requested that the federal court prevent the government from funding any project that “fails to obtain parental consent” before distributing family planning services to minors. In other words, an individual parent is demanding a religious right to upend teens’ ability to access contraception nationwide.
A few weeks ago, Deanda won his case before an arch-conservative District Court judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who previously worked at the Christian Right law firm First Liberty Institute—though Kacsmaryk didn’t rely on religious liberty arguments in his decision. While an appeal is likely, at least for now teens in Texas no longer have access to contraception at Title X clinics without parental approval.
Nor is this case the only example of such far-reaching religious liberty claims. In December, a nurse at a Veterans Association hospital in Texas, represented by First Liberty Institute, filed a legal complaint alleging that it violated her religious beliefs to “work in a facility that performs abortion services for reasons other than to save the life of the” patient. The case, Carter v. McDonough, challenges a recent policy requiring VA hospitals to offer abortion care under modestly broader circumstances: “when the life or health of the pregnant Veteran would be endangered if the pregnancy were carried to term, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.”
The nurse isn’t merely requesting that she be permitted to opt out of abortion care, which would make the complaint utterly unremarkable. Rather, she demands that the new rule allowing patients to access some forms of abortion care in VA hospitals not be applied at the entire facility where she works (never mind the beliefs of her coworkers, who may feel religiously motivated to provide abortion care, or to be patients themselves).
If the case is successful, there’s no question that conservative law firms will attempt to replicate the suit in VA hospitals nationwide. If a single religious adherent is able to cut off access to reproductive healthcare for thousands or millions of people, what comes next? A claim that the ability of women to access contraception under Title X without their husband’s permission violates the husband’s religious liberty? A complaint by a public-school teacher arguing that it violates their religious beliefs to work at a school that teaches evolution, sex-ed, or multiculturalism—or to work alongside LGBTQ teachers? A claim that the ability of minors to access certain books in a public library violates parents’ religious liberty? A lawsuit alleging that the existence of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) interferes with a church’s religious requirement to serve the poor and save souls? These examples may sound farcical—but this is the direction that law is now being pushed.
Of course, not all faith groups are likely to benefit from an expanding definition of what constitutes a “substantial burden” on religious exercise. For example, in case after case over decades, courts have held that the destruction of sacred Native American religious sites by the government does not constitute a “substantial burden” on tribal members’ religion. In the most infamous case, Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery in 1988, the Supreme Court explained that the destruction of a sacred site did not meet the legal definition of a substantial burden because it wouldn’t coerce the tribes “into violating their religious beliefs; nor would [it] penalize religious activity.”
Even as religious rights have vastly grown for conservative Christians over the past decade, this analysis has been cited as recently as 2022 to deny protection to Native American sacred sites. Other cases from the past year found no substantial burden where Muslims were subject to targeted questioning by immigration officials, leading them to modify their religious practices. None of these cases, had they won, would have posed the threat to public benefits present in Deanda v. Becerra or Carter v. McDonough.
There are serious concerns with expanding the legal definition of what constitutes a “substantial burden” on religious exercise. Not only could an overly-expansive definition allow individual religious practitioners to transform entire government programs or institutions, but it also stands to quash the rights of many other religious practitioners—such as the medical providers who believe it’s immoral to turn away patients in need of reproductive healthcare, or the patients who view their own reproductive decision-making as a religious right.
The absolute worst-case scenario, however, is the path we appear to be on now—where conservative Christians are able (even temporarily) to shut down government programs they oppose, while religious minorities are left unprotected from even grievous threats to their religious practice. This development threatens to turn the entire structure of religious exemptions on its head: morphing from an individual right to opt-out of laws that apply to the general public, to an ability to transform public programs to conform to one’s personal religious beliefs.
How can a single faith practitioner’s right to “religious liberty” allow them to stymie an entire government program that provides healthcare to millions? This alarming prospect is now at issue, not just in the family planning case mentioned above, but in multiple lawsuits in which plaintiffs argue that the mere existence of government programs they oppose wrongfully burdens their religious exercise.
In most religious liberty lawsuits, it’s extremely clear when the government is placing a “substantial burden” (the legal term of art in these cases) on religious activity. Policies that bar a Sikh soldier from wearing a turban, require a Seventh Day Adventist government employee to work on Saturdays, or deny a Jewish or Muslim person access to kosher or halal food in prison have been extensively litigated. If and when such plaintiffs win their claim, they gain a right to personal accommodations that allow them to practice their faith—for example, an individual right to wear a turban or receive kosher food.
Seizing the opportunity to vastly expand religious rights in an era when the courts are increasingly sympathetic toward claims brought by conservative Christians, we’re now seeing plaintiffs argue that the existence of a government social or health program that benefits the public at large violates their religious exercise. Rather than requesting personal religious exemptions from government policies, they are demanding that entire government systems be altered or shut down to accommodate their religious beliefs.
In 2020, Texas father Alexander Deanda—represented by Jonathan F. Mitchell, the architect of Texas’s S.B. 8 abortion ban—filed a lawsuit in an attempt to obstruct Title X, the federal government’s long standing family planning program. Title X is a federal grant program created in 1970 by President Nixon to provide contraceptive and related healthcare to low-income and uninsured patients. Federal regulations state that while grant recipients should “encourage family participation” when treating teen patients, they are prohibited from requiring parental consent.
In his complaint, Deanda argued that the “administration of the Title X program substantially burdens the exercise of religion by subverting the ability of parents to raise their children in accordance with Christian beliefs on matters of sexuality, which require unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.”
While Deanda’s children never sought contraception from a Title X grant recipient he nevertheless claimed that the program’s operation burdens his religious rights, and removes the “assurance that his children will be unable to access prescription contraception or other family planning services that facilitate sexual promiscuity and pre-marital sex.”
What was his proposed solution to this supposed burden? Deanda requested that the federal court prevent the government from funding any project that “fails to obtain parental consent” before distributing family planning services to minors. In other words, an individual parent is demanding a religious right to upend teens’ ability to access contraception nationwide.
A few weeks ago, Deanda won his case before an arch-conservative District Court judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who previously worked at the Christian Right law firm First Liberty Institute—though Kacsmaryk didn’t rely on religious liberty arguments in his decision. While an appeal is likely, at least for now teens in Texas no longer have access to contraception at Title X clinics without parental approval.
Nor is this case the only example of such far-reaching religious liberty claims. In December, a nurse at a Veterans Association hospital in Texas, represented by First Liberty Institute, filed a legal complaint alleging that it violated her religious beliefs to “work in a facility that performs abortion services for reasons other than to save the life of the” patient. The case, Carter v. McDonough, challenges a recent policy requiring VA hospitals to offer abortion care under modestly broader circumstances: “when the life or health of the pregnant Veteran would be endangered if the pregnancy were carried to term, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.”
The nurse isn’t merely requesting that she be permitted to opt out of abortion care, which would make the complaint utterly unremarkable. Rather, she demands that the new rule allowing patients to access some forms of abortion care in VA hospitals not be applied at the entire facility where she works (never mind the beliefs of her coworkers, who may feel religiously motivated to provide abortion care, or to be patients themselves).
If the case is successful, there’s no question that conservative law firms will attempt to replicate the suit in VA hospitals nationwide. If a single religious adherent is able to cut off access to reproductive healthcare for thousands or millions of people, what comes next? A claim that the ability of women to access contraception under Title X without their husband’s permission violates the husband’s religious liberty? A complaint by a public-school teacher arguing that it violates their religious beliefs to work at a school that teaches evolution, sex-ed, or multiculturalism—or to work alongside LGBTQ teachers? A claim that the ability of minors to access certain books in a public library violates parents’ religious liberty? A lawsuit alleging that the existence of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) interferes with a church’s religious requirement to serve the poor and save souls? These examples may sound farcical—but this is the direction that law is now being pushed.
Of course, not all faith groups are likely to benefit from an expanding definition of what constitutes a “substantial burden” on religious exercise. For example, in case after case over decades, courts have held that the destruction of sacred Native American religious sites by the government does not constitute a “substantial burden” on tribal members’ religion. In the most infamous case, Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery in 1988, the Supreme Court explained that the destruction of a sacred site did not meet the legal definition of a substantial burden because it wouldn’t coerce the tribes “into violating their religious beliefs; nor would [it] penalize religious activity.”
Even as religious rights have vastly grown for conservative Christians over the past decade, this analysis has been cited as recently as 2022 to deny protection to Native American sacred sites. Other cases from the past year found no substantial burden where Muslims were subject to targeted questioning by immigration officials, leading them to modify their religious practices. None of these cases, had they won, would have posed the threat to public benefits present in Deanda v. Becerra or Carter v. McDonough.
There are serious concerns with expanding the legal definition of what constitutes a “substantial burden” on religious exercise. Not only could an overly-expansive definition allow individual religious practitioners to transform entire government programs or institutions, but it also stands to quash the rights of many other religious practitioners—such as the medical providers who believe it’s immoral to turn away patients in need of reproductive healthcare, or the patients who view their own reproductive decision-making as a religious right.
The absolute worst-case scenario, however, is the path we appear to be on now—where conservative Christians are able (even temporarily) to shut down government programs they oppose, while religious minorities are left unprotected from even grievous threats to their religious practice. This development threatens to turn the entire structure of religious exemptions on its head: morphing from an individual right to opt-out of laws that apply to the general public, to an ability to transform public programs to conform to one’s personal religious beliefs.
Wealthy Donors Bankroll Christian Nationalists to Sustain Unregulated Capitalism
BY Nicholas Powers, Truthout
PUBLISHED August 15, 2022
“They’re just going to let me die?” Madison Anderson asked. Her doctor had decided it was too legally risky to perform an abortion. Anderson told The New York Times she’d been informed the fetus would not live after birth — and carrying it could kill her.
Many in the United States now face multiple, life-wrenching crises due to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The first is how to access safe abortion. The next is a possible national abortion ban if Republicans take the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms. Justice Clarence Thomas even wrote that the court’s rulings on things like contraception and gay marriage may be overturned.
Why has the GOP carried out a draconian assault on the right to abortion, a right that a majority of people in the U.S. support? At least part of the reason is that the Republican drive for power has found Christian nationalism a useful tool. Funded by a 1 percent of megadonors and corporations, the religious right, like Frankenstein’s monster, has grown to a grotesque size. The reality is that some of the richest people and corporations in the world bankroll Christian nationalists who, in turn, attack the already limited freedoms of poor people, people of color, women and LGBTQ people in the name of God. Yet the wealthy and the politicians they pay often break the very biblical codes they make into law. Now the danger has intensified. A Republican White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court can overturn democracy and replace it with a Christian nationalist state, fueled by ultra-wealthy donors who see attacks on fundamental rights as handy tools in securing their power.
Personal Jesus
A cruel irony is in the U.S., wealthy individuals and rich corporations bankroll Christian nationalists, even when they don’t believe in religious extremism themselves. They reap the benefits of supporting Republicans in the forms of lower taxes, unregulated capitalism or promoting libertarian ideas. Depriving millions of their bodily autonomy is a small price to pay.
“I’m basically a libertarian,” David Koch told Barbara Walters in a 2014 interview. “And I’m a conservative on economic matters and I’m a social liberal.” He died that year but his and his brother Charles’s political legacy is that since the 1970s, they have donated $100 million to conservatives. The main vehicle the Koch brothers use to bankroll pet causes is the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, an organization that in 2014 gave $885,000 to CitizenLink, which itself was founded by Focus on the Family, an extremist Christian organization that opposes abortion and gay marriage. CitizenLink used part of the money for direct mail support for Republicans like Tom Cotton, who wants to restrict immigration and called for the military to patrol the streets during the George Floyd protests.
Since 2010, the Koch brothers’ nonprofit network has poured $24 million into Catholic and right-wing Christian groups like Concerned Women for America (which got $11 million) and the Susan B. Anthony List (which received $1.5 million). Both groups specifically target abortion rights. At a 1999 meeting with conservative leaders, Charles Koch said the money was intended to “rally the troops” for his economic goals.
The Kochs are just one family in a network of Republican megadonors that include the Mercer family, the Uihleins and recently deceased Sheldon Adelson. Alongside them are multinational corporations like Amazon and CVS, Charles Schwab and AT&T. They in turn fund politicians or groups that aim to gut reproductive rights. The largest anti-abortion groups like National Right to Life and the Susan B. Anthony List coordinate or work with dozens of smaller groups like The Alabama Policy Institute or The Family Policy Alliance to attack reproductive rights.
Some megadonors are driven by religion, like Texas fracking magnates Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who shelled out $11 million to far right politicians over the past decade. In Pennsylvania, the Martin family, owners of Martin’s Pastry Shop, are proud Christian nationalists who funded the campaign of far right Republican Doug Mastriano, to the tune of $100,000.
More often, megadonors fund reactionary social forces to secure other goals. Take, for example, Sheldon Adelson, who donated over $426 million to the Republican Party and super PACS from 2016. Yet he claimed to be pro-choice, for socialized health care and a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants, but held a hardline support for Israel. “Look I’m basically a social liberal,” Adelson told the Wall Street Journal. “I know no one would believe that.”
Aside from megadonors, large corporations give to both political parties in order to lobby them later. As reported by Truthout’s Sharon Zhang, many companies that publicly support reproductive and LGBTQ rights underhandedly fund the most reactionary politics. Zhang writes, “Amazon, AT&T, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, CVS, General Motors, Google, T-Mobile, Walgreens, Walmart, Wells Fargo and Verizon have spent at least $15.2 million to support anti-abortion politicians.”
The sum of this double-dealing is simple. The 1% are more than willing to throw people’s rights under the bus in order to protect their profits. They fed Christian nationalism until it became an uncontrollable monster on the verge of ripping apart nearly every progressive legal victory of the 21st century.
Faith No More
“I know what it’s like to see children growing up in poverty,” Miriah Mark said to CNN. “I know what it’s like to be a young Black girl not having a father, or the mom not being able to be home because they have to work.” At 15 weeks pregnant, Mark decided to have an abortion because her partner walked out. Plus, the sky-rocketing cost of child care and housing was too much.
When asked about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, she said, “it makes you feel like you’re going back to a time where women didn’t have rights or women couldn’t vote.”
She is exactly right. The Republican Party is trying to turn back time. It is a party that wins on a rigged political playing field. The Senate structurally tilts Republican since each state, regardless of population, gets two senators. They often gerrymander districts, practically guaranteeing GOP victories. Most importantly, they stacked the Supreme Court by stealing a vacancy from President Obama, and under Trump, put in Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. By locking in minoritarian rule, the GOP can pay back the players in their base, the religious right being first in line.
Until recently, the religious right was clearly losing the culture war and corresponding legal rights. Feminism and gay liberation, abortion and contraception freed people to explore their authentic selves. The legal victories of Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges — which legalized, respectively, abortion, same-sex privacy and gay marriage — cemented the sexual revolution. Americans were leaving establishment religion behind in large numbers.
Unable to halt the decline of religious attendance, the religious right has ongoingly used courts to force secular America to bow down. The Republican Party solidified a judicial pipeline from the Federalist Society, a conservative organization that incubates lawyers and judges with a budget of nearly $20 million. Take a wild guess where that money comes from? On Democracy Now!, journalist Eric Lipton said, “Google and Microsoft are donors to the Federalist Society, and as well as major energy companies like Chevron or Devon [Energy] … you have also a lot of very conservative family foundations that — you know, like the Mercer foundation or the Koch brothers’ foundation, that see their giving, if you look at their donor patterns, as a way to try to influence American society.”
To understand the impacts of all this strategic spending by the wealthy and powerful, remember what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Poor women of color are going to pay the price for rich people’s incredibly selfish funding of Christian nationalism. “People will die,” she tweeted.
Many in the United States now face multiple, life-wrenching crises due to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The first is how to access safe abortion. The next is a possible national abortion ban if Republicans take the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms. Justice Clarence Thomas even wrote that the court’s rulings on things like contraception and gay marriage may be overturned.
Why has the GOP carried out a draconian assault on the right to abortion, a right that a majority of people in the U.S. support? At least part of the reason is that the Republican drive for power has found Christian nationalism a useful tool. Funded by a 1 percent of megadonors and corporations, the religious right, like Frankenstein’s monster, has grown to a grotesque size. The reality is that some of the richest people and corporations in the world bankroll Christian nationalists who, in turn, attack the already limited freedoms of poor people, people of color, women and LGBTQ people in the name of God. Yet the wealthy and the politicians they pay often break the very biblical codes they make into law. Now the danger has intensified. A Republican White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court can overturn democracy and replace it with a Christian nationalist state, fueled by ultra-wealthy donors who see attacks on fundamental rights as handy tools in securing their power.
Personal Jesus
A cruel irony is in the U.S., wealthy individuals and rich corporations bankroll Christian nationalists, even when they don’t believe in religious extremism themselves. They reap the benefits of supporting Republicans in the forms of lower taxes, unregulated capitalism or promoting libertarian ideas. Depriving millions of their bodily autonomy is a small price to pay.
“I’m basically a libertarian,” David Koch told Barbara Walters in a 2014 interview. “And I’m a conservative on economic matters and I’m a social liberal.” He died that year but his and his brother Charles’s political legacy is that since the 1970s, they have donated $100 million to conservatives. The main vehicle the Koch brothers use to bankroll pet causes is the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, an organization that in 2014 gave $885,000 to CitizenLink, which itself was founded by Focus on the Family, an extremist Christian organization that opposes abortion and gay marriage. CitizenLink used part of the money for direct mail support for Republicans like Tom Cotton, who wants to restrict immigration and called for the military to patrol the streets during the George Floyd protests.
Since 2010, the Koch brothers’ nonprofit network has poured $24 million into Catholic and right-wing Christian groups like Concerned Women for America (which got $11 million) and the Susan B. Anthony List (which received $1.5 million). Both groups specifically target abortion rights. At a 1999 meeting with conservative leaders, Charles Koch said the money was intended to “rally the troops” for his economic goals.
The Kochs are just one family in a network of Republican megadonors that include the Mercer family, the Uihleins and recently deceased Sheldon Adelson. Alongside them are multinational corporations like Amazon and CVS, Charles Schwab and AT&T. They in turn fund politicians or groups that aim to gut reproductive rights. The largest anti-abortion groups like National Right to Life and the Susan B. Anthony List coordinate or work with dozens of smaller groups like The Alabama Policy Institute or The Family Policy Alliance to attack reproductive rights.
Some megadonors are driven by religion, like Texas fracking magnates Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who shelled out $11 million to far right politicians over the past decade. In Pennsylvania, the Martin family, owners of Martin’s Pastry Shop, are proud Christian nationalists who funded the campaign of far right Republican Doug Mastriano, to the tune of $100,000.
More often, megadonors fund reactionary social forces to secure other goals. Take, for example, Sheldon Adelson, who donated over $426 million to the Republican Party and super PACS from 2016. Yet he claimed to be pro-choice, for socialized health care and a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants, but held a hardline support for Israel. “Look I’m basically a social liberal,” Adelson told the Wall Street Journal. “I know no one would believe that.”
Aside from megadonors, large corporations give to both political parties in order to lobby them later. As reported by Truthout’s Sharon Zhang, many companies that publicly support reproductive and LGBTQ rights underhandedly fund the most reactionary politics. Zhang writes, “Amazon, AT&T, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, CVS, General Motors, Google, T-Mobile, Walgreens, Walmart, Wells Fargo and Verizon have spent at least $15.2 million to support anti-abortion politicians.”
The sum of this double-dealing is simple. The 1% are more than willing to throw people’s rights under the bus in order to protect their profits. They fed Christian nationalism until it became an uncontrollable monster on the verge of ripping apart nearly every progressive legal victory of the 21st century.
Faith No More
“I know what it’s like to see children growing up in poverty,” Miriah Mark said to CNN. “I know what it’s like to be a young Black girl not having a father, or the mom not being able to be home because they have to work.” At 15 weeks pregnant, Mark decided to have an abortion because her partner walked out. Plus, the sky-rocketing cost of child care and housing was too much.
When asked about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, she said, “it makes you feel like you’re going back to a time where women didn’t have rights or women couldn’t vote.”
She is exactly right. The Republican Party is trying to turn back time. It is a party that wins on a rigged political playing field. The Senate structurally tilts Republican since each state, regardless of population, gets two senators. They often gerrymander districts, practically guaranteeing GOP victories. Most importantly, they stacked the Supreme Court by stealing a vacancy from President Obama, and under Trump, put in Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. By locking in minoritarian rule, the GOP can pay back the players in their base, the religious right being first in line.
Until recently, the religious right was clearly losing the culture war and corresponding legal rights. Feminism and gay liberation, abortion and contraception freed people to explore their authentic selves. The legal victories of Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges — which legalized, respectively, abortion, same-sex privacy and gay marriage — cemented the sexual revolution. Americans were leaving establishment religion behind in large numbers.
Unable to halt the decline of religious attendance, the religious right has ongoingly used courts to force secular America to bow down. The Republican Party solidified a judicial pipeline from the Federalist Society, a conservative organization that incubates lawyers and judges with a budget of nearly $20 million. Take a wild guess where that money comes from? On Democracy Now!, journalist Eric Lipton said, “Google and Microsoft are donors to the Federalist Society, and as well as major energy companies like Chevron or Devon [Energy] … you have also a lot of very conservative family foundations that — you know, like the Mercer foundation or the Koch brothers’ foundation, that see their giving, if you look at their donor patterns, as a way to try to influence American society.”
To understand the impacts of all this strategic spending by the wealthy and powerful, remember what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Poor women of color are going to pay the price for rich people’s incredibly selfish funding of Christian nationalism. “People will die,” she tweeted.
Christian nationalism and misogyny
Christian nationalism is rooted in stupid tough-guy misogyny: What would Jesus say?
I'm an evangelical minister: Christian nationalism is a bizarre, misogynist fantasy — and totally un-Christian
By NATHANIEL MANDERSON - salon
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 20, 2022 12:00PM (EST)
During my time as a boy attending an evangelical church and then later, when I attended an evangelical seminary, it was hard not to notice an underlying misogyny that seemed consistently present. As a man, I would be the head of the household. I was like Christ to my future wife. In fact, I once heard a sermon by prominent evangelical minister Tony Evans where he declared that wives must refer to their husbands as "Lord." In my church youth groups, we were separated by sex and the boys had bizarre discussions on the type of men we should become. There was a strong emphasis on being what they considered to be manly and tough, whereas young girls, of course, were encouraged to be nurturing, submissive and, most important, sexually pure.
When contemporary evangelical leaders push a message around Christian nationalism, I can promise you it always refers back to a time when the "traditional" roles of American households held fast. Making America "great again" is truly about bringing back a time when women were subject to their husbands' wills and whims, and the husbands were lords of the house.
Someone recently wrote to me, in response to one of my previous articles, wondering why so many evangelicals chose Donald Trump, a vulgar misogynist who shows no understanding of any element of the Christian faith, over other candidates who were much closer to the evangelical movement. The difficult answer is that most evangelical men long for the days when misogyny was cool, when women were under the thumb of their husbands and sexual harassment was almost universally accepted. Trump exemplified that approach — and a great many evangelicals loved him for it. Trump remains the favorite of the evangelicals not because any commitment to Christ or the Christian way of life — since he has none — but because of the widespread desire among evangelicals to take back control over their lives, and their wives. One of the major ways this has been expressed lately is through the ideology known as Christian nationalism.
As I understand it, Christian nationalism is an idea now widely accepted within the evangelical church that the U.S. is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles — no matter what it may say in the Constitution. This commitment to the Christian faith, as a nation, is the reason God blessed the U.S. as the greatest nation that ever existed. God will only continue to bless this nation, however, as long as it remains a Christian nation. As America becomes more progressive and increasingly secular in terms of politics, culture and faith, then in this view God will remove his blessing and protection and great evils will befall our nation.
This remarkable theory has no connection to any of the teachings of Jesus Christ or his followers, and is completely irrelevant to the Christian faith. I will certainly admit that I have a heart for American idealism. I have officiated at numerous Veterans Day and Memorial Day services, and I have felt the love of country enormously, on those days and all the days in between. None of that, however, has anything to do with Christianity. God does not play favorites when it comes to nations, people or cultures. That entire idea is morally and theologically absurd.
In truth, Christian nationalism is based not in the Bible or the teachings of Jesus Christ, but on the idea of the traditional American family. As roles for women have changed, as divorce becomes more common, as same-sex marriage gains a firmer footing, and now with the movement for transgender rights and visibility becoming more public, the panic of the Christian nationalists becomes ever more desperate. This is where all that rage among evangelicals is coming from. Understand, most people are motivated politically based on how they perceive policy decisions affecting their day-to-day life. Nothing affects our lives more than what is happening to our families. When things fall apart at home, it can feel helpful — even if it's not healthy — to blame someone or something besides ourselves. For myself, I know that all my personal failures are mine alone. I can't blame MTV or Eminem or the LGBTQI population, the evangelical church, Trump, Biden, Obama, my mom, my dad or anyone else. The problem is in the mirror, as it is for everyone. Any effort to pass that blame along to others is quite human, and quite wrong.
My final point on Christian nationalism is around all the macho tough-guy stuff that seems to be on the lips of every right-wing leader. Being "tough" seems to be the only thing conservative commentators and evangelical leaders care about. Trump is supposedly the epitome of that and his little posse loves him for it. I won't pretend to understand it. After I graduated middle school, being tough just didn't seem that important. But for people like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jerry Falwell Jr. (before his fall) and of course Trump himself, it's important to keep pretending that they are a bunch of tough guys, even though they also claim to stand with Jesus Christ, a humble, meek and homeless teacher.
I'm no tough guy but I am happy to offer a challenge to any of these fake tough guys. Debate me anywhere, anytime. I am truly blue-collar, a member of the American working class. I am a Bible-believing minister and a flaming liberal. I believe that the Christian nationalist message comes from the devil himself. I am trying to save the name of the Christian faith and to stand up for American idealism. I oppose every part of the hypocritical, fake-populist agenda of the Christian nationalists and their enablers. I double-dog dare any of them, here and now, to stand up and take me on in public debate. Odds are they never will.
When contemporary evangelical leaders push a message around Christian nationalism, I can promise you it always refers back to a time when the "traditional" roles of American households held fast. Making America "great again" is truly about bringing back a time when women were subject to their husbands' wills and whims, and the husbands were lords of the house.
Someone recently wrote to me, in response to one of my previous articles, wondering why so many evangelicals chose Donald Trump, a vulgar misogynist who shows no understanding of any element of the Christian faith, over other candidates who were much closer to the evangelical movement. The difficult answer is that most evangelical men long for the days when misogyny was cool, when women were under the thumb of their husbands and sexual harassment was almost universally accepted. Trump exemplified that approach — and a great many evangelicals loved him for it. Trump remains the favorite of the evangelicals not because any commitment to Christ or the Christian way of life — since he has none — but because of the widespread desire among evangelicals to take back control over their lives, and their wives. One of the major ways this has been expressed lately is through the ideology known as Christian nationalism.
As I understand it, Christian nationalism is an idea now widely accepted within the evangelical church that the U.S. is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles — no matter what it may say in the Constitution. This commitment to the Christian faith, as a nation, is the reason God blessed the U.S. as the greatest nation that ever existed. God will only continue to bless this nation, however, as long as it remains a Christian nation. As America becomes more progressive and increasingly secular in terms of politics, culture and faith, then in this view God will remove his blessing and protection and great evils will befall our nation.
This remarkable theory has no connection to any of the teachings of Jesus Christ or his followers, and is completely irrelevant to the Christian faith. I will certainly admit that I have a heart for American idealism. I have officiated at numerous Veterans Day and Memorial Day services, and I have felt the love of country enormously, on those days and all the days in between. None of that, however, has anything to do with Christianity. God does not play favorites when it comes to nations, people or cultures. That entire idea is morally and theologically absurd.
In truth, Christian nationalism is based not in the Bible or the teachings of Jesus Christ, but on the idea of the traditional American family. As roles for women have changed, as divorce becomes more common, as same-sex marriage gains a firmer footing, and now with the movement for transgender rights and visibility becoming more public, the panic of the Christian nationalists becomes ever more desperate. This is where all that rage among evangelicals is coming from. Understand, most people are motivated politically based on how they perceive policy decisions affecting their day-to-day life. Nothing affects our lives more than what is happening to our families. When things fall apart at home, it can feel helpful — even if it's not healthy — to blame someone or something besides ourselves. For myself, I know that all my personal failures are mine alone. I can't blame MTV or Eminem or the LGBTQI population, the evangelical church, Trump, Biden, Obama, my mom, my dad or anyone else. The problem is in the mirror, as it is for everyone. Any effort to pass that blame along to others is quite human, and quite wrong.
My final point on Christian nationalism is around all the macho tough-guy stuff that seems to be on the lips of every right-wing leader. Being "tough" seems to be the only thing conservative commentators and evangelical leaders care about. Trump is supposedly the epitome of that and his little posse loves him for it. I won't pretend to understand it. After I graduated middle school, being tough just didn't seem that important. But for people like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jerry Falwell Jr. (before his fall) and of course Trump himself, it's important to keep pretending that they are a bunch of tough guys, even though they also claim to stand with Jesus Christ, a humble, meek and homeless teacher.
I'm no tough guy but I am happy to offer a challenge to any of these fake tough guys. Debate me anywhere, anytime. I am truly blue-collar, a member of the American working class. I am a Bible-believing minister and a flaming liberal. I believe that the Christian nationalist message comes from the devil himself. I am trying to save the name of the Christian faith and to stand up for American idealism. I oppose every part of the hypocritical, fake-populist agenda of the Christian nationalists and their enablers. I double-dog dare any of them, here and now, to stand up and take me on in public debate. Odds are they never will.
the home of insanity!!!
The Seeds of Political Violence Are Being Sown in Church
The new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you.
David French - the dispatch
2/13/2022
On Thursday night in Castle Rock, Colorado, a group called “FEC United” (FEC stands for faith, education, and commerce) held a “town hall” meeting that featured a potpourri of GOP candidates and election conspiracy theorists. Most notably, the event included John Eastman, the Claremont scholar who authored the notorious legal memos that purported to justify the decertification and reversal of the 2020 election results.
During the meeting, a man named Shawn Smith accused Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold of election misconduct. “You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang,” he said. “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”
“I was accused of endorsing violence,” he went on. “I’m not endorsing violence, I’m saying once you put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned.” As soon as he said, “you deserve to hang,” an audience member shouted “Yeah!” and applause filled the room. You can watch the moment here.
The moment, almost entirely ignored by the national media, is worth noting on its own terms, but perhaps the most ominous aspect of the evening was its location—a church called The Rock.
If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event.
Last week, the New York Times’s Robert Draper wrote a must-read profile of former President Donald Trump’s one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn. Before January 6, Flynn advocated military intervention, including martial law, to assist in overturning the election results.
During the Biden administration, he’s taken his show on the road, launching a “ReAwaken America” tour that features conferences that combine “elements of a tent revival, a trade fair and a sci-fi convention.” It is striking to see Flynn’s use of Christian channels and venues to spread his apocalyptic message of election corruption and national doom.
Draper caught up with the tour at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, where 3,500 people had shown up to see Flynn and his collection of speakers. Flynn, Draper says, is “the single greatest draw besides Trump himself” in the “parallel universe” of the Make America Great Again movement.
Intrigued by the Dream City Church reference in Draper’s article, I went to the ReAwaken America tour page to see where Flynn was headed next. The first thing you notice is that the tour is sponsored by Charisma News, a charismatic Christian outlet. The next thing you should notice is the list of upcoming venues: Trinity Gospel Temple in Ohio, Awaken Church in California, The River Church in Oregon, and Burnsview Baptist Church in South Carolina.
It is always difficult to know when and how to cover extremism. Does highlighting a fringe provide an artificial sense of their danger and strength, in much the same way that “nutpicking” works in online spaces to exaggerate the extremism of your opponents? Or does ignoring a fringe allow it to flourish outside the spotlight and shock the nation when it finally emerges?
When it comes to Christian nationalism, the bar for concern has been passed by any conceivable measure. When a movement is strong enough to storm the Capitol, then it is worth continued monitoring and continued concern. Moreover, it’s important to understand why it continues to flourish, and why it is so difficult to understand, much less combat.
First, MAGA Christian nationalism is emotional and spiritual, not intellectual or ideological. While a number of scholars have done yeoman’s work in identifying the basic tenets of Christian nationalism, I’m still partial to Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd’s formulation of the ideology as “more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” Kidd provides a telling example:
I recently saw a yard sign that read “Make Faith Great Again: Trump 2020.” I wondered, How can re-electing Donald Trump make “faith” great again? What faith? When did it stop being great? No coherent answers would be forthcoming to such questions, but that’s the point. The sign speaks to a person’s ethnic, religious, and cultural identity in ways easier to notice than to explain.
But a MAGA Christian nationalist will read that sign and know exactly what it means–when Trump wins, America wins, and the church wins. The man, the nation, and the church are the movement.
Second, MAGA Christian nationalism is concentrated in the churches most removed from elite American culture, including from elite Evangelicalism. While there may be some Christian nationalists in seminaries, or in the pews of big, highly-educated suburban churches, or in the leadership of America’s largest denominations, you’re far more likely to find the true believers in exactly the kind of nondenominational, independent, and often-charismatic churches that populate the list of ReAwaken America tour stops.
Pentecostal Christianity, despite its immense size, is about as far from elite American culture as Mercury is from Mars. And this means it’s quite distant from elite Evangelical culture as well. Right-wing blue-check theologians and pastors who speak disdainfully of warnings about Christian nationalism because it’s not something they see in their churches never darken the door of a Pentecostal church.
They’re almost wholly unfamiliar with the world of “prophets” and “apostles” who have helped fuel much of the fervor for Trump. It’s no coincidence that Paula White, a pentecostal pastor herself, was Trump’s spiritual adviser. Trumpism penetrated pentecostalism early. I do not mean to say that all pentecostals are Trump supporters, much less Christian nationalists. But you can’t understand the Trumpist Christian core without understanding its pentecostal connection.
Third, MAGA Christian nationalism is often rooted in purported prophecies. I’ve spent every single day of the Trump era living deep in the heart of Trump country, surrounded by Trump-supporting friends, and attending church with Trump-supporting Christians. If there’s anything I know by heart, it’s the “Christian case for Trump.” I’ve read all the essays. I’ve heard all the arguments. It’s in the air out here.
There’s the pragmatic or prudential cost/benefit analysis—he’s a bad man, but his judicial appointments are good. There’s the cultural argument about threat—the left has grown so terrible that we have to punch back. But there’s also another argument entirely, one that’s impossible to discuss rationally—that Trump is divinely anointed by God to save this nation from imminent destruction.
I have up-close experience with this level of fervor. Some readers may remember that I debated Eric Metaxas at John Brown University in September 2020. While the debate was civil enough, it was clear to me that Metaxas was operating with a level of commitment to Trump that went well beyond reason. He truly believed Joe Biden would destroy America. He truly believed Trump was God’s chosen man for the moment.
Then, after the election, Metaxas escalated his rhetoric considerably. Let’s recall some of his quotes about the election:
“It’s like stealing the heart and soul of America. It’s like holding a rusty knife to the throat of Lady Liberty.”
“You might as well spit on the grave of George Washington.”
“This is evil. It’s like somebody has been raped or murdered. … This is like that times a thousand.”
---
The proper response to fear and fanaticism is reason and faith. It’s demonstrating by word and deed that the response even to the worst forms of extremism on the left is not to stampede to extremism on the other side. But we have to know what we face, and what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.
During the meeting, a man named Shawn Smith accused Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold of election misconduct. “You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang,” he said. “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”
“I was accused of endorsing violence,” he went on. “I’m not endorsing violence, I’m saying once you put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned.” As soon as he said, “you deserve to hang,” an audience member shouted “Yeah!” and applause filled the room. You can watch the moment here.
The moment, almost entirely ignored by the national media, is worth noting on its own terms, but perhaps the most ominous aspect of the evening was its location—a church called The Rock.
If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event.
Last week, the New York Times’s Robert Draper wrote a must-read profile of former President Donald Trump’s one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn. Before January 6, Flynn advocated military intervention, including martial law, to assist in overturning the election results.
During the Biden administration, he’s taken his show on the road, launching a “ReAwaken America” tour that features conferences that combine “elements of a tent revival, a trade fair and a sci-fi convention.” It is striking to see Flynn’s use of Christian channels and venues to spread his apocalyptic message of election corruption and national doom.
Draper caught up with the tour at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, where 3,500 people had shown up to see Flynn and his collection of speakers. Flynn, Draper says, is “the single greatest draw besides Trump himself” in the “parallel universe” of the Make America Great Again movement.
Intrigued by the Dream City Church reference in Draper’s article, I went to the ReAwaken America tour page to see where Flynn was headed next. The first thing you notice is that the tour is sponsored by Charisma News, a charismatic Christian outlet. The next thing you should notice is the list of upcoming venues: Trinity Gospel Temple in Ohio, Awaken Church in California, The River Church in Oregon, and Burnsview Baptist Church in South Carolina.
It is always difficult to know when and how to cover extremism. Does highlighting a fringe provide an artificial sense of their danger and strength, in much the same way that “nutpicking” works in online spaces to exaggerate the extremism of your opponents? Or does ignoring a fringe allow it to flourish outside the spotlight and shock the nation when it finally emerges?
When it comes to Christian nationalism, the bar for concern has been passed by any conceivable measure. When a movement is strong enough to storm the Capitol, then it is worth continued monitoring and continued concern. Moreover, it’s important to understand why it continues to flourish, and why it is so difficult to understand, much less combat.
First, MAGA Christian nationalism is emotional and spiritual, not intellectual or ideological. While a number of scholars have done yeoman’s work in identifying the basic tenets of Christian nationalism, I’m still partial to Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd’s formulation of the ideology as “more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” Kidd provides a telling example:
I recently saw a yard sign that read “Make Faith Great Again: Trump 2020.” I wondered, How can re-electing Donald Trump make “faith” great again? What faith? When did it stop being great? No coherent answers would be forthcoming to such questions, but that’s the point. The sign speaks to a person’s ethnic, religious, and cultural identity in ways easier to notice than to explain.
But a MAGA Christian nationalist will read that sign and know exactly what it means–when Trump wins, America wins, and the church wins. The man, the nation, and the church are the movement.
Second, MAGA Christian nationalism is concentrated in the churches most removed from elite American culture, including from elite Evangelicalism. While there may be some Christian nationalists in seminaries, or in the pews of big, highly-educated suburban churches, or in the leadership of America’s largest denominations, you’re far more likely to find the true believers in exactly the kind of nondenominational, independent, and often-charismatic churches that populate the list of ReAwaken America tour stops.
Pentecostal Christianity, despite its immense size, is about as far from elite American culture as Mercury is from Mars. And this means it’s quite distant from elite Evangelical culture as well. Right-wing blue-check theologians and pastors who speak disdainfully of warnings about Christian nationalism because it’s not something they see in their churches never darken the door of a Pentecostal church.
They’re almost wholly unfamiliar with the world of “prophets” and “apostles” who have helped fuel much of the fervor for Trump. It’s no coincidence that Paula White, a pentecostal pastor herself, was Trump’s spiritual adviser. Trumpism penetrated pentecostalism early. I do not mean to say that all pentecostals are Trump supporters, much less Christian nationalists. But you can’t understand the Trumpist Christian core without understanding its pentecostal connection.
Third, MAGA Christian nationalism is often rooted in purported prophecies. I’ve spent every single day of the Trump era living deep in the heart of Trump country, surrounded by Trump-supporting friends, and attending church with Trump-supporting Christians. If there’s anything I know by heart, it’s the “Christian case for Trump.” I’ve read all the essays. I’ve heard all the arguments. It’s in the air out here.
There’s the pragmatic or prudential cost/benefit analysis—he’s a bad man, but his judicial appointments are good. There’s the cultural argument about threat—the left has grown so terrible that we have to punch back. But there’s also another argument entirely, one that’s impossible to discuss rationally—that Trump is divinely anointed by God to save this nation from imminent destruction.
I have up-close experience with this level of fervor. Some readers may remember that I debated Eric Metaxas at John Brown University in September 2020. While the debate was civil enough, it was clear to me that Metaxas was operating with a level of commitment to Trump that went well beyond reason. He truly believed Joe Biden would destroy America. He truly believed Trump was God’s chosen man for the moment.
Then, after the election, Metaxas escalated his rhetoric considerably. Let’s recall some of his quotes about the election:
“It’s like stealing the heart and soul of America. It’s like holding a rusty knife to the throat of Lady Liberty.”
“You might as well spit on the grave of George Washington.”
“This is evil. It’s like somebody has been raped or murdered. … This is like that times a thousand.”
---
The proper response to fear and fanaticism is reason and faith. It’s demonstrating by word and deed that the response even to the worst forms of extremism on the left is not to stampede to extremism on the other side. But we have to know what we face, and what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.
Now evangelicals want to depict 'social justice' as un-Christian
Nathaniel Manderson, Salon
November 13, 2021
Like so many people in the working poor, I have lost a lot more than I have won in this life. I have been laid off four times. I have lost a house and a car. I owe more on my student loans at 45 than I did at 25. Like millions of others in the working class, I have never stopped working — I've done every job you can imagine and I will continue to fight for a better life for my daughters, and my working-class brothers and sisters until my last breath. As an ordained minister trained at an evangelical seminary, I find that motivation to fight for the least of these within what is called the "social justice gospel." In recent years, however, that gospel has been twisted by the evangelical Republican machine, which now seeks to instill the belief that social justice is the gospel of godless socialism and communism.
Over the last few years, the evangelical movement has gone to great lengths to vilify any message coming out of any church that connects with the social justice movement. In a brief statement widely circulated in the evangelical world, prominent Christian leaders and pastors have claimed that the social justice movement is a danger to Christians, "an onslaught of dangerous and false teachings that threaten the gospel, misrepresent Scripture, and lead people away from the grace of God in Jesus Christ."
The problem for evangelicals is that the Bible is quite clear around the issues connected to social justice. Ignoring these issues requires completely ignoring the teachings of Jesus. It is fascinating to me, in a grim way, that the very people who claim to be holding onto the true form of Christian faith are in fact committed to destroying it.
Connecting the social justice agenda to socialism is an intentional lie — although of course it's true that Christians can be socialists, and vice versa. The Christian faith pushes its followers to fight for equality of opportunity, and teaches a belief in the possibility for every individual to be better, if given the chance. Our faith calls for providing every human being a chance to succeed while offering the basic need of forgiveness, grace, mercy, and love.
No one exemplified this calling more than a dear friend of mine who died a couple weeks ago. Her name was Gale Hull, and she created the finest example of a mission organization I have ever come across. Her organization, Partners in Development, started its work in Haiti and brought its mission to Guatemala, Peru and rural Mississippi. Her beautiful idea of "whole-person change" provided the opportunity for thousands to have a better life and inspired thousands more to be better people.
Gale understood that people needed an opportunity. Through a mortgage program, micro-business loans, child sponsorship and free medical care, families thrived. People within the program pay for their own homes with money they earn from their own businesses while having their basic needs of education and health met. That is the type of social justice that lies at the foundation of the Christian faith.
I have worked as a career and life coach for first-generation immigrants and low-income folks for more than 20 years, and I can say with authority that most people just want an opportunity to succeed. The people I have worked with desire an opportunity to earn their keep, provide for their family and, most important of all, the chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
How is it that using the Christian faith to serve the poor, heal the sick and welcome the foreigner is destroying America — in the minds of far too many evangelicals — but manipulating the Christian faith to condemn women as murderers and condemn LGBTQ people to hell is somehow proper Biblical teaching?
These political distortions within the evangelical movement are far advanced, and will be difficult to overcome. I still want people to understand that hateful and judgmental language has nothing to do with the core of Christian faith and everything to do with false evangelical hypocrisy. The truth is that the Christian faith should be used as a shield for the oppressed and a sword against the oppressors. The working poor have been completely ignored by the evangelical movement and it's time for people of good faith to find themselves some new leaders. Preferably among people who want to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, not the teachings of Donald Trump.
There are millions of people in the U.S. who remain in the working class, struggling to make a living and pull ourselves up just a little. We will continue to work our tails off. We manage your buildings, install your toilets, build and clean your homes, deliver your packages, teach your children, bag your groceries, serve your food and do the rest of the grunt work no one else wants to do. Many within the working class will keep fighting for the American dream, and will keep on losing a lot more than they win. Some of their dreams will be lived out by their children, and too many will not. But the fight never ends. My dream is that people of faith and people of conscience, especially if they have voice, power and influence in our society, will begin to align with the idea of equality of opportunity. That would be doing God's work for real.
Over the last few years, the evangelical movement has gone to great lengths to vilify any message coming out of any church that connects with the social justice movement. In a brief statement widely circulated in the evangelical world, prominent Christian leaders and pastors have claimed that the social justice movement is a danger to Christians, "an onslaught of dangerous and false teachings that threaten the gospel, misrepresent Scripture, and lead people away from the grace of God in Jesus Christ."
The problem for evangelicals is that the Bible is quite clear around the issues connected to social justice. Ignoring these issues requires completely ignoring the teachings of Jesus. It is fascinating to me, in a grim way, that the very people who claim to be holding onto the true form of Christian faith are in fact committed to destroying it.
Connecting the social justice agenda to socialism is an intentional lie — although of course it's true that Christians can be socialists, and vice versa. The Christian faith pushes its followers to fight for equality of opportunity, and teaches a belief in the possibility for every individual to be better, if given the chance. Our faith calls for providing every human being a chance to succeed while offering the basic need of forgiveness, grace, mercy, and love.
No one exemplified this calling more than a dear friend of mine who died a couple weeks ago. Her name was Gale Hull, and she created the finest example of a mission organization I have ever come across. Her organization, Partners in Development, started its work in Haiti and brought its mission to Guatemala, Peru and rural Mississippi. Her beautiful idea of "whole-person change" provided the opportunity for thousands to have a better life and inspired thousands more to be better people.
Gale understood that people needed an opportunity. Through a mortgage program, micro-business loans, child sponsorship and free medical care, families thrived. People within the program pay for their own homes with money they earn from their own businesses while having their basic needs of education and health met. That is the type of social justice that lies at the foundation of the Christian faith.
I have worked as a career and life coach for first-generation immigrants and low-income folks for more than 20 years, and I can say with authority that most people just want an opportunity to succeed. The people I have worked with desire an opportunity to earn their keep, provide for their family and, most important of all, the chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
How is it that using the Christian faith to serve the poor, heal the sick and welcome the foreigner is destroying America — in the minds of far too many evangelicals — but manipulating the Christian faith to condemn women as murderers and condemn LGBTQ people to hell is somehow proper Biblical teaching?
These political distortions within the evangelical movement are far advanced, and will be difficult to overcome. I still want people to understand that hateful and judgmental language has nothing to do with the core of Christian faith and everything to do with false evangelical hypocrisy. The truth is that the Christian faith should be used as a shield for the oppressed and a sword against the oppressors. The working poor have been completely ignored by the evangelical movement and it's time for people of good faith to find themselves some new leaders. Preferably among people who want to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, not the teachings of Donald Trump.
There are millions of people in the U.S. who remain in the working class, struggling to make a living and pull ourselves up just a little. We will continue to work our tails off. We manage your buildings, install your toilets, build and clean your homes, deliver your packages, teach your children, bag your groceries, serve your food and do the rest of the grunt work no one else wants to do. Many within the working class will keep fighting for the American dream, and will keep on losing a lot more than they win. Some of their dreams will be lived out by their children, and too many will not. But the fight never ends. My dream is that people of faith and people of conscience, especially if they have voice, power and influence in our society, will begin to align with the idea of equality of opportunity. That would be doing God's work for real.
simply, racists supporting a racist!!!
White evangelical support for Donald Trump wasn't about partisanship -- it was about animus toward minorities
Chrissy Stroop, AltrNet
July 10, 2021
In the wake of the Pew Research Center's findings that 84 percent of the white evangelical Protestant vote went to former President Donald Trump in 2020, it is more important than ever for the American public to face the uncomfortable truth about the authoritarian Christian right's deleterious impact on society, culture and politics.
Some of us have been pushing for this conversation for years, with various iterations of relevant data and scholarship helping to elucidate key points. During the 2016 primaries, a few political scientists drew attention to a link between authoritarian personality traits and support for Trump. For Religion Dispatches, I wrote at the time, "if 'a desire for order and a fear of outsiders' predicts Trump support, the question of why white evangelicals are backing a trash-talking billionaire can be easily answered."
Although the mainstream press has only haltingly begun to take such analysis seriously, my conclusion, which was intuitive to me as someone who grew up in white evangelical subculture and attended Christian schools, aged well over the next few years, as the rubric of "Christian nationalism" became an important part of the relevant discourse. No one should have been surprised by evangelical Trump support, and that the American public has done such a poor job of grappling with the issue is a sad commentary on the fundamental weakness of American civil society.
One of the key roots of that weakness is the tendency of TV news and the legacy press to present "both sides" of any issue that can be framed as partisan. The right has long since learned to exploit this tendency by using manufactured "controversies"—where there is no serious controversy among experts in the relevant fields—to shift the Overton window in, for example, areas such as climate change. While a strong argument that American polarization is "asymmetric," and driven primarily from the right, has been available, this understanding has done little to improve the situation.
Could the national discussion of right-wing, white Christians as a distinct authoritarian "faction" that transcends party help us to escape from the trap of bothsidesism? Lilliana Mason, associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, seemed to suggest as much in a recent Twitter thread exploring some of the implications of a new paper she and colleagues Julie Wronski and John V. Kane recently published in American Political Science Review.
The main finding of the paper, "Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support," is that support for the former president was driven primarily by negative feelings toward discrete social groups primarily associated with the Democratic Party: African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and gays and lesbians.
Using a 2011 baseline that could be checked against later voting preferences, the authors show that animosity toward marginalized groups increased Trump support regardless of party affiliation, with a particularly strong effect among independents (a 30-percentage-point shift in Trump's favor vs. a 15-percentage-point shift among both Republicans and Democrats). The effect does not hold for other Republican leaders or the Republican Party in general. The authors found no similar effect of animosity toward groups primarily associated with Republicans—whites and Christians—on support for the Democratic Party. Thus, as the authors put it:
The observed relationship between group animosity and Trump support is neither an artifact of his serving as a de facto party leader nor a phenomenon that manifests symmetrically across candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Rather, it appears that Trump support is uniquely drawn from animosity toward social groups linked with the out-party, whereas most other elites' political support is unrelated to these kinds of sentiments.
It would therefore be incorrect to "explain Trump's appeal with partisanship alone." These conclusions seem to be the basis of Mason's Twitter thread, in which she contends, "More than 'polarization,' we need to worry about the very real threat posed by an anti-democratic group that has always existed in the electorate, and [that] has taken control of parties to cover for their explicitly anti-democratic aims."
It is certainly true that this white Christian faction identified by Mason and her colleagues exists throughout American history not only as a bastion of white supremacist patriarchy, but also as something distinct from the political parties with which it may be aligned at any given time. It is not clear to me, however, that simply pointing out that American racists used to be mostly Democrats, but are now mostly Republicans, can do much to change the public discourse. After all, appeals to seemingly moderate Republicans to show "spine" or "conscience" in recent years have yielded precious few results in this post-2010 gerrymandering environment that has allowed the Tea Party and the Christian right to control the GOP. To be sure, the concentration of authoritarians in one of two major parties in a two-party system is a serious problem, but there is no simple way to dislodge the authoritarians from their power over the current Republican Party, which is more white and male than ever.
That being said, I wholly agree with Mason's contention that we need to talk about white right-wing Christians as the core of anti-pluralist, anti-democratic America. I'm not sure, however, that trying to make the case that doing so is "non-partisan" will have much impact when, despite the findings of Mason and her colleagues, the faction in question currently defines the GOP. Whether this argument will convince media gatekeepers, there's also still the issue of Christian supremacy, and the concomitant de facto taboo on subjecting Christian demographics to social criticism, to overcome.
Despite the challenges, I think it makes sense for American liberals and leftists, and for all Americans who support democracy and human rights, to push both these narratives. And they are more likely to have an impact the more they can be associated with relatable human faces and stories. I have worked over the last few years to elevate the voices of "exvangelicals" and the nonreligious to argue that we should be considered stakeholders in discussions of evangelicalism and the Christian right—as should anyone directly affected by their politics. This approach has yielded some results, and I believe it has legs, inasmuch as stories have power. The stories of those who have left the Republican Party because of the authoritarian faction's control may also be mobilized to change the national conversation, which is indeed a crucial part of the long game in politics. Whether it will be enough to avoid a long period of minority authoritarian rule by our racist, anti-democratic faction, however, is far from certain.
Some of us have been pushing for this conversation for years, with various iterations of relevant data and scholarship helping to elucidate key points. During the 2016 primaries, a few political scientists drew attention to a link between authoritarian personality traits and support for Trump. For Religion Dispatches, I wrote at the time, "if 'a desire for order and a fear of outsiders' predicts Trump support, the question of why white evangelicals are backing a trash-talking billionaire can be easily answered."
Although the mainstream press has only haltingly begun to take such analysis seriously, my conclusion, which was intuitive to me as someone who grew up in white evangelical subculture and attended Christian schools, aged well over the next few years, as the rubric of "Christian nationalism" became an important part of the relevant discourse. No one should have been surprised by evangelical Trump support, and that the American public has done such a poor job of grappling with the issue is a sad commentary on the fundamental weakness of American civil society.
One of the key roots of that weakness is the tendency of TV news and the legacy press to present "both sides" of any issue that can be framed as partisan. The right has long since learned to exploit this tendency by using manufactured "controversies"—where there is no serious controversy among experts in the relevant fields—to shift the Overton window in, for example, areas such as climate change. While a strong argument that American polarization is "asymmetric," and driven primarily from the right, has been available, this understanding has done little to improve the situation.
Could the national discussion of right-wing, white Christians as a distinct authoritarian "faction" that transcends party help us to escape from the trap of bothsidesism? Lilliana Mason, associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, seemed to suggest as much in a recent Twitter thread exploring some of the implications of a new paper she and colleagues Julie Wronski and John V. Kane recently published in American Political Science Review.
The main finding of the paper, "Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support," is that support for the former president was driven primarily by negative feelings toward discrete social groups primarily associated with the Democratic Party: African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and gays and lesbians.
Using a 2011 baseline that could be checked against later voting preferences, the authors show that animosity toward marginalized groups increased Trump support regardless of party affiliation, with a particularly strong effect among independents (a 30-percentage-point shift in Trump's favor vs. a 15-percentage-point shift among both Republicans and Democrats). The effect does not hold for other Republican leaders or the Republican Party in general. The authors found no similar effect of animosity toward groups primarily associated with Republicans—whites and Christians—on support for the Democratic Party. Thus, as the authors put it:
The observed relationship between group animosity and Trump support is neither an artifact of his serving as a de facto party leader nor a phenomenon that manifests symmetrically across candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Rather, it appears that Trump support is uniquely drawn from animosity toward social groups linked with the out-party, whereas most other elites' political support is unrelated to these kinds of sentiments.
It would therefore be incorrect to "explain Trump's appeal with partisanship alone." These conclusions seem to be the basis of Mason's Twitter thread, in which she contends, "More than 'polarization,' we need to worry about the very real threat posed by an anti-democratic group that has always existed in the electorate, and [that] has taken control of parties to cover for their explicitly anti-democratic aims."
It is certainly true that this white Christian faction identified by Mason and her colleagues exists throughout American history not only as a bastion of white supremacist patriarchy, but also as something distinct from the political parties with which it may be aligned at any given time. It is not clear to me, however, that simply pointing out that American racists used to be mostly Democrats, but are now mostly Republicans, can do much to change the public discourse. After all, appeals to seemingly moderate Republicans to show "spine" or "conscience" in recent years have yielded precious few results in this post-2010 gerrymandering environment that has allowed the Tea Party and the Christian right to control the GOP. To be sure, the concentration of authoritarians in one of two major parties in a two-party system is a serious problem, but there is no simple way to dislodge the authoritarians from their power over the current Republican Party, which is more white and male than ever.
That being said, I wholly agree with Mason's contention that we need to talk about white right-wing Christians as the core of anti-pluralist, anti-democratic America. I'm not sure, however, that trying to make the case that doing so is "non-partisan" will have much impact when, despite the findings of Mason and her colleagues, the faction in question currently defines the GOP. Whether this argument will convince media gatekeepers, there's also still the issue of Christian supremacy, and the concomitant de facto taboo on subjecting Christian demographics to social criticism, to overcome.
Despite the challenges, I think it makes sense for American liberals and leftists, and for all Americans who support democracy and human rights, to push both these narratives. And they are more likely to have an impact the more they can be associated with relatable human faces and stories. I have worked over the last few years to elevate the voices of "exvangelicals" and the nonreligious to argue that we should be considered stakeholders in discussions of evangelicalism and the Christian right—as should anyone directly affected by their politics. This approach has yielded some results, and I believe it has legs, inasmuch as stories have power. The stories of those who have left the Republican Party because of the authoritarian faction's control may also be mobilized to change the national conversation, which is indeed a crucial part of the long game in politics. Whether it will be enough to avoid a long period of minority authoritarian rule by our racist, anti-democratic faction, however, is far from certain.
proof that everone is not stupid!!!
Catholic leaders' embrace of Trump and MAGA accelerated exodus of church members: report
Tom Boggioni - raw story
April 30, 2021
According to a report from the National Catholic Reporter, the exodus of Catholic church members seeking a new spiritual home accelerated during Donald Trump's four years as some Catholic leaders embraced the controversial president to the dismay of parishioners.
In an interview with one former member of the church, he admitted he was planning on leaving, changed his mind with the elevation of Pope Francis, and then Trump came along and that sealed his departure.
"A practicing Catholic all his life, Boyle was serious enough about his faith that he had spent three years as a member of a Dominican community, " NCR's Rebecca Patten Weiss wrote before noting that he admitted he "began to be uncomfortable with the church leaders' obvious promotion of right-wing political ideologies."
Boyle explained, "With Trump, it was basically like watching a car crash in slow motion. Deep down, I knew that the hierarchy and all the usual suspects were going to jump on board the Trump train, but I still hoped that I was wrong, that I was being too cynical. But, of course, I wasn't being too cynical," adding, "it was not so much that MAGA Catholics (whether lay or clergy) pushed me out the door, so much as the embrace of MAGA cut the last strings that I was holding onto."
According to journalist Weiss, Boyle's departure is one of many the church has suffered over the past ten years, before reporting, "Many who have left, like Boyle, cite their coreligionists' alliance with the MAGA 'Make America Great Again' movement as a key factor in their decision."
Another church member, H.L. Vogl admitted he became a Catholic as an adult and soon realized it was a mistake.
"But in 2016, Vogl was dismayed to see their pastor becoming far more political — and it got worse after Donald Trump was elected president. According to Vogl, their pastor was 'explicitly citing Fox News in homilies, preaching on the obligation to respect those in authority in the government, and stoking fear of 'political correctness'." reported Weiss, with Vogl telling her, "In short, the political abuses destroyed my trust in the clergy and prompted me to rip my pious blinders off. Having taken in this broader perspective, I can never see the Catholic Church the same way again."
J.M. Jensen, who joined the church in 2008, said he saw a sea change among some Catholic leaders begin in 2015.
"Over the course of the next four years, I saw almost every single Catholic leader who had been a voice for me in my formative years turn to Trump," he explained in an interview. "People who once had decried 'cafeteria Catholics' and said that you must give your consent to the church's sexual teachings now said you had to ignore the pope when he talks about the environment or social justice. People who decried the moral relativism of the left now used the same tools when it suited them. All of the principle and character that they demanded of [Bill] Clinton were left at the wayside when a truly foul person came along. All for political power."
The NCR article goes on to point out that church attendance, above and beyond the ascendancy of Trump, has been declining for years and that younger members of the Catholic church started jumping ship after leaders embraced him following the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape where he admitted to groping woman against their will.
"Having been young during Clinton and seen the way evangelical leaders responded to him, and then to see these same leaders make excuses for Trump," Michael Wear, once a faith adviser to President Barack Obama explained. "It just led them to think, some of these voices aren't trustworthy."
You can read more here.
In an interview with one former member of the church, he admitted he was planning on leaving, changed his mind with the elevation of Pope Francis, and then Trump came along and that sealed his departure.
"A practicing Catholic all his life, Boyle was serious enough about his faith that he had spent three years as a member of a Dominican community, " NCR's Rebecca Patten Weiss wrote before noting that he admitted he "began to be uncomfortable with the church leaders' obvious promotion of right-wing political ideologies."
Boyle explained, "With Trump, it was basically like watching a car crash in slow motion. Deep down, I knew that the hierarchy and all the usual suspects were going to jump on board the Trump train, but I still hoped that I was wrong, that I was being too cynical. But, of course, I wasn't being too cynical," adding, "it was not so much that MAGA Catholics (whether lay or clergy) pushed me out the door, so much as the embrace of MAGA cut the last strings that I was holding onto."
According to journalist Weiss, Boyle's departure is one of many the church has suffered over the past ten years, before reporting, "Many who have left, like Boyle, cite their coreligionists' alliance with the MAGA 'Make America Great Again' movement as a key factor in their decision."
Another church member, H.L. Vogl admitted he became a Catholic as an adult and soon realized it was a mistake.
"But in 2016, Vogl was dismayed to see their pastor becoming far more political — and it got worse after Donald Trump was elected president. According to Vogl, their pastor was 'explicitly citing Fox News in homilies, preaching on the obligation to respect those in authority in the government, and stoking fear of 'political correctness'." reported Weiss, with Vogl telling her, "In short, the political abuses destroyed my trust in the clergy and prompted me to rip my pious blinders off. Having taken in this broader perspective, I can never see the Catholic Church the same way again."
J.M. Jensen, who joined the church in 2008, said he saw a sea change among some Catholic leaders begin in 2015.
"Over the course of the next four years, I saw almost every single Catholic leader who had been a voice for me in my formative years turn to Trump," he explained in an interview. "People who once had decried 'cafeteria Catholics' and said that you must give your consent to the church's sexual teachings now said you had to ignore the pope when he talks about the environment or social justice. People who decried the moral relativism of the left now used the same tools when it suited them. All of the principle and character that they demanded of [Bill] Clinton were left at the wayside when a truly foul person came along. All for political power."
The NCR article goes on to point out that church attendance, above and beyond the ascendancy of Trump, has been declining for years and that younger members of the Catholic church started jumping ship after leaders embraced him following the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape where he admitted to groping woman against their will.
"Having been young during Clinton and seen the way evangelical leaders responded to him, and then to see these same leaders make excuses for Trump," Michael Wear, once a faith adviser to President Barack Obama explained. "It just led them to think, some of these voices aren't trustworthy."
You can read more here.
The evil within us: How Christian fascist ideology led to the Atlanta killings
Millions of white Americans yearn to destroy the Satanic forces they blame for the collapse of their communities
By CHRIS HEDGES - SALON
MARCH 23, 2021 10:02AM (UTC)
...The simplistic message was always the same. The world was divided into us and them, the blessed and the damned, agents of God and agents of Satan, good and evil. Millions of largely white Americans, hermetically sealed within the ideology of the Christian right, yearn to destroy the Satanic forces they blame for the debacle of their lives, the broken homes, domestic and sexual abuse, struggling single parent households, lack of opportunities, crippling debt, poverty, evictions, bankruptcies, loss of sustainable incomes and the decay of their communities. Satanic forces, they believe, control the financial systems, the media, public education and the three branches of government. They believed this long before Donald Trump, who astutely tapped into this deep malaise and magic thinking, mounted his 2016 campaign for president.
The killings in Atlanta were not an anomaly by a deranged gunman. The hatred for people of other ethnicities and faiths, the hatred for women of color, who are condemned by the Christian right as temptresses in league with Satan, was fertilized in the rampant misogyny, hyper-masculinity and racism that lie at the center of the belief system of the Christian right, as well as define the core beliefs of American imperialism. The white race, especially in the United States, is celebrated as God's chosen agent. Imperialism and war are divine instruments for purging the world of infidels and barbarians, evil itself. Capitalism, because God blessed the righteous with wealth and power and condemned the immoral to poverty and suffering, is shorn of its inherent cruelty and exploitation. The iconography and symbols of American nationalism are intertwined with the iconography and symbols of the Christian faith. In short, the worst aspects of American society are sacralized by this heretical form of Christianity.
Believers are told that Satanic forces, promoting a liberal creed of "secular humanism," lure people to self-destruction through drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography and massage brothels. Long, who had frequented two of the massage parlors he attacked, was arrested on his way to Florida to attack a business connected with the pornography industry. He had attempted to block porn sites on his computer and sought help for his fascination with porn from Christian counselors.
The secular humanists, along with creating a society designed to tempt people into sin, are blamed for immigration programs that fuel demographic shifts to turn whites into a minority. The secular humanists are charged with elevating those of other races and beliefs — including Muslims, whose religion is branded as Satanic — along with those whose gender identities challenge the sanctity of marriage as between a man and a woman and patriarchy. The secular humanists are believed to be behind an array of institutions including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, the State Department, major foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford), elite universities and media platforms such as CNN and The New York Times.
In D. James Kennedy's book "The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail: The Attack on Christianity and What You Need to Know to Combat It," he writes that although the United States was once a "Christian nation," that is no longer the case because today "the hostile barrage from atheists, agnostics and other secular humanists has begun to take a serious toll on that heritage. In recent years, they have built up their forces and even increased their assault upon all our Christian institutions, and they have been enormously successful in taking over the 'public square.' Public education, the media, the government, the courts, and even the church in many places, now belong to them."
That incendiary rhetoric creates an atmosphere of being under siege. It imparts a sense of comradeship, the feeling that although the world outside the walls of the church or the home is dangerous and hostile, there is a select community of brothers and sisters. Believers only owe a moral obligation to other Christians. The world is divided between comrades and enemies, neighbors and strangers. The commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself" is perverted to "Love your fellow Christians as yourself." Nonbelievers have no place on the moral map.
When Christ returns, believers are told, He will lead the elect in one final apocalyptic battle against the people and groups blamed for their dislocation and despair. The secular world, the one that almost destroyed them and their families, will be eradicated. The flaws in human society and in human beings will be erased. They will have what most never had: a stable home and family, a loving community, fixed moral standards, financial and personal security and success and an abolition of uncertainty, disorder and doubt. Their fragmented, troubled lives will become whole. Evil will be physically vanquished. There will be no more impurity because the impure will no longer exist.
This externalization of evil, however, is not limited to the Christian right. It lies at the core of American imperialism, American exceptionalism and American racism. White supremacy, which dehumanizes the other at home and abroad, is also fueled by the fantasy that there are superior human beings who are white and lesser human beings who are not. Long did not need the Christian fascism of his church to justify to himself the killings; the racial hierarchies within American society had already dehumanized his victims. His church simply cloaked it in religious language. The jargon varies. The dark sentiments are the same.
The ideology of the Christian right, like all totalitarian creeds, is, at its core, an ideology of hatred. It rejects what Augustine calls the grace of love, or volo ut sis ("I want you to be"). It replaces it with an ideology that condemns all those outside the magic circle. There is, in relationships based on love, an affirmation of the mystery of the other, an affirmation of unexplained and unfathomable differences. These relationships not only recognize that others have a right to be, as Augustine wrote, but the sacredness of difference. This sacredness of difference is an anathema to Christian fundamentalists, as it is to imperialists, to all racists. It is dangerous to the hegemony of the triumphalist ideology. It calls into question the infallibility of the doctrine, the essential appeal of all ideologies. It suggests that there are alternative ways to live and believe. The moment there is a hint of uncertainty the ideological edifice crumbles. The truth is irrelevant as long as the ideology is consistent, doubt is heretical and the vision of the world, however absurd, absolute and unassailable. These ideologies are not meant to be rational. They are meant to fill emotional voids.
Evil for the Christian fundamentalists is not something within them. It is an external force to be destroyed. It may require indiscriminate acts of violence, but if it leads to a better world this violence is morally justified. Those who advance the holy crusade alone know the truth. They alone have been anointed by God or, in the language of American imperialism, Western civilization, to do battle with evil. They alone have the right to impose their "values" on others by force. Once evil is external, once the human race is divided into the righteous and the damned, repression and even murder become a sacred duty.
Immanuel Kant defined "radical evil" as the drive, often carried out under a righteous façade, to surrender to absolute self-love. Those gripped by radical evil always externalize evil. They lose touch with their own humanity. They are blind to their own innate depravity. In the name of Western civilization and high ideals, in the name of reason and science, in the name of America, in the name of the free market, in the name of Jesus, they seek the subjugation and annihilation of others. Radical evil, Hannah Arendt wrote, makes whole groups of human beings superfluous. They become, rhetorically, living corpses before often becoming actual corpses.
This binary world view is anti-thought. That is part of its attraction. It gives to those who are alienated and lost emotional certitude. It is buttressed by hollow clichés, patriotic slogans and Bible passages, what psychologists call symbol agnostics. True believers are capable only of imitation. They shut down, by choice, critical reflection and genuine understanding. They surrender all moral autonomy. The impoverished language is regurgitated not because it makes sense, but because it justifies the messianic and intoxicating right to lead humankind to paradise. These pseudo-heroes, however, know only one form of sacrifice, the sacrifice of others.
Human evil is not a problem to be solved. It is a mystery. It is a bitter, constant paradox. We carry the capacity for evil within us. I learned this unsettling truth as a war correspondent. The line between the victim and the victimizer is razor-thin. Evil is also seductive. It offers us unlimited, often lethal, power to turn those around us into objects to destroy or debase to gratify our most perverted desires or both. This evil waits to consume us. All it requires to flourish is for us to turn away, to pretend it is not there, to do nothing. Those who blind themselves to their capacity for evil commit evil not for evil's sake, but to make a better world. This collective self-delusion is the story of America, from its foundation on the twin evils of slavery and genocide to its inherent racism, predatory capitalism and savage wars of conquest. The more we ignore this evil, the worse it gets.
The awareness of human corruptibility and human limitations, as understood by Augustine, Kant, Sigmund Freud and Primo Levi, has been humankind's most potent check on evil. Levi wrote that "compassion and brutality can coexist in the same individual and in the same moment, despite all logic." This self-knowledge forces us to accept that no act, even one defined as moral or virtuous, is ever free from the taint of self-interest. It reminds us that we are condemned to always battle our baser instincts. It recognizes that compassion, as Rousseau wrote, is alone the quality from which "all the social virtues flow."
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that "some are guilty, but all are responsible." We may not be guilty of the murders in Atlanta, but we are responsible. We must answer for them. We must accept the truth about ourselves, however unpleasant. We must unmask the lie of our pretended innocence. Long's murderous spree was quintessentially American. That is what makes it, along with all other hate crimes, along with our endless imperial wars, police terror, callous abandonment of the poor and the vulnerable, so frightening. This evil will not be tamed until it is named and confronted.
The killings in Atlanta were not an anomaly by a deranged gunman. The hatred for people of other ethnicities and faiths, the hatred for women of color, who are condemned by the Christian right as temptresses in league with Satan, was fertilized in the rampant misogyny, hyper-masculinity and racism that lie at the center of the belief system of the Christian right, as well as define the core beliefs of American imperialism. The white race, especially in the United States, is celebrated as God's chosen agent. Imperialism and war are divine instruments for purging the world of infidels and barbarians, evil itself. Capitalism, because God blessed the righteous with wealth and power and condemned the immoral to poverty and suffering, is shorn of its inherent cruelty and exploitation. The iconography and symbols of American nationalism are intertwined with the iconography and symbols of the Christian faith. In short, the worst aspects of American society are sacralized by this heretical form of Christianity.
Believers are told that Satanic forces, promoting a liberal creed of "secular humanism," lure people to self-destruction through drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography and massage brothels. Long, who had frequented two of the massage parlors he attacked, was arrested on his way to Florida to attack a business connected with the pornography industry. He had attempted to block porn sites on his computer and sought help for his fascination with porn from Christian counselors.
The secular humanists, along with creating a society designed to tempt people into sin, are blamed for immigration programs that fuel demographic shifts to turn whites into a minority. The secular humanists are charged with elevating those of other races and beliefs — including Muslims, whose religion is branded as Satanic — along with those whose gender identities challenge the sanctity of marriage as between a man and a woman and patriarchy. The secular humanists are believed to be behind an array of institutions including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, the State Department, major foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford), elite universities and media platforms such as CNN and The New York Times.
In D. James Kennedy's book "The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail: The Attack on Christianity and What You Need to Know to Combat It," he writes that although the United States was once a "Christian nation," that is no longer the case because today "the hostile barrage from atheists, agnostics and other secular humanists has begun to take a serious toll on that heritage. In recent years, they have built up their forces and even increased their assault upon all our Christian institutions, and they have been enormously successful in taking over the 'public square.' Public education, the media, the government, the courts, and even the church in many places, now belong to them."
That incendiary rhetoric creates an atmosphere of being under siege. It imparts a sense of comradeship, the feeling that although the world outside the walls of the church or the home is dangerous and hostile, there is a select community of brothers and sisters. Believers only owe a moral obligation to other Christians. The world is divided between comrades and enemies, neighbors and strangers. The commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself" is perverted to "Love your fellow Christians as yourself." Nonbelievers have no place on the moral map.
When Christ returns, believers are told, He will lead the elect in one final apocalyptic battle against the people and groups blamed for their dislocation and despair. The secular world, the one that almost destroyed them and their families, will be eradicated. The flaws in human society and in human beings will be erased. They will have what most never had: a stable home and family, a loving community, fixed moral standards, financial and personal security and success and an abolition of uncertainty, disorder and doubt. Their fragmented, troubled lives will become whole. Evil will be physically vanquished. There will be no more impurity because the impure will no longer exist.
This externalization of evil, however, is not limited to the Christian right. It lies at the core of American imperialism, American exceptionalism and American racism. White supremacy, which dehumanizes the other at home and abroad, is also fueled by the fantasy that there are superior human beings who are white and lesser human beings who are not. Long did not need the Christian fascism of his church to justify to himself the killings; the racial hierarchies within American society had already dehumanized his victims. His church simply cloaked it in religious language. The jargon varies. The dark sentiments are the same.
The ideology of the Christian right, like all totalitarian creeds, is, at its core, an ideology of hatred. It rejects what Augustine calls the grace of love, or volo ut sis ("I want you to be"). It replaces it with an ideology that condemns all those outside the magic circle. There is, in relationships based on love, an affirmation of the mystery of the other, an affirmation of unexplained and unfathomable differences. These relationships not only recognize that others have a right to be, as Augustine wrote, but the sacredness of difference. This sacredness of difference is an anathema to Christian fundamentalists, as it is to imperialists, to all racists. It is dangerous to the hegemony of the triumphalist ideology. It calls into question the infallibility of the doctrine, the essential appeal of all ideologies. It suggests that there are alternative ways to live and believe. The moment there is a hint of uncertainty the ideological edifice crumbles. The truth is irrelevant as long as the ideology is consistent, doubt is heretical and the vision of the world, however absurd, absolute and unassailable. These ideologies are not meant to be rational. They are meant to fill emotional voids.
Evil for the Christian fundamentalists is not something within them. It is an external force to be destroyed. It may require indiscriminate acts of violence, but if it leads to a better world this violence is morally justified. Those who advance the holy crusade alone know the truth. They alone have been anointed by God or, in the language of American imperialism, Western civilization, to do battle with evil. They alone have the right to impose their "values" on others by force. Once evil is external, once the human race is divided into the righteous and the damned, repression and even murder become a sacred duty.
Immanuel Kant defined "radical evil" as the drive, often carried out under a righteous façade, to surrender to absolute self-love. Those gripped by radical evil always externalize evil. They lose touch with their own humanity. They are blind to their own innate depravity. In the name of Western civilization and high ideals, in the name of reason and science, in the name of America, in the name of the free market, in the name of Jesus, they seek the subjugation and annihilation of others. Radical evil, Hannah Arendt wrote, makes whole groups of human beings superfluous. They become, rhetorically, living corpses before often becoming actual corpses.
This binary world view is anti-thought. That is part of its attraction. It gives to those who are alienated and lost emotional certitude. It is buttressed by hollow clichés, patriotic slogans and Bible passages, what psychologists call symbol agnostics. True believers are capable only of imitation. They shut down, by choice, critical reflection and genuine understanding. They surrender all moral autonomy. The impoverished language is regurgitated not because it makes sense, but because it justifies the messianic and intoxicating right to lead humankind to paradise. These pseudo-heroes, however, know only one form of sacrifice, the sacrifice of others.
Human evil is not a problem to be solved. It is a mystery. It is a bitter, constant paradox. We carry the capacity for evil within us. I learned this unsettling truth as a war correspondent. The line between the victim and the victimizer is razor-thin. Evil is also seductive. It offers us unlimited, often lethal, power to turn those around us into objects to destroy or debase to gratify our most perverted desires or both. This evil waits to consume us. All it requires to flourish is for us to turn away, to pretend it is not there, to do nothing. Those who blind themselves to their capacity for evil commit evil not for evil's sake, but to make a better world. This collective self-delusion is the story of America, from its foundation on the twin evils of slavery and genocide to its inherent racism, predatory capitalism and savage wars of conquest. The more we ignore this evil, the worse it gets.
The awareness of human corruptibility and human limitations, as understood by Augustine, Kant, Sigmund Freud and Primo Levi, has been humankind's most potent check on evil. Levi wrote that "compassion and brutality can coexist in the same individual and in the same moment, despite all logic." This self-knowledge forces us to accept that no act, even one defined as moral or virtuous, is ever free from the taint of self-interest. It reminds us that we are condemned to always battle our baser instincts. It recognizes that compassion, as Rousseau wrote, is alone the quality from which "all the social virtues flow."
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that "some are guilty, but all are responsible." We may not be guilty of the murders in Atlanta, but we are responsible. We must answer for them. We must accept the truth about ourselves, however unpleasant. We must unmask the lie of our pretended innocence. Long's murderous spree was quintessentially American. That is what makes it, along with all other hate crimes, along with our endless imperial wars, police terror, callous abandonment of the poor and the vulnerable, so frightening. This evil will not be tamed until it is named and confronted.
Purity culture and the subjugation of women: Southern Baptist beliefs on sex and gender provide context to spa suspect’s ‘motive’
the conversation
March 23, 2021 2.30pm EDT
...Common beliefs, not creeds
Southern Baptists, the largest branch of evangelicalism in the U.S., are noncreedal. This means Southern Baptists do not have a required dogma, although the denomination’s confessional statement, “The Baptist Faith and Message,” lays out commonly held beliefs. Not every Southern Baptist, then, believes the same things.
But since the 1990s, fundamentalists who adhere to a strict set of beliefs have controlled the denomination. Their approach to interpreting the Bible and their beliefs about gender predominate in Southern Baptist churches. They are taught in Southern Baptist seminaries, practiced in hiring for missionaries and agency workers, and reflected in curriculum materials for churches.
Central is the belief in Biblical literalism – a method of interpreting the Bible based on the belief that the text is literally true. Biblical literalists believe, for example, that God created the universe in six days, that a worldwide flood destroyed all but Noah’s family and the pairs of animals on the ark, and that the Red Sea parted so the Israelites could walk across on dry ground.
Literalism goes hand in hand with inerrancy – the belief that the Bible is without error, not only in doctrine but also in history and science.
This method of interpreting the Bible plays a significant role in how Southern Baptists come to many of their beliefs about gender.
The fall of Eve
Many Southern Baptists believe that the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible happened literally as described. That is, God created one man and one woman, put them in the Garden of Eden, and forbade them to eat the fruit from one tree.
Because Eve was the first of the humans to fall from God’s grace by eating the forbidden fruit, she became subject to man. And that subjugation fell on all women, according to Southern Baptist teaching.
Further, some Baptists argue that gender hierarchy was God’s original intention.
This interpretation of Eve as “first in the Edenic fall” was cited by Southern Baptists in a 1984 resolution calling for women to be excluded from ordained ministry.
This fits with the Southern Baptist principle of complementarianism which holds that while God created men and women as equals, they perform separate but complementary roles: that men are to be leaders in home, church and society, and women are to be submissive helpers, primarily responsible for caring for the home and rearing children.
In this way, women are expected to submit to men in the home and in the church. Southern Baptist leaders point to the writings of the apostle Paul in the Bible (Ephesians 5:22) as evidence of God’s expectation of women’s submission: “Wives, submit yourself unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”
This view of submission also means that women should not hold leadership over men or teach men in the church, hence the move to prevent women being ordained.
Sexuality and gender identity
The denomination’s teachings on sexuality are similarly rooted in traditional beliefs about women and men.
Humans were, according to Southern Baptists, created heterosexual, and sexual activity is acceptable only between a man and a woman in a lifelong heterosexual marriage. While 54% of Christians support acceptance of homosexuality, only 30% of Southern Baptists believe homosexuality should be accepted. In 1992, the Southern Baptist Convention amended its constitution to exclude churches that implied acceptance of homosexuality.
The executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention recently ousted two churches that welcome LGBTQ people into membership.
Most evangelicals believe that God created humanity as male and female only. According to the denomination, only these two biological sexes exist, and gender aligns with sex.
In 2014, the Southern Baptist Convention approved a resolution affirming, “God’s good design” is “that gender identity is determined by biological sex and not by one’s self-perception.”
These views on sexual activity and gender roles are reflected in the purity culture that influences many Southern Baptists. Purity culture focuses on abstinence outside traditional heterosexual marriage and dangers in girls’ and women’s sexuality. In particular, purity culture teaches that girls and women are responsible for boys’ and men’s sexuality and that they may cause boys and men to sin through expressions of their own sexuality.
These teachings are supported by an entire industry of purity rings, purity balls, purity curricula and purity music. Purity culture rarely talks about sexual violence or consent because of the assumption that controlling men’s sexual urges is women’s responsibility, and so, if women will be completely asexual, men will not be overcome by their sexual urges.
Taken together, these beliefs create a context in which men exert authority and control. Women are expected to submit to men and to constrain men’s sexual urges and behaviors through their pure lifestyles. Women are seen as important but secondary, equal in value but submissive in actuality.
None of this can excuse or explain the actions of the shooting suspect in Georgia. But Southern Baptist beliefs about sex and gender give context to the suspect’s apparent conviction that his sexual urges were wrong, and that the women he believed to have encouraged them were in some way responsible.
Southern Baptists, the largest branch of evangelicalism in the U.S., are noncreedal. This means Southern Baptists do not have a required dogma, although the denomination’s confessional statement, “The Baptist Faith and Message,” lays out commonly held beliefs. Not every Southern Baptist, then, believes the same things.
But since the 1990s, fundamentalists who adhere to a strict set of beliefs have controlled the denomination. Their approach to interpreting the Bible and their beliefs about gender predominate in Southern Baptist churches. They are taught in Southern Baptist seminaries, practiced in hiring for missionaries and agency workers, and reflected in curriculum materials for churches.
Central is the belief in Biblical literalism – a method of interpreting the Bible based on the belief that the text is literally true. Biblical literalists believe, for example, that God created the universe in six days, that a worldwide flood destroyed all but Noah’s family and the pairs of animals on the ark, and that the Red Sea parted so the Israelites could walk across on dry ground.
Literalism goes hand in hand with inerrancy – the belief that the Bible is without error, not only in doctrine but also in history and science.
This method of interpreting the Bible plays a significant role in how Southern Baptists come to many of their beliefs about gender.
The fall of Eve
Many Southern Baptists believe that the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible happened literally as described. That is, God created one man and one woman, put them in the Garden of Eden, and forbade them to eat the fruit from one tree.
Because Eve was the first of the humans to fall from God’s grace by eating the forbidden fruit, she became subject to man. And that subjugation fell on all women, according to Southern Baptist teaching.
Further, some Baptists argue that gender hierarchy was God’s original intention.
This interpretation of Eve as “first in the Edenic fall” was cited by Southern Baptists in a 1984 resolution calling for women to be excluded from ordained ministry.
This fits with the Southern Baptist principle of complementarianism which holds that while God created men and women as equals, they perform separate but complementary roles: that men are to be leaders in home, church and society, and women are to be submissive helpers, primarily responsible for caring for the home and rearing children.
In this way, women are expected to submit to men in the home and in the church. Southern Baptist leaders point to the writings of the apostle Paul in the Bible (Ephesians 5:22) as evidence of God’s expectation of women’s submission: “Wives, submit yourself unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”
This view of submission also means that women should not hold leadership over men or teach men in the church, hence the move to prevent women being ordained.
Sexuality and gender identity
The denomination’s teachings on sexuality are similarly rooted in traditional beliefs about women and men.
Humans were, according to Southern Baptists, created heterosexual, and sexual activity is acceptable only between a man and a woman in a lifelong heterosexual marriage. While 54% of Christians support acceptance of homosexuality, only 30% of Southern Baptists believe homosexuality should be accepted. In 1992, the Southern Baptist Convention amended its constitution to exclude churches that implied acceptance of homosexuality.
The executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention recently ousted two churches that welcome LGBTQ people into membership.
Most evangelicals believe that God created humanity as male and female only. According to the denomination, only these two biological sexes exist, and gender aligns with sex.
In 2014, the Southern Baptist Convention approved a resolution affirming, “God’s good design” is “that gender identity is determined by biological sex and not by one’s self-perception.”
These views on sexual activity and gender roles are reflected in the purity culture that influences many Southern Baptists. Purity culture focuses on abstinence outside traditional heterosexual marriage and dangers in girls’ and women’s sexuality. In particular, purity culture teaches that girls and women are responsible for boys’ and men’s sexuality and that they may cause boys and men to sin through expressions of their own sexuality.
These teachings are supported by an entire industry of purity rings, purity balls, purity curricula and purity music. Purity culture rarely talks about sexual violence or consent because of the assumption that controlling men’s sexual urges is women’s responsibility, and so, if women will be completely asexual, men will not be overcome by their sexual urges.
Taken together, these beliefs create a context in which men exert authority and control. Women are expected to submit to men and to constrain men’s sexual urges and behaviors through their pure lifestyles. Women are seen as important but secondary, equal in value but submissive in actuality.
None of this can excuse or explain the actions of the shooting suspect in Georgia. But Southern Baptist beliefs about sex and gender give context to the suspect’s apparent conviction that his sexual urges were wrong, and that the women he believed to have encouraged them were in some way responsible.
Evangelicals are false Christians
Evangelicals are teaching false doctrine. Who says so? Jesus Christ
I've spent my life around evangelical theology — and most of it is exactly the hypocrisy Christ warned us about
NATHANIEL MANDERSON - SALON
3/20/2021
I was raised by a pair of wild hippies, so my heart has always been committed to liberal ideology. As a Bible-believing Christian, however, I was surrounded by evangelical theology throughout my youth, in various churches, Bible camps and so on. When I decided to enter the ministry to attempt to change that conservative theology, I attended an evangelical seminary. It was clear on my first day on campus that no reform was going to occur.
If I happened to mention voting for Al Gore, I was told by my classmates that God keeps a record of my voting history and that I had voted for a man who endorses baby-killing and tearing down the American family. Honestly, I was just hoping that President Gore might help save the planet and not make up a reason to go to war in Iraq. Anyway, in my 10 years in ministry I had even less luck making any changes, which is why I left the formal ministry a couple of years ago
The truth then, and even more so now, is that we cannot separate Republicans, and now the Trumpists, from the evangelicals. I have seen my fellow "Christian left" types attempting to reform the God vote — in fact, I've done it myself — but I feel we have been too timid in our approach. Stronger language and a pure rejection of evangelical theology is needed. From a purely Christian point of view, the evangelical leadership are false teachers teaching a false doctrine. Trumpism cannot be defeated without first facing down evangelicalism. Jesus Christ, who these people claim as their savior, himself provided a warning against these religious hypocrites in Matthew 23:
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.
The only real threat to Christianity is Christianity itself. Leading evangelical pastors like Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress made a passionate plea for Christian voters to ignore Trump's shortcomings as a man because he stands with the Christian church on all things that are right and true. Apparently, that means Christians must shut the door to all LGBTQ people, abortion providers, liberals, immigrants, Muslims and anyone who happens to mention taxing the wealthy.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
Many of the false American evangelical teachers demonize and look down upon the people in poorer countries. I have seen these "missionaries" in places like Haiti building their churches and making sure "proper doctrine" is followed. It is this type of modern-day colonialism that has provided foreign governments the religious authority to enact terrible anti-LGBTQ laws and restrictions on reproductive rights for women.
Woe to you, blind guides! You say, "If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath." You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?
False teachers have always believed that their financial wealth means favor with God. I have seen many Christian leaders give praise to God for their big homes, nice cars and million-dollar sanctuaries. This belief that God has blessed them with great stuff prevents them from ever understanding the need to fund programs that provide equality in the education, health care, justice and economic systems.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
These false evangelical leaders may have stayed within the law, but they know nothing about being merciful. They could never understand the message to reach out to undocumented immigrants because of God's call to treat the foreigner as native born — because we were once foreigners ourselves. They only understand the language of rules and law without mercy and grace.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
Many of these false evangelical leaders have spent a lot of time and money making sure their public image is clean. Ideal marriages, wonderful children, kind and loving people who are financially affluent and pay their taxes. Christ reminded his followers to be careful of such a well-crafted persona. Behind the curtain there are many filled with hypocrisy and wickedness.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, "If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets." So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!
Many of these current evangelical leaders love to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his message of love and forgiveness. Many would like to forget that most conservative Christian leaders rejected Dr. King's message while he was alive, and some believed he was a communist. It is no mystery to me why there is no picture of the great Rev. Billy Graham marching with Dr. King. These false evangelical leaders expose themselves again as they reject the Rev. William J. Barber II's message about honoring and uplifting the poor, which is far more clearly based in Christian doctrine than anything they preach. These false evangelical Christian leaders never understood Dr. King's message to follow Jesus into those places in America where poor people struggle and suffer and too often die, and they never will.
If I happened to mention voting for Al Gore, I was told by my classmates that God keeps a record of my voting history and that I had voted for a man who endorses baby-killing and tearing down the American family. Honestly, I was just hoping that President Gore might help save the planet and not make up a reason to go to war in Iraq. Anyway, in my 10 years in ministry I had even less luck making any changes, which is why I left the formal ministry a couple of years ago
The truth then, and even more so now, is that we cannot separate Republicans, and now the Trumpists, from the evangelicals. I have seen my fellow "Christian left" types attempting to reform the God vote — in fact, I've done it myself — but I feel we have been too timid in our approach. Stronger language and a pure rejection of evangelical theology is needed. From a purely Christian point of view, the evangelical leadership are false teachers teaching a false doctrine. Trumpism cannot be defeated without first facing down evangelicalism. Jesus Christ, who these people claim as their savior, himself provided a warning against these religious hypocrites in Matthew 23:
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.
The only real threat to Christianity is Christianity itself. Leading evangelical pastors like Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress made a passionate plea for Christian voters to ignore Trump's shortcomings as a man because he stands with the Christian church on all things that are right and true. Apparently, that means Christians must shut the door to all LGBTQ people, abortion providers, liberals, immigrants, Muslims and anyone who happens to mention taxing the wealthy.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
Many of the false American evangelical teachers demonize and look down upon the people in poorer countries. I have seen these "missionaries" in places like Haiti building their churches and making sure "proper doctrine" is followed. It is this type of modern-day colonialism that has provided foreign governments the religious authority to enact terrible anti-LGBTQ laws and restrictions on reproductive rights for women.
Woe to you, blind guides! You say, "If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath." You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?
False teachers have always believed that their financial wealth means favor with God. I have seen many Christian leaders give praise to God for their big homes, nice cars and million-dollar sanctuaries. This belief that God has blessed them with great stuff prevents them from ever understanding the need to fund programs that provide equality in the education, health care, justice and economic systems.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
These false evangelical leaders may have stayed within the law, but they know nothing about being merciful. They could never understand the message to reach out to undocumented immigrants because of God's call to treat the foreigner as native born — because we were once foreigners ourselves. They only understand the language of rules and law without mercy and grace.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
Many of these false evangelical leaders have spent a lot of time and money making sure their public image is clean. Ideal marriages, wonderful children, kind and loving people who are financially affluent and pay their taxes. Christ reminded his followers to be careful of such a well-crafted persona. Behind the curtain there are many filled with hypocrisy and wickedness.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, "If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets." So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!
Many of these current evangelical leaders love to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his message of love and forgiveness. Many would like to forget that most conservative Christian leaders rejected Dr. King's message while he was alive, and some believed he was a communist. It is no mystery to me why there is no picture of the great Rev. Billy Graham marching with Dr. King. These false evangelical leaders expose themselves again as they reject the Rev. William J. Barber II's message about honoring and uplifting the poor, which is far more clearly based in Christian doctrine than anything they preach. These false evangelical Christian leaders never understood Dr. King's message to follow Jesus into those places in America where poor people struggle and suffer and too often die, and they never will.
OP-ED RACIAL JUSTICE
The Catholic Church Is Responding to Indigenous Protest With Exorcisms
BY Charles Sepulveda, Truthout
PUBLISHED November 26, 2020
On this day, Indigenous activists in New England and beyond are observing a National Day of Mourning to mark the theft of land, cultural assault and genocide that followed after the anchoring of the Mayflower on Wampanoag land in 1620 — a genocide that is erased within conventional “Thanksgiving Day” narratives.
The acts of mourning and resistance taking place today build on the energy of Indigenous People’s Day 2020, which was also a day of uprising. On October 11, 2020, also called “Indigenous People’s Day of Rage,” participants around the country took part in actions such as de-monumenting — the toppling of statues of individuals dedicated to racial nation-building.
In response to Indigenous-led efforts that demanded land back and the toppling of statues, Catholic Church leaders in Oregon and California deemed it necessary to perform exorcisms, thereby casting Indigenous protest as demonic.
The toppled statues included President Abraham Lincoln, President Theodore Roosevelt and Father Junípero Serra, who founded California’s mission system (1769-1834) and was canonized into sainthood by the Catholic Church and Pope Francis in 2015.
What do these leaders whose statues were toppled have in common? They perpetrated and promoted devastating violence against Native peoples.
Abraham Lincoln was responsible for the largest mass execution in United States history when 38 Dakota were hanged in 1862 after being found guilty for their involvement in what is known as the “Minnesota Uprising.”
Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech in 1886 in New York that would have made today’s white supremacists blush when he declared: “I don’t go as far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are…” This was not his only foray in promoting racial genocide.
Junípero Serra is known for having committed cruel punishments against the Indians of California and enslaved them as part of Spain’s genocidal conquest.
Last month, “Land Back” and “Dakota 38” were scrawled on the base of the now-toppled Lincoln statue in Portland, Oregon. The political statements and demands for land return reveal a Native decolonial spirit based in resistance continuing through multiple generations.
The “Indigenous People’s Day of Rage” came after months of protests in Portland in support of Black Lives Matter. The resistance enacted in Portland coincides with demands for both abolition (the end of racialized policing and imprisonment) and decolonization (the return of land and regeneration of life outside of colonialism). Both of these notions encompass a multifaceted imagining of life beyond white supremacy.
In San Rafael, California, Native activists gathered at the Spanish mission that had been the site of California Indian enslavement. Activists, who included members of the Coast Miwok of Marin, first poured red paint on the statue of Serra and then pulled it down with ropes, while other protesters held signs that read: “Land Back Now” and “We Stand on Unceded Land – Decolonization means #LandBack.” The statue broke at the ankles, leaving only the feet on the base.
What was even more provocative than the toppling of the statues by Native activists and their accomplices, was the response by the Catholic Church, which not only condemned the actions of the Native activists, but also spiritually chastised them. In both Portland and San Rafael, the reaction by the Church was to perform exorcisms.
The purpose of an exorcism, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is to expel demons or “the liberation from demonic possession through the spiritual authority which Jesus entrusted to his Church.”
In other words, Native activism and demands for land back were deemed blasphemous and evil by two archbishops and were determined to require exorcism.
In Portland, Archbishop Alexander K. Sample led 225 members of his congregation to a city park where he prayed a rosary for peace and conducted an exorcism on October 17, six days after the “Indigenous People’s Day of Rage.” Archbishop Sample stated that there was no better time to come together to pray for peace than in the wake of social unrest and on the eve of the elections. His exorcism was a direct response to Indigenous-led efforts that demanded land back.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone held an exorcism on the same day as the one performed in Portland and after the toppling of Saint Junipero Serra’s statue in San Rafael. In his performance of the exorcism, he prayed that God would purify the mission of evil spirits as well as the hearts of those who perpetrated blasphemy. Was he responding to a “demonic possession” or was he exorcising the political motivations of those he did not agree with? Perhaps both, as he also stated that the toppling of the statue was an attack on the Catholic faith that took place on their own property. However, the mission is only Church property because of Native dispossession through conquest and missionization.
The conquest of the Americas by European nations was, as Saint Serra had deemed his own work, a “spiritual conquest.” From the doctrine of discovery to manifest destiny, the possession of Native land was rationalized as divine – from God. Those who threaten colonial possession are attacking the theological rationalization of possession, not their faith.
Demands for land back interfere with the doctrine that enabled Native land to be exorcised from them. Archbishop Cordileone’s exorcism was in the maintenance of property that had been stolen from Indigenous people long ago, and Archbishop Sample’s was in the maintenance of peace and the status quo of Native dispossession.
With a majority-Christian population in the United States and other nations in the Americas, demands for the return of land and decolonization have more to reckon with than racial injustice and white supremacy. Christians must also consider how dominant strains of Christian theology rationalized conquest and its ongoing structures of dispossession. Can a religion, made up of many sects, shift its framework to help end continued Native dispossession and its rationalization? Can we come together to overturn a racialized theological doctrine that functioned through violence and was adopted into a nation’s legal system? Can we imagine life beyond rage and the racialized spiritual possession of stolen land?
The Doctrine of Discovery was the primary international law developed in the 15th and 16th centuries through a series of papal bulls (Catholic decrees) that divided the Americas for white European conquest and authorized the enslavement of non-Christians. In 1823 the Doctrine of Discovery was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh. Chief Justice John Marshall declared in his ruling that Indians only held occupancy rights to land — ownership belonged to the European nation that discovered it. This case further legalized the theft of Native lands. It continues to be a foundational principal of U.S. property law and has been cited as recently as 2005 by the U.S. Supreme Court (City of Sherrill v. Oneida Nation of Indians) to diminish Native American land rights.
In 2009 the Episcopal Church passed a resolution that repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. It was the first Christian denomination to do so and has since been followed by several other denominations, including the Anglican Church of Canada (2010), the Religious Society of Friends/Quakers (2009 and 2012), the World Council of Churches (2012), the United Methodist Church (2012), the United Church of Christ (2013) and the Mennonite Church (2014).
Decolonization and land return are as possible as repudiating the legal justification of land theft. Social, cultural, governmental and economic systems are constantly changing, but the land remains — in the hands of the dispossessors. When our faith is held above what we know is true — we will prolong doing what is right.
Native peoples are not ancient peoples of the past only remembered on days such as Thanksgiving, just as our mourning is not all that we are. Native peoples are a myriad of things, including activists who demand land back — which is not a demonic request. Our land can be returned, and we can work together to heal and imagine a future beyond white supremacy and dispossession.
The acts of mourning and resistance taking place today build on the energy of Indigenous People’s Day 2020, which was also a day of uprising. On October 11, 2020, also called “Indigenous People’s Day of Rage,” participants around the country took part in actions such as de-monumenting — the toppling of statues of individuals dedicated to racial nation-building.
In response to Indigenous-led efforts that demanded land back and the toppling of statues, Catholic Church leaders in Oregon and California deemed it necessary to perform exorcisms, thereby casting Indigenous protest as demonic.
The toppled statues included President Abraham Lincoln, President Theodore Roosevelt and Father Junípero Serra, who founded California’s mission system (1769-1834) and was canonized into sainthood by the Catholic Church and Pope Francis in 2015.
What do these leaders whose statues were toppled have in common? They perpetrated and promoted devastating violence against Native peoples.
Abraham Lincoln was responsible for the largest mass execution in United States history when 38 Dakota were hanged in 1862 after being found guilty for their involvement in what is known as the “Minnesota Uprising.”
Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech in 1886 in New York that would have made today’s white supremacists blush when he declared: “I don’t go as far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are…” This was not his only foray in promoting racial genocide.
Junípero Serra is known for having committed cruel punishments against the Indians of California and enslaved them as part of Spain’s genocidal conquest.
Last month, “Land Back” and “Dakota 38” were scrawled on the base of the now-toppled Lincoln statue in Portland, Oregon. The political statements and demands for land return reveal a Native decolonial spirit based in resistance continuing through multiple generations.
The “Indigenous People’s Day of Rage” came after months of protests in Portland in support of Black Lives Matter. The resistance enacted in Portland coincides with demands for both abolition (the end of racialized policing and imprisonment) and decolonization (the return of land and regeneration of life outside of colonialism). Both of these notions encompass a multifaceted imagining of life beyond white supremacy.
In San Rafael, California, Native activists gathered at the Spanish mission that had been the site of California Indian enslavement. Activists, who included members of the Coast Miwok of Marin, first poured red paint on the statue of Serra and then pulled it down with ropes, while other protesters held signs that read: “Land Back Now” and “We Stand on Unceded Land – Decolonization means #LandBack.” The statue broke at the ankles, leaving only the feet on the base.
What was even more provocative than the toppling of the statues by Native activists and their accomplices, was the response by the Catholic Church, which not only condemned the actions of the Native activists, but also spiritually chastised them. In both Portland and San Rafael, the reaction by the Church was to perform exorcisms.
The purpose of an exorcism, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is to expel demons or “the liberation from demonic possession through the spiritual authority which Jesus entrusted to his Church.”
In other words, Native activism and demands for land back were deemed blasphemous and evil by two archbishops and were determined to require exorcism.
In Portland, Archbishop Alexander K. Sample led 225 members of his congregation to a city park where he prayed a rosary for peace and conducted an exorcism on October 17, six days after the “Indigenous People’s Day of Rage.” Archbishop Sample stated that there was no better time to come together to pray for peace than in the wake of social unrest and on the eve of the elections. His exorcism was a direct response to Indigenous-led efforts that demanded land back.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone held an exorcism on the same day as the one performed in Portland and after the toppling of Saint Junipero Serra’s statue in San Rafael. In his performance of the exorcism, he prayed that God would purify the mission of evil spirits as well as the hearts of those who perpetrated blasphemy. Was he responding to a “demonic possession” or was he exorcising the political motivations of those he did not agree with? Perhaps both, as he also stated that the toppling of the statue was an attack on the Catholic faith that took place on their own property. However, the mission is only Church property because of Native dispossession through conquest and missionization.
The conquest of the Americas by European nations was, as Saint Serra had deemed his own work, a “spiritual conquest.” From the doctrine of discovery to manifest destiny, the possession of Native land was rationalized as divine – from God. Those who threaten colonial possession are attacking the theological rationalization of possession, not their faith.
Demands for land back interfere with the doctrine that enabled Native land to be exorcised from them. Archbishop Cordileone’s exorcism was in the maintenance of property that had been stolen from Indigenous people long ago, and Archbishop Sample’s was in the maintenance of peace and the status quo of Native dispossession.
With a majority-Christian population in the United States and other nations in the Americas, demands for the return of land and decolonization have more to reckon with than racial injustice and white supremacy. Christians must also consider how dominant strains of Christian theology rationalized conquest and its ongoing structures of dispossession. Can a religion, made up of many sects, shift its framework to help end continued Native dispossession and its rationalization? Can we come together to overturn a racialized theological doctrine that functioned through violence and was adopted into a nation’s legal system? Can we imagine life beyond rage and the racialized spiritual possession of stolen land?
The Doctrine of Discovery was the primary international law developed in the 15th and 16th centuries through a series of papal bulls (Catholic decrees) that divided the Americas for white European conquest and authorized the enslavement of non-Christians. In 1823 the Doctrine of Discovery was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh. Chief Justice John Marshall declared in his ruling that Indians only held occupancy rights to land — ownership belonged to the European nation that discovered it. This case further legalized the theft of Native lands. It continues to be a foundational principal of U.S. property law and has been cited as recently as 2005 by the U.S. Supreme Court (City of Sherrill v. Oneida Nation of Indians) to diminish Native American land rights.
In 2009 the Episcopal Church passed a resolution that repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. It was the first Christian denomination to do so and has since been followed by several other denominations, including the Anglican Church of Canada (2010), the Religious Society of Friends/Quakers (2009 and 2012), the World Council of Churches (2012), the United Methodist Church (2012), the United Church of Christ (2013) and the Mennonite Church (2014).
Decolonization and land return are as possible as repudiating the legal justification of land theft. Social, cultural, governmental and economic systems are constantly changing, but the land remains — in the hands of the dispossessors. When our faith is held above what we know is true — we will prolong doing what is right.
Native peoples are not ancient peoples of the past only remembered on days such as Thanksgiving, just as our mourning is not all that we are. Native peoples are a myriad of things, including activists who demand land back — which is not a demonic request. Our land can be returned, and we can work together to heal and imagine a future beyond white supremacy and dispossession.
real family values people!!!
good evangelical christians!!!
Business partner of Falwells says affair with evangelical power couple spanned seven years
Giancarlo Granda says his sexual relationship with the Falwells began when he was 20. He says he had sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell Jr, head of Liberty University and a staunch supporter of President Trump, looked on.
By ARAM ROSTON - reuters
WASHINGTON – In a claim likely to intensify the controversy surrounding one of the most influential figures in the American Christian conservative movement, a business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader.
Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.
Granda showed Reuters emails, text messages and other evidence that he says demonstrate the sexual nature of his relationship with the couple, who have been married since 1987. “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Granda said in an interview. Now 29, he described the liaisons as frequent – “multiple times per year” – and said the encounters took place at hotels in Miami and New York, and at the Falwells’ home in Virginia.
His friendship with the Falwells eventually soured, Granda told Reuters, in part because he wanted to dissolve his ties with the couple and fell into a business dispute with them.
Granda first emerged as a figure in the Falwells’ circle two years ago, when BuzzFeed News reported that the couple had befriended Granda and gone into business with him, buying a Miami Beach youth hostel in 2013. At the time of the BuzzFeed article, a representative of the Falwell family said Granda was “offered a share” in Alton Hostel LLC because Granda lived in Miami and would act as a manager of the youth hostel. Corporate records show that Granda currently has a stake in that venture.
Becki Falwell did not respond to emails or phone and text messages from Reuters. After Reuters presented its initial reporting early last week to the Falwells, a lawyer for Jerry Falwell, Michael Bowe, said the evangelical leader “categorically denies everything you indicated you intend to publish about him.”
On Sunday night, however, as Reuters was preparing to publish this article, Jerry Falwell issued a statement to the Washington Examiner in which he said that his wife had had an affair with Granda and that Granda had been trying to extort money from the couple over the matter. Granda denies any such intent, saying he was seeking to negotiate a buyout from a business arrangement he says he had with the couple.
Falwell’s statement Sunday to the Examiner said nothing about Granda’s account alleging that the evangelical leader had his own role in the affair, and Falwell didn’t address questions from Reuters about it. In the statement quoted by the Examiner, Falwell said that “Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved.”
News of the entanglement could pose a fresh threat to the influence of Jerry Falwell, a towering figure in the U.S. evangelical political movement. His 2016 endorsement of Donald Trump helped the twice-divorced New Yorker win the Republican nomination for president.
Falwell, 58, took an indefinite leave of absence earlier this month from Liberty University, the Christian school he has run since 2007. The leave, announced in a terse statement from the school’s board of trustees, came days after Falwell posted, then deleted, an Instagram photo of himself with his pants unzipped, standing with his arm around a young woman whose pants were also partly undone. Falwell later told a local radio station that the picture was meant as a good-natured joke.
Becki Falwell, 53, is a political figure in her own right. She served on the advisory board of the group Women for Trump, which advocates for the president’s reelection campaign. She also spoke as part of a panel with her husband and Donald Trump Jr at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the signature annual gathering of conservatives. Jerry Falwell and others refer to her as “the first lady of Liberty University.”
The university, based in Lynchburg, Virginia, was founded in 1971 by Falwell’s televangelist father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell. The younger Falwell took over in 2007. Today, the university boasts an online and on-campus enrollment that exceeds 100,000 students and holds those who attend to an exacting honor code. “Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University,” the code reads.
The material Granda showed Reuters includes screenshots from what Granda said was a FaceTime conversation he had with the Falwells in 2019. During that call, Granda said, Becki was naked as the two discussed their relationship while Jerry peeked from behind a door. Reuters was able to verify Granda’s description of the screenshots.
Granda also shared an audio recording that he says captures a conversation he had with the Falwells in 2018. In it, Becky complained about Granda describing his relationships with other people: “He’s like telling me every time he hooks up with people. Like I don’t have feelings or something.” Jerry then chimed in: “You’re going to make her jealous.” “I’m not trying to do that,” Granda replied.
Earlier texts show a friendly and romantic dynamic between Granda and Becki Falwell. One 2012 text message, which Granda said came from Becki, read in part: “Right now I am just missing you like crazy .... Have you had this effect on all of your lady friends?”
Other more recent text messages, such as an exchange from this June that Granda provided to Reuters, show Granda growing angry and frustrated as his relationship with the Falwells frayed.
“Since you’re okay with ruining my life, I am going to take the kamikaze route,” Granda wrote to Jerry Falwell. “It really is a shame because I wanted to reach a peaceful resolution and just move on with our lives but if conflict is what you want, then so be it.”
In the same message string, Falwell replied: “You should by now understand that I will not be extorted. I have always treated you fairly and been restrained in response to your threats because I did not wish to ruin your life. Going forward, stop contacting me and my family.”
Granda said that while he entered into the sexual relationship with the Falwells willingly, today he feels the couple preyed upon him. “Whether it was immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells likely detected in deciding that I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” Granda said.
In a statement released Friday, before news of the relationship with Granda became public, Liberty University said its “decision whether or not to retain Falwell as president has not yet been made.” Its board of trustees, the statement read, “requested prayer and patience as they seek the Lord’s will and also seek additional information for assessment.”
RELATED: ‘My husband likes to watch and he’s wearing a Speedo’: Falwell ‘pool boy’ recalls meeting the couple in 2012
Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.
Granda showed Reuters emails, text messages and other evidence that he says demonstrate the sexual nature of his relationship with the couple, who have been married since 1987. “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Granda said in an interview. Now 29, he described the liaisons as frequent – “multiple times per year” – and said the encounters took place at hotels in Miami and New York, and at the Falwells’ home in Virginia.
His friendship with the Falwells eventually soured, Granda told Reuters, in part because he wanted to dissolve his ties with the couple and fell into a business dispute with them.
Granda first emerged as a figure in the Falwells’ circle two years ago, when BuzzFeed News reported that the couple had befriended Granda and gone into business with him, buying a Miami Beach youth hostel in 2013. At the time of the BuzzFeed article, a representative of the Falwell family said Granda was “offered a share” in Alton Hostel LLC because Granda lived in Miami and would act as a manager of the youth hostel. Corporate records show that Granda currently has a stake in that venture.
Becki Falwell did not respond to emails or phone and text messages from Reuters. After Reuters presented its initial reporting early last week to the Falwells, a lawyer for Jerry Falwell, Michael Bowe, said the evangelical leader “categorically denies everything you indicated you intend to publish about him.”
On Sunday night, however, as Reuters was preparing to publish this article, Jerry Falwell issued a statement to the Washington Examiner in which he said that his wife had had an affair with Granda and that Granda had been trying to extort money from the couple over the matter. Granda denies any such intent, saying he was seeking to negotiate a buyout from a business arrangement he says he had with the couple.
Falwell’s statement Sunday to the Examiner said nothing about Granda’s account alleging that the evangelical leader had his own role in the affair, and Falwell didn’t address questions from Reuters about it. In the statement quoted by the Examiner, Falwell said that “Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved.”
News of the entanglement could pose a fresh threat to the influence of Jerry Falwell, a towering figure in the U.S. evangelical political movement. His 2016 endorsement of Donald Trump helped the twice-divorced New Yorker win the Republican nomination for president.
Falwell, 58, took an indefinite leave of absence earlier this month from Liberty University, the Christian school he has run since 2007. The leave, announced in a terse statement from the school’s board of trustees, came days after Falwell posted, then deleted, an Instagram photo of himself with his pants unzipped, standing with his arm around a young woman whose pants were also partly undone. Falwell later told a local radio station that the picture was meant as a good-natured joke.
Becki Falwell, 53, is a political figure in her own right. She served on the advisory board of the group Women for Trump, which advocates for the president’s reelection campaign. She also spoke as part of a panel with her husband and Donald Trump Jr at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the signature annual gathering of conservatives. Jerry Falwell and others refer to her as “the first lady of Liberty University.”
The university, based in Lynchburg, Virginia, was founded in 1971 by Falwell’s televangelist father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell. The younger Falwell took over in 2007. Today, the university boasts an online and on-campus enrollment that exceeds 100,000 students and holds those who attend to an exacting honor code. “Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University,” the code reads.
The material Granda showed Reuters includes screenshots from what Granda said was a FaceTime conversation he had with the Falwells in 2019. During that call, Granda said, Becki was naked as the two discussed their relationship while Jerry peeked from behind a door. Reuters was able to verify Granda’s description of the screenshots.
Granda also shared an audio recording that he says captures a conversation he had with the Falwells in 2018. In it, Becky complained about Granda describing his relationships with other people: “He’s like telling me every time he hooks up with people. Like I don’t have feelings or something.” Jerry then chimed in: “You’re going to make her jealous.” “I’m not trying to do that,” Granda replied.
Earlier texts show a friendly and romantic dynamic between Granda and Becki Falwell. One 2012 text message, which Granda said came from Becki, read in part: “Right now I am just missing you like crazy .... Have you had this effect on all of your lady friends?”
Other more recent text messages, such as an exchange from this June that Granda provided to Reuters, show Granda growing angry and frustrated as his relationship with the Falwells frayed.
“Since you’re okay with ruining my life, I am going to take the kamikaze route,” Granda wrote to Jerry Falwell. “It really is a shame because I wanted to reach a peaceful resolution and just move on with our lives but if conflict is what you want, then so be it.”
In the same message string, Falwell replied: “You should by now understand that I will not be extorted. I have always treated you fairly and been restrained in response to your threats because I did not wish to ruin your life. Going forward, stop contacting me and my family.”
Granda said that while he entered into the sexual relationship with the Falwells willingly, today he feels the couple preyed upon him. “Whether it was immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells likely detected in deciding that I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” Granda said.
In a statement released Friday, before news of the relationship with Granda became public, Liberty University said its “decision whether or not to retain Falwell as president has not yet been made.” Its board of trustees, the statement read, “requested prayer and patience as they seek the Lord’s will and also seek additional information for assessment.”
RELATED: ‘My husband likes to watch and he’s wearing a Speedo’: Falwell ‘pool boy’ recalls meeting the couple in 2012
Stella Immanuel’s theories about the relationship between demons, illness and sex have a long history
the conversation
July 29, 2020 4.31pm EDT
Matfre Ermengaud’s ‘Temptation by Lechery’ from a 14th-century manuscript. The British Library
President Donald Trump has a new favorite doctor.
On July 27, the president and his son Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted a viral video featuring Dr. Stella Immanuel, in which the Houston pediatrician rejected the effectiveness of wearing face masks for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and promoted hydroxychloroquine to treat the disease.
Journalists quickly dug into Immanuel’s background and found that she’s also claimed that having sex with demons can cause illnesses like cysts and endometriosis.
These beliefs don’t come out of thin air, and she’s far from the only person who holds them.
As a scholar of biblical and apocryphal literature, I’ve researched and taught how these beliefs have deep roots in early Jewish and Christian stories – one reason they continue to persist today.
Hints of demons in the Bible
As in many religions, demons in Judaism and Christianity are often evil supernatural beings that torment people.
Although it’s difficult to find a lot of clarity about demons in the Hebrew Bible, many later interpreters have understood demons to be the explanation for the “evil spirit” that haunts King Saul in the first book of Samuel.
Another example appears in the book of Tobit. This work was composed between about 225 and 175 BCE and isn’t included in the Hebrew Bible or accepted by all Christians. But it is considered part of the Bible by religious groups like Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Beta Israel and the Assyrian Church of the East.
Tobit includes a narrative about a young woman named Sarah. Although Sarah doesn’t suffer any physical affliction, Asmodeus, the demon of lust, kills every man betrothed to her because of his desire for her.
The Christian gospels are full of stories linking demons and illness, with Jesus and several of his early followers casting out demons who afflict their victims. In one of the most prominent stories told in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus encounters a man possessed by a group of demons who call themselves “Legion” and sends them into a nearby herd of pigs who stampede off a cliff.
Demon lore spreads far and wide
Demons pervade biblical apocrypha, which are stories about biblical subjects that were never included in the canonical Bible and include various associations between demons, illness and sex.
The early Christian text “Acts of Thomas” was likely composed in the third century and became hugely popular, as it was eventually translated into Greek, Arabic and Syriac. It tells the story of the apostle Thomas’ travels to India as an early Christian missionary. Along the way, he encounters a number of obstacles, including people who have been possessed by demons.
In the fifth act, a woman comes to him and pleads for help. She tells the apostle how, one day at the baths, she encountered an old man and talked to him out of pity. But when he propositioned her for sex, she refused and left.
Later that night, the demon in the guise of an old man attacked her in her sleep and raped her. Although the woman attempted to escape the demon the next day, he continued to find her and rape her every night, tormenting the woman for five years. Thomas then exorcises the demon.
Another demon story is found in the “Martyrdom of Bartholomew,” which probably dates back to the sixth century. Bartholomew also travels to India, where he finds that the inhabitants of a city worship an idol named Astaroth who has promised to heal all of their illnesses. But Astaroth is actually a demon who causes afflictions that he then pretends to cure in order to gain more followers. Bartholomew reveals the farce and performs several miracles to prove his own spiritual prowess. After forcing the demon to confess to his deceit, Bartholomew drives him into the wilderness.
Apocrypha like the “Acts of Thomas” and “Acts of Bartholomew” were popular in the medieval period, and even those who couldn’t read or write knew these stories. They also helped fuel the “witch craze” of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which zealous Christian leaders persecuted and killed thousands of people – mainly women – for their beliefs, often concocting claims that they consorted with demons.
Beliefs that persist today
It’s clear that Immanuel has profited from her beliefs in the supernatural, especially in right-wing and religious circles. She has over 9,000 followers on Facebook and over 94,000 on Twitter, with a dedicated platform as a pastor. In fact, she casts herself as a prophet and destroyer of demons.
It isn’t difficult to find other modern Christians who connect demons, sex and health issues. The conservative Christian magazine Charisma published a story claiming that sex with demons causes homosexuality. And researchers recently were able to show that belief in supernatural evil could predict negative attitudes toward abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex and pornography.
[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]
Meanwhile, many evangelical Americans believe that Trump is God’s chosen one, who has been tasked with fighting actual demons. Trump’s personal minister, Paula White, is just one conservative figure known to espouse these views.
If anything, the coronavirus pandemic has shown how many on the religious right continue to rely on faith over science. Studies have already emerged showing how the tension between faith and science has influenced many conservative Christians to resist the use of masks and other public health responses to the pandemic.
With many conservative Christians sharing some of the same views about demons as Immanuel – and conservative Christians forming a core base of support for the president – Trump’s promotion of the doctor’s beliefs makes perfect sense.
He’s preaching to the choir.
On July 27, the president and his son Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted a viral video featuring Dr. Stella Immanuel, in which the Houston pediatrician rejected the effectiveness of wearing face masks for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and promoted hydroxychloroquine to treat the disease.
Journalists quickly dug into Immanuel’s background and found that she’s also claimed that having sex with demons can cause illnesses like cysts and endometriosis.
These beliefs don’t come out of thin air, and she’s far from the only person who holds them.
As a scholar of biblical and apocryphal literature, I’ve researched and taught how these beliefs have deep roots in early Jewish and Christian stories – one reason they continue to persist today.
Hints of demons in the Bible
As in many religions, demons in Judaism and Christianity are often evil supernatural beings that torment people.
Although it’s difficult to find a lot of clarity about demons in the Hebrew Bible, many later interpreters have understood demons to be the explanation for the “evil spirit” that haunts King Saul in the first book of Samuel.
Another example appears in the book of Tobit. This work was composed between about 225 and 175 BCE and isn’t included in the Hebrew Bible or accepted by all Christians. But it is considered part of the Bible by religious groups like Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Beta Israel and the Assyrian Church of the East.
Tobit includes a narrative about a young woman named Sarah. Although Sarah doesn’t suffer any physical affliction, Asmodeus, the demon of lust, kills every man betrothed to her because of his desire for her.
The Christian gospels are full of stories linking demons and illness, with Jesus and several of his early followers casting out demons who afflict their victims. In one of the most prominent stories told in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus encounters a man possessed by a group of demons who call themselves “Legion” and sends them into a nearby herd of pigs who stampede off a cliff.
Demon lore spreads far and wide
Demons pervade biblical apocrypha, which are stories about biblical subjects that were never included in the canonical Bible and include various associations between demons, illness and sex.
The early Christian text “Acts of Thomas” was likely composed in the third century and became hugely popular, as it was eventually translated into Greek, Arabic and Syriac. It tells the story of the apostle Thomas’ travels to India as an early Christian missionary. Along the way, he encounters a number of obstacles, including people who have been possessed by demons.
In the fifth act, a woman comes to him and pleads for help. She tells the apostle how, one day at the baths, she encountered an old man and talked to him out of pity. But when he propositioned her for sex, she refused and left.
Later that night, the demon in the guise of an old man attacked her in her sleep and raped her. Although the woman attempted to escape the demon the next day, he continued to find her and rape her every night, tormenting the woman for five years. Thomas then exorcises the demon.
Another demon story is found in the “Martyrdom of Bartholomew,” which probably dates back to the sixth century. Bartholomew also travels to India, where he finds that the inhabitants of a city worship an idol named Astaroth who has promised to heal all of their illnesses. But Astaroth is actually a demon who causes afflictions that he then pretends to cure in order to gain more followers. Bartholomew reveals the farce and performs several miracles to prove his own spiritual prowess. After forcing the demon to confess to his deceit, Bartholomew drives him into the wilderness.
Apocrypha like the “Acts of Thomas” and “Acts of Bartholomew” were popular in the medieval period, and even those who couldn’t read or write knew these stories. They also helped fuel the “witch craze” of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which zealous Christian leaders persecuted and killed thousands of people – mainly women – for their beliefs, often concocting claims that they consorted with demons.
Beliefs that persist today
It’s clear that Immanuel has profited from her beliefs in the supernatural, especially in right-wing and religious circles. She has over 9,000 followers on Facebook and over 94,000 on Twitter, with a dedicated platform as a pastor. In fact, she casts herself as a prophet and destroyer of demons.
It isn’t difficult to find other modern Christians who connect demons, sex and health issues. The conservative Christian magazine Charisma published a story claiming that sex with demons causes homosexuality. And researchers recently were able to show that belief in supernatural evil could predict negative attitudes toward abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex and pornography.
[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]
Meanwhile, many evangelical Americans believe that Trump is God’s chosen one, who has been tasked with fighting actual demons. Trump’s personal minister, Paula White, is just one conservative figure known to espouse these views.
If anything, the coronavirus pandemic has shown how many on the religious right continue to rely on faith over science. Studies have already emerged showing how the tension between faith and science has influenced many conservative Christians to resist the use of masks and other public health responses to the pandemic.
With many conservative Christians sharing some of the same views about demons as Immanuel – and conservative Christians forming a core base of support for the president – Trump’s promotion of the doctor’s beliefs makes perfect sense.
He’s preaching to the choir.
people actually believe this shit!!!
At the evangelical Creation Museum, dinosaurs lived alongside humans and the world is 6,000 years old
the conversation
July 27, 2020 10.41am EDT
Summer travel in the United States has slowed but not stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Among those destinations that have recently reopened is, as of June 8, is the Creation Museum, a museum dedicated to promoting the Biblical story of Genesis as historic and scientific fact.
More than this, the Creation Museum offers a window into the ideas and workings of the American religious right.
Adam, Eve and the dinosaurs
Evangelical Christians make up approximately 25% of the U.S. population. A majority of them think the Bible should be read literally and that evolution is false.
The Creation Museum, about which we wrote a book in 2016, promotes a very specific version of this belief, which holds that God made the universe in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago.
The first four chapters of the book of Genesis tell the story of Adam and Eve, who were created on the sixth day and given two jobs: to obey God and populate the Earth. When they disobeyed God and ate fruit from the tree of knowledge, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and became mortal.
Adam and Eve did better on their second assignment, though. Eve gave birth to two sons, Cain and Abel, and, according to the Creation Museum, to a daughter who later became Cain’s wife.
According to Genesis, humans eventually became wicked and violent. In response, God sent a global flood that drowned everyone on the planet; the Creation Museum says the dead numbered in the billions.
Only righteous Noah and his family were saved. They, along with some animals – including, according to the Creation Museum, dinosaurs – were safely housed in the ark that God commanded Noah to build.
Since opening in 2007, the Creation Museum has told this story – with an abundance of dinosaur displays and life-size dioramas of the idyllic Garden of Eden – to more than 4 million visitors.
Biblical inerrancy
Creationism is a central tenet of Protestant fundamentalism, an American evangelical movement that has its roots in the late 19th century just as Darwinian evolution was undermining the story of Genesis.
Around that same time, scholars were also asking substantive questions about who actually wrote the 66 books of the Bible, noting some of its apparent inconsistencies and errors and observing that some of its stories – including that of the giant flood – seemed borrowed from other cultures.
Some conservative evangelical theologians, appalled by the undermining of biblical authority, responded by creating the notion of biblical inerrancy. In this view, the Bible is without error, clearly written and factually accurate – including when it comes to history and science.
The fundamentalist movement emerged in 1919, holding to biblical inerrancy and creationism. They did, however, accept geologists’ assertions that Earth was millions or billions of years old, based on its many layers of rock.
As such, fundamentalists understood God’s six “days” of creation to refer not to 24-hour days, but to eras of indeterminate length.
This posed a problem for biblical inerrancy. If the Bible is best understood literally, how can a “day” be an era?
Recreating Earth
In 1961 Bible scholar John Whitcomb Jr. and engineer Henry Morris came to the rescue with their book, “The Genesis Flood.” Borrowing heavily from the Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price – who had spent decades defending his own faith’s belief that God created Earth in six days – Morris and Whitcomb argued that it was Noah’s flood that created Earth’s layers.
In this theory, the planet’s geological strata only give the impression that the Earth is ancient, when in fact these layers were created 6,000 years ago by a global flood that lasted a year.
Young Earth creationism spread through American fundamentalism with astonishing speed in the late 20th century. Among the many Christian organizations established to advance these ideas is Answers in Genesis, or AiG.
Founded in 1994 in Petersburg, Kentucky, AiG is a young Earth creationist juggernaut, producing a flood of creationist books, videos, magazines, school curricula and other print and digital materials each year.
As we document in our book, AiG is also heavily invested in the white evangelical right-wing politics that in 2016 helped secure the presidency for Donald Trump.
The 75,000-square-foot Creation Museum, located next to AiG’s main office and down the road from its giant replica of Noah’s Ark is the jewel of AiG’s close to US$50 million assets.
Creationist science
Though the Trump administration derides science and scientists, AiG chief executive Ken Ham claims to be a fan.
In a 2014 debate with Bill Nye, popularly known as “the science guy,” that has been viewed nearly 8 million times on YouTube, Ham said the word “science” 105 times – twice as often as Nye. “I love science!” Ham insisted.
But contemporary mainstream science is defined by its use of the scientific method, in which scientists formulate a hypothesis, conduct experiments to test that hypothesis and then confirm or deny it.
By contrast, creationists begin with a conclusion – that the universe is 6,000 years old – then seek evidence to confirm it. Contravening facts, such as radiometric dating that shows the Earth to be 4.5 billion years old, are rejected.
The Creation Museum’s presentation of an impressive skeleton of an Allosaurus, donated by neo-Confederate Michael Peroutka, is a good example of creation “science.”
This exhibit explains in great and seemingly accurate scientific detail that the Allosaurus’s skull is 34 inches long, 22 inches high and has 53 teeth that are about 4.5 inches long, if you include the roots.
Then it states that this Allosaurus perished in Noah’s flood. Those scouring the placards for empirical evidence that dinosaurs scrambled up a hilltop to escape the rising waters will come up short.
Mainstream geologists and biologists will probably find the Creation Museum more frustrating than educational. But for those hoping to better understand the divides of modern American society, the museum is illuminating. It shines a light on the worldview held by a segment of the U.S. population with significant economic resources and political connections at the highest rungs of power.
Among those destinations that have recently reopened is, as of June 8, is the Creation Museum, a museum dedicated to promoting the Biblical story of Genesis as historic and scientific fact.
More than this, the Creation Museum offers a window into the ideas and workings of the American religious right.
Adam, Eve and the dinosaurs
Evangelical Christians make up approximately 25% of the U.S. population. A majority of them think the Bible should be read literally and that evolution is false.
The Creation Museum, about which we wrote a book in 2016, promotes a very specific version of this belief, which holds that God made the universe in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago.
The first four chapters of the book of Genesis tell the story of Adam and Eve, who were created on the sixth day and given two jobs: to obey God and populate the Earth. When they disobeyed God and ate fruit from the tree of knowledge, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and became mortal.
Adam and Eve did better on their second assignment, though. Eve gave birth to two sons, Cain and Abel, and, according to the Creation Museum, to a daughter who later became Cain’s wife.
According to Genesis, humans eventually became wicked and violent. In response, God sent a global flood that drowned everyone on the planet; the Creation Museum says the dead numbered in the billions.
Only righteous Noah and his family were saved. They, along with some animals – including, according to the Creation Museum, dinosaurs – were safely housed in the ark that God commanded Noah to build.
Since opening in 2007, the Creation Museum has told this story – with an abundance of dinosaur displays and life-size dioramas of the idyllic Garden of Eden – to more than 4 million visitors.
Biblical inerrancy
Creationism is a central tenet of Protestant fundamentalism, an American evangelical movement that has its roots in the late 19th century just as Darwinian evolution was undermining the story of Genesis.
Around that same time, scholars were also asking substantive questions about who actually wrote the 66 books of the Bible, noting some of its apparent inconsistencies and errors and observing that some of its stories – including that of the giant flood – seemed borrowed from other cultures.
Some conservative evangelical theologians, appalled by the undermining of biblical authority, responded by creating the notion of biblical inerrancy. In this view, the Bible is without error, clearly written and factually accurate – including when it comes to history and science.
The fundamentalist movement emerged in 1919, holding to biblical inerrancy and creationism. They did, however, accept geologists’ assertions that Earth was millions or billions of years old, based on its many layers of rock.
As such, fundamentalists understood God’s six “days” of creation to refer not to 24-hour days, but to eras of indeterminate length.
This posed a problem for biblical inerrancy. If the Bible is best understood literally, how can a “day” be an era?
Recreating Earth
In 1961 Bible scholar John Whitcomb Jr. and engineer Henry Morris came to the rescue with their book, “The Genesis Flood.” Borrowing heavily from the Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price – who had spent decades defending his own faith’s belief that God created Earth in six days – Morris and Whitcomb argued that it was Noah’s flood that created Earth’s layers.
In this theory, the planet’s geological strata only give the impression that the Earth is ancient, when in fact these layers were created 6,000 years ago by a global flood that lasted a year.
Young Earth creationism spread through American fundamentalism with astonishing speed in the late 20th century. Among the many Christian organizations established to advance these ideas is Answers in Genesis, or AiG.
Founded in 1994 in Petersburg, Kentucky, AiG is a young Earth creationist juggernaut, producing a flood of creationist books, videos, magazines, school curricula and other print and digital materials each year.
As we document in our book, AiG is also heavily invested in the white evangelical right-wing politics that in 2016 helped secure the presidency for Donald Trump.
The 75,000-square-foot Creation Museum, located next to AiG’s main office and down the road from its giant replica of Noah’s Ark is the jewel of AiG’s close to US$50 million assets.
Creationist science
Though the Trump administration derides science and scientists, AiG chief executive Ken Ham claims to be a fan.
In a 2014 debate with Bill Nye, popularly known as “the science guy,” that has been viewed nearly 8 million times on YouTube, Ham said the word “science” 105 times – twice as often as Nye. “I love science!” Ham insisted.
But contemporary mainstream science is defined by its use of the scientific method, in which scientists formulate a hypothesis, conduct experiments to test that hypothesis and then confirm or deny it.
By contrast, creationists begin with a conclusion – that the universe is 6,000 years old – then seek evidence to confirm it. Contravening facts, such as radiometric dating that shows the Earth to be 4.5 billion years old, are rejected.
The Creation Museum’s presentation of an impressive skeleton of an Allosaurus, donated by neo-Confederate Michael Peroutka, is a good example of creation “science.”
This exhibit explains in great and seemingly accurate scientific detail that the Allosaurus’s skull is 34 inches long, 22 inches high and has 53 teeth that are about 4.5 inches long, if you include the roots.
Then it states that this Allosaurus perished in Noah’s flood. Those scouring the placards for empirical evidence that dinosaurs scrambled up a hilltop to escape the rising waters will come up short.
Mainstream geologists and biologists will probably find the Creation Museum more frustrating than educational. But for those hoping to better understand the divides of modern American society, the museum is illuminating. It shines a light on the worldview held by a segment of the U.S. population with significant economic resources and political connections at the highest rungs of power.
The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European
Anna Swartwood House, University of South Carolina - the conversation
July 17, 2020 8.19am EDT
Painting depicting transfiguration of Jesus, a story in the New Testament when Jesus becomes radiant upon a mountain. Artist Raphael /Collections Hallwyl Museum, CC BY-SA
The portrayal of Jesus as a white, European man has come under renewed scrutiny during this period of introspection over the legacy of racism in society.
As protesters called for the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., activist Shaun King went further, suggesting that murals and artwork depicting “white Jesus” should “come down.”
His concerns about the depiction of Christ and how it is used to uphold notions of white supremacy are not isolated. Prominent scholars and the archbishop of Canterbury have called to reconsider Jesus’ portrayal as a white man.
As a European Renaissance art historian, I study the evolving image of Jesus Christ from A.D. 1350 to 1600. Some of the best-known depictions of Christ, from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, were produced during this period.
But the all-time most-reproduced image of Jesus comes from another period. It is Warner Sallman’s light-eyed, light-haired “Head of Christ” from 1940. Sallman, a former commercial artist who created art for advertising campaigns, successfully marketed this picture worldwide.
Through Sallman’s partnerships with two Christian publishing companies, one Protestant and one Catholic, the Head of Christ came to be included on everything from prayer cards to stained glass, faux oil paintings, calendars, hymnals and night lights.
Sallman’s painting culminates a long tradition of white Europeans creating and disseminating pictures of Christ made in their own image.
In search of the holy face
The historical Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.
Even these texts are contradictory: The Old Testament prophet Isaiah reads that the coming savior “had no beauty or majesty,” while the Book of Psalms claims he was “fairer than the children of men,” the word “fair” referring to physical beauty.
The earliest images of Jesus Christ emerged in the first through third centuries A.D., amidst concerns about idolatry. They were less about capturing the actual appearance of Christ than about clarifying his role as a ruler or as a savior.
To clearly indicate these roles, early Christian artists often relied on syncretism, meaning they combined visual formats from other cultures.
Probably the most popular syncretic image is Christ as the Good Shepherd, a beardless, youthful figure based on pagan representations of Orpheus, Hermes and Apollo.
In other common depictions, Christ wears the toga or other attributes of the emperor. The theologian Richard Viladesau argues that the mature bearded Christ, with long hair in the “Syrian” style, combines characteristics of the Greek god Zeus and the Old Testament figure Samson, among others.
Christ as self-portraitist
The first portraits of Christ, in the sense of authoritative likenesses, were believed to be self-portraits: the miraculous “image not made by human hands,” or acheiropoietos.
This belief originated in the seventh century A.D., based on a legend that Christ healed King Abgar of Edessa in modern-day Urfa, Turkey, through a miraculous image of his face, now known as the Mandylion.
A similar legend adopted by Western Christianity between the 11th and 14th centuries recounts how, before his death by crucifixion, Christ left an impression of his face on the veil of Saint Veronica, an image known as the volto santo, or “Holy Face.”
These two images, along with other similar relics, have formed the basis of iconic traditions about the “true image” of Christ.
From the perspective of art history, these artifacts reinforced an already standardized image of a bearded Christ with shoulder-length, dark hair.
In the Renaissance, European artists began to combine the icon and the portrait, making Christ in their own likeness. This happened for a variety of reasons, from identifying with the human suffering of Christ to commenting on one’s own creative power.
The 15th-century Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, for example, painted small pictures of the suffering Christ formatted exactly like his portraits of regular people, with the subject positioned between a fictive parapet and a plain black background and signed “Antonello da Messina painted me.”
The 16th-century German artist Albrecht Dürer blurred the line between the holy face and his own image in a famous self-portrait of 1500. In this, he posed frontally like an icon, with his beard and luxuriant shoulder-length hair recalling Christ’s. The “AD” monogram could stand equally for “Albrecht Dürer” or “Anno Domini” – “in the year of our Lord.”
In whose image?
This phenomenon was not restricted to Europe: There are 16th- and 17th-century pictures of Jesus with, for example, Ethiopian and Indian features.
In Europe, however, the image of a light-skinned European Christ began to influence other parts of the world through European trade and colonization.
The Italian painter Andrea Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi” from A.D. 1505 features three distinct magi, who, according to one contemporary tradition, came from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They present expensive objects of porcelain, agate and brass that would have been prized imports from China and the Persian and Ottoman empires.
But Jesus’ light skin and blues eyes suggest that he is not Middle Eastern but European-born. And the faux-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hemline belie a complicated relationship to the Judaism of the Holy Family.
In Mantegna’s Italy, anti-Semitic myths were already prevalent among the majority Christian population, with Jewish people often segregated to their own quarters of major cities.
Artists tried to distance Jesus and his parents from their Jewishness. Even seemingly small attributes like pierced ears – earrings were associated with Jewish women, their removal with a conversion to Christianity – could represent a transition toward the Christianity represented by Jesus.
Much later, anti-Semitic forces in Europe including the Nazis would attempt to divorce Jesus totally from his Judaism in favor of an Aryan stereotype.
White Jesus abroad
As Europeans colonized (stole resources and committed genocide) increasingly farther-flung lands, they brought a European Jesus with them. Jesuit missionaries established painting schools that taught new converts Christian art in a European mode.
A small altarpiece made in the school of Giovanni Niccolò, the Italian Jesuit who founded the “Seminary of Painters” in Kumamoto, Japan, around 1590, combines a traditional Japanese gilt and mother-of-pearl shrine with a painting of a distinctly white, European Madonna and Child.
In colonial Latin America – called “New Spain” by European colonists – images of a white Jesus reinforced a caste system where white, Christian Europeans occupied the top tier, while those with darker skin from perceived intermixing with native populations ranked considerably lower.
Artist Nicolas Correa’s 1695 painting of Saint Rose of Lima, the first Catholic saint born in “New Spain,” shows her metaphorical marriage to a blond, light-skinned Christ.
Legacies of likeness
Scholar Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey argue that in the centuries after European colonization of the Americas, the image of a white Christ associated him with the logic of empire and could be used to justify the oppression of Native and African Americans.
In a multiracial but unequal America, there was a disproportionate representation of a white Jesus in the media. It wasn’t only Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ that was depicted widely; a large proportion of actors who have played Jesus on television and film have been white with blue eyes.
Pictures of Jesus historically have served many purposes, from symbolically presenting his power to depicting his actual likeness. But representation matters, and viewers need to understand the complicated history of the images of Christ they consume.
As protesters called for the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., activist Shaun King went further, suggesting that murals and artwork depicting “white Jesus” should “come down.”
His concerns about the depiction of Christ and how it is used to uphold notions of white supremacy are not isolated. Prominent scholars and the archbishop of Canterbury have called to reconsider Jesus’ portrayal as a white man.
As a European Renaissance art historian, I study the evolving image of Jesus Christ from A.D. 1350 to 1600. Some of the best-known depictions of Christ, from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, were produced during this period.
But the all-time most-reproduced image of Jesus comes from another period. It is Warner Sallman’s light-eyed, light-haired “Head of Christ” from 1940. Sallman, a former commercial artist who created art for advertising campaigns, successfully marketed this picture worldwide.
Through Sallman’s partnerships with two Christian publishing companies, one Protestant and one Catholic, the Head of Christ came to be included on everything from prayer cards to stained glass, faux oil paintings, calendars, hymnals and night lights.
Sallman’s painting culminates a long tradition of white Europeans creating and disseminating pictures of Christ made in their own image.
In search of the holy face
The historical Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.
Even these texts are contradictory: The Old Testament prophet Isaiah reads that the coming savior “had no beauty or majesty,” while the Book of Psalms claims he was “fairer than the children of men,” the word “fair” referring to physical beauty.
The earliest images of Jesus Christ emerged in the first through third centuries A.D., amidst concerns about idolatry. They were less about capturing the actual appearance of Christ than about clarifying his role as a ruler or as a savior.
To clearly indicate these roles, early Christian artists often relied on syncretism, meaning they combined visual formats from other cultures.
Probably the most popular syncretic image is Christ as the Good Shepherd, a beardless, youthful figure based on pagan representations of Orpheus, Hermes and Apollo.
In other common depictions, Christ wears the toga or other attributes of the emperor. The theologian Richard Viladesau argues that the mature bearded Christ, with long hair in the “Syrian” style, combines characteristics of the Greek god Zeus and the Old Testament figure Samson, among others.
Christ as self-portraitist
The first portraits of Christ, in the sense of authoritative likenesses, were believed to be self-portraits: the miraculous “image not made by human hands,” or acheiropoietos.
This belief originated in the seventh century A.D., based on a legend that Christ healed King Abgar of Edessa in modern-day Urfa, Turkey, through a miraculous image of his face, now known as the Mandylion.
A similar legend adopted by Western Christianity between the 11th and 14th centuries recounts how, before his death by crucifixion, Christ left an impression of his face on the veil of Saint Veronica, an image known as the volto santo, or “Holy Face.”
These two images, along with other similar relics, have formed the basis of iconic traditions about the “true image” of Christ.
From the perspective of art history, these artifacts reinforced an already standardized image of a bearded Christ with shoulder-length, dark hair.
In the Renaissance, European artists began to combine the icon and the portrait, making Christ in their own likeness. This happened for a variety of reasons, from identifying with the human suffering of Christ to commenting on one’s own creative power.
The 15th-century Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, for example, painted small pictures of the suffering Christ formatted exactly like his portraits of regular people, with the subject positioned between a fictive parapet and a plain black background and signed “Antonello da Messina painted me.”
The 16th-century German artist Albrecht Dürer blurred the line between the holy face and his own image in a famous self-portrait of 1500. In this, he posed frontally like an icon, with his beard and luxuriant shoulder-length hair recalling Christ’s. The “AD” monogram could stand equally for “Albrecht Dürer” or “Anno Domini” – “in the year of our Lord.”
In whose image?
This phenomenon was not restricted to Europe: There are 16th- and 17th-century pictures of Jesus with, for example, Ethiopian and Indian features.
In Europe, however, the image of a light-skinned European Christ began to influence other parts of the world through European trade and colonization.
The Italian painter Andrea Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi” from A.D. 1505 features three distinct magi, who, according to one contemporary tradition, came from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They present expensive objects of porcelain, agate and brass that would have been prized imports from China and the Persian and Ottoman empires.
But Jesus’ light skin and blues eyes suggest that he is not Middle Eastern but European-born. And the faux-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hemline belie a complicated relationship to the Judaism of the Holy Family.
In Mantegna’s Italy, anti-Semitic myths were already prevalent among the majority Christian population, with Jewish people often segregated to their own quarters of major cities.
Artists tried to distance Jesus and his parents from their Jewishness. Even seemingly small attributes like pierced ears – earrings were associated with Jewish women, their removal with a conversion to Christianity – could represent a transition toward the Christianity represented by Jesus.
Much later, anti-Semitic forces in Europe including the Nazis would attempt to divorce Jesus totally from his Judaism in favor of an Aryan stereotype.
White Jesus abroad
As Europeans colonized (stole resources and committed genocide) increasingly farther-flung lands, they brought a European Jesus with them. Jesuit missionaries established painting schools that taught new converts Christian art in a European mode.
A small altarpiece made in the school of Giovanni Niccolò, the Italian Jesuit who founded the “Seminary of Painters” in Kumamoto, Japan, around 1590, combines a traditional Japanese gilt and mother-of-pearl shrine with a painting of a distinctly white, European Madonna and Child.
In colonial Latin America – called “New Spain” by European colonists – images of a white Jesus reinforced a caste system where white, Christian Europeans occupied the top tier, while those with darker skin from perceived intermixing with native populations ranked considerably lower.
Artist Nicolas Correa’s 1695 painting of Saint Rose of Lima, the first Catholic saint born in “New Spain,” shows her metaphorical marriage to a blond, light-skinned Christ.
Legacies of likeness
Scholar Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey argue that in the centuries after European colonization of the Americas, the image of a white Christ associated him with the logic of empire and could be used to justify the oppression of Native and African Americans.
In a multiracial but unequal America, there was a disproportionate representation of a white Jesus in the media. It wasn’t only Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ that was depicted widely; a large proportion of actors who have played Jesus on television and film have been white with blue eyes.
Pictures of Jesus historically have served many purposes, from symbolically presenting his power to depicting his actual likeness. But representation matters, and viewers need to understand the complicated history of the images of Christ they consume.
White Christians in the US have a race problem, a new book argues
By Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor
6/19/2020
Growing up in the South, Robert P. Jones attended Southern Baptist churches, Sunday schools, even a Southern Baptist college.
But it was only in seminary, in his mid-20s, that Jones says he learned the full truth about Southern Baptists' white supremacist roots. The denomination was founded to defend slavery and did not formally rebuke its past until 1995, when Southern Baptists voted to apologize for their history of racism.
Jones was a social scientist before he realized how stubbornly racist ideas can persist in white churches.
"White Christian churches have not just been complacent; they have not only been complicit," he writes in his book, "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," publishing next month.
"Rather, as the dominant cultural power in America, they have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect white supremacy and resist black equality," he writes. "This project has framed the entire American story."
In the book Jones, CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute, blends church history, memoir and contemporary public opinion surveys. Together, they make a clear and compelling case for why white American Christians need to reckon with their past.
But American Christianity's past is only part of the problem.
In survey after survey, said Jones, contemporary white Christians repeatedly deny that structural racism is a problem, that shootings of unarmed blacks are not isolated incidents, or even that African Americans still face racism and discrimination.
White non-Christians, on the other hand, more often agree with blacks about racial discrimination, according to public opinion surveys.
So what gives? Why would white Christians be more reluctant to see racism than their non-Christian counterparts?
If that's the question that animates "White Too Long," the answer will be challenging, if not deeply unsettling for many white Christians.
CNN spoke to Jones recently about why so many white Christians turn a blind eye to racism, how white supremacy took hold of American culture and what Christians can do now to make amends.
What prompted you to write this book?
Whenever we asked questions about race or African Americans there was a huge gap between whites who are Christian and those who are not. Whites who are not Christian were always closer to the attitudes of African Americans.
Seeing that pattern over and over made me realize that something deeper is going on. And coupled with my own experience of growing up in the South and this current moment, I realized that these issues are not being dealt with well. Most white Christians try to ignore them.
To that point, it seems like more white evangelicals than we've seen in the past are speaking out against the recent killings of black Americans by the police and vigilantes. Joel Osteen, who is often studiously apolitical, marched in a Black Lives Matter protest. Some evangelicals are even mentioning systemic racism, which they've been slow to acknowledge in the past. What do you make of their responses?
One measure of authenticity for white Christians is whether they link reconciliation with justice and repair. It's easy for a white Christain leader to jump in a march and put his arm around an African-American pastor. But will we see Joel Osteen preach a sermon calling for white Christians to reflect on the ugly parts of our history? Are pastors going to help white Christians free their faith from privileged claims of whiteness?
One of the challenges, historically, has been that the Christian theology developed in white churches intentionally blinds white Christians to racial injustice. White Christians are nearly twice as likely as non-religious Americans to say police shootings of unarmed black men are isolated incidents. That is a moral and theological problem.
We've heard some Christian leaders denounce racism in clear moral terms, but that doesn't seem to filter down to the pews, according to surveys. And that's a problem not only for white evangelicals but Catholics and others, right?
Yes, that's true not only for evangelicals but Catholics and the more liberal mainline Protestant leaders. They've put out a number of statements and press releases, but historically they have not landed at the parish or congregational level. And that's where theology gets built: at the local level.
The hymns sung, the scripture passages preached, how people understand salvation, none of that has been deconstructed. It was all built for a world in which white Christians needed to shield their institutions and beliefs from claims of injustice by African Americans.
You can see that in the way black Catholics were forced to sit in the back of the church and receive Communion last, and in the way the Southern and Northern branches of Methodism realigned after the Civil War but still didn't admit black churches as equal members.
Why have so many white Christians been so slow to recognize the racism in their past, as well as the racism that continues in America?
As long as white supremacy has a hold on our culture, it's pretty comfortable for white Christian churches to say their theology is about personal salvation and personal lives. Theology has been constricted to be only about personal piety, disconnected from claims of social justice. Everything outside of salvation has been labeled "politics."
It's a self-protective move. If you read sermons in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s you would have no idea that there was a Civil Rights movement. It was a lulling of white consciences to sleep.
But what about now, this moment?
I see the last four years as a moment of reckoning for white Christians. The election of President Trump, who has put white supremacy front and center, has brought these issues from just barely below the surface into plain view. Charlottesville changed things. Charleston changed things. Dylan Roof was a confirmed Lutheran, who, in his journal while imprisoned has been drawing crosses and white Jesus and is completely unrepentant.
White Christians have inherited a worldview that has Christians on top of other religions, men over women, whites over blacks. There is a top-down authoritarian structure to it.
What, if anything, can change that?
In the book, I write about two Baptist churches in Macon, Georgia, one white and one black, who have built trust and a partnership in a way that allowed white Christians to be challenged about their assumptions. White Christians don't have the critical distance to do that for themselves. They have to put themselves in community with African American Christians. And frankly, even with that, it's going to be a long journey.
But it was only in seminary, in his mid-20s, that Jones says he learned the full truth about Southern Baptists' white supremacist roots. The denomination was founded to defend slavery and did not formally rebuke its past until 1995, when Southern Baptists voted to apologize for their history of racism.
Jones was a social scientist before he realized how stubbornly racist ideas can persist in white churches.
"White Christian churches have not just been complacent; they have not only been complicit," he writes in his book, "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," publishing next month.
"Rather, as the dominant cultural power in America, they have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect white supremacy and resist black equality," he writes. "This project has framed the entire American story."
In the book Jones, CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute, blends church history, memoir and contemporary public opinion surveys. Together, they make a clear and compelling case for why white American Christians need to reckon with their past.
But American Christianity's past is only part of the problem.
In survey after survey, said Jones, contemporary white Christians repeatedly deny that structural racism is a problem, that shootings of unarmed blacks are not isolated incidents, or even that African Americans still face racism and discrimination.
White non-Christians, on the other hand, more often agree with blacks about racial discrimination, according to public opinion surveys.
So what gives? Why would white Christians be more reluctant to see racism than their non-Christian counterparts?
If that's the question that animates "White Too Long," the answer will be challenging, if not deeply unsettling for many white Christians.
CNN spoke to Jones recently about why so many white Christians turn a blind eye to racism, how white supremacy took hold of American culture and what Christians can do now to make amends.
What prompted you to write this book?
Whenever we asked questions about race or African Americans there was a huge gap between whites who are Christian and those who are not. Whites who are not Christian were always closer to the attitudes of African Americans.
Seeing that pattern over and over made me realize that something deeper is going on. And coupled with my own experience of growing up in the South and this current moment, I realized that these issues are not being dealt with well. Most white Christians try to ignore them.
To that point, it seems like more white evangelicals than we've seen in the past are speaking out against the recent killings of black Americans by the police and vigilantes. Joel Osteen, who is often studiously apolitical, marched in a Black Lives Matter protest. Some evangelicals are even mentioning systemic racism, which they've been slow to acknowledge in the past. What do you make of their responses?
One measure of authenticity for white Christians is whether they link reconciliation with justice and repair. It's easy for a white Christain leader to jump in a march and put his arm around an African-American pastor. But will we see Joel Osteen preach a sermon calling for white Christians to reflect on the ugly parts of our history? Are pastors going to help white Christians free their faith from privileged claims of whiteness?
One of the challenges, historically, has been that the Christian theology developed in white churches intentionally blinds white Christians to racial injustice. White Christians are nearly twice as likely as non-religious Americans to say police shootings of unarmed black men are isolated incidents. That is a moral and theological problem.
We've heard some Christian leaders denounce racism in clear moral terms, but that doesn't seem to filter down to the pews, according to surveys. And that's a problem not only for white evangelicals but Catholics and others, right?
Yes, that's true not only for evangelicals but Catholics and the more liberal mainline Protestant leaders. They've put out a number of statements and press releases, but historically they have not landed at the parish or congregational level. And that's where theology gets built: at the local level.
The hymns sung, the scripture passages preached, how people understand salvation, none of that has been deconstructed. It was all built for a world in which white Christians needed to shield their institutions and beliefs from claims of injustice by African Americans.
You can see that in the way black Catholics were forced to sit in the back of the church and receive Communion last, and in the way the Southern and Northern branches of Methodism realigned after the Civil War but still didn't admit black churches as equal members.
Why have so many white Christians been so slow to recognize the racism in their past, as well as the racism that continues in America?
As long as white supremacy has a hold on our culture, it's pretty comfortable for white Christian churches to say their theology is about personal salvation and personal lives. Theology has been constricted to be only about personal piety, disconnected from claims of social justice. Everything outside of salvation has been labeled "politics."
It's a self-protective move. If you read sermons in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s you would have no idea that there was a Civil Rights movement. It was a lulling of white consciences to sleep.
But what about now, this moment?
I see the last four years as a moment of reckoning for white Christians. The election of President Trump, who has put white supremacy front and center, has brought these issues from just barely below the surface into plain view. Charlottesville changed things. Charleston changed things. Dylan Roof was a confirmed Lutheran, who, in his journal while imprisoned has been drawing crosses and white Jesus and is completely unrepentant.
White Christians have inherited a worldview that has Christians on top of other religions, men over women, whites over blacks. There is a top-down authoritarian structure to it.
What, if anything, can change that?
In the book, I write about two Baptist churches in Macon, Georgia, one white and one black, who have built trust and a partnership in a way that allowed white Christians to be challenged about their assumptions. White Christians don't have the critical distance to do that for themselves. They have to put themselves in community with African American Christians. And frankly, even with that, it's going to be a long journey.
more hypocrisy!!
TRUMP CABINET BIBLE TEACHER BLAMES CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC ON GOD’S WRATH — SOMEHOW IT INVOLVES CHINA, GAY PEOPLE, AND ENVIRONMENTALISTS
Lee Fang - the intercept
March 24 2020, 5:33 p.m.
RALPH DROLLINGER, a minister who leads a weekly Bible study group for President Donald Trump’s cabinet, released a new interpretation of the coronavirus pandemic this week, arguing that the crisis represents an act of God’s judgment.
The coronavirus, Drollinger argues in two blog posts and a rambling Bible study guide published in the past few days, is a form of God’s wrath upon nations, but not one as severe as the floods described in the Old Testament or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Relative to the coronavirus pandemic crisis, this is not God’s abandonment wrath nor His cataclysmic wrath, rather it is sowing and reaping wrath,” wrote Drollinger. “A biblically astute evaluation of the situation strongly suggests that America and other countries of the world are reaping what China has sown due to their leaders’ recklessness and lack of candor and transparency.”
Neither does he miss a chance to condemn those who worship the “religion of environmentalism” and express a “proclivity toward lesbianism and homosexuality.” These individuals, Drollinger argues in “Is God Judging America Today?”, one of the minister’s posts about coronavirus pandemic, have infiltrated “high positions in our government, our educational system, our media and our entertainment industry” and “are largely responsible for God’s consequential wrath on our nation.”
In the Bible study, Drollinger meanders through scripture, explaining the ways in which God may have caused the coronavirus. In a footnote, he hedges on his previous argument that the virus represents a mild form of God’s wrath, noting that, “We’ll soon see a human cure for the coronavirus.”
Drollinger, reached by phone, referred questions to his foundation’s press line. Capitol Ministries, the nonprofit founded by Drollinger that hosts his Bible study, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Drollinger-led Bible study meets every Wednesday morning with members of Trump’s cabinet, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Health Secretary Alex Azar. Carson and Azar, notably, are members of the Coronavirus Task Force guiding the federal government response to the pandemic.
Vice President Mike Pence, a member of the task force and a listed host of Capitol Ministries, is also tied to the Bible study. Emails obtained by Gizmodo show administration officials coordinating with Drollinger’s group to schedule a session of the Bible study, including the possibility of hosting the weekly event in Pence’s West Wing office.
At least 52 GOP lawmakers also participate in a Capitol Hill version of Drollinger’s Bible study, which meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sponsors of the event include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the second-ranking GOP lawmaker in the Senate.
The evangelical lessons are carefully catered to conservative ideology, with a focus on interpreting current events through a partisan lens. Drollinger’s study guides have provided Biblical justification for the Trump administration’s undocumented immigrant child separation policies and arguments in favor of lower taxes on the wealthy.
Bible study guides from Capitol Ministries distributed to politicians also claim that “Islam and its Koran are nothing more than a plagiarism of OT truths,” a reference to the Old Testament and, in all caps, declare: “NOT EVERY MUSLIM IS A TERRORIST BUT EVERY INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST IN RECENT HISTORY HAS BEEN A MUSLIM.”
A former college basketball player, Drollinger has spent much of the last 24 years involved in fusing politics with religion. Danielle Drollinger, the minister’s spouse, once ran a political action committee designed to elect conservative Christians to office in California. Drollinger eventually formed a Christian ministry focused on cultivating political leaders in Sacramento.
For many years, Drollinger operated on the fringes. In 2004, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that many California Republicans resented the presence of Drollinger’s group, which preached that the Bible opposed women working outside the home. “It’s the world’s largest false religion,” said Drollinger, describing his view of Catholicism, in an interview with the paper.
In recent years, Capitol Ministries has since experienced dramatic growth, having been largely embraced by mainstream members of the Republican Party. In 2010, Drollinger launched his Washington, D.C., chapter, which quickly gained a following among right-wing lawmakers such as then-Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. The organization, focused on conservative Christian outreach to political leadership, has expanded to 20 state legislatures and now capitals in Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, and Ecuador, among other international affiliations.
In his book “Rebuilding America: The Biblical Blueprint,” Drollinger laid out his vision to “reach all the capitals of the world for Christ.” “We have a goal of 200 ministries in 200 federal capitals around the world,” Brian Hanson, an official at Capitol Ministries, told the New York Times.
The organization’s latest annual report touts endorsement quotes from a series of prominent GOP lawmakers.
“I do absolutely believe in the advancement of this ministry worldwide,” wrote Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla.
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst offered even more effusive praise.
“Getting together with my Senate colleagues for Bible study is a highlight of my week,” wrote the Iowa senator. “It’s a time where we can shut out all the partisan noise and focus on what matters most, our faith. Without the work of Capitol Ministries®, this wouldn’t be possible.”
The coronavirus, Drollinger argues in two blog posts and a rambling Bible study guide published in the past few days, is a form of God’s wrath upon nations, but not one as severe as the floods described in the Old Testament or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Relative to the coronavirus pandemic crisis, this is not God’s abandonment wrath nor His cataclysmic wrath, rather it is sowing and reaping wrath,” wrote Drollinger. “A biblically astute evaluation of the situation strongly suggests that America and other countries of the world are reaping what China has sown due to their leaders’ recklessness and lack of candor and transparency.”
Neither does he miss a chance to condemn those who worship the “religion of environmentalism” and express a “proclivity toward lesbianism and homosexuality.” These individuals, Drollinger argues in “Is God Judging America Today?”, one of the minister’s posts about coronavirus pandemic, have infiltrated “high positions in our government, our educational system, our media and our entertainment industry” and “are largely responsible for God’s consequential wrath on our nation.”
In the Bible study, Drollinger meanders through scripture, explaining the ways in which God may have caused the coronavirus. In a footnote, he hedges on his previous argument that the virus represents a mild form of God’s wrath, noting that, “We’ll soon see a human cure for the coronavirus.”
Drollinger, reached by phone, referred questions to his foundation’s press line. Capitol Ministries, the nonprofit founded by Drollinger that hosts his Bible study, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Drollinger-led Bible study meets every Wednesday morning with members of Trump’s cabinet, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Health Secretary Alex Azar. Carson and Azar, notably, are members of the Coronavirus Task Force guiding the federal government response to the pandemic.
Vice President Mike Pence, a member of the task force and a listed host of Capitol Ministries, is also tied to the Bible study. Emails obtained by Gizmodo show administration officials coordinating with Drollinger’s group to schedule a session of the Bible study, including the possibility of hosting the weekly event in Pence’s West Wing office.
At least 52 GOP lawmakers also participate in a Capitol Hill version of Drollinger’s Bible study, which meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sponsors of the event include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the second-ranking GOP lawmaker in the Senate.
The evangelical lessons are carefully catered to conservative ideology, with a focus on interpreting current events through a partisan lens. Drollinger’s study guides have provided Biblical justification for the Trump administration’s undocumented immigrant child separation policies and arguments in favor of lower taxes on the wealthy.
Bible study guides from Capitol Ministries distributed to politicians also claim that “Islam and its Koran are nothing more than a plagiarism of OT truths,” a reference to the Old Testament and, in all caps, declare: “NOT EVERY MUSLIM IS A TERRORIST BUT EVERY INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST IN RECENT HISTORY HAS BEEN A MUSLIM.”
A former college basketball player, Drollinger has spent much of the last 24 years involved in fusing politics with religion. Danielle Drollinger, the minister’s spouse, once ran a political action committee designed to elect conservative Christians to office in California. Drollinger eventually formed a Christian ministry focused on cultivating political leaders in Sacramento.
For many years, Drollinger operated on the fringes. In 2004, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that many California Republicans resented the presence of Drollinger’s group, which preached that the Bible opposed women working outside the home. “It’s the world’s largest false religion,” said Drollinger, describing his view of Catholicism, in an interview with the paper.
In recent years, Capitol Ministries has since experienced dramatic growth, having been largely embraced by mainstream members of the Republican Party. In 2010, Drollinger launched his Washington, D.C., chapter, which quickly gained a following among right-wing lawmakers such as then-Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. The organization, focused on conservative Christian outreach to political leadership, has expanded to 20 state legislatures and now capitals in Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, and Ecuador, among other international affiliations.
In his book “Rebuilding America: The Biblical Blueprint,” Drollinger laid out his vision to “reach all the capitals of the world for Christ.” “We have a goal of 200 ministries in 200 federal capitals around the world,” Brian Hanson, an official at Capitol Ministries, told the New York Times.
The organization’s latest annual report touts endorsement quotes from a series of prominent GOP lawmakers.
“I do absolutely believe in the advancement of this ministry worldwide,” wrote Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla.
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst offered even more effusive praise.
“Getting together with my Senate colleagues for Bible study is a highlight of my week,” wrote the Iowa senator. “It’s a time where we can shut out all the partisan noise and focus on what matters most, our faith. Without the work of Capitol Ministries®, this wouldn’t be possible.”
The ‘nurtured insanity’ of a fundamentalist upbringing
Frank Schaeffer / Religion Dispatches - alternet
February 22, 2020
There is a great exodus taking place in Christian circles. Can it be called a loss of faith? I don’t think so. It is rather a loss of confidence in everything at once. Christianity has always been about “the Word,” but these days, words don’t seem to matter. They’ve lost their power to describe and convince in the face of horrible deeds, from climate-change denial to the persecution of trans people to the wholesale abandonment of Christ’s teachings in favor of abusive meanness. The hard-right white evangelical voter gave us Trump. The church sat silent as industrial oligarchs ruined the earth.
Christianity is improbable. When its cultural presence fades, be that through the Roman Catholic sex-abuse meltdown or because of the Trumping of white evangelicalism, all that’s left is disillusionment. Presuppositional theology—the sort of “apologetics” my late father Francis Schaeffer dealt in—only works if you accept the possibility that some of “this” (i.e., the entire claim of “historical” Christianity) might be true. Fewer and fewer people do these days, outside of the initiated and indoctrinated. The grim “witness” of how Christians have behaved and voted is too heavy a blow for faith in magical thinking to survive.
The Empty the Pews anthology marks a historic moment as a group of younger writers and scholars have come together to record what is happening (and has happened) to their inner lives of faith. What ties these essays together is one idea: history needs record keepers. Bluntly: as the aging, Fox News-loving “alternative facts” crowd dies out, what’s left? Contributors to Empty the Pews and the millions they represent are one answer.
There are some big differences between these contributors and me. They represent a generational shift. Most, though not all, are Gen Xers and Millennials to whom I’m the “old guy.” And none of them had anything like my kind of nepotistic celebrity within evangelicaldom. That said, I find solidarity herein, the solidarity of survivors.
Many people who grew up in evangelical homes will understand me when I say that remembering my own evangelical upbringing seems like an odd and bad dream. Throughout my early childhood, we Schaeffers were busy littering train seats, café tables, and assorted telephone booths all over Europe with luridly illustrated little pamphlets “in the local language, in case someone is led to read it,” as Dad said. They had titles such as “What Must I Do to Be Saved?” and “Is There a Heaven and Hell?” and “Where Will I Spend Eternity?” Sometimes, as our train roared through Italian or Swiss towns, Dad would fling handfuls of tracts from the window at astonished passersby. The lesson I learned from all this was that there was “us” (the saved) and “them” (the lost). This set in motion the us-and-them way of thinking that, transposed decades later to politics, cast Democrats as “the lost,” deserving of hell, and us Republicans as saved and favored by God—no matter how far our actions strayed from anything remotely Christlike.
How do you unscramble this level of broken-brain toxicity? To read Empty the Pews is one good answer. The writers here are exposing the Christian right as a toxic farce. Since I was for a time a leader in that netherworld, and since I’ve been a bit of a pioneer in speaking out about leaving it, I welcome this book of essays. It heralds the arrival of the next wave of questioners I helped unleash by asking some questions of myself through my novels, nonfiction books, and media appearances.
A large part of what Empty the Pews does is capture a generational exodus from toxic Christianity from the perspective of (for the most part) former believers. What is the usefulness of the essays? They are a record of dissent! They are a record of heartbreak! They are a record of hope based on lives lived, not unattainable magical fixes! They are also a therapeutic reaching out to those (like me) whose neural pathways have been damaged by what has to be called nurtured insanity.
During a different period of religious madness, in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, Anne Hutchinson was an “unauthorized” Bible teacher in a dissident church group who, in the words of the Boston monument honoring her, was a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration.” She was also a student of the Bible, which she interpreted by the light of what she termed her own “divine inspiration.” In other words, like the writers in Empty the Pews, she came to believe that in order to remain a sane and decent being, she had to pick and choose what she believed from her tradition. Let’s hope a better fate awaits these essayists—Hutchinson was banished from the colony for her stand.
Hutchinson seems to have concluded that religious believers should worship God, not the books about God. Another way to state her case is that God does not reveal himself, herself, or themselves through books but rather through what she called the “prophetical office” of the heart, like that which is revealed in the essays compiled for Empty the Pews.
Our hearts connect to a truth larger than ourselves: love of others in the context of community. That is the value of the anthology’s written windows into lovely souls changing before our eyes. They provide the place and time for the inner liturgies through which we may unite with these writers heart-to-heart, in order to seek out those truths that even our best words cannot describe.
Christianity is improbable. When its cultural presence fades, be that through the Roman Catholic sex-abuse meltdown or because of the Trumping of white evangelicalism, all that’s left is disillusionment. Presuppositional theology—the sort of “apologetics” my late father Francis Schaeffer dealt in—only works if you accept the possibility that some of “this” (i.e., the entire claim of “historical” Christianity) might be true. Fewer and fewer people do these days, outside of the initiated and indoctrinated. The grim “witness” of how Christians have behaved and voted is too heavy a blow for faith in magical thinking to survive.
The Empty the Pews anthology marks a historic moment as a group of younger writers and scholars have come together to record what is happening (and has happened) to their inner lives of faith. What ties these essays together is one idea: history needs record keepers. Bluntly: as the aging, Fox News-loving “alternative facts” crowd dies out, what’s left? Contributors to Empty the Pews and the millions they represent are one answer.
There are some big differences between these contributors and me. They represent a generational shift. Most, though not all, are Gen Xers and Millennials to whom I’m the “old guy.” And none of them had anything like my kind of nepotistic celebrity within evangelicaldom. That said, I find solidarity herein, the solidarity of survivors.
Many people who grew up in evangelical homes will understand me when I say that remembering my own evangelical upbringing seems like an odd and bad dream. Throughout my early childhood, we Schaeffers were busy littering train seats, café tables, and assorted telephone booths all over Europe with luridly illustrated little pamphlets “in the local language, in case someone is led to read it,” as Dad said. They had titles such as “What Must I Do to Be Saved?” and “Is There a Heaven and Hell?” and “Where Will I Spend Eternity?” Sometimes, as our train roared through Italian or Swiss towns, Dad would fling handfuls of tracts from the window at astonished passersby. The lesson I learned from all this was that there was “us” (the saved) and “them” (the lost). This set in motion the us-and-them way of thinking that, transposed decades later to politics, cast Democrats as “the lost,” deserving of hell, and us Republicans as saved and favored by God—no matter how far our actions strayed from anything remotely Christlike.
How do you unscramble this level of broken-brain toxicity? To read Empty the Pews is one good answer. The writers here are exposing the Christian right as a toxic farce. Since I was for a time a leader in that netherworld, and since I’ve been a bit of a pioneer in speaking out about leaving it, I welcome this book of essays. It heralds the arrival of the next wave of questioners I helped unleash by asking some questions of myself through my novels, nonfiction books, and media appearances.
A large part of what Empty the Pews does is capture a generational exodus from toxic Christianity from the perspective of (for the most part) former believers. What is the usefulness of the essays? They are a record of dissent! They are a record of heartbreak! They are a record of hope based on lives lived, not unattainable magical fixes! They are also a therapeutic reaching out to those (like me) whose neural pathways have been damaged by what has to be called nurtured insanity.
During a different period of religious madness, in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, Anne Hutchinson was an “unauthorized” Bible teacher in a dissident church group who, in the words of the Boston monument honoring her, was a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration.” She was also a student of the Bible, which she interpreted by the light of what she termed her own “divine inspiration.” In other words, like the writers in Empty the Pews, she came to believe that in order to remain a sane and decent being, she had to pick and choose what she believed from her tradition. Let’s hope a better fate awaits these essayists—Hutchinson was banished from the colony for her stand.
Hutchinson seems to have concluded that religious believers should worship God, not the books about God. Another way to state her case is that God does not reveal himself, herself, or themselves through books but rather through what she called the “prophetical office” of the heart, like that which is revealed in the essays compiled for Empty the Pews.
Our hearts connect to a truth larger than ourselves: love of others in the context of community. That is the value of the anthology’s written windows into lovely souls changing before our eyes. They provide the place and time for the inner liturgies through which we may unite with these writers heart-to-heart, in order to seek out those truths that even our best words cannot describe.
THE WHITE NATIONALIST FANTASY OF ANCIENT CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM CONFLICT WOULD GET AN ‘F’ IN HISTORY CLASS
BY TONY KEDDIE - religion dispatches
When I first heard the tragic news of the shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, I was preparing a lecture for my Introduction to Western Religions course on Jesus in the Qur’an. This lecture asks a deceptively simple question: How was Islam different from Christianity in the 7th century? As a historian of religion, I like to use questions like this to challenge my students to interrogate the definitions of religion that we use and how we understand the borders between religions like Christianity and Islam. Who built these borders, and when did they first appear?
The terrorist charged with waging a calculated, hateful attack on Muslims in their place of worship fancies himself a historian, but it will come as little shock to learn that, given his writings, it’s clear that he’s never really read the texts of ancient Muslims and Christians or studied the artifacts they left behind.
His 74-page manifesto, “The Great Replacement,” parrots the deeply flawed historical claims of white nationalist pseudo-intellectuals and their trolling internet henchmen. The manifesto smacks of white fragility. It spews vitriolic rhetoric about the malleable Other who seeks to invade and replace; the non-white bogeyman who threatens white identity. In this case, the Other takes the shape of Muslims, with devastating consequences.
As has been widely reported, the shooter’s firearms were bedecked with the graffitied names of a veritable who’s who of white supremacists’ heroes. These men represent the Christian West in a clash of civilizations with the Muslim East. There are references to the Crusades, of course, but also to lesser known skirmishes between European Christians and Muslims such as Charles Martel’s campaign at the Battle of Tours (France) in 732. A power-hungry duke, Martel won a minor victory over Arabs who sought, at the urging of the Spanish Christian Duke Eudo of Aquitaine, to reclaim land Charles’s uncle seized from them. Tours was, in fact, a power struggle between Christian aristocrats.
The Battle of Tours was neither an epic clash between Western and Eastern civilizations, as the influential eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon spun it, nor was it a battle between the Christian West and Eastern invaders, as French nationalists and white nationalists like Steve Bannon have argued. James Palmer, a medieval historian, has noted that Martel was no defender of Christendom, and his ecclesiastical peers denounced his actions. In the historical imagination of white nationalists, however, this event looms large as the earliest example of Euro-Christian resistance against hostile Arab-Muslim invaders. It’s made to fit a preconceived model in which Muslims have always posed a threat to Christians.
Global white nationalism appears to be focused exclusively on race. Yet, again and again, its adherents equate Christianity with the West and the West with a fanciful white pan-European identity that they claim is under attack. For this reason, Murali Balaji describes forms of white nationalism as Christian nationalism, even though these terrorists aren’t theologians or Bible-thumpers. Sometimes they conflate the West with “Judeo-Christianity,” but this really just nods to “Christian Zionism” and a fig leaf against charges of Christian supremacy. The white supremacist shooter who wreaked havoc at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October reminds us that these hate-mongers also don’t give a damn about Jews, except maybe as the sovereign guardians of the land where Christ will return to save Christians.
Egged on by Trump’s racializing protectionism, white nationalists continue to commit atrocities against not only people of color but also non-Christians regardless of race. They rely on fake history that’s wrong in its details, narrow in its scope, and susceptible to cherry-picked sources and warped interpretations. This methodology is a great recipe for a big fat “F” on a paper in most university history courses.
Early Christian-Muslim Interactions
It’s typical to think of Christianity as a “Western religion”—a product of Rome, Wittenberg, and Vienna. But it originated in the Middle East and was still thriving there when the Qur’an was produced in the early 600s. “Eastern” (or, from a different angle, “West Asian”) Christianity was diverse, and many of its varieties differed in theology from so-called “orthodox” Christianity.
At ecumenical Christian councils such as the famous ones at Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), wealthy and powerful male bishops got together to vote on Christ’s divinity. Was he a human who appeared divine or a god who appeared human? Was he both god and human at the same time? Of the same substance as God the Father? There were major differences of opinion, but the victors of those councils determined in the end that Jesus Christ was of the same substance as God, that he had two natures (human and divine), and that his virgin mother, Mary, was the Theotokos (“God-bearer”).
Some Christians in places like Syria, Persia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Arabian peninsula resisted these doctrines. In these regions, there were two main theological camps—the Monophysites, who spoke of Christ as having “one nature of the incarnate Word” (Logos), and the Nestorians who accepted that Christ had two harmonious natures but refused to attribute human sufferings to the divine nature. They also called Mary the Christotokos (“Christ-bearer”) instead of the Theotokos. (Additional theological currents were represented by various types of Docetists who believed that Christ was fully God and only took on the appearance of a human; Apollinarians, who believed that God was fully human but had the Word of God implanted in him; and Arians, who denied the divinity of Christ.)
Although these differences may seem to amount to Christian theologians splitting hairs over terminology, they are significant because they show how fluid Christian understandings of Christ’s divinity were when Islam emerged. The Qur’an’s portrayal of Jesus fits within the spectrum of alternative understandings of Jesus in the East. Qur’an 4:171 states that “the Messiah, ‘Īsā ibn Maryam (Arabic for “Jesus son of Mary”), was nothing more than a messenger of God, His Word, directed to Maryam, a Spirit from Him.”
In his book, The Islamic Jesus, Mustafa Akyol has remarked that this description of Jesus as the Word of God engages in longstanding Christian debates over Christ’s divinity sparked by the prologue to the Gospel of John (1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”). Elsewhere in its telling of the story of ‘Īsā and Maryam, the Qur’an transmits traditions that were popular in Christian texts that circulated widely in the East, such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James.
The earliest Muslims resembled Eastern Christians not only in theology but also in practice. For instance, Athanasius of Balad (in modern Iraq), patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 684 to 687, required Christians to abide by the Noahide laws: “those believing in Christ…should abstain from fornication, from what is strangled, from blood, and from meals of pagan sacrifice.” These laws are based on Genesis 9:3-6 and are required of Gentiles according to Acts of the Apostles 15:19-20 in the Syriac version of the Bible and other texts popular among Syriac Christians. They are also stipulated in the Qur’an (5:3). Based on this and other common practices, scholar Holger Zellentin has described Syriac Christianity and early Islam as sharing a common legal culture.
Earliest Islam fit within the spectrum of Eastern forms of Christianity so much that legends circulated among ancient Muslim historians that Muhammad was influenced by an Arian or Nestorian monk named Bahira when traveling through Syria as a boy.
Whether this is true or not, Muhammad clearly interacted regularly and positively with Christians. In the midst of battles with the dominant tribe in Mecca, Muhammad’s community (umma) took refuge in the Christian kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia. About a decade later, the prophet established his community in Medina (Yathrib) in Arabia. The historian Fred Donner has argued that this community was significantly ecumenical, including Jews and Christians together with those Muhammad converted from polytheism. Together, this group was known as the “Believers.” Remarkably, inscriptions as late as the reign of the Umayyad caliph Mu‘awiya I (661 to 680) speak of the caliph as “Commander of the Believers” rather than “Commander of the Muslims.”
Archaeological evidence reveals churches in lands under Arab rule flourishing during the first centuries of Islam, and Syriac Christian writings often speak of Arabs expanding their rule through diplomatic treaties with cities, but never of “conquest” as such. To recognize this is not to deny that the expansion of Arab rule sometimes involved violence, but rather to acknowledge that this was not always the case and that religion was not always the motivating force. As Edward Curtis IV reminds us in his piece here on RD, “Muslims were as likely to fight for and with Christian-led European militaries as they were against them.” Universals are never correct, and they’re often dangerous.
The Making of Christian-Muslim Borders
It was during the tenure of the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (685 to 705) that a distinctive Muslim identity started to be shaped in contrast to Christianity. The coins minted in this time and the inscriptions installed in the new Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem all emphasize that “God begets not and was not begotten.” The Dome of the Rock inscriptions are anti-trinitarian and mince no words in proclaiming that “the religion of God is Islam.” The overt anti-trinitarian language used in ‘Abd al-Malik’s propaganda reflects growing hostilities not with Christianity in general, but with the “orthodox” Christianity of the Byzantine empire in modern Europe, Turkey, and North Africa.
In his book on Syriac Christian sources on early Islam, Envisioning Islam, Michael Penn has demonstrated that the boundaries between Christianity and Islam remained porous in the East into the 9th century. As they adapted to the changing realities of Muslim rule, Eastern Christians increasingly sought to articulate their own identities in contrast to Muslims (and other Christians). This gradual process of identity formation was mutual: Muslim and Christian authorities constructed a religious border between one another in order to galvanize their identities amid shifts that had much more to do with geopolitics than religion.
Men of power developed these Christian and Muslim discourses of difference in order to police border-crossings, to block the bridges between Muslims and Christians that had been used for generations. But these discursive borders were not always realized in practice. Since antiquity, there have always been Muslims and Christians who lived in harmony in the Middle East, and around the world, abiding peacefully in their religious borderlands.
Resisting the Clash of Civilizations Narrative
The question of how Islam differed from Christianity in antiquity depends entirely on how we define religion, Christianity, and Islam, as well as how we assign meaning to difference. We might choose to define Christianity and Islam as separate religions from the beginning of Muhammad’s career, but this makes little sense of the ancient traces of more gradual “partings of the ways.” Or, we could define them as two varieties of a broadly defined religion of Abrahamic monotheism. But this obscures the ways that these groups increasingly defined themselves as “Christians” or “Muslims” in contrast to one another. What matters the most, historically, is that we don’t juxtapose Islam against a homogenous, Western, European image of Christianity as part of some clash of civilizations narrative. There was as much difference and conflict among the varieties of Christianity as there was between Christianity and Islam.
White nationalists like the Christchurch shooter rely on simplistic narratives of cultural conflict, but careful historical analysis always betrays more complicated processes of identity formation, negotiation, and contestation. When we reproduce these problematic narratives, we defend borders built by the Powerful on foundations of fear and exploitation. Identities are not nations—they’re not bounded entities, they’re not invaded, they’re not replaced. Only when we resist the words and actions of corrupt leaders who seek to shape and reshape identities for their own benefit can we reclaim our religious borderlands as sites of interaction, learning, and collaboration instead of ignorance, segregation, and violence.
The terrorist charged with waging a calculated, hateful attack on Muslims in their place of worship fancies himself a historian, but it will come as little shock to learn that, given his writings, it’s clear that he’s never really read the texts of ancient Muslims and Christians or studied the artifacts they left behind.
His 74-page manifesto, “The Great Replacement,” parrots the deeply flawed historical claims of white nationalist pseudo-intellectuals and their trolling internet henchmen. The manifesto smacks of white fragility. It spews vitriolic rhetoric about the malleable Other who seeks to invade and replace; the non-white bogeyman who threatens white identity. In this case, the Other takes the shape of Muslims, with devastating consequences.
As has been widely reported, the shooter’s firearms were bedecked with the graffitied names of a veritable who’s who of white supremacists’ heroes. These men represent the Christian West in a clash of civilizations with the Muslim East. There are references to the Crusades, of course, but also to lesser known skirmishes between European Christians and Muslims such as Charles Martel’s campaign at the Battle of Tours (France) in 732. A power-hungry duke, Martel won a minor victory over Arabs who sought, at the urging of the Spanish Christian Duke Eudo of Aquitaine, to reclaim land Charles’s uncle seized from them. Tours was, in fact, a power struggle between Christian aristocrats.
The Battle of Tours was neither an epic clash between Western and Eastern civilizations, as the influential eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon spun it, nor was it a battle between the Christian West and Eastern invaders, as French nationalists and white nationalists like Steve Bannon have argued. James Palmer, a medieval historian, has noted that Martel was no defender of Christendom, and his ecclesiastical peers denounced his actions. In the historical imagination of white nationalists, however, this event looms large as the earliest example of Euro-Christian resistance against hostile Arab-Muslim invaders. It’s made to fit a preconceived model in which Muslims have always posed a threat to Christians.
Global white nationalism appears to be focused exclusively on race. Yet, again and again, its adherents equate Christianity with the West and the West with a fanciful white pan-European identity that they claim is under attack. For this reason, Murali Balaji describes forms of white nationalism as Christian nationalism, even though these terrorists aren’t theologians or Bible-thumpers. Sometimes they conflate the West with “Judeo-Christianity,” but this really just nods to “Christian Zionism” and a fig leaf against charges of Christian supremacy. The white supremacist shooter who wreaked havoc at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October reminds us that these hate-mongers also don’t give a damn about Jews, except maybe as the sovereign guardians of the land where Christ will return to save Christians.
Egged on by Trump’s racializing protectionism, white nationalists continue to commit atrocities against not only people of color but also non-Christians regardless of race. They rely on fake history that’s wrong in its details, narrow in its scope, and susceptible to cherry-picked sources and warped interpretations. This methodology is a great recipe for a big fat “F” on a paper in most university history courses.
Early Christian-Muslim Interactions
It’s typical to think of Christianity as a “Western religion”—a product of Rome, Wittenberg, and Vienna. But it originated in the Middle East and was still thriving there when the Qur’an was produced in the early 600s. “Eastern” (or, from a different angle, “West Asian”) Christianity was diverse, and many of its varieties differed in theology from so-called “orthodox” Christianity.
At ecumenical Christian councils such as the famous ones at Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), wealthy and powerful male bishops got together to vote on Christ’s divinity. Was he a human who appeared divine or a god who appeared human? Was he both god and human at the same time? Of the same substance as God the Father? There were major differences of opinion, but the victors of those councils determined in the end that Jesus Christ was of the same substance as God, that he had two natures (human and divine), and that his virgin mother, Mary, was the Theotokos (“God-bearer”).
Some Christians in places like Syria, Persia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Arabian peninsula resisted these doctrines. In these regions, there were two main theological camps—the Monophysites, who spoke of Christ as having “one nature of the incarnate Word” (Logos), and the Nestorians who accepted that Christ had two harmonious natures but refused to attribute human sufferings to the divine nature. They also called Mary the Christotokos (“Christ-bearer”) instead of the Theotokos. (Additional theological currents were represented by various types of Docetists who believed that Christ was fully God and only took on the appearance of a human; Apollinarians, who believed that God was fully human but had the Word of God implanted in him; and Arians, who denied the divinity of Christ.)
Although these differences may seem to amount to Christian theologians splitting hairs over terminology, they are significant because they show how fluid Christian understandings of Christ’s divinity were when Islam emerged. The Qur’an’s portrayal of Jesus fits within the spectrum of alternative understandings of Jesus in the East. Qur’an 4:171 states that “the Messiah, ‘Īsā ibn Maryam (Arabic for “Jesus son of Mary”), was nothing more than a messenger of God, His Word, directed to Maryam, a Spirit from Him.”
In his book, The Islamic Jesus, Mustafa Akyol has remarked that this description of Jesus as the Word of God engages in longstanding Christian debates over Christ’s divinity sparked by the prologue to the Gospel of John (1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”). Elsewhere in its telling of the story of ‘Īsā and Maryam, the Qur’an transmits traditions that were popular in Christian texts that circulated widely in the East, such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James.
The earliest Muslims resembled Eastern Christians not only in theology but also in practice. For instance, Athanasius of Balad (in modern Iraq), patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 684 to 687, required Christians to abide by the Noahide laws: “those believing in Christ…should abstain from fornication, from what is strangled, from blood, and from meals of pagan sacrifice.” These laws are based on Genesis 9:3-6 and are required of Gentiles according to Acts of the Apostles 15:19-20 in the Syriac version of the Bible and other texts popular among Syriac Christians. They are also stipulated in the Qur’an (5:3). Based on this and other common practices, scholar Holger Zellentin has described Syriac Christianity and early Islam as sharing a common legal culture.
Earliest Islam fit within the spectrum of Eastern forms of Christianity so much that legends circulated among ancient Muslim historians that Muhammad was influenced by an Arian or Nestorian monk named Bahira when traveling through Syria as a boy.
Whether this is true or not, Muhammad clearly interacted regularly and positively with Christians. In the midst of battles with the dominant tribe in Mecca, Muhammad’s community (umma) took refuge in the Christian kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia. About a decade later, the prophet established his community in Medina (Yathrib) in Arabia. The historian Fred Donner has argued that this community was significantly ecumenical, including Jews and Christians together with those Muhammad converted from polytheism. Together, this group was known as the “Believers.” Remarkably, inscriptions as late as the reign of the Umayyad caliph Mu‘awiya I (661 to 680) speak of the caliph as “Commander of the Believers” rather than “Commander of the Muslims.”
Archaeological evidence reveals churches in lands under Arab rule flourishing during the first centuries of Islam, and Syriac Christian writings often speak of Arabs expanding their rule through diplomatic treaties with cities, but never of “conquest” as such. To recognize this is not to deny that the expansion of Arab rule sometimes involved violence, but rather to acknowledge that this was not always the case and that religion was not always the motivating force. As Edward Curtis IV reminds us in his piece here on RD, “Muslims were as likely to fight for and with Christian-led European militaries as they were against them.” Universals are never correct, and they’re often dangerous.
The Making of Christian-Muslim Borders
It was during the tenure of the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (685 to 705) that a distinctive Muslim identity started to be shaped in contrast to Christianity. The coins minted in this time and the inscriptions installed in the new Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem all emphasize that “God begets not and was not begotten.” The Dome of the Rock inscriptions are anti-trinitarian and mince no words in proclaiming that “the religion of God is Islam.” The overt anti-trinitarian language used in ‘Abd al-Malik’s propaganda reflects growing hostilities not with Christianity in general, but with the “orthodox” Christianity of the Byzantine empire in modern Europe, Turkey, and North Africa.
In his book on Syriac Christian sources on early Islam, Envisioning Islam, Michael Penn has demonstrated that the boundaries between Christianity and Islam remained porous in the East into the 9th century. As they adapted to the changing realities of Muslim rule, Eastern Christians increasingly sought to articulate their own identities in contrast to Muslims (and other Christians). This gradual process of identity formation was mutual: Muslim and Christian authorities constructed a religious border between one another in order to galvanize their identities amid shifts that had much more to do with geopolitics than religion.
Men of power developed these Christian and Muslim discourses of difference in order to police border-crossings, to block the bridges between Muslims and Christians that had been used for generations. But these discursive borders were not always realized in practice. Since antiquity, there have always been Muslims and Christians who lived in harmony in the Middle East, and around the world, abiding peacefully in their religious borderlands.
Resisting the Clash of Civilizations Narrative
The question of how Islam differed from Christianity in antiquity depends entirely on how we define religion, Christianity, and Islam, as well as how we assign meaning to difference. We might choose to define Christianity and Islam as separate religions from the beginning of Muhammad’s career, but this makes little sense of the ancient traces of more gradual “partings of the ways.” Or, we could define them as two varieties of a broadly defined religion of Abrahamic monotheism. But this obscures the ways that these groups increasingly defined themselves as “Christians” or “Muslims” in contrast to one another. What matters the most, historically, is that we don’t juxtapose Islam against a homogenous, Western, European image of Christianity as part of some clash of civilizations narrative. There was as much difference and conflict among the varieties of Christianity as there was between Christianity and Islam.
White nationalists like the Christchurch shooter rely on simplistic narratives of cultural conflict, but careful historical analysis always betrays more complicated processes of identity formation, negotiation, and contestation. When we reproduce these problematic narratives, we defend borders built by the Powerful on foundations of fear and exploitation. Identities are not nations—they’re not bounded entities, they’re not invaded, they’re not replaced. Only when we resist the words and actions of corrupt leaders who seek to shape and reshape identities for their own benefit can we reclaim our religious borderlands as sites of interaction, learning, and collaboration instead of ignorance, segregation, and violence.
Opinion - Religion
Evangelicals using religion for political gain is nothing new. It is a US tradition
No one who has read US history can be surprised by the hypocrisy of Evangelicals for Trump but it also tells us how their undoing will inevitably come
Reverend William Barber
Wed 8 Jan 2020 10.47 EST
Last Friday the Trump 2020 campaign held its first rally at a megachurch. King Jesus international ministries, located outside of Miami, Florida, hosted the Evangelicals for Trump Coalition kick-off. Before boasting about his commitment to fight for the religious right’s agenda, the president bowed his head to receive prayers from prosperity preacher Paula White and other religious nationalists who offer spiritual cover for a corrupt and immoral administration.
As a bishop of the church, I am troubled anytime I see Christianity used to justify the injustice, deception, violence and oppression that God hates. Even if Donald Trump had a perfect personal moral résumé, his policy agenda is an affront to God’s agenda to lift the poor and bless the marginalized. The distorted moral narrative these so-called Evangelicals for Trump have embraced is contrary to God’s politics, which have nothing to do with being a Democrat or Republican. But this misuse of religion is not new. It has a long history in the American story.
When the segregationist George Wallace faced the moral challenge of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement in 1960s Alabama, he also called upon religious leaders to vouch for him. “By no stretch of the imagination is George C Wallace a racist,” Dr Henry L Lyon, the pastor of Montgomery’s Highland Avenue Baptist church, testified. “He has shown fairness to all people, regardless of race or color,” the Rev RL Lawrence, a Methodist minister, concurred. They were vouching for the same Wallace who had infamously declared in his inaugural address: “Segregation yesterday, segregation today, segregation forever!” But they had adopted a false morality that framed King as an “agitator” and Wallace as a fair-minded defender of tradition and God’s good order.
This misuse of religion is, sadly, an American tradition. Colonists who cheated Native Americans out of land and forced enslaved Africans to build a new nation worshiped a God whose demand for justice troubled their conscience. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, acknowledging the basic moral contradiction between the principle of liberty he had appealed to in the Declaration of Independence and the practice of bondage that his plantation and the economy surrounding it depended upon. This conflict did not only exist within Jefferson’s soul. It divided every major denomination of the American church in the 19th century.
When abolitionists insisted on pointing out the immorality of human bondage, plantation owners responded by paying preachers and theologians to write justifications of race-based chattel slavery. They imagined a world in which the bodies and souls of black Africans were dependent on the paternalistic supervision of white civilization. Slavery was not simply a justifiable evil. It was, according to America’s slaveholder religion, a positive good. Just as they would argue in the 20th century that segregation was best for black and white people, evangelicals for Jefferson Davis contended that slavery was as good for the souls of black Africans as it was for the pocketbook of the plantation owner.
No one who has read American history can be surprised by the hypocrisy of Evangelicals for Trump. But we can learn from the history how their undoing will inevitably come from their public arrogance. While Davis and Wallace had power, they did not have to listen to the cries of those who suffered from the injustice they used the Bible to justify. They found religious leaders who were willing to tell them lies in order to have access to their power. But the ignorance they intentionally cultivated led them to misjudge the political realities of their day. The Confederate States of America could not last. Wallace’s 1968 run for president revealed the limits of his political imagination.
This theme of false religionists lying to despotic rulers runs throughout the Bible. Moses and Miriam had to contend with pharaoh’s religionists in Egypt, just as Elijah had to face the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. When Jesus proclaimed good news to the poor in ancient Palestine, he had to deal with religious leaders who twisted scripture to support the same governing authorities that had sought to kill him when he was a baby.
Religious hypocrisy is not new. But Jesus and the prophets of the Bible make clear that God hates this abuse of the holy. “Do you expect me to overlook obscene wealth you’ve piled up by cheating and fraud?” God asks through the prophet Micah. “Do you think I’ll tolerate shady deals and shifty scheming? I’m tired of the violent rich bullying their way with bluffs and lies.” These are the biblical values we have heard too little about in our public life.
Yes, there is a circle of Evangelicals for Trump who speak loudly about values they have long tried to associate with scripture. But that circle pales in comparison to the great cloud of moral witnesses that stretches from Moses and Miriam to Micah and Elijah; from Jesus and the disciples to Fredrick Douglass and Lucretia Mott; from Ella Baker and Martin Luther King to the moral movements for justice and equity in our world today. These moral witnesses have shown us what it means to push this nation toward a more perfect union. They have demonstrated what true faith in public life looks like. In this moment, we must remember and follow them as a coalition of moral witnesses for truth.
As a bishop of the church, I am troubled anytime I see Christianity used to justify the injustice, deception, violence and oppression that God hates. Even if Donald Trump had a perfect personal moral résumé, his policy agenda is an affront to God’s agenda to lift the poor and bless the marginalized. The distorted moral narrative these so-called Evangelicals for Trump have embraced is contrary to God’s politics, which have nothing to do with being a Democrat or Republican. But this misuse of religion is not new. It has a long history in the American story.
When the segregationist George Wallace faced the moral challenge of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement in 1960s Alabama, he also called upon religious leaders to vouch for him. “By no stretch of the imagination is George C Wallace a racist,” Dr Henry L Lyon, the pastor of Montgomery’s Highland Avenue Baptist church, testified. “He has shown fairness to all people, regardless of race or color,” the Rev RL Lawrence, a Methodist minister, concurred. They were vouching for the same Wallace who had infamously declared in his inaugural address: “Segregation yesterday, segregation today, segregation forever!” But they had adopted a false morality that framed King as an “agitator” and Wallace as a fair-minded defender of tradition and God’s good order.
This misuse of religion is, sadly, an American tradition. Colonists who cheated Native Americans out of land and forced enslaved Africans to build a new nation worshiped a God whose demand for justice troubled their conscience. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, acknowledging the basic moral contradiction between the principle of liberty he had appealed to in the Declaration of Independence and the practice of bondage that his plantation and the economy surrounding it depended upon. This conflict did not only exist within Jefferson’s soul. It divided every major denomination of the American church in the 19th century.
When abolitionists insisted on pointing out the immorality of human bondage, plantation owners responded by paying preachers and theologians to write justifications of race-based chattel slavery. They imagined a world in which the bodies and souls of black Africans were dependent on the paternalistic supervision of white civilization. Slavery was not simply a justifiable evil. It was, according to America’s slaveholder religion, a positive good. Just as they would argue in the 20th century that segregation was best for black and white people, evangelicals for Jefferson Davis contended that slavery was as good for the souls of black Africans as it was for the pocketbook of the plantation owner.
No one who has read American history can be surprised by the hypocrisy of Evangelicals for Trump. But we can learn from the history how their undoing will inevitably come from their public arrogance. While Davis and Wallace had power, they did not have to listen to the cries of those who suffered from the injustice they used the Bible to justify. They found religious leaders who were willing to tell them lies in order to have access to their power. But the ignorance they intentionally cultivated led them to misjudge the political realities of their day. The Confederate States of America could not last. Wallace’s 1968 run for president revealed the limits of his political imagination.
This theme of false religionists lying to despotic rulers runs throughout the Bible. Moses and Miriam had to contend with pharaoh’s religionists in Egypt, just as Elijah had to face the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. When Jesus proclaimed good news to the poor in ancient Palestine, he had to deal with religious leaders who twisted scripture to support the same governing authorities that had sought to kill him when he was a baby.
Religious hypocrisy is not new. But Jesus and the prophets of the Bible make clear that God hates this abuse of the holy. “Do you expect me to overlook obscene wealth you’ve piled up by cheating and fraud?” God asks through the prophet Micah. “Do you think I’ll tolerate shady deals and shifty scheming? I’m tired of the violent rich bullying their way with bluffs and lies.” These are the biblical values we have heard too little about in our public life.
Yes, there is a circle of Evangelicals for Trump who speak loudly about values they have long tried to associate with scripture. But that circle pales in comparison to the great cloud of moral witnesses that stretches from Moses and Miriam to Micah and Elijah; from Jesus and the disciples to Fredrick Douglass and Lucretia Mott; from Ella Baker and Martin Luther King to the moral movements for justice and equity in our world today. These moral witnesses have shown us what it means to push this nation toward a more perfect union. They have demonstrated what true faith in public life looks like. In this moment, we must remember and follow them as a coalition of moral witnesses for truth.
Link between religious fundamentalism and brain damage established by scientists
December 30, 2019
By Bobby Azarian, Raw Story
A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.
Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.
Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.
Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.
To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.
Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.
Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.
According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.
The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.
These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.
The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.
By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.
Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.
Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.
Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.
To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.
Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.
Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.
According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.
The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.
These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.
The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.
By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.
Legion of Christ finds 33 priests, 71 seminarian sex abusers
By NICOLE WINFIELD - ap
12/21/19
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Legion of Christ religious order, which was discredited by its pedophile founder and the cult-like practices he imposed, says an internal investigation has identified 33 priests and 71 seminarians who sexually abused minors over the past eight decades.
A third of the priestly abusers were themselves victims of the Legion’s late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, while others were victims of his victims — a multi-generational chain of abuse that confirms Maciel’s toxic influence spread throughout the order.
The Legion counted 175 victims of the priests, but didn’t provide a number for the victims of the seminarians, most of whom were never ordained and left the congregation.
The Legion released the statistics on Saturday, the same day Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the Legion’s biggest defender at the Vatican, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, as dean of the College of Cardinals.
Sodano, who was secretary of state under St. John Paul II, had for years blocked the Vatican from investigating sex abuse allegations against Maciel, even though the Vatican had documented evidence dating from the 1940s that he was a drug addict and pedophile. Under John Paul, however, Maciel was adored at the Vatican for his supposed orthodoxy and ability to produce donations and vocations.
The Vatican in 2010 took over the Mexico-based Legion and imposed a process of reform after an investigation showed that Maciel had sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least three children with two women. The Vatican found he had created a system of power built on silence, deceit and obedience that enabled him lead a double life “devoid of any scruples and authentic sense of religion.”
Two-thirds of the Legion’s priestly victims — 60 — were Maciel’s victims, the report found. Most were boys between age 11 and 16.
The 33 priestly abusers represented 2.44% of the 1,353 Legion priests ordained since 1941, the report found. That percentage is far lower than national averages of credibly accused priests over a similar period in the U.S. or Australia, where the percentages are 5.8 and seven, respectively.
The Legion acknowledged that more victims may come forward with other accusations, and attributed the comparatively low percentage to the fact that 60 of the seminarians who abused weren’t ordained as priests.
The Legion only published the names of four U.S.-based priests who were among the 33 abusers, saying ethical and legal considerations prevented identifying the others. U.S. religious orders and dioceses have been publishing names of credibly accused priests following the re-eruption of the scandal there.
A former Legion priest, the Rev. Christian Borgogno, said the report debunks the Legion’s effort to blame all its problems on Maciel alone and showed that abuse festered far beyond his inner circle.
In a series of tweets, Borgogno questioned the seemingly low number of abusers, noted some had been ordained even after allegations against them were known, and complained that the report said nothing about the web of cover-up that allowed Maciel and others to continue abusing.
The report acknowledged that it was limited in scope, didn’t address issues of abuse of power or conscience, or matters of cover-up and negligence, but said that was an “important pending task.”
It said it was publishing the report to as a first step on a “path of reconciliation” with victims, by recognizing the history of abuse in the order.
The Legion leadership is due to consider the report at a general meeting next month.
RELATED: 175 children abused by Mexican branch of Catholic Church: report
A third of the priestly abusers were themselves victims of the Legion’s late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, while others were victims of his victims — a multi-generational chain of abuse that confirms Maciel’s toxic influence spread throughout the order.
The Legion counted 175 victims of the priests, but didn’t provide a number for the victims of the seminarians, most of whom were never ordained and left the congregation.
The Legion released the statistics on Saturday, the same day Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the Legion’s biggest defender at the Vatican, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, as dean of the College of Cardinals.
Sodano, who was secretary of state under St. John Paul II, had for years blocked the Vatican from investigating sex abuse allegations against Maciel, even though the Vatican had documented evidence dating from the 1940s that he was a drug addict and pedophile. Under John Paul, however, Maciel was adored at the Vatican for his supposed orthodoxy and ability to produce donations and vocations.
The Vatican in 2010 took over the Mexico-based Legion and imposed a process of reform after an investigation showed that Maciel had sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least three children with two women. The Vatican found he had created a system of power built on silence, deceit and obedience that enabled him lead a double life “devoid of any scruples and authentic sense of religion.”
Two-thirds of the Legion’s priestly victims — 60 — were Maciel’s victims, the report found. Most were boys between age 11 and 16.
The 33 priestly abusers represented 2.44% of the 1,353 Legion priests ordained since 1941, the report found. That percentage is far lower than national averages of credibly accused priests over a similar period in the U.S. or Australia, where the percentages are 5.8 and seven, respectively.
The Legion acknowledged that more victims may come forward with other accusations, and attributed the comparatively low percentage to the fact that 60 of the seminarians who abused weren’t ordained as priests.
The Legion only published the names of four U.S.-based priests who were among the 33 abusers, saying ethical and legal considerations prevented identifying the others. U.S. religious orders and dioceses have been publishing names of credibly accused priests following the re-eruption of the scandal there.
A former Legion priest, the Rev. Christian Borgogno, said the report debunks the Legion’s effort to blame all its problems on Maciel alone and showed that abuse festered far beyond his inner circle.
In a series of tweets, Borgogno questioned the seemingly low number of abusers, noted some had been ordained even after allegations against them were known, and complained that the report said nothing about the web of cover-up that allowed Maciel and others to continue abusing.
The report acknowledged that it was limited in scope, didn’t address issues of abuse of power or conscience, or matters of cover-up and negligence, but said that was an “important pending task.”
It said it was publishing the report to as a first step on a “path of reconciliation” with victims, by recognizing the history of abuse in the order.
The Legion leadership is due to consider the report at a general meeting next month.
RELATED: 175 children abused by Mexican branch of Catholic Church: report
Conservative evangelicals aren’t hypocrites — it’s worse than that
December 15, 2019
By John Stoehr, The Editorial Board- Commentary - raw story
I understand why it’s hard for normal people to believe that white evangelical Christians are sadists. Normal people have never been, as I was a long time ago, on the inside of that shadowy religious world. But the sooner they understand this, the sooner normal people will see that white evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump isn’t rooted in hypocrisy, contradiction or merely straying from the straight and narrow. The reason they support a fascist president is simple: They’re sadists.
The word “sadist” is off-putting. I get that. But if you’re thinking of sex, you’re thinking in the wrong way. If you’re thinking of “pleasure,” as in sexual pleasure, you’re thinking the wrong way. The pleasure white evangelical Christians derive from the suffering of human beings deemed less human than they are is not about sex. It’s about the pain, humiliation or even violence out-groups deserve by dint of being out-groups. Gay men, for instance, deserve their punishment because they are gay. Punishment for being gay is “divine justice.” From such “justice” comes pleasure—which is sadism.
I didn’t come up with the term. Richard Rorty did. I’m only pushing it as far to the fore as I can, because I don’t think normal people understand what they are facing, and if they don’t understand, they will keep treating sadists as if they have a legitimate place in a liberal democracy. Cruelty is the point, as Adam Serwer powerfully and famously put it in The Atlantic. But normal people must understand the animating force behind that cruelty. Sadists are sadistic not because they are cruel. It’s much simpler than that. They are cruel because being cruel to people deserving cruelty feels good.
Rorty was expansive in his use of “sadism.” In Achieving Our Country, one of his final books, he characterized slavery, Southern apartheid, racism, misogyny and other ancient hatreds as “socially accepted sadism.” In this, he included not only efforts to harm people—humiliating, cheating, raping and murdering them—but also efforts to rationalize the harm. (For instance: not only is it OK to cheat women out of equal pay for equal work because they are women; women actually want to be cheated.) Though renowned as a philosopher and literary critic, Rorty was a life-long liberal. His goals were many, but key was making “socially accepted sadism” less socially acceptable.
He didn’t live to see the Supreme Court legalize gay marriage. (He died in 2007.) But I believe that he’d have seen that ruling as a capstone to a long 20th-century political war to make anti-gay sadism less socially acceptable. Indeed, the United States seems to have surpassed that standard. Within a decade, trans rights have become widely recognized as legitimate and just. Moreover, anti-gay sadism are now a social taboo mighty enough to alienate the world’s richest and most powerful corporations.
Most Americans, though they may not know it, have manifested the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
You’ll notice I said “anti-gay sadism,” not “homophobia” or the fear of homosexuals and homosexuality. This is what normal people are in the habit of thinking. For instance: homophobes are homophobic because they don’t understand. Because they don’t understand, they’re afraid. Being afraid drives them to act sadistically. This seems reasonable, and while it may be true in many cases, it’s false in some. I have come to believe attributing fear to sadism gives the sadists far too much credit.
Think about it. To ease a person’s fear of homosexuals and homosexuality, you have to persuade that person that gay people are human beings. They are not demons. They are not monsters. They are people. They are the flesh-and-blood sons and daughters of mothers and fathers—just like you. Gay people have no more control over how they were born than you do. Treat them as you wish to be treated, and you’ll see there’s nothing to fear. Most Americans, I think, have gone through that process. Most, though they may not know it, have manifested the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
You’d think white evangelical Christians would have gone through the same process given their profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But they can’t. They can’t because they won’t. And they won’t because, to them, homosexuality is an abomination before God. You cannot expect a person to reason his way out of fear when doing so would bring him, in his view, to the edge of a Lake of Fire. You cannot expect him to recognize your political legitimacy when he looks at you and doesn’t see a human being with endowed and inalienable rights. Instead, he sees an unholy perversion.
Normal people can’t know any of this, because they have never been on the inside of the shadowy world of white evangelical Christianity. (That is, to me, what makes them more or less “normal.”) Even if normal people had some inkling, it never feels right to presume the worst in people. But trust me when I say white evangelical Christians are presuming the worst in normal people--in you. Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? No? You are therefore not one among God’s Chosen.
This is their moral compass, which is not a moral compass at all, and as such, Trump-voting white evangelical Christians do not have the ability to reason their way out of fear. And because they don’t, they will choose sadism. Why? Sadism feels good.
The word “sadist” is off-putting. I get that. But if you’re thinking of sex, you’re thinking in the wrong way. If you’re thinking of “pleasure,” as in sexual pleasure, you’re thinking the wrong way. The pleasure white evangelical Christians derive from the suffering of human beings deemed less human than they are is not about sex. It’s about the pain, humiliation or even violence out-groups deserve by dint of being out-groups. Gay men, for instance, deserve their punishment because they are gay. Punishment for being gay is “divine justice.” From such “justice” comes pleasure—which is sadism.
I didn’t come up with the term. Richard Rorty did. I’m only pushing it as far to the fore as I can, because I don’t think normal people understand what they are facing, and if they don’t understand, they will keep treating sadists as if they have a legitimate place in a liberal democracy. Cruelty is the point, as Adam Serwer powerfully and famously put it in The Atlantic. But normal people must understand the animating force behind that cruelty. Sadists are sadistic not because they are cruel. It’s much simpler than that. They are cruel because being cruel to people deserving cruelty feels good.
Rorty was expansive in his use of “sadism.” In Achieving Our Country, one of his final books, he characterized slavery, Southern apartheid, racism, misogyny and other ancient hatreds as “socially accepted sadism.” In this, he included not only efforts to harm people—humiliating, cheating, raping and murdering them—but also efforts to rationalize the harm. (For instance: not only is it OK to cheat women out of equal pay for equal work because they are women; women actually want to be cheated.) Though renowned as a philosopher and literary critic, Rorty was a life-long liberal. His goals were many, but key was making “socially accepted sadism” less socially acceptable.
He didn’t live to see the Supreme Court legalize gay marriage. (He died in 2007.) But I believe that he’d have seen that ruling as a capstone to a long 20th-century political war to make anti-gay sadism less socially acceptable. Indeed, the United States seems to have surpassed that standard. Within a decade, trans rights have become widely recognized as legitimate and just. Moreover, anti-gay sadism are now a social taboo mighty enough to alienate the world’s richest and most powerful corporations.
Most Americans, though they may not know it, have manifested the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
You’ll notice I said “anti-gay sadism,” not “homophobia” or the fear of homosexuals and homosexuality. This is what normal people are in the habit of thinking. For instance: homophobes are homophobic because they don’t understand. Because they don’t understand, they’re afraid. Being afraid drives them to act sadistically. This seems reasonable, and while it may be true in many cases, it’s false in some. I have come to believe attributing fear to sadism gives the sadists far too much credit.
Think about it. To ease a person’s fear of homosexuals and homosexuality, you have to persuade that person that gay people are human beings. They are not demons. They are not monsters. They are people. They are the flesh-and-blood sons and daughters of mothers and fathers—just like you. Gay people have no more control over how they were born than you do. Treat them as you wish to be treated, and you’ll see there’s nothing to fear. Most Americans, I think, have gone through that process. Most, though they may not know it, have manifested the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
You’d think white evangelical Christians would have gone through the same process given their profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But they can’t. They can’t because they won’t. And they won’t because, to them, homosexuality is an abomination before God. You cannot expect a person to reason his way out of fear when doing so would bring him, in his view, to the edge of a Lake of Fire. You cannot expect him to recognize your political legitimacy when he looks at you and doesn’t see a human being with endowed and inalienable rights. Instead, he sees an unholy perversion.
Normal people can’t know any of this, because they have never been on the inside of the shadowy world of white evangelical Christianity. (That is, to me, what makes them more or less “normal.”) Even if normal people had some inkling, it never feels right to presume the worst in people. But trust me when I say white evangelical Christians are presuming the worst in normal people--in you. Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? No? You are therefore not one among God’s Chosen.
This is their moral compass, which is not a moral compass at all, and as such, Trump-voting white evangelical Christians do not have the ability to reason their way out of fear. And because they don’t, they will choose sadism. Why? Sadism feels good.
Here are six hints that baby Jesus stories were added much later to early Christian legends
December 9, 2019
By Valerie Tarico- Commentary - raw story
The wonder-filled birth story of the baby Jesus was centuries in the making.
Picture a creche with baby Jesus in a manger and shepherds and angels and three kings and a star over the stable roof. We think of this traditional scene as representing the Christmas story, but it actually mixes elements from two different nativity stories in the Bible, one in Matthew and one in Luke, with a few embellishments that got added in later centuries. What was the historical kernel? Most likely we will never know, because it appears that the Bible’s nativity stories are themselves highly-embellished late add-ons to the Gospels.
Here are six hints that the story so familiar to us might have been unfamiliar to early Jesus worshipers.
1. Paul’s Silence – The earliest texts in the New Testament are letters written during the first half of the first century by Paul and other people who used his name. These letters, or Epistles as they are called, give no hint that Paul or the forgers who used his name had heard about any signs and wonders surrounding the birth of Jesus, nor that his mother was a virgin impregnated by God in spirit form. Paul simply says that he was a Jew, born to a woman.
2. Mark’s Silence – The Gospel of Mark—thought to be the earliest of the four gospels and, so, closest to actual events—doesn’t contain a nativity or “infancy” story, even though it otherwise looks to be the primary source document for Matthew and Luke. In Mark, the divinity of Jesus gets established by wonders at the beginning of his ministry, and some Christian sects have believed that he was adopted by God at this point.
Why is Mark thought to be where the authors of Matthew and Luke got material? For starters, some passages in Mark, Matthew, and Luke would likely get flagged by plagiarism software. But in the original Greek, Mark is the most primitive and least polished of the three. It also is missing powerful passages like the Sermon on the Mount and has endings that vary from copy to copy. These are some of the reasons that scholars believe it predates the other two. Unlike Paul, the author of Mark was writing a life history of Jesus, one that was full of miracles. It would have been odd for him to simply leave out the auspicious miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus—unless those stories didn’t yet exist.
3. A Tale of Two Tales – Beyond a few basics, the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke have remarkably little overlap. In both, Jesus is born in Bethlehem of a virgin Mary who is betrothed to a man named Joseph. That’s where the similarity ends.
In Matthew’s story, an unnamed angel appears to Joseph, astrologers arrive bearing symbolic gifts, a special star appears in the east, Herod seeks to kill Jesus, warnings come during dreams, and the holy family flees to safety in Egypt just before boy infants are slaughtered across Judea.
In Luke’s story, the angel Gabriel appears to the future parents of John the Baptist. They miraculously conceive, but his father is made mute as a punishment for doubting. Gabriel then appears to Mary. During a visit between the two prospective mothers, who are cousins, John the Baptist in the womb recognizes Jesus in the womb and leaps. Later when John is named, his father miraculously regains the power of speech. A census forces Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem, where there is no room in the inn. Jesus is born and laid in a manger/cradle, and angels sing to shepherds who visit the baby. After his naming, his parents take him to the Jerusalem temple where he is recognized and blessed by a holy man and a resident prophetess, and then the family returns to their home in Nazareth instead of going to Egypt.
Some Christians try to harmonize these stories but a simpler explanation is that they represent two different branches in the tree of oral tradition. The study of European fairy tales shows that different versions of the stories tend to split off, with characters and magical elements diverging over time much like an evolutionary tree. The Matthew and Luke nativity stories likely underwent a similar process, meaning that oral traditions circulated and evolved for some time before the two authors inscribed their respective versions. Scholars debate how much the authors further revised the stories they received.
It’s interesting to note that each author inserted a dubious historical event (an impossible census in one and an unlikely mass infanticide in the other) to make his plotline work. Dubious histories become credible only after potential eyewitnesses die off—so their presence is one more indicator that one or more generations lapsed before the stories took their present form.
4. Pagan Parallels – Luke’s story appears to be slanted toward a Roman audience, and in fact the idea of gods impregnating human women was a common trope that many Jews and Christians have recognized as pagan. Progressive theologian Marcus Borg argued that the point of the story was to pivot fealty from Caesar Augustus to Jesus. According to Roman imperial theology, Augustus had been conceived when the god Apollo impregnated his human mother, Atia. Titles inscribed on coins and temples during his reign included “Son of God,” “Lord,” and “Savior.” They also included the phrase “peace on earth,” which Luke has his angels sing to shepherds.
5. Say What?! – By the second chapter of Luke, the parents of Jesus behave as if they have forgotten the astounding signs and wonders that accompanied his birth. When the boy is twelve, Mary and Joseph take him to Jerusalem for a festival, where they lose him in the crowd and find him three days later among the teachers in the temple. When they scold him, he says ‘“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them’ (Luke 2:49-50).
Wait. They didn’t know what he was talking about?! This otherwise bizarre narrative glitch, which directly follows the nativity story, suggests that the former was tacked on at a later time.
6. Divinity Rising – If we line up the four gospels in the estimated order they were written—Mark (60CE), Matthew (70-90CE), Luke (80-95CE), then John (90-100CE), an interesting pattern emerges. Jesus becomes divine earlier and earlier. In Mark, as mentioned, he is shown to be divine when he is baptized (and perhaps is uniquely adopted or entered by God at that point). In Matthew and Luke, he is fathered by the Holy Spirit and is sinless from birth. In John, he is the Logos, present at the creation of the world—though also born of a woman. This sequence suggests that theologies explaining the divinity of Jesus emerged gradually and evolved as Christianity crystalized and spread.
After the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were bundled into the Catholic Bible, the two infancy stories merged. The three astrologers became Kings riding camels. Mary got her own “immaculate conception” and became, to some, a sinless perpetual virgin. The place of Jesus birth became a stable filled with adoring animals. And the holy birthday moved to winter solstice, weaving in delicious and delightful pagan traditions including feasting, tree decorating and festivals of light. The birth of a long-awaited messiah fused with the rebirth of the sun—and their joint birthday party became, in the dead of winter, a celebration of bounty and beauty and love and hope that captivated hearts even beyond the bounds of Christianity.
Picture a creche with baby Jesus in a manger and shepherds and angels and three kings and a star over the stable roof. We think of this traditional scene as representing the Christmas story, but it actually mixes elements from two different nativity stories in the Bible, one in Matthew and one in Luke, with a few embellishments that got added in later centuries. What was the historical kernel? Most likely we will never know, because it appears that the Bible’s nativity stories are themselves highly-embellished late add-ons to the Gospels.
Here are six hints that the story so familiar to us might have been unfamiliar to early Jesus worshipers.
1. Paul’s Silence – The earliest texts in the New Testament are letters written during the first half of the first century by Paul and other people who used his name. These letters, or Epistles as they are called, give no hint that Paul or the forgers who used his name had heard about any signs and wonders surrounding the birth of Jesus, nor that his mother was a virgin impregnated by God in spirit form. Paul simply says that he was a Jew, born to a woman.
2. Mark’s Silence – The Gospel of Mark—thought to be the earliest of the four gospels and, so, closest to actual events—doesn’t contain a nativity or “infancy” story, even though it otherwise looks to be the primary source document for Matthew and Luke. In Mark, the divinity of Jesus gets established by wonders at the beginning of his ministry, and some Christian sects have believed that he was adopted by God at this point.
Why is Mark thought to be where the authors of Matthew and Luke got material? For starters, some passages in Mark, Matthew, and Luke would likely get flagged by plagiarism software. But in the original Greek, Mark is the most primitive and least polished of the three. It also is missing powerful passages like the Sermon on the Mount and has endings that vary from copy to copy. These are some of the reasons that scholars believe it predates the other two. Unlike Paul, the author of Mark was writing a life history of Jesus, one that was full of miracles. It would have been odd for him to simply leave out the auspicious miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus—unless those stories didn’t yet exist.
3. A Tale of Two Tales – Beyond a few basics, the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke have remarkably little overlap. In both, Jesus is born in Bethlehem of a virgin Mary who is betrothed to a man named Joseph. That’s where the similarity ends.
In Matthew’s story, an unnamed angel appears to Joseph, astrologers arrive bearing symbolic gifts, a special star appears in the east, Herod seeks to kill Jesus, warnings come during dreams, and the holy family flees to safety in Egypt just before boy infants are slaughtered across Judea.
In Luke’s story, the angel Gabriel appears to the future parents of John the Baptist. They miraculously conceive, but his father is made mute as a punishment for doubting. Gabriel then appears to Mary. During a visit between the two prospective mothers, who are cousins, John the Baptist in the womb recognizes Jesus in the womb and leaps. Later when John is named, his father miraculously regains the power of speech. A census forces Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem, where there is no room in the inn. Jesus is born and laid in a manger/cradle, and angels sing to shepherds who visit the baby. After his naming, his parents take him to the Jerusalem temple where he is recognized and blessed by a holy man and a resident prophetess, and then the family returns to their home in Nazareth instead of going to Egypt.
Some Christians try to harmonize these stories but a simpler explanation is that they represent two different branches in the tree of oral tradition. The study of European fairy tales shows that different versions of the stories tend to split off, with characters and magical elements diverging over time much like an evolutionary tree. The Matthew and Luke nativity stories likely underwent a similar process, meaning that oral traditions circulated and evolved for some time before the two authors inscribed their respective versions. Scholars debate how much the authors further revised the stories they received.
It’s interesting to note that each author inserted a dubious historical event (an impossible census in one and an unlikely mass infanticide in the other) to make his plotline work. Dubious histories become credible only after potential eyewitnesses die off—so their presence is one more indicator that one or more generations lapsed before the stories took their present form.
4. Pagan Parallels – Luke’s story appears to be slanted toward a Roman audience, and in fact the idea of gods impregnating human women was a common trope that many Jews and Christians have recognized as pagan. Progressive theologian Marcus Borg argued that the point of the story was to pivot fealty from Caesar Augustus to Jesus. According to Roman imperial theology, Augustus had been conceived when the god Apollo impregnated his human mother, Atia. Titles inscribed on coins and temples during his reign included “Son of God,” “Lord,” and “Savior.” They also included the phrase “peace on earth,” which Luke has his angels sing to shepherds.
5. Say What?! – By the second chapter of Luke, the parents of Jesus behave as if they have forgotten the astounding signs and wonders that accompanied his birth. When the boy is twelve, Mary and Joseph take him to Jerusalem for a festival, where they lose him in the crowd and find him three days later among the teachers in the temple. When they scold him, he says ‘“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them’ (Luke 2:49-50).
Wait. They didn’t know what he was talking about?! This otherwise bizarre narrative glitch, which directly follows the nativity story, suggests that the former was tacked on at a later time.
6. Divinity Rising – If we line up the four gospels in the estimated order they were written—Mark (60CE), Matthew (70-90CE), Luke (80-95CE), then John (90-100CE), an interesting pattern emerges. Jesus becomes divine earlier and earlier. In Mark, as mentioned, he is shown to be divine when he is baptized (and perhaps is uniquely adopted or entered by God at that point). In Matthew and Luke, he is fathered by the Holy Spirit and is sinless from birth. In John, he is the Logos, present at the creation of the world—though also born of a woman. This sequence suggests that theologies explaining the divinity of Jesus emerged gradually and evolved as Christianity crystalized and spread.
After the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were bundled into the Catholic Bible, the two infancy stories merged. The three astrologers became Kings riding camels. Mary got her own “immaculate conception” and became, to some, a sinless perpetual virgin. The place of Jesus birth became a stable filled with adoring animals. And the holy birthday moved to winter solstice, weaving in delicious and delightful pagan traditions including feasting, tree decorating and festivals of light. The birth of a long-awaited messiah fused with the rebirth of the sun—and their joint birthday party became, in the dead of winter, a celebration of bounty and beauty and love and hope that captivated hearts even beyond the bounds of Christianity.
Here are 5 reasons to suspect Jesus never existed
December 8, 2019
By Valerie Tarico- Commentary - raw story
Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, based on the evidence available they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a “historical Jesus” became mythologized.
For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians grounded in this perspective have analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles include Zealot by Reza Aslan and How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman.
By contrast, other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually “historicized mythology.” In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received.
The notion that Jesus never existed is a minority position. Of course it is! says David Fitzgerald, the author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All. Fitzgerald points out that for centuries all serious scholars of Christianity were Christians themselves, and modern secular scholars lean heavily on the groundwork that they laid in collecting, preserving, and analyzing ancient texts. Even today most secular scholars come out of a religious background, and many operate by default under historical presumptions of their former faith.
Fitzgerald–who, as his book title indicates, takes the “mythical Jesus” position–is an atheist speaker and writer, popular with secular students and community groups. The internet phenom, Zeitgeist the Movie introduced millions to some of the mythic roots of Christianity. But Zeitgeist and similar works contain known errors and oversimplifications that undermine their credibility. Fitzgerald seeks to correct that by giving young people accessible information that is grounded in accountable scholarship.
More academic arguments in support of the Jesus Myth theory can be found in the writings of Richard Carrier and Robert Price. Carrier, who has a Ph.D. in ancient history uses the tools of his trade to show, among other things, how Christianity might have gotten off the ground without a miracle. Price, by contrast, writes from the perspective of a theologian whose biblical scholarship ultimately formed the basis for his skepticism. It is interesting to note that some of the harshest critics of popular Jesus myth theories like those from Zeitgeist or Joseph Atwill (who argued that the Romans invented Jesus) are academic Mythicists like these.
The arguments on both sides of this question—mythologized history or historicized mythology—fill volumes, and if anything the debate seems to be heating up rather than resolving. Since many people, both Christian and not, find it surprising that this debate even exists—that serious scholars might think Jesus never existed—here are some of the key points that keep the doubts alive:
1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef.
In the words of Bart Ehrman (who himself believes the stories were built on a historical kernel):
“What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references – nothing. In fact, if we broaden our field of concern to the years after his death – even if we include the entire first century of the Common Era – there is not so much as a solitary reference to Jesus in any non-Christian, non-Jewish source of any kind. I should stress that we do have a large number of documents from the time – the writings of poets, philosophers, historians, scientists, and government officials, for example, not to mention the large collection of surviving inscriptions on stone and private letters and legal documents on papyrus. In none of this vast array of surviving writings is Jesus’ name ever so much as mentioned.” (pp. 56-57)
2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts.
Paul seems unaware of any virgin birth, for example. No wise men, no star in the east, no miracles. Historians have long puzzled over the “Silence of Paul” on the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus. Paul fails to cite Jesus’ authority precisely when it would make his case. What’s more, he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples; in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did miracles, or gave teachings. He virtually refuses to disclose any other biographical detail, and the few cryptic hints he offers aren’t just vague, but contradict the gospels. The leaders of the early Christian movement in Jerusalem like Peter and James are supposedly Jesus’ own followers and family; but Paul dismisses them as nobodies and repeatedly opposes them for not being true Christians!
Liberal theologian Marcus Borg suggests that people read the books of the New Testament in chronological order to see how early Christianity unfolded.
Placing the Gospels after Paul makes it clear that as written documents they are not the source of early Christianity but its product. The Gospel — the good news — of and about Jesus existed before the Gospels. They are the products of early Christian communities several decades after Jesus’ historical life and tell us how those communities saw his significance in their historical context.
3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts.
We now know that the four gospels were assigned the names of the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not written by them. To make matter sketchier, the name designations happened sometime in second century, around 100 years or more after Christianity supposedly began.
For a variety of reasons, the practice of pseudonymous writing was common at the time and many contemporary documents are “signed” by famous figures. The same is true of the New Testament epistles except for a handful of letters from Paul (6 out of 13) which are broadly thought to be genuine. But even the gospel stories don’t actually say, “I was there.” Rather, they claim the existence of other witnesses, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has heard the phrase, my aunt knew someone who . . . .
4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.
If you think you know the Jesus story pretty well, I suggest that you pause at this point to test yourself with the 20 question quiz at ExChristian.net.
The gospel of Mark is thought to be the earliest existing “life of Jesus,” and linguistic analysis suggests that Luke and Matthew both simply reworked Mark and added their own corrections and new material. But they contradict each other and, to an even greater degree contradict the much later gospel of John, because they were written with different objectives for different audiences. The incompatible Easter stories offer one example of how much the stories disagree.
5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons.
They include a cynic philosopher, charismatic Hasid, liberal Pharisee, conservative rabbi, Zealot revolutionary, and nonviolent pacifist to borrow from a much longer list assembled by Price. In his words (pp. 15-16), “The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time.” John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar grumbles that “the stunning diversity is an academic embarrassment.”
For David Fitzgerald, these issues and more lead to a conclusion that he finds inescapable:
Jesus appears to be an effect, not a cause, of Christianity. Paul and the rest of the first generation of Christians searched the Septuagint translation of Hebrew scriptures to create a Mystery Faith for the Jews, complete with pagan rituals like a Lord’s Supper, Gnostic terms in his letters, and a personal savior god to rival those in their neighbors’ longstanding Egyptian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman traditions.
In a soon-to-be-released follow up to Nailed, entitled Jesus: Mything in Action, Fitzgerald argues that the many competing versions proposed by secular scholars are just as problematic as any “Jesus of Faith:”
Even if one accepts that there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, the question has little practical meaning: Regardless of whether or not a first century rabbi called Yeshua ben Yosef lived, the “historical Jesus” figures so patiently excavated and re-assembled by secular scholars are themselves fictions.
We may never know for certain what put Christian history in motion. Only time (or perhaps time travel) will tell.
For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians grounded in this perspective have analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles include Zealot by Reza Aslan and How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman.
By contrast, other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually “historicized mythology.” In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received.
The notion that Jesus never existed is a minority position. Of course it is! says David Fitzgerald, the author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All. Fitzgerald points out that for centuries all serious scholars of Christianity were Christians themselves, and modern secular scholars lean heavily on the groundwork that they laid in collecting, preserving, and analyzing ancient texts. Even today most secular scholars come out of a religious background, and many operate by default under historical presumptions of their former faith.
Fitzgerald–who, as his book title indicates, takes the “mythical Jesus” position–is an atheist speaker and writer, popular with secular students and community groups. The internet phenom, Zeitgeist the Movie introduced millions to some of the mythic roots of Christianity. But Zeitgeist and similar works contain known errors and oversimplifications that undermine their credibility. Fitzgerald seeks to correct that by giving young people accessible information that is grounded in accountable scholarship.
More academic arguments in support of the Jesus Myth theory can be found in the writings of Richard Carrier and Robert Price. Carrier, who has a Ph.D. in ancient history uses the tools of his trade to show, among other things, how Christianity might have gotten off the ground without a miracle. Price, by contrast, writes from the perspective of a theologian whose biblical scholarship ultimately formed the basis for his skepticism. It is interesting to note that some of the harshest critics of popular Jesus myth theories like those from Zeitgeist or Joseph Atwill (who argued that the Romans invented Jesus) are academic Mythicists like these.
The arguments on both sides of this question—mythologized history or historicized mythology—fill volumes, and if anything the debate seems to be heating up rather than resolving. Since many people, both Christian and not, find it surprising that this debate even exists—that serious scholars might think Jesus never existed—here are some of the key points that keep the doubts alive:
1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef.
In the words of Bart Ehrman (who himself believes the stories were built on a historical kernel):
“What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references – nothing. In fact, if we broaden our field of concern to the years after his death – even if we include the entire first century of the Common Era – there is not so much as a solitary reference to Jesus in any non-Christian, non-Jewish source of any kind. I should stress that we do have a large number of documents from the time – the writings of poets, philosophers, historians, scientists, and government officials, for example, not to mention the large collection of surviving inscriptions on stone and private letters and legal documents on papyrus. In none of this vast array of surviving writings is Jesus’ name ever so much as mentioned.” (pp. 56-57)
2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts.
Paul seems unaware of any virgin birth, for example. No wise men, no star in the east, no miracles. Historians have long puzzled over the “Silence of Paul” on the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus. Paul fails to cite Jesus’ authority precisely when it would make his case. What’s more, he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples; in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did miracles, or gave teachings. He virtually refuses to disclose any other biographical detail, and the few cryptic hints he offers aren’t just vague, but contradict the gospels. The leaders of the early Christian movement in Jerusalem like Peter and James are supposedly Jesus’ own followers and family; but Paul dismisses them as nobodies and repeatedly opposes them for not being true Christians!
Liberal theologian Marcus Borg suggests that people read the books of the New Testament in chronological order to see how early Christianity unfolded.
Placing the Gospels after Paul makes it clear that as written documents they are not the source of early Christianity but its product. The Gospel — the good news — of and about Jesus existed before the Gospels. They are the products of early Christian communities several decades after Jesus’ historical life and tell us how those communities saw his significance in their historical context.
3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts.
We now know that the four gospels were assigned the names of the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not written by them. To make matter sketchier, the name designations happened sometime in second century, around 100 years or more after Christianity supposedly began.
For a variety of reasons, the practice of pseudonymous writing was common at the time and many contemporary documents are “signed” by famous figures. The same is true of the New Testament epistles except for a handful of letters from Paul (6 out of 13) which are broadly thought to be genuine. But even the gospel stories don’t actually say, “I was there.” Rather, they claim the existence of other witnesses, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has heard the phrase, my aunt knew someone who . . . .
4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.
If you think you know the Jesus story pretty well, I suggest that you pause at this point to test yourself with the 20 question quiz at ExChristian.net.
The gospel of Mark is thought to be the earliest existing “life of Jesus,” and linguistic analysis suggests that Luke and Matthew both simply reworked Mark and added their own corrections and new material. But they contradict each other and, to an even greater degree contradict the much later gospel of John, because they were written with different objectives for different audiences. The incompatible Easter stories offer one example of how much the stories disagree.
5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons.
They include a cynic philosopher, charismatic Hasid, liberal Pharisee, conservative rabbi, Zealot revolutionary, and nonviolent pacifist to borrow from a much longer list assembled by Price. In his words (pp. 15-16), “The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time.” John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar grumbles that “the stunning diversity is an academic embarrassment.”
For David Fitzgerald, these issues and more lead to a conclusion that he finds inescapable:
Jesus appears to be an effect, not a cause, of Christianity. Paul and the rest of the first generation of Christians searched the Septuagint translation of Hebrew scriptures to create a Mystery Faith for the Jews, complete with pagan rituals like a Lord’s Supper, Gnostic terms in his letters, and a personal savior god to rival those in their neighbors’ longstanding Egyptian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman traditions.
In a soon-to-be-released follow up to Nailed, entitled Jesus: Mything in Action, Fitzgerald argues that the many competing versions proposed by secular scholars are just as problematic as any “Jesus of Faith:”
Even if one accepts that there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, the question has little practical meaning: Regardless of whether or not a first century rabbi called Yeshua ben Yosef lived, the “historical Jesus” figures so patiently excavated and re-assembled by secular scholars are themselves fictions.
We may never know for certain what put Christian history in motion. Only time (or perhaps time travel) will tell.
White Christians are an endangered species — and that’s part of what drives their support of Trump
October 22, 2019
By Matthew Chapman - raw story
Much attention has been given to how the widening partisan polarization in America has cut along racial lines, with white voters growing more sharply conservative as they decline as a share of the electorate.
But the divide is not only visible in racial data. According to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute first reported by CNN, a similar polarization also is occurring along religious lines.
“Voters in each party now hold antithetical views not only on issues that dominate the immediate political debate — such as health care and impeachment — but also on deeper changes in the nation’s demography, culture, race relations and gender roles, according to detailed results the institute provided to CNN,” said the report. Moreover, “While whites who identify as Christians still represent about two-thirds of all Republicans, they now compose only one-fourth of Democrats, according to results provided by the Pew Research Center from a new study it released last week.”
At the core, there are two major trends pulling politics in opposite directions. “Not only have the religiously unaffiliated expanded since 2009 from about 1 in 6 to 1 in 4 adults, but the share of Americans who ascribe to non-Christian faiths, a group that also leans strongly Democratic, has edged up from 5% to 7% of the population over that time, Pew found,” said the report — but at the same time, “even as white Christians have fallen below majority status in the country, they remain a clear majority of Republicans.”
The data also show stark cultural attitude differences between the religious voters on the GOP’s side and everyone else. “While two-thirds of white evangelicals, for instance, say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minorities, more than 7 in 10 among the religiously unaffiliated disagree,” said the report. “Two-thirds of white evangelicals say immigrants are ‘invading’ America; three-fourths of the religiously unaffiliated disagree. Three-fourths of white evangelicals say socialists have taken over the Democratic Party; two-thirds of the unaffiliated say racists now control the Republican Party.”
The data do not provide a clear answer on how long Republicans can sustain their numbers using bigger margins from smaller demographics — but offer warnings.
“On most key measures, from racial diversity to the shift away from Christian faiths, the changes reshaping America are more pronounced among the youngest generations,” said the report. “Among adults younger than 30, only 1 in 4 are white Christians, the Public Religion Research Institute found, with the religiously unaffiliated and those who practice non-Christian faiths accounting for nearly half and non-white Christians making up the remaining fourth.”
“This wave of new data on religion and partisan allegiance underscores the broader conclusion that American politics in 2020, and likely for years beyond, promises an epic collision between what America has been and what it is becoming,” concluded the report.
You can read more here.
But the divide is not only visible in racial data. According to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute first reported by CNN, a similar polarization also is occurring along religious lines.
“Voters in each party now hold antithetical views not only on issues that dominate the immediate political debate — such as health care and impeachment — but also on deeper changes in the nation’s demography, culture, race relations and gender roles, according to detailed results the institute provided to CNN,” said the report. Moreover, “While whites who identify as Christians still represent about two-thirds of all Republicans, they now compose only one-fourth of Democrats, according to results provided by the Pew Research Center from a new study it released last week.”
At the core, there are two major trends pulling politics in opposite directions. “Not only have the religiously unaffiliated expanded since 2009 from about 1 in 6 to 1 in 4 adults, but the share of Americans who ascribe to non-Christian faiths, a group that also leans strongly Democratic, has edged up from 5% to 7% of the population over that time, Pew found,” said the report — but at the same time, “even as white Christians have fallen below majority status in the country, they remain a clear majority of Republicans.”
The data also show stark cultural attitude differences between the religious voters on the GOP’s side and everyone else. “While two-thirds of white evangelicals, for instance, say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minorities, more than 7 in 10 among the religiously unaffiliated disagree,” said the report. “Two-thirds of white evangelicals say immigrants are ‘invading’ America; three-fourths of the religiously unaffiliated disagree. Three-fourths of white evangelicals say socialists have taken over the Democratic Party; two-thirds of the unaffiliated say racists now control the Republican Party.”
The data do not provide a clear answer on how long Republicans can sustain their numbers using bigger margins from smaller demographics — but offer warnings.
“On most key measures, from racial diversity to the shift away from Christian faiths, the changes reshaping America are more pronounced among the youngest generations,” said the report. “Among adults younger than 30, only 1 in 4 are white Christians, the Public Religion Research Institute found, with the religiously unaffiliated and those who practice non-Christian faiths accounting for nearly half and non-white Christians making up the remaining fourth.”
“This wave of new data on religion and partisan allegiance underscores the broader conclusion that American politics in 2020, and likely for years beyond, promises an epic collision between what America has been and what it is becoming,” concluded the report.
You can read more here.
a religion for the ignorant
myths turned into lies to justify racism, genocide, MISOGYNY, and corruption!!!
Fundamentalism turns 100 — a landmark for America’s Christian Right
October 8, 2019
By The Conversation- Commentary - raw story
These days, the term “fundamentalism” is often associated with a militant form of Islam.
But the original fundamentalist movement was actually Christian. And it was born in the United States a century ago this year.
Protestant fundamentalism is still very much alive. And, as Susan Trollinger and I discuss in our 2016 book, it has fueled today’s culture war over gender, sexual orientation, science and American religious identity.
Roots of Fundamentalism
Christian fundamentalism has roots in the 19th century, when Protestants were confronted by two challenges to traditional understandings of the Bible.
Throughout the century, scholars increasingly evaluated the Bible as a historical text. In the process they raised questions about its divine origins, given its seeming inconsistencies and errors.
In addition, Charles Darwin’s 1859 book “On the Origin of Species” – which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection – raised profound questions about the Genesis account of creation.
Many American Protestants easily squared their Christian faith with these ideas. Others were horrified.
Conservative theologians responded by developing the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Inerrancy asserts that the Bible is errorless and factually accurate in everything it says – including about science.
This doctrine became the theological touchstone of fundamentalism. Alongside inerrancy emerged a system of ideas, called apocalyptic or “dispensational premillennialism.”
Adherents of these ideas hold that reading the Bible literally – particularly the Book of Revelation – reveals that history will end soon with a ghastly apocalypse.
All those who are not true Christians will be slaughtered. In the wake of this violence, Christ will establish God’s millennial kingdom on Earth.
Setting the stage
A series of Bible and prophecy conferences spread these ideas to thousands of Protestants across the United States in the late 19th century.
But two early 20th-century publications were particularly key to their dissemination.
The first was author Cyrus Scofield’s 1909 Reference Bible. Scofield’s Bible included an overwhelming set of footnotes emphasizing that the errorless Bible predicts a violent end of history which only true Christians will survive.
The second was “The Fundamentals,” 12 volumes published between 1910 and 1915 which made the case for biblical inerrancy while simultaneously attacking socialism and affirming capitalism.
“The Fundamentals” provided the name of the future religious movement. But there was not yet a fundamentalist movement.
That came after World War I.
The birth of the Fundamentalist Movement
After Woodrow Wilson’s April 1917 declaration of war on Germany, the government mobilized a huge propaganda campaign designed to demonize the Germans as barbarous Huns who threatened Western civilization. Many conservative Protestants traced Germany’s devolution into depravity to its embrace of Darwinism and de-emphasis of the Bible’s divine origins.
Six months after the war’s end, William Bell Riley – pastor of Minneapolis’ First Baptist Church and a well-known speaker on the Bible’s prophecies regarding the end of history – organized and presided over the World’s Conference on Christian Fundamentals in Philadelphia.
This five-day May 1919 meeting attracted over 6,000 people and an all-star lineup of conservative Protestant speakers. It produced the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, which birthed a movement that influences American political and social life today.
In summer and fall of 1919 Riley sent teams of speakers to spread the fundamentalist word across the U.S. In addition to promoting biblical inerrancy and apocalyptic premillennialism, they attacked socialism and Darwinism.
Soon, Riley and his newly minted fundamentalists began trying to capture control of major Protestant denominations and eliminate the teaching of Darwinian evolution from American public schools.
The anti-evolution crusade had some success in the South. Five states passed laws banning the theory of evolution from classrooms.
In March 1925 Tennessee made it illegal to teach “that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Four months later a science teacher named John Scopes was tried and convicted of violating the statute.
Fundamentalism after Scopes
Though the Scopes Trial brought ridicule by the national media, fundamentalism did not wither away.
Instead, it continued to advance during the 20th century. And it remained remarkably consistent in its central commitments of biblical inerrancy, apocalyptic premillennialism, creationism and patriarchy – the idea that women are to submit to male authority in church and home.
Fundamentalists also embraced political conservatism. This commitment grew more intense as the 20th century progressed.
Fundamentalists despised President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. They saw welfare to the poor and increased taxes on the rich as an indefensible expansion of government powers.
When the Cold War brought the United States into conflict with the Soviet Union, their concerns about the all-encompassing, anti-Christian state intensified.
Then came the 1960s and 1970s.
Fundamentalists bitterly opposed the civil rights and feminist movements, the Supreme Court’s rulings prohibiting school-sponsored prayer and affirming a woman’s right to an abortion, and President Lyndon Johnson’s programs that sought to eliminate poverty and racial injustice.
Fundamentalists go political
Understanding Christian America to be under deadly assault, in the late 1970s these politically conservative fundamentalists began to organize.
The emergent Christian Right attached itself to the Republican Party, which was more aligned with its members’ central commitments than the Democrats.
In the vanguard was Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell Sr. His “Moral Majority” sought to make America Christian again by electing “pro-family, pro-life, pro-Bible morality” candidates.
Since the 1980s, the movement has become increasingly sophisticated. Christian Right organizations like Focus on the Family and Concerned Women of America push for laws that reflect the fundamentalist views on everything from abortion to sexual orientation.
By the time Falwell died, in 2007, the Christian Right had become the most important constituency in the Republican Party. It played a crucial role in electing Donald Trump in 2016.
After one century, Protestant fundamentalism is still very much alive in America. William Bell Riley, I wager, would be pleased.
But the original fundamentalist movement was actually Christian. And it was born in the United States a century ago this year.
Protestant fundamentalism is still very much alive. And, as Susan Trollinger and I discuss in our 2016 book, it has fueled today’s culture war over gender, sexual orientation, science and American religious identity.
Roots of Fundamentalism
Christian fundamentalism has roots in the 19th century, when Protestants were confronted by two challenges to traditional understandings of the Bible.
Throughout the century, scholars increasingly evaluated the Bible as a historical text. In the process they raised questions about its divine origins, given its seeming inconsistencies and errors.
In addition, Charles Darwin’s 1859 book “On the Origin of Species” – which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection – raised profound questions about the Genesis account of creation.
Many American Protestants easily squared their Christian faith with these ideas. Others were horrified.
Conservative theologians responded by developing the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Inerrancy asserts that the Bible is errorless and factually accurate in everything it says – including about science.
This doctrine became the theological touchstone of fundamentalism. Alongside inerrancy emerged a system of ideas, called apocalyptic or “dispensational premillennialism.”
Adherents of these ideas hold that reading the Bible literally – particularly the Book of Revelation – reveals that history will end soon with a ghastly apocalypse.
All those who are not true Christians will be slaughtered. In the wake of this violence, Christ will establish God’s millennial kingdom on Earth.
Setting the stage
A series of Bible and prophecy conferences spread these ideas to thousands of Protestants across the United States in the late 19th century.
But two early 20th-century publications were particularly key to their dissemination.
The first was author Cyrus Scofield’s 1909 Reference Bible. Scofield’s Bible included an overwhelming set of footnotes emphasizing that the errorless Bible predicts a violent end of history which only true Christians will survive.
The second was “The Fundamentals,” 12 volumes published between 1910 and 1915 which made the case for biblical inerrancy while simultaneously attacking socialism and affirming capitalism.
“The Fundamentals” provided the name of the future religious movement. But there was not yet a fundamentalist movement.
That came after World War I.
The birth of the Fundamentalist Movement
After Woodrow Wilson’s April 1917 declaration of war on Germany, the government mobilized a huge propaganda campaign designed to demonize the Germans as barbarous Huns who threatened Western civilization. Many conservative Protestants traced Germany’s devolution into depravity to its embrace of Darwinism and de-emphasis of the Bible’s divine origins.
Six months after the war’s end, William Bell Riley – pastor of Minneapolis’ First Baptist Church and a well-known speaker on the Bible’s prophecies regarding the end of history – organized and presided over the World’s Conference on Christian Fundamentals in Philadelphia.
This five-day May 1919 meeting attracted over 6,000 people and an all-star lineup of conservative Protestant speakers. It produced the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, which birthed a movement that influences American political and social life today.
In summer and fall of 1919 Riley sent teams of speakers to spread the fundamentalist word across the U.S. In addition to promoting biblical inerrancy and apocalyptic premillennialism, they attacked socialism and Darwinism.
Soon, Riley and his newly minted fundamentalists began trying to capture control of major Protestant denominations and eliminate the teaching of Darwinian evolution from American public schools.
The anti-evolution crusade had some success in the South. Five states passed laws banning the theory of evolution from classrooms.
In March 1925 Tennessee made it illegal to teach “that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Four months later a science teacher named John Scopes was tried and convicted of violating the statute.
Fundamentalism after Scopes
Though the Scopes Trial brought ridicule by the national media, fundamentalism did not wither away.
Instead, it continued to advance during the 20th century. And it remained remarkably consistent in its central commitments of biblical inerrancy, apocalyptic premillennialism, creationism and patriarchy – the idea that women are to submit to male authority in church and home.
Fundamentalists also embraced political conservatism. This commitment grew more intense as the 20th century progressed.
Fundamentalists despised President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. They saw welfare to the poor and increased taxes on the rich as an indefensible expansion of government powers.
When the Cold War brought the United States into conflict with the Soviet Union, their concerns about the all-encompassing, anti-Christian state intensified.
Then came the 1960s and 1970s.
Fundamentalists bitterly opposed the civil rights and feminist movements, the Supreme Court’s rulings prohibiting school-sponsored prayer and affirming a woman’s right to an abortion, and President Lyndon Johnson’s programs that sought to eliminate poverty and racial injustice.
Fundamentalists go political
Understanding Christian America to be under deadly assault, in the late 1970s these politically conservative fundamentalists began to organize.
The emergent Christian Right attached itself to the Republican Party, which was more aligned with its members’ central commitments than the Democrats.
In the vanguard was Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell Sr. His “Moral Majority” sought to make America Christian again by electing “pro-family, pro-life, pro-Bible morality” candidates.
Since the 1980s, the movement has become increasingly sophisticated. Christian Right organizations like Focus on the Family and Concerned Women of America push for laws that reflect the fundamentalist views on everything from abortion to sexual orientation.
By the time Falwell died, in 2007, the Christian Right had become the most important constituency in the Republican Party. It played a crucial role in electing Donald Trump in 2016.
After one century, Protestant fundamentalism is still very much alive in America. William Bell Riley, I wager, would be pleased.
christianity, a religion of hate!!!
U.S.'S BIGGEST CHRISTIAN CHARITY REPORTEDLY CHANNELED $56.1 MILLION TO PURPORTED HATE GROUPS
BY DANIEL MORITZ-RABSON - newsweek
The nation's eighth-largest nonprofit donated $56.1 million to a series of organizations identified as hate groups from 2015 to 2017, according to a report from Sludge.
National Christian Foundation, which identifies itself as the largest Christian grant maker and one of the largest donor-advised funds in the nation, has served as a vehicle for individuals trying to anonymously send money.
Donor-advised funds allow individuals sending the tax deductible contributions to remain anonymous from the IRS and instruct where they want the payments to be sent. For those donating via NCF, this meant sending money to 23 organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled hate groups. Most of the hate organizations that received money from the NCF opposed LGBT rights. The report also found that the NCF donated to anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant organizations.
Organizations receiving the most funds from NCF included the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has advocated for sterilizing transgender individuals, and the Family Research Council, which has advocated conversion therapy. Members of the Family Research Council including Tony Perkins, the organization's president, have sought to link pedophilia and homosexuality.
Ads by scrollerads.comThe NCF's website says it has "accepted over $12 billion in contributions and made over $10 billion in giver-recommended grants to more than 55,000 charities."
"NCF is a national network of givers who are working to further the generosity movement in the areas they care about the most. Like other donor-advised fund sponsors, NCF helps thousands of generous people give to the charitable causes they care about, and we help them do so in the most efficient and effective manner possible," Steve Chapman, a spokesperson for NCF told Newsweek when asked about the Sludge report. "In 2018, we sent $1.7 billion in grants to more than 26,000 charities who are bringing clean water to the thirsty, homes to the homeless, food to the hungry, healing to the hurting, and much more. We are solely focused on helping people give generously and wisely to their favorite charities."
Aaron Scherb, the legislative director of watchdog organization Common Cause, noted that conservative religious organizations have previously donated large amounts to groups that further their political interests.
"The Religious Right and certain conservative religious groups have significant resources at their disposable. As we detailed in a 2015 report, they often flex their political muscle to further enhance their ability to spend big money in politics to drown out the voices of dissenting views," he told Newsweek.
"It's interesting to me that big donors have a mechanism to give money to causes that would be unpopular, like going after gay rights.... It's not always so much about the total amount as it is about the mechanisms for funneling money into politics," Lisa Gilbert, the vice president of legislative affairs at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen told Newsweek. "This is like a shell-game funnel of corporate money. So it might be an organization that has an innocent name, that sounds like a good, upstanding, innocent group" but is being backed by wealthy donors, she added.
She emphasized that the dollar amounts weren't necessarily the most important topic illuminated by the Sludge story. Instead she focused on the source of money influencing public and political messaging.
"It's not always about the aggregate amount. It's not always about that for influence peddling."
National Christian Foundation, which identifies itself as the largest Christian grant maker and one of the largest donor-advised funds in the nation, has served as a vehicle for individuals trying to anonymously send money.
Donor-advised funds allow individuals sending the tax deductible contributions to remain anonymous from the IRS and instruct where they want the payments to be sent. For those donating via NCF, this meant sending money to 23 organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled hate groups. Most of the hate organizations that received money from the NCF opposed LGBT rights. The report also found that the NCF donated to anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant organizations.
Organizations receiving the most funds from NCF included the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has advocated for sterilizing transgender individuals, and the Family Research Council, which has advocated conversion therapy. Members of the Family Research Council including Tony Perkins, the organization's president, have sought to link pedophilia and homosexuality.
Ads by scrollerads.comThe NCF's website says it has "accepted over $12 billion in contributions and made over $10 billion in giver-recommended grants to more than 55,000 charities."
"NCF is a national network of givers who are working to further the generosity movement in the areas they care about the most. Like other donor-advised fund sponsors, NCF helps thousands of generous people give to the charitable causes they care about, and we help them do so in the most efficient and effective manner possible," Steve Chapman, a spokesperson for NCF told Newsweek when asked about the Sludge report. "In 2018, we sent $1.7 billion in grants to more than 26,000 charities who are bringing clean water to the thirsty, homes to the homeless, food to the hungry, healing to the hurting, and much more. We are solely focused on helping people give generously and wisely to their favorite charities."
Aaron Scherb, the legislative director of watchdog organization Common Cause, noted that conservative religious organizations have previously donated large amounts to groups that further their political interests.
"The Religious Right and certain conservative religious groups have significant resources at their disposable. As we detailed in a 2015 report, they often flex their political muscle to further enhance their ability to spend big money in politics to drown out the voices of dissenting views," he told Newsweek.
"It's interesting to me that big donors have a mechanism to give money to causes that would be unpopular, like going after gay rights.... It's not always so much about the total amount as it is about the mechanisms for funneling money into politics," Lisa Gilbert, the vice president of legislative affairs at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen told Newsweek. "This is like a shell-game funnel of corporate money. So it might be an organization that has an innocent name, that sounds like a good, upstanding, innocent group" but is being backed by wealthy donors, she added.
She emphasized that the dollar amounts weren't necessarily the most important topic illuminated by the Sludge story. Instead she focused on the source of money influencing public and political messaging.
"It's not always about the aggregate amount. It's not always about that for influence peddling."
The US a Christian nation? Not according to the Founders
September 10, 2019
By History News Network - raw story
George Washington may have said it best, if not first: “Religious controversies are always more productive of acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.” To prevent such controversies, Washington ordered Continental Army commanders “to protect and support the free exercise…and undisturbed enjoyment of…religious matters.”
But former attorney general Jefferson [“Jeff”] Beauregard Sessions, III, of Alabama, contends that Washington’s views were “directly contrary to the founding of our country.” And Vice-President Michael Richard Pence, a fervent church-goer who publicly proclaims his Christian beliefs whenever he can, insists the United States was “founded as a Christian nation.”
Pence and Sessions are but two prominent Americans in and out of politics today who continue refueling a centuries-old controversy over the role of religion in American life.
Washington’s friend, the widely heralded polemicist Thomas Paine tried ending the controversy. “I do not believe in…any church,” he declared. In a call to arms against what he called church-state tyranny in early America, he insisted that “every national church or religion accuses the others of unbelief; for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”
Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson agreed. President Jefferson denied that Jesus was “a member of the Godhead,” and Benjamin Franklin, a co-author of the Declaration of Independence with Jefferson, decried Christian church services for promoting church memberships instead of “trying to make us good citizens.” An outspoken Deist, Franklin criticized all religions for making “orthodoxy more regarded than virtue.” He insisted that man be judged “not for what we thought but what we did…that we did good to our fellow creatures.”
Most of America’s Founding Fathers echoed Franklin’s beliefs. America’s fourth President, James Madison was raised an Anglican and was a cousin of Virginia’s Episcopal bishop. But he was a fierce proponent of church-state separation and fathered the Bill of Rights, whose opening words outlawed government “establishment of religion” and any prohibition of “the free exercise thereof.” Both Congress and all the states agreed.
“It was the universal opinion of the [18th] century,” Madison wrote in 1819, “that civil government could not stand without the prop of a religious establishment and that the Christian religion itself would perish if not supported by a legal provision for its clergy.” But as President, Madison found that, “the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of church from the state.”
Even the devout, church-going Congregationalist John Adams, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, inked his presidential signature on the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli affirming to Americans and the world that “the United States is not, in any sense, a Christian nation.” The 23 members present in the U.S. Senate (out of 32) ratified the document unanimously.
That should have settled matters, but in the centuries since the founding, some Americans have persisted in claiming that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, ignoring– even scoffing at–the words of the Founders, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
The sole grain of truth to claims of governmental ties to Christianity in early America lies in the different religions established in each of the independent British-North American provinces before the birth of the United States. Although individual states retained state-supported religions well into the 19gh century (four did so until after the Civil War), the ratification of the Constitution created an absolutely secular nation.
Indeed, each of the nation’s three founding documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution—carefully avoided all mention of Christianity or Christ. Article VI of the Constitution states as dramatically as possible, that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” –hardly the hallmark of a “Christian” nation.
To reaffirm America’s not becoming a Christian nation, Congress and all the states added the First Amendment to the Constitution in 1791, reiterating the nation’s areligious character by barring government establishment of any and all religion.
Only the Declaration of Independence even mentions God–in a single ambiguous reference in the opening paragraph to what Deists rather than practicing Christians called “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”
Like the founding documents, the collected letters, speeches, and papers of George Washington never invoked the name of Christ or Christianity and mentioned God only once, as he concluded his oath of office as first President of the United States and added, “So help me God.” Prior to that, he carefully omitted all references to God and Christ, appealing instead to “providence,” “destiny,” “heaven,” or “the author of our being” as sources of possible supernatural favor for himself and the nation.
“Providence has directed my steps and shielded me.” young Colonel Washington affirmed after escaping death in a fierce encounter in the French and Indian War. And as President, he wrote carefully worded letters affirming the nation’s areligious status and its promise of religious freedom to leaders of twenty-two religious groups—and atheists!
In a reaffirmation of his deep opposition—and that of all the Founding Fathers–to state-sponsored religion, Washington wrote a personal letter to members of the Jewish synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, restating the United States Government commitment that “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Again, the nation’s first President avoided all mention of God or Christ.
Thomas Paine reinforced the thinking of Washington and America’s other Founders in his famed pamphlet Common Sense—the most widely read publication in the western world in the late 18th century after the Bible. Washington called Common Sense critical in convincing Americans of “the propriety of a separation [from Britain].”
A fervent patron of Deism, Paine called the “connection of church and state adulterous.” He said such a connection in Britain and British-America had been designed to enrich both institutions and keep mankind in their perpetual thrall by infecting men’s minds with the myth of divine right of kings and hereditary rule. “Why,” Paine demanded, “should someone rule over us simply because he is someone else’s child?” Calling the notion absurd, he added, “Mingling religion with politics [should be] disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.” The Founding Fathers agreed.
John Adams disliked Paine intensely, but nonetheless declared, “I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or its affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. Call it then the Age of Paine.” He might have said, “The Age of Deism.”
But former attorney general Jefferson [“Jeff”] Beauregard Sessions, III, of Alabama, contends that Washington’s views were “directly contrary to the founding of our country.” And Vice-President Michael Richard Pence, a fervent church-goer who publicly proclaims his Christian beliefs whenever he can, insists the United States was “founded as a Christian nation.”
Pence and Sessions are but two prominent Americans in and out of politics today who continue refueling a centuries-old controversy over the role of religion in American life.
Washington’s friend, the widely heralded polemicist Thomas Paine tried ending the controversy. “I do not believe in…any church,” he declared. In a call to arms against what he called church-state tyranny in early America, he insisted that “every national church or religion accuses the others of unbelief; for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”
Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson agreed. President Jefferson denied that Jesus was “a member of the Godhead,” and Benjamin Franklin, a co-author of the Declaration of Independence with Jefferson, decried Christian church services for promoting church memberships instead of “trying to make us good citizens.” An outspoken Deist, Franklin criticized all religions for making “orthodoxy more regarded than virtue.” He insisted that man be judged “not for what we thought but what we did…that we did good to our fellow creatures.”
Most of America’s Founding Fathers echoed Franklin’s beliefs. America’s fourth President, James Madison was raised an Anglican and was a cousin of Virginia’s Episcopal bishop. But he was a fierce proponent of church-state separation and fathered the Bill of Rights, whose opening words outlawed government “establishment of religion” and any prohibition of “the free exercise thereof.” Both Congress and all the states agreed.
“It was the universal opinion of the [18th] century,” Madison wrote in 1819, “that civil government could not stand without the prop of a religious establishment and that the Christian religion itself would perish if not supported by a legal provision for its clergy.” But as President, Madison found that, “the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of church from the state.”
Even the devout, church-going Congregationalist John Adams, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, inked his presidential signature on the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli affirming to Americans and the world that “the United States is not, in any sense, a Christian nation.” The 23 members present in the U.S. Senate (out of 32) ratified the document unanimously.
That should have settled matters, but in the centuries since the founding, some Americans have persisted in claiming that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, ignoring– even scoffing at–the words of the Founders, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
The sole grain of truth to claims of governmental ties to Christianity in early America lies in the different religions established in each of the independent British-North American provinces before the birth of the United States. Although individual states retained state-supported religions well into the 19gh century (four did so until after the Civil War), the ratification of the Constitution created an absolutely secular nation.
Indeed, each of the nation’s three founding documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution—carefully avoided all mention of Christianity or Christ. Article VI of the Constitution states as dramatically as possible, that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” –hardly the hallmark of a “Christian” nation.
To reaffirm America’s not becoming a Christian nation, Congress and all the states added the First Amendment to the Constitution in 1791, reiterating the nation’s areligious character by barring government establishment of any and all religion.
Only the Declaration of Independence even mentions God–in a single ambiguous reference in the opening paragraph to what Deists rather than practicing Christians called “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”
Like the founding documents, the collected letters, speeches, and papers of George Washington never invoked the name of Christ or Christianity and mentioned God only once, as he concluded his oath of office as first President of the United States and added, “So help me God.” Prior to that, he carefully omitted all references to God and Christ, appealing instead to “providence,” “destiny,” “heaven,” or “the author of our being” as sources of possible supernatural favor for himself and the nation.
“Providence has directed my steps and shielded me.” young Colonel Washington affirmed after escaping death in a fierce encounter in the French and Indian War. And as President, he wrote carefully worded letters affirming the nation’s areligious status and its promise of religious freedom to leaders of twenty-two religious groups—and atheists!
In a reaffirmation of his deep opposition—and that of all the Founding Fathers–to state-sponsored religion, Washington wrote a personal letter to members of the Jewish synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, restating the United States Government commitment that “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Again, the nation’s first President avoided all mention of God or Christ.
Thomas Paine reinforced the thinking of Washington and America’s other Founders in his famed pamphlet Common Sense—the most widely read publication in the western world in the late 18th century after the Bible. Washington called Common Sense critical in convincing Americans of “the propriety of a separation [from Britain].”
A fervent patron of Deism, Paine called the “connection of church and state adulterous.” He said such a connection in Britain and British-America had been designed to enrich both institutions and keep mankind in their perpetual thrall by infecting men’s minds with the myth of divine right of kings and hereditary rule. “Why,” Paine demanded, “should someone rule over us simply because he is someone else’s child?” Calling the notion absurd, he added, “Mingling religion with politics [should be] disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.” The Founding Fathers agreed.
John Adams disliked Paine intensely, but nonetheless declared, “I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or its affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. Call it then the Age of Paine.” He might have said, “The Age of Deism.”
Churches in America are being transformed into mosques, Buddhist temples, and breweries as Christianity declines
August 30, 2019
By The Conversation - Raw Story
Over the past few decades, vacant and underutilized churches have become a familiar sight in American cities.
In some cases, a congregation or a religious governing body – say, a Catholic diocese – will sell the church to developers, who then turn them into apartments, offices, art galleries, museums, breweries or performance spaces.
But what about churches in neighborhoods that aren’t doing well, areas that are less attractive to developers looking to turn a profit?
In Buffalo, New York, two empty Roman Catholic churches were recently converted – not into apartments or offices, but into other places of worship. One became an Islamic mosque, the other a Buddhist temple.
As an architect and historic preservation planner, I was drawn to this phenomenon. With the help of Enjoli Hall, who was then a graduate student at University at Buffalo, I interviewed those involved in converting the former churches.
With immigrant and refugee populations growing in post-industrial cities across the U.S., the conversion of vacant Christian churches into new places of worship can preserve historic architecture and strengthen burgeoning communities.
In Buffalo, a split between east and west
Buffalo has long been an immigrant gateway. From 1850 to 1900, the city’s population increased by over 700%. In 1892, over one-third of Buffalo’s residents were foreign born. Poles, Germans and Italians settled in the city, leading to a wave of church construction. In the 1930s, African Americans started migrating from southern US to the east side of the city.
But by 2010, the city’s population had dwindled to just over 260,000 people – less than half of what it was in 1950.
This public attention, however, has mainly focused on the West Side neighborhoods, which have experienced the bulk of investment and population growth. Neighborhoods in Buffalo’s East Side continue to face tremendous challenges of poverty, crumbling infrastructure and abandoned houses.Nonetheless, Buffalo has recently been in the news for its efforts to overcome decades of population decline and disinvestment. In 2016, Yahoo News anchor Katie Couric, fascinated by Buffalo’s transformation, featured the city in her six-video series, “Cities Rising: Rebuilding America,” while The New York Timesdetailed the changes taking place in some of the city’s neighborhoods.
According to the 2015 American Community Survey, these neighborhoods are now predominantly African American. But they’ve also become home to immigrants from South Asia, along with resettled refugees from Vietnam, Central Africa and Iraq.
During community clean-up events or flower plantings, it’s not uncommon to see members of Temple Beth Zion, Westminster Presbyterian Church and the mosque Masjid Nu’Man working side by side.
A closer look at two faith-to-faith conversions
Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia famously switched from a Christian church to a mosque in 1453.
The same sort of conversions have been taking place in Buffalo’s East Side. Many former Catholic churches have, over the years, been converted into other denominations – Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal and Evangelical – to accommodate the area’s African American community.
But several former Christian churches in Buffalo’s East Side also now serve as sites of worship for other religions. Two mosques, Bait Ul Mamur Inc. Masjid and Masjid Zakariya, used to be Saint Joachim’s Roman Catholic Church and Holy Mother of Rosary Polish National Catholic Church, respectively.
And two other formerly vacant churches that the Catholic diocese was struggling to sell were eventually sold. One, Queen of Peace Roman Catholic Church, was converted into a mosque, Jami Masjid. Another, Saint Agnes Roman Catholic Church, became a temple, the International Sangha Bhiksu Buddhist Association.
For my study, I interviewed those involved in the conversion of these two Catholic churches to learn more about how they were successfully adapted.
In Islam, for example, there’s a wariness about idolatry. So those involved with Jami Masjid removed the stained glass windows, statuary and iconography, along with the pews, Stations of the Cross and the altar. Volunteers painted over the ecclesiastical murals by local artist Josef Mazur and carpeted the entire floor so worshipers could pray on the floor, per Islamic custom.
The structural elements of the church, however, all remained the same – including the wooden trusses, doors and the adjoining buildings.
Today, the mosque offers camps for children and runs a school on the premises. The neighborhood residents – not all of whom are Muslim – have been largely appreciative of the new facility, especially the new playground on the premises.
The Buddhist temple, on the other hand, made very little changes to the interior, aside from removing the Stations of the Cross and the altar. The priest, Bhiksu Thich Minh Chanh, replaced the statuary with large Buddha statues. But the pews are still there, save for a few rows in front that were removed and carpeted for prayer services.
The neighbors in the immediate vicinity – some of whom had attended services at St. Agnes – told us that they were sad that their church was gone. But most were happy that, at the very least, it continued to be used as a place of worship, as opposed to lying vacant, or worse, being demolished. Even with the neighborhood’s support, the temple has been vandalized several times; clearly, not everyone is happy with the conversion.
Other cities, like Cincinnati and Detroit, are also grappling with the issue of empty and underused churches. Each, like Buffalo, has growing immigrant populations.
Buffalo has shown how faith-to-faith church conversions can be a win-win situation for everyone involved: The diocese gets to sell a redundant property, immigrants can acquire a property that will strengthen their community, and the city builds its tax base by attracting new residents to the area.
In some cases, a congregation or a religious governing body – say, a Catholic diocese – will sell the church to developers, who then turn them into apartments, offices, art galleries, museums, breweries or performance spaces.
But what about churches in neighborhoods that aren’t doing well, areas that are less attractive to developers looking to turn a profit?
In Buffalo, New York, two empty Roman Catholic churches were recently converted – not into apartments or offices, but into other places of worship. One became an Islamic mosque, the other a Buddhist temple.
As an architect and historic preservation planner, I was drawn to this phenomenon. With the help of Enjoli Hall, who was then a graduate student at University at Buffalo, I interviewed those involved in converting the former churches.
With immigrant and refugee populations growing in post-industrial cities across the U.S., the conversion of vacant Christian churches into new places of worship can preserve historic architecture and strengthen burgeoning communities.
In Buffalo, a split between east and west
Buffalo has long been an immigrant gateway. From 1850 to 1900, the city’s population increased by over 700%. In 1892, over one-third of Buffalo’s residents were foreign born. Poles, Germans and Italians settled in the city, leading to a wave of church construction. In the 1930s, African Americans started migrating from southern US to the east side of the city.
But by 2010, the city’s population had dwindled to just over 260,000 people – less than half of what it was in 1950.
This public attention, however, has mainly focused on the West Side neighborhoods, which have experienced the bulk of investment and population growth. Neighborhoods in Buffalo’s East Side continue to face tremendous challenges of poverty, crumbling infrastructure and abandoned houses.Nonetheless, Buffalo has recently been in the news for its efforts to overcome decades of population decline and disinvestment. In 2016, Yahoo News anchor Katie Couric, fascinated by Buffalo’s transformation, featured the city in her six-video series, “Cities Rising: Rebuilding America,” while The New York Timesdetailed the changes taking place in some of the city’s neighborhoods.
According to the 2015 American Community Survey, these neighborhoods are now predominantly African American. But they’ve also become home to immigrants from South Asia, along with resettled refugees from Vietnam, Central Africa and Iraq.
During community clean-up events or flower plantings, it’s not uncommon to see members of Temple Beth Zion, Westminster Presbyterian Church and the mosque Masjid Nu’Man working side by side.
A closer look at two faith-to-faith conversions
Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia famously switched from a Christian church to a mosque in 1453.
The same sort of conversions have been taking place in Buffalo’s East Side. Many former Catholic churches have, over the years, been converted into other denominations – Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal and Evangelical – to accommodate the area’s African American community.
But several former Christian churches in Buffalo’s East Side also now serve as sites of worship for other religions. Two mosques, Bait Ul Mamur Inc. Masjid and Masjid Zakariya, used to be Saint Joachim’s Roman Catholic Church and Holy Mother of Rosary Polish National Catholic Church, respectively.
And two other formerly vacant churches that the Catholic diocese was struggling to sell were eventually sold. One, Queen of Peace Roman Catholic Church, was converted into a mosque, Jami Masjid. Another, Saint Agnes Roman Catholic Church, became a temple, the International Sangha Bhiksu Buddhist Association.
For my study, I interviewed those involved in the conversion of these two Catholic churches to learn more about how they were successfully adapted.
In Islam, for example, there’s a wariness about idolatry. So those involved with Jami Masjid removed the stained glass windows, statuary and iconography, along with the pews, Stations of the Cross and the altar. Volunteers painted over the ecclesiastical murals by local artist Josef Mazur and carpeted the entire floor so worshipers could pray on the floor, per Islamic custom.
The structural elements of the church, however, all remained the same – including the wooden trusses, doors and the adjoining buildings.
Today, the mosque offers camps for children and runs a school on the premises. The neighborhood residents – not all of whom are Muslim – have been largely appreciative of the new facility, especially the new playground on the premises.
The Buddhist temple, on the other hand, made very little changes to the interior, aside from removing the Stations of the Cross and the altar. The priest, Bhiksu Thich Minh Chanh, replaced the statuary with large Buddha statues. But the pews are still there, save for a few rows in front that were removed and carpeted for prayer services.
The neighbors in the immediate vicinity – some of whom had attended services at St. Agnes – told us that they were sad that their church was gone. But most were happy that, at the very least, it continued to be used as a place of worship, as opposed to lying vacant, or worse, being demolished. Even with the neighborhood’s support, the temple has been vandalized several times; clearly, not everyone is happy with the conversion.
Other cities, like Cincinnati and Detroit, are also grappling with the issue of empty and underused churches. Each, like Buffalo, has growing immigrant populations.
Buffalo has shown how faith-to-faith church conversions can be a win-win situation for everyone involved: The diocese gets to sell a redundant property, immigrants can acquire a property that will strengthen their community, and the city builds its tax base by attracting new residents to the area.
Trump’s megachurch pastor goes off on Jewish Democrats: ‘I will curse those who curse you’
August 23, 2019
By Tana Ganeva - Raw Story
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump accused Jews who vote for Democrats of being disloyal to Israel. The president’s comments conjured the anti-Semitic trope of Jewish dual loyalty. Ironically, the president has falsely claimed that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is an anti-Semite.
Texas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress is one of Trump’s closest spiritual advisors. The pastor doubled down on the president’s comments in an appearance on Fox News radio show, Patheos reports.
“And the question he (Trump) is raising about how can American Jews support Democrats who support people like [Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib], despicable representatives of our country who are antisemitic to the core, how can Jewish Americans support that?” he said.
“It makes no sense for those Jewish Americans not to support a president and a party that stands for Israel like Donald J. Trump does…” he added.
Jeffress also slammed Bernie Sanders for pushing back on Trump’s comments. “I am a proud Jewish person, and I have no concerns about voting Democratic,” Sanders said. “And in fact, I intend to vote for a Jewish man to become the next president of the United States.”
“… I mean it’s obvious Bernie Sanders is completely illiterate when it comes to what the Old Testament teaches about Israel,” Jeffress said.
For context, Jeffress quoted the part of the Old Testament about multi-generational curses.
“You know, God said to Abraham in Genesis 12, “I will bless those who bless you and your descendants and I will curse those who curse you and your descendants,” he said.
Texas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress is one of Trump’s closest spiritual advisors. The pastor doubled down on the president’s comments in an appearance on Fox News radio show, Patheos reports.
“And the question he (Trump) is raising about how can American Jews support Democrats who support people like [Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib], despicable representatives of our country who are antisemitic to the core, how can Jewish Americans support that?” he said.
“It makes no sense for those Jewish Americans not to support a president and a party that stands for Israel like Donald J. Trump does…” he added.
Jeffress also slammed Bernie Sanders for pushing back on Trump’s comments. “I am a proud Jewish person, and I have no concerns about voting Democratic,” Sanders said. “And in fact, I intend to vote for a Jewish man to become the next president of the United States.”
“… I mean it’s obvious Bernie Sanders is completely illiterate when it comes to what the Old Testament teaches about Israel,” Jeffress said.
For context, Jeffress quoted the part of the Old Testament about multi-generational curses.
“You know, God said to Abraham in Genesis 12, “I will bless those who bless you and your descendants and I will curse those who curse you and your descendants,” he said.
Religion for suckers!!!
A wealthy televangelist explains his fleet of private jets: ‘It’s a biblical thing’
Michael Brice-Saddler - Washington Post
6/3/19
In the waning days of 2015, renowned televangelist Kenneth Copeland laid out exactly why he needs a luxury private jet to do his job: you can’t “talk to God” while riding commercial
Criticized at the time for his use of extravagant planes, Copeland argued travel for his work would be difficult, nay, impossible without them. The Texas-based preacher invoked his mentor, prosperity gospel preacher Oral Roberts, who Copeland said faced unsolicited requests for prayer when he flew on public airliners, “agitating his spirit.”
“You can’t manage that today, in this dope-filled world, get in a long tube with a bunch of demons,” Copeland told fellow televangelist Jesse Duplantis, who’s faced similar backlash for asking his followers to bankroll a $54 million jet. “And it’s deadly.”
Copeland’s defense, viewed by millions and widely mocked at the time, did little to help his case. Many figured the “demons” he spoke of were the same people he was asking for donations. The preacher was asked to clarify his remarks last month by “Inside Edition” reporter Lisa Guerrero, and the exchange has recently gone viral, reigniting conversations about televangelists and the tax-exempt status of churches.
Captured on video confronting Copeland as he got into a car, Guerrero pressed him repeatedly on his 2015 comments, at one point asking: “Do you really believe that humans are demons?”
“No I do not, and don’t you ever say I did,” Copeland responded, visibly perturbed. He added, “It’s a biblical thing, it’s a spiritual thing, it doesn’t have anything to do with people. People? I love people. Jesus loves people. But people get pushed in alcohol. Do you think that’s a good place for a preacher to be and prepare to preach?”
The questioning centered around Copeland’s Gulfstream V jet, which he announced he’d purchased from Tyler Perry in Jan. 2018. Declining to state how much he spent on the aircraft, which is one of three in his possession, Copeland said Perry made the plane “so cheap for me I couldn’t help but buy it.” He again asserted the plane was necessary for his work, which has sent him to nearly every continent and allowed him to spread his message to thousands of people.
“If I flew commercial, I’d have to stop 65 percent of what I’m doing, that’s the main reason,” he said.
Copeland said he was a “very wealthy man” and acknowledged using the private jets to travel to his vacation homes. Guerrero asked how he would respond to those who say preachers shouldn’t live so luxuriously.
“They’re wrong,” he replied “It’s a misunderstanding of the bible that … if you go into the old covenant, do you think the Jewish people believe you should be broke?”
Guerrero follows up: “Are you saying that Jewish people appreciate money more?”
“They believe in wealth,” Copeland said.
“Some people would find that offensive,” Guerrero responds.
“Wait a minute now, I’m not talking about some people,” Copeland explains, before mentioning the Abrahamic Blessing. “I’m talking about the bible.”
In his various responses, Copeland draws passages from the books of Ephesians and Galatians. He again cites Oral Roberts, who Copeland says “took the same heat for believing God would prosper you.”
Like many televangelists, Copeland preaches the “prosperity gospel,” which stems from the belief that faith, often in the form of donations to their preachers and ministries, will garner riches down the line. HBO’s John Oliver spoke at length on televangelism, or as he put it, “churches who exploit people’s faith for monetary gain,” in a 2015 episode of “Last Week Tonight.”
The host illustrated an unmistakable pattern of these television preachers purchasing — or asking for donations to buy — extravagant, high-end jets.
Among the examples were televangelist Creflo Dollar, who was ridiculed in 2015 for asking his followers to raise $65 million for a Gulfstream G650. As The Post’s Abby Ohleiser wrote at the time, Dollar said he “needs one of the most luxurious private jets today in order to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
During the segment, Oliver also played a clip of Mike Murdock, a televangelist who once bragged to his congregation about buying two Cessna Citation jets; in cash, no less.
“And since there’s so much jealousy in this room tonight that I can feel over this, a few weeks later I brought myself another one worth three times what that one was.” Murdock said. He paused before appealing to the crowd: “Act happy over my blessing, folks.”
Then there’s the aforementioned Jesse Duplantis, who asked his congregation for $54 million to buy a Falcon 7X jet last year. The Post’s Cleve Wootson reported it would have been the fourth plane added to Duplantis’s fleet — all paid for by his loyal congregation. These preachers claim the jets are essential for their jobs, and Copeland is no different.
Texas-based Kenneth Copeland Ministries could not be reached for comment Monday. Ablog post on their website titled “Glory to God! It’s Ours! The Gulfstream V is in our hands!” shows the preacher standing next to his sleek new plane in a bomber jacket. He thanked donors but wrote there was more work to be done: the jet required $2.5 million in upgrades as well as a new hangar, runway renovations and “special GV maintenance equipment."
“The Copelands, the KCM staff, the leadership team and I are pressing for your harvest and our harvest as a team,” the post reads. “Let’s be aggressive in our faith, in our giving and in our harvesting!”
Speaking with Copeland last month, Guerrero mentioned that both of her grandfathers were poor preachers who were “extremely offended” by those who made lots of money preaching.
Copeland said he loved Guerroro’s grandfathers, and indicated he was “standing on their shoulders.”
“But when you go back to the bible, it’s full of wealth,” he said. “And it’s full of miracles and signs and wonders, and it’s full of goodness, and it’s full of meanness. It’s full of hell on earth. Those are the demons, not the people. I love the people.”
Criticized at the time for his use of extravagant planes, Copeland argued travel for his work would be difficult, nay, impossible without them. The Texas-based preacher invoked his mentor, prosperity gospel preacher Oral Roberts, who Copeland said faced unsolicited requests for prayer when he flew on public airliners, “agitating his spirit.”
“You can’t manage that today, in this dope-filled world, get in a long tube with a bunch of demons,” Copeland told fellow televangelist Jesse Duplantis, who’s faced similar backlash for asking his followers to bankroll a $54 million jet. “And it’s deadly.”
Copeland’s defense, viewed by millions and widely mocked at the time, did little to help his case. Many figured the “demons” he spoke of were the same people he was asking for donations. The preacher was asked to clarify his remarks last month by “Inside Edition” reporter Lisa Guerrero, and the exchange has recently gone viral, reigniting conversations about televangelists and the tax-exempt status of churches.
Captured on video confronting Copeland as he got into a car, Guerrero pressed him repeatedly on his 2015 comments, at one point asking: “Do you really believe that humans are demons?”
“No I do not, and don’t you ever say I did,” Copeland responded, visibly perturbed. He added, “It’s a biblical thing, it’s a spiritual thing, it doesn’t have anything to do with people. People? I love people. Jesus loves people. But people get pushed in alcohol. Do you think that’s a good place for a preacher to be and prepare to preach?”
The questioning centered around Copeland’s Gulfstream V jet, which he announced he’d purchased from Tyler Perry in Jan. 2018. Declining to state how much he spent on the aircraft, which is one of three in his possession, Copeland said Perry made the plane “so cheap for me I couldn’t help but buy it.” He again asserted the plane was necessary for his work, which has sent him to nearly every continent and allowed him to spread his message to thousands of people.
“If I flew commercial, I’d have to stop 65 percent of what I’m doing, that’s the main reason,” he said.
Copeland said he was a “very wealthy man” and acknowledged using the private jets to travel to his vacation homes. Guerrero asked how he would respond to those who say preachers shouldn’t live so luxuriously.
“They’re wrong,” he replied “It’s a misunderstanding of the bible that … if you go into the old covenant, do you think the Jewish people believe you should be broke?”
Guerrero follows up: “Are you saying that Jewish people appreciate money more?”
“They believe in wealth,” Copeland said.
“Some people would find that offensive,” Guerrero responds.
“Wait a minute now, I’m not talking about some people,” Copeland explains, before mentioning the Abrahamic Blessing. “I’m talking about the bible.”
In his various responses, Copeland draws passages from the books of Ephesians and Galatians. He again cites Oral Roberts, who Copeland says “took the same heat for believing God would prosper you.”
Like many televangelists, Copeland preaches the “prosperity gospel,” which stems from the belief that faith, often in the form of donations to their preachers and ministries, will garner riches down the line. HBO’s John Oliver spoke at length on televangelism, or as he put it, “churches who exploit people’s faith for monetary gain,” in a 2015 episode of “Last Week Tonight.”
The host illustrated an unmistakable pattern of these television preachers purchasing — or asking for donations to buy — extravagant, high-end jets.
Among the examples were televangelist Creflo Dollar, who was ridiculed in 2015 for asking his followers to raise $65 million for a Gulfstream G650. As The Post’s Abby Ohleiser wrote at the time, Dollar said he “needs one of the most luxurious private jets today in order to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
During the segment, Oliver also played a clip of Mike Murdock, a televangelist who once bragged to his congregation about buying two Cessna Citation jets; in cash, no less.
“And since there’s so much jealousy in this room tonight that I can feel over this, a few weeks later I brought myself another one worth three times what that one was.” Murdock said. He paused before appealing to the crowd: “Act happy over my blessing, folks.”
Then there’s the aforementioned Jesse Duplantis, who asked his congregation for $54 million to buy a Falcon 7X jet last year. The Post’s Cleve Wootson reported it would have been the fourth plane added to Duplantis’s fleet — all paid for by his loyal congregation. These preachers claim the jets are essential for their jobs, and Copeland is no different.
Texas-based Kenneth Copeland Ministries could not be reached for comment Monday. Ablog post on their website titled “Glory to God! It’s Ours! The Gulfstream V is in our hands!” shows the preacher standing next to his sleek new plane in a bomber jacket. He thanked donors but wrote there was more work to be done: the jet required $2.5 million in upgrades as well as a new hangar, runway renovations and “special GV maintenance equipment."
“The Copelands, the KCM staff, the leadership team and I are pressing for your harvest and our harvest as a team,” the post reads. “Let’s be aggressive in our faith, in our giving and in our harvesting!”
Speaking with Copeland last month, Guerrero mentioned that both of her grandfathers were poor preachers who were “extremely offended” by those who made lots of money preaching.
Copeland said he loved Guerroro’s grandfathers, and indicated he was “standing on their shoulders.”
“But when you go back to the bible, it’s full of wealth,” he said. “And it’s full of miracles and signs and wonders, and it’s full of goodness, and it’s full of meanness. It’s full of hell on earth. Those are the demons, not the people. I love the people.”
Florida pastor refuses to give up millions of dollars stolen in a Ponzi scheme — calling it ‘God’s blessings’
By Tana Ganeva - raw story
May 24, 2019
The American prosperity gospel is a uniquely capitalist interpretation of the teachings of traditional Christianity, which emphasize humility and service to the needy. In contrast, many U.S. evangelicals ascribe to the idea that great wealth is a sign of God’s favor.
This philosophy has allowed Megachurch pastors to amass millions and lead lavish lifestyles, seeing no contradiction between their actions and the lessons of Jesus.
A pastor in Florida is stretching it even further, refusing to give up $1.7 million to the victims of a Ponzi scheme, calling the money “God’s blessings,” the Friendly Atheist reports.
“A federal judge has temporarily frozen the accounts of Winners Church and its top pastors, Fred and Whitney Shipman. In an unusual move, the father and son leaders of the 25-year-old Jog Road church are fighting efforts that would allow the money to be returned to hundreds of people who were lured into a far-flung diamond and bitcoin investment scam.”
“It’s going to have a ripple effect in everything we do from this point on,” Bishop Fred Shipman told U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg, according to the Palm Beach Post. He added that it’s not fair for him to have to return money stolen by one of the church’s directors who was involved in the scheme. “I don’t think it’s fair.”
This philosophy has allowed Megachurch pastors to amass millions and lead lavish lifestyles, seeing no contradiction between their actions and the lessons of Jesus.
A pastor in Florida is stretching it even further, refusing to give up $1.7 million to the victims of a Ponzi scheme, calling the money “God’s blessings,” the Friendly Atheist reports.
“A federal judge has temporarily frozen the accounts of Winners Church and its top pastors, Fred and Whitney Shipman. In an unusual move, the father and son leaders of the 25-year-old Jog Road church are fighting efforts that would allow the money to be returned to hundreds of people who were lured into a far-flung diamond and bitcoin investment scam.”
“It’s going to have a ripple effect in everything we do from this point on,” Bishop Fred Shipman told U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg, according to the Palm Beach Post. He added that it’s not fair for him to have to return money stolen by one of the church’s directors who was involved in the scheme. “I don’t think it’s fair.”
The evidence that Jesus ever existed is weaker than you might think
VALERIE TARICO - COMMENTARY - raw story
17 APR 2019 AT 00:46 ET
Before the European Enlightenment, virtually all New Testament experts assumed that handed-down stories about Jesus were first recorded by eye witnesses and were largely biographical. That is no longer the case.
Assuming that the Jesus stories had their beginnings in one single person rather than a composite of several—or even in mythology itself—he probably was a wandering Jewish teacher in Roman-occupied Judea who offended the authorities and was executed. Beyond that, any knowledge about the figure at the center of the Christian religion is remarkably open to debate (and vigorously debated among relevant scholars).
Where was Jesus born? Did he actually have twelve disciples? Do we know with certainty anything he said or did?
As antiquities scholarship improves, it becomes increasingly clear that the origins of Christianity are controversial, convoluted, and not very coherent.
1. The more we know the less we know for sure. After centuries in which the gospel stories about Jesus were taken as gospel truth, the Enlightenment gave birth to a new breed of biblical historians. Most people have heard that Thomas Jefferson secretly took a pair of scissors to the Bible, keeping only the parts he thought were historical. His version of the New Testament is still available today. Jefferson’s snipping was a crude early attempt to address a problem recognized by many educated men of his time: It had become clear that any histories the Bible might contain had been garbled by myth. (One might argue that the Protestant Reformation’s rejection of the books of the Bible that they called “apocrypha,” was an even earlier, even cruder attempt to purge the Good Book of obvious mythology.)
In the two centuries that have passed since Jefferson began clipping, scores of biblical historians—including modern scholars armed with the tools of archeology, anthropology and linguistics—have tried repeatedly to identify “the historical Jesus” and have failed. The more scholars study the roots of Christianity, the more confused and uncertain our knowledge becomes. Currently, we have a plethora of contradictory versions of Jesus—an itinerant preacher, a zealot, an apocalyptic prophet, an Essene heretic, a Roman sympathizer, and many more —each with a different scholar to confidently tout theirs as the only real one. Instead of a convergent view of early Christianity and its founder, we are faced instead with a cacophony of conflicting opinions. This is precisely what happens when people faced with ambiguous and contradictory information cannot bring themselves to say, we don’t know.
This scholastic mess has been an open secret in biblical history circles for decades. Over forty years ago, professors like Robin S. Barbour and Cambridge’s Morna Hooker were complaining about the naïve assumptions underlying the criteria biblical scholars used to gauge the “authentic” elements of the Jesus stories. Today, even Christian historians complain the problem is no better; most recently Anthony Le Donne and Chris Keith in the 2012 book Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity.
2. The Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses. Every bit of our ostensibly biographical information for Jesus comes from just four texts – the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Though most Christians assume that associates of Jesus wrote these texts, no objective biblical scholars think so. None of the four gospels claims to be written by eyewitnesses, and all were originally anonymous. Only later were they attributed to men named in the stories themselves.
While the four gospels were traditionally held to be four independent accounts, textual analysis suggests that they all actually are adaptations of the earliest gospel, Mark. Each has been edited and expanded upon, repeatedly, by unknown editors. It is worth noting that Mark features the most fallible, human, no-frills Jesus—and, more importantly, may be an allegory.
All of the gospels contain anachronisms and errors that show they were written long after the events they describe, and most likely far from the setting of their stories. Even more troubling, they don’t just have minor nitpicky contradictions; they have basic, even crucial, contradictions.
3. The Gospels are not corroborated by outside historians. Despite generations of apologists insisting Jesus is vouched for by plenty of historical sources like Tacitus or Suetonius, none of these hold up to close inspection. The most commonly-cited of these is the Testimonium Flavianum, a disputed passage in the writings of ancient historian Flavius Josephus, written around the years 93/94, generations after the presumed time of Jesus. Today historians overwhelmingly recognize this odd Jesus passage is a forgery. (For one thing, no one but the suspected forger ever quotes it – for 500 years!) But defenders of Christianity are loath to give it up, and supporters now argue it is only a partial forgery.
Either way, as New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman points out, the Testimonium Flavaniummerely repeats common Christian beliefs of the late first century, and even if it were 100% genuine would provide no evidence about where those beliefs came from. This same applies to other secular references to Jesus–they definitely attest to the existence of Christians and recount Christian beliefs at the time, but offer no independent record of a historical Jesus.
In sum, while well-established historic figures like Alexander the Great are supported by multiple lines of evidence, in the case of Jesus we have only one line of evidence: the writings of believers involved in spreading the fledgling religion.
4. Early Christian scriptures weren’t the same as ours. At the time Christianity emerged, gospels were a common religious literary genre, each promoting a different version or set of sacred stories. For example, as legends of Jesus sprang up, they began to include “infancy gospels.” As historian Robert M. Price notes, just as Superman comics spun off into stories of young Superboy in Smallville, Christians wrote stories of young Jesus in Nazareth using his divine powers to bring clay birds to life or peevishly strike his playmates dead.
Early Christians didn’t agree on which texts were sacred, and those included in our New Testament were selected to elevate one competing form of Christianity, that of the Roman Church over others. (Note that the Roman Church also proclaimed itself “catholic” meaning universal.)
Our two oldest complete New Testament collections, Codex Siniaticus and Codex Vaticanus only go back to the beginning of the fourth century. To make matters worse, their books differ from each other – and from our bibles. We have books they don’t have; they have books we don’t have, like the Shepherd of Hermas and the Gospel of Barnabas.
In addition to gospels, the New Testament includes another religious literary genre—the epistle or letter. Some of our familiar New Testament epistles like 1 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude were rejected as forgeries even in ancient times; today scholars identify almost all of the New Testament books as forgeries except for six attributed to Paul (and even his authentic letters have been re-edited).
5. Christian martyrs are not proof (if they even were real). Generations of Christian apologists have pointed to the existence of Christian martyrs as proof their religion is true, asking “Who would die for a lie?” The short answer, of course, that all too many true believers have died in the service of falsehoods they passionately believed to be true—and not just Christians. The obvious existence of Muslim jihadis has made this argument less common in recent years
But who says that the Christian stories of widespread martyrdom themselves were real? The Book of Acts records only two martyr accounts, and secular scholars doubt that the book contains much if any actual history. The remaining Christian martyr tales first appeared centuries later. Historian Candida Moss’ 2014 book The Myth of Persecution gives a revealing look at how early Christian fathers fabricated virtually the entire tradition of Christian martyrdom—a fact that was, ironically enough, largely uncovered and debunked by later Christian scholars.
6. No other way to explain the existence of Christianity? Most people, Christians and outsiders alike, find it difficult to imagine how Christianity could have arisen if our Bible stories aren’t true. Beyond a doubt, Christianity could not have arisen if people in the first century hadn’t believed them to be true. But the stories themselves?
Best-selling New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman believes that the biblical stories about Jesus had their kernel in the person of a single itinerant preacher, as do most New Testament scholars. Historian Richard Carrier and David Fitzgerald (co-author of this article) take an opposing position—that the original kernel was a set of ancient mythic tropes to which unsuspecting believers added historical details. Ehrman and Carrier may be on opposite sides of this debate, but both agree on one important fact: the only thing needed to explain the rise of Christianity is the belief fostered by the rival Christian preachers of the first century.
Witchcraft, bigfoot, the idea that an American president was born in Kenya, golden tablets revealed to a 19th century huckster by the Angel Moroni . . . we all know that false ideas can be sticky—that they can spread from person to person, getting elaborated along the way until they become virtually impossible to eradicate. The beginnings of Christianity may be shrouded in mystery, but the viral spread of passionately-held false ideas is becoming better understood by the year.
Keeping Options Open
University of Sheffield’s Philip Davies—who believes that Christianity probably began with a single Jesus, acknowledges that the evidence is fragile and problematic. Davies argues that the only way the field of New Testament studies can maintain any academic respectability is by acknowledging the possibility that Jesus didn’t exist. He further notes this wouldn’t generate any controversy in most fields of ancient history, but that New Testament studies is not a normal case.
Brandon University’s Kurt Noll goes even further and lays out a case that the question doesn’t matter: Whether the original Jesus was real or mythological is irrelevant to the religion that was founded in his name.
That is because either way, the Christ at the heart of Christianity is a figure woven from the fabric of mythology. The stories that bear his name draw on ancient templates imbedded in the Hebrew religion and those of the surrounding region. They were handed down by word of mouth in a cultural context filled with magical beings and miracles. Demons caused epilepsy. Burnt offerings made it rain. Medical cures included mandrakes and dove blood. Angels and ghosts appeared to people in dreams. Gods and other supernatural beings abounded and not infrequently crossed over from their world to ours.
Who, in the midst of all of this, was Jesus? We may never know.
Assuming that the Jesus stories had their beginnings in one single person rather than a composite of several—or even in mythology itself—he probably was a wandering Jewish teacher in Roman-occupied Judea who offended the authorities and was executed. Beyond that, any knowledge about the figure at the center of the Christian religion is remarkably open to debate (and vigorously debated among relevant scholars).
Where was Jesus born? Did he actually have twelve disciples? Do we know with certainty anything he said or did?
As antiquities scholarship improves, it becomes increasingly clear that the origins of Christianity are controversial, convoluted, and not very coherent.
1. The more we know the less we know for sure. After centuries in which the gospel stories about Jesus were taken as gospel truth, the Enlightenment gave birth to a new breed of biblical historians. Most people have heard that Thomas Jefferson secretly took a pair of scissors to the Bible, keeping only the parts he thought were historical. His version of the New Testament is still available today. Jefferson’s snipping was a crude early attempt to address a problem recognized by many educated men of his time: It had become clear that any histories the Bible might contain had been garbled by myth. (One might argue that the Protestant Reformation’s rejection of the books of the Bible that they called “apocrypha,” was an even earlier, even cruder attempt to purge the Good Book of obvious mythology.)
In the two centuries that have passed since Jefferson began clipping, scores of biblical historians—including modern scholars armed with the tools of archeology, anthropology and linguistics—have tried repeatedly to identify “the historical Jesus” and have failed. The more scholars study the roots of Christianity, the more confused and uncertain our knowledge becomes. Currently, we have a plethora of contradictory versions of Jesus—an itinerant preacher, a zealot, an apocalyptic prophet, an Essene heretic, a Roman sympathizer, and many more —each with a different scholar to confidently tout theirs as the only real one. Instead of a convergent view of early Christianity and its founder, we are faced instead with a cacophony of conflicting opinions. This is precisely what happens when people faced with ambiguous and contradictory information cannot bring themselves to say, we don’t know.
This scholastic mess has been an open secret in biblical history circles for decades. Over forty years ago, professors like Robin S. Barbour and Cambridge’s Morna Hooker were complaining about the naïve assumptions underlying the criteria biblical scholars used to gauge the “authentic” elements of the Jesus stories. Today, even Christian historians complain the problem is no better; most recently Anthony Le Donne and Chris Keith in the 2012 book Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity.
2. The Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses. Every bit of our ostensibly biographical information for Jesus comes from just four texts – the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Though most Christians assume that associates of Jesus wrote these texts, no objective biblical scholars think so. None of the four gospels claims to be written by eyewitnesses, and all were originally anonymous. Only later were they attributed to men named in the stories themselves.
While the four gospels were traditionally held to be four independent accounts, textual analysis suggests that they all actually are adaptations of the earliest gospel, Mark. Each has been edited and expanded upon, repeatedly, by unknown editors. It is worth noting that Mark features the most fallible, human, no-frills Jesus—and, more importantly, may be an allegory.
All of the gospels contain anachronisms and errors that show they were written long after the events they describe, and most likely far from the setting of their stories. Even more troubling, they don’t just have minor nitpicky contradictions; they have basic, even crucial, contradictions.
3. The Gospels are not corroborated by outside historians. Despite generations of apologists insisting Jesus is vouched for by plenty of historical sources like Tacitus or Suetonius, none of these hold up to close inspection. The most commonly-cited of these is the Testimonium Flavianum, a disputed passage in the writings of ancient historian Flavius Josephus, written around the years 93/94, generations after the presumed time of Jesus. Today historians overwhelmingly recognize this odd Jesus passage is a forgery. (For one thing, no one but the suspected forger ever quotes it – for 500 years!) But defenders of Christianity are loath to give it up, and supporters now argue it is only a partial forgery.
Either way, as New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman points out, the Testimonium Flavaniummerely repeats common Christian beliefs of the late first century, and even if it were 100% genuine would provide no evidence about where those beliefs came from. This same applies to other secular references to Jesus–they definitely attest to the existence of Christians and recount Christian beliefs at the time, but offer no independent record of a historical Jesus.
In sum, while well-established historic figures like Alexander the Great are supported by multiple lines of evidence, in the case of Jesus we have only one line of evidence: the writings of believers involved in spreading the fledgling religion.
4. Early Christian scriptures weren’t the same as ours. At the time Christianity emerged, gospels were a common religious literary genre, each promoting a different version or set of sacred stories. For example, as legends of Jesus sprang up, they began to include “infancy gospels.” As historian Robert M. Price notes, just as Superman comics spun off into stories of young Superboy in Smallville, Christians wrote stories of young Jesus in Nazareth using his divine powers to bring clay birds to life or peevishly strike his playmates dead.
Early Christians didn’t agree on which texts were sacred, and those included in our New Testament were selected to elevate one competing form of Christianity, that of the Roman Church over others. (Note that the Roman Church also proclaimed itself “catholic” meaning universal.)
Our two oldest complete New Testament collections, Codex Siniaticus and Codex Vaticanus only go back to the beginning of the fourth century. To make matters worse, their books differ from each other – and from our bibles. We have books they don’t have; they have books we don’t have, like the Shepherd of Hermas and the Gospel of Barnabas.
In addition to gospels, the New Testament includes another religious literary genre—the epistle or letter. Some of our familiar New Testament epistles like 1 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude were rejected as forgeries even in ancient times; today scholars identify almost all of the New Testament books as forgeries except for six attributed to Paul (and even his authentic letters have been re-edited).
5. Christian martyrs are not proof (if they even were real). Generations of Christian apologists have pointed to the existence of Christian martyrs as proof their religion is true, asking “Who would die for a lie?” The short answer, of course, that all too many true believers have died in the service of falsehoods they passionately believed to be true—and not just Christians. The obvious existence of Muslim jihadis has made this argument less common in recent years
But who says that the Christian stories of widespread martyrdom themselves were real? The Book of Acts records only two martyr accounts, and secular scholars doubt that the book contains much if any actual history. The remaining Christian martyr tales first appeared centuries later. Historian Candida Moss’ 2014 book The Myth of Persecution gives a revealing look at how early Christian fathers fabricated virtually the entire tradition of Christian martyrdom—a fact that was, ironically enough, largely uncovered and debunked by later Christian scholars.
6. No other way to explain the existence of Christianity? Most people, Christians and outsiders alike, find it difficult to imagine how Christianity could have arisen if our Bible stories aren’t true. Beyond a doubt, Christianity could not have arisen if people in the first century hadn’t believed them to be true. But the stories themselves?
Best-selling New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman believes that the biblical stories about Jesus had their kernel in the person of a single itinerant preacher, as do most New Testament scholars. Historian Richard Carrier and David Fitzgerald (co-author of this article) take an opposing position—that the original kernel was a set of ancient mythic tropes to which unsuspecting believers added historical details. Ehrman and Carrier may be on opposite sides of this debate, but both agree on one important fact: the only thing needed to explain the rise of Christianity is the belief fostered by the rival Christian preachers of the first century.
Witchcraft, bigfoot, the idea that an American president was born in Kenya, golden tablets revealed to a 19th century huckster by the Angel Moroni . . . we all know that false ideas can be sticky—that they can spread from person to person, getting elaborated along the way until they become virtually impossible to eradicate. The beginnings of Christianity may be shrouded in mystery, but the viral spread of passionately-held false ideas is becoming better understood by the year.
Keeping Options Open
University of Sheffield’s Philip Davies—who believes that Christianity probably began with a single Jesus, acknowledges that the evidence is fragile and problematic. Davies argues that the only way the field of New Testament studies can maintain any academic respectability is by acknowledging the possibility that Jesus didn’t exist. He further notes this wouldn’t generate any controversy in most fields of ancient history, but that New Testament studies is not a normal case.
Brandon University’s Kurt Noll goes even further and lays out a case that the question doesn’t matter: Whether the original Jesus was real or mythological is irrelevant to the religion that was founded in his name.
That is because either way, the Christ at the heart of Christianity is a figure woven from the fabric of mythology. The stories that bear his name draw on ancient templates imbedded in the Hebrew religion and those of the surrounding region. They were handed down by word of mouth in a cultural context filled with magical beings and miracles. Demons caused epilepsy. Burnt offerings made it rain. Medical cures included mandrakes and dove blood. Angels and ghosts appeared to people in dreams. Gods and other supernatural beings abounded and not infrequently crossed over from their world to ours.
Who, in the midst of all of this, was Jesus? We may never know.
in other words, insanity!!!
Scientists have established a link between religious fundamentalism and brain damage
Bobby Azarian, Raw Story - raw story
16 APR 2019 AT 13:59 ET
A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.
Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.
Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.
Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.
To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.
Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.
Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.
According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.
The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.
These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.
The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.
By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.
Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.
Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.
Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.
To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.
Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.
Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.
According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.
The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.
These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.
The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.
By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.
Atheism has been part of many Asian traditions for a millennia
by The Conversation - alternet
April 6, 2019
A group of atheists and secularists recently gathered in Southern California to talk about social and political issues. This was the first of three summits planned by the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group based in Washington D.C.
To many, atheism – the lack of belief in a personal god or gods – may appear an entirely modern concept. After all, it would seem that it is religious traditions that have dominated the world since the beginning of recorded history.
As a scholar of Asian religions, however, I’m often struck by the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism – the view that it is impossible to know whether a god exists – in ancient Asian texts. Atheistic traditions have played a significant part in Asian cultures for millennia.
Atheism in Buddhism, Jainism
While Buddhism is a tradition focused on spiritual liberation, it is not a theistic religion.
The Buddha himself rejected the idea of a creator god, and Buddhist philosophers have even argued that belief in an eternal god is nothing but a distraction for humans seeking enlightenment.
While Buddhism does not argue that gods don’t exist, gods are seen as completely irrelevant to those who strive for enlightenment.
A similar form of functional atheism can also be found in the ancient Asian religion of Jainism, a tradition that emphasizes non-violence toward all living beings, non-attachment to worldly possessions and ascetic practice. While Jains believe in an eternal soul or jiva, that can be reborn, they do not believe in a divine creator.
According to Jainism, the universe is eternal, and while gods may exist, they too must be reborn, just like humans are. The gods play no role in spiritual liberation and enlightenment; humans must find their own path to enlightenment with the help of wise human teachers.
Other atheistic philosophies
Around the same time when Buddhism and Jainism arose in the sixth century B.C., there was also an explicitly atheist school of thought in India called the Carvaka school. Although none of their original texts have survived, Buddhist and Hindu authors describe the Carvakas as firm atheists who believed that nothing existed beyond the material world.
To the Carvakas, there was no life after death, no soul apart from the body, no gods and no world other than this one.
Another school of thought, Ajivika, which flourished around the same time, similarly argued that gods didn’t exist, although its followers did believe in a soul and in rebirth.
The Ajivikas claimed that the fate of the soul was determined by fate alone, and not by a god, or even by free will. The Ajivikas taught that everything was made up of atoms, but that these atoms were moving and combining with each other in predestined ways.
Like the Carvaka school, the Ajivika school is today only known from texts composed by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It is therefore difficult to determine exactly what the Ajivikas themselves thought.
According to Buddhist texts, the Ajivikas argued that there was no distinction between good and evil and there was no such thing as sin. The school may have existed around the same time as early Buddhism, in the fifth century B.C.
Atheism in Hinduism
While the Hindu tradition of India embraces the belief in many gods and goddesses – 330 million of them, according to some sources – there are also atheistic strands of thought found within Hinduism.
The Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy is one such example. It believes that humans can achieve liberation for themselves by freeing their own spirit from the realm of matter.
Another example is the Mimamsa school. This school also rejects the idea of a creator God. The Mimamsa philosopher Kumarila said that if a god had created the world by himself in the beginning, how could anyone else possibly confirm it? Kumarila further argued that if a merciful god had created the world, it could not have been as full of suffering as it is.
According to the 2011 census, there were approximately 2.9 million atheists in India. Atheism is still a significant cultural force in India, as well as in other Asian countries influenced by Indian religions.The Conversation
To many, atheism – the lack of belief in a personal god or gods – may appear an entirely modern concept. After all, it would seem that it is religious traditions that have dominated the world since the beginning of recorded history.
As a scholar of Asian religions, however, I’m often struck by the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism – the view that it is impossible to know whether a god exists – in ancient Asian texts. Atheistic traditions have played a significant part in Asian cultures for millennia.
Atheism in Buddhism, Jainism
While Buddhism is a tradition focused on spiritual liberation, it is not a theistic religion.
The Buddha himself rejected the idea of a creator god, and Buddhist philosophers have even argued that belief in an eternal god is nothing but a distraction for humans seeking enlightenment.
While Buddhism does not argue that gods don’t exist, gods are seen as completely irrelevant to those who strive for enlightenment.
A similar form of functional atheism can also be found in the ancient Asian religion of Jainism, a tradition that emphasizes non-violence toward all living beings, non-attachment to worldly possessions and ascetic practice. While Jains believe in an eternal soul or jiva, that can be reborn, they do not believe in a divine creator.
According to Jainism, the universe is eternal, and while gods may exist, they too must be reborn, just like humans are. The gods play no role in spiritual liberation and enlightenment; humans must find their own path to enlightenment with the help of wise human teachers.
Other atheistic philosophies
Around the same time when Buddhism and Jainism arose in the sixth century B.C., there was also an explicitly atheist school of thought in India called the Carvaka school. Although none of their original texts have survived, Buddhist and Hindu authors describe the Carvakas as firm atheists who believed that nothing existed beyond the material world.
To the Carvakas, there was no life after death, no soul apart from the body, no gods and no world other than this one.
Another school of thought, Ajivika, which flourished around the same time, similarly argued that gods didn’t exist, although its followers did believe in a soul and in rebirth.
The Ajivikas claimed that the fate of the soul was determined by fate alone, and not by a god, or even by free will. The Ajivikas taught that everything was made up of atoms, but that these atoms were moving and combining with each other in predestined ways.
Like the Carvaka school, the Ajivika school is today only known from texts composed by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It is therefore difficult to determine exactly what the Ajivikas themselves thought.
According to Buddhist texts, the Ajivikas argued that there was no distinction between good and evil and there was no such thing as sin. The school may have existed around the same time as early Buddhism, in the fifth century B.C.
Atheism in Hinduism
While the Hindu tradition of India embraces the belief in many gods and goddesses – 330 million of them, according to some sources – there are also atheistic strands of thought found within Hinduism.
The Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy is one such example. It believes that humans can achieve liberation for themselves by freeing their own spirit from the realm of matter.
Another example is the Mimamsa school. This school also rejects the idea of a creator God. The Mimamsa philosopher Kumarila said that if a god had created the world by himself in the beginning, how could anyone else possibly confirm it? Kumarila further argued that if a merciful god had created the world, it could not have been as full of suffering as it is.
According to the 2011 census, there were approximately 2.9 million atheists in India. Atheism is still a significant cultural force in India, as well as in other Asian countries influenced by Indian religions.The Conversation
How Evangelical Christianity’s brand is all used up
VALERIE TARICO - COMMENTARY - raw story
24 MAR 2019 AT 09:51 ET
...How Brand Assets Get Depleted
In the business world, a corporation sometimes buys or licenses a premium brand in order to either upgrade their own brand desirability or to sell a lower quality product. Coca-Cola acquired Odwalla for example. Dean Foods acquired Silk soy milk. Target and Walmart license various designer labels for their made-in-China housewares and clothes. Donald Trump sells his name to real estate developers who use it to set an expectation of quality.
Once a premium brand or label is acquired, the parent company often uses the premium label to sell an inferior product. Alternately, if they acquired the whole company rather than just the name, they may gradually change the product, ratcheting down input costs (and quality) to the point that the premium brand becomes just another commodity. The profit advantage comes from the fact that it takes people a while to notice and change their brand perceptions. Also, being creatures of habit, a person may stick with a familiar brand even though the quality of the product itself has changed. In this way, a corporation can draw down the value of a brand the way that a person might draw down a bank account.
Republican Acquisition of the Evangelical “Brand”
A generation ago, the Republican Party realized that Evangelical Christianity could be a valuable acquisition. “Evangelical” had righteous, “family values” brand associations, the unassailable name of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and the organizing infrastructure and social capital of Evangelical churches. Republican operatives courted Evangelical leaders and promised them power and money—the power to turn back the clock on equal rights for women and queers, and the glitter of government subsidies for church enterprises including religious education, real estate speculation, and marketing campaigns that pair social services with evangelism.
As in any story about selling your soul, Evangelical leaders largely got what they bargained for, but at a price that only the devil fully understood in advance. Internally, Evangelical communities can be wonderfully kind, generous and mutually supportive. But today, few people other than Evangelical Christians themselves associate the term “Evangelical” with words like generous and kind. In fact, a secular person is likely to see a kind, generous Evangelical neighbor as a decent person in spite of their Christian beliefs, not because of them.
The Evangelical brand is so depleted and tainted at this point that Russell Moore, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention recently said that he will no longer call himself an “Evangelical Christian,” thanks—he implied—to association between Evangelicals and Trump. Instead he is using the term “Gospel Christian”—at least till the 2016 election is over. While Trump has received endorsements from Evangelical icons including Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Pat Robertson, other Evangelical leaders (e.g. here, here) have joined Moore in lamenting the deep and wide Evangelical attraction to Trump, which they say is antithetical to their values.
But how much, really, is the Trump brand antithetical to the Evangelical brand? Humanist commentator James Croft argues that Trump is what Evangelicalism, in the hands of the Religious Right, has become:
“The religious right in America has always been a political philosophy based on bullying, pandering, projecting strength to hide fear and weakness, and proud, aggressive ignorance. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Trump has merely distilled those elements into a decoction so deadly that even some evangelicals are starting to recognize the venom they have injected into American culture.”
Croft says that Pastors like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren use Jesus as a fig leaf “to drape over social views that would otherwise be revealed as nakedly evil.”
As a former Evangelical, I have to side with Croft: the Evangelical brand problem is much bigger than Trump and his candidacy or the morally-bankrupt priorities and theocratic aspirations of fellow Republican candidates Cruz and Rubio. Evangelicals may use the name of Jesus for cover, but even Jesus is too small a fig leaf to hide the fact outsiders looking at Evangelical Christianity see more prick than heart.
Here is what the Evangelical brand looks like from the outside:
Evangelical means obsessed with sex. Evangelicals are so desperate to fend off their own complicated sexual desires and self-loathing that they would rather watch queer teens commit suicide than deal with their homophobia. They abhor youth sexuality and female sexual pleasure to the point that they have driven an epidemic of teen pregnancy, unintended pregnancy and abortion—all because accurate information and contraceptive access might let the wrong kind of people (young unmarried and female people) have sex for the wrong reasons (pleasure and intimacy) without suffering for it.
Evangelical means arrogant. Wheaton College put Evangelical arrogance on national display when administrators decided to suspend and then fire a professor who dared to suggest that Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the same God.
Evangelical means fearful and bigoted. While more secular Europeans and Canadians offer aid to Syrian refugees, Evangelical Christians have instead sought to exclude Muslims. They have used their vast empire of telecommunications channels to inspire not charity but fear of imminent Sharia in the U.S. and of refugees more broadly. They have urged that Latin American refugees be sent home so that we can build a wall across the southern border before they come back.
Evangelical means indifferent to truth. Evangelicals refuse to acknowledge what is obvious to everyone else, including most other Christians—that the Bible is a human documentwoven through with moral and factual imperfections. Treating the Bible like the literally perfect word of God has forced Bible believers to make a high art out of self-deception, which they then apply to other inconvenient truths. They rewrite American History, embrace faux news, defend in court the right of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” to lie, and force doctors to do the same. The end justifies the means.
Evangelical means gullible and greedy. From televangelists and Prosperity Gospel to adulation of Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand, Evangelicalism faces the world as a religion of exploiters and exploited—both of which are hoping to make a quick buck.
Evangelical means ignorant. The only way to protect creationism is to keep people from understanding how science works and what scientists have discovered. As evidence accumulates related to evolutionary biology, insulating children requires a constant battle to keep accurate information out of textbooks. Insulating adults requires cultivating a deep suspicion of science and scholarship, an anti-intellectualism that diffuses out from this center and defines Evangelical culture at large.
Evangelical means predatory. Evangelical missionaries prey on the young and ignorant. They have fought all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure they can proselytize children in public grade schools. Having failed to block marriage equality in the States, they export Bible based gay-hate to Central Africa, where gays are more vulnerable. Since Americans lost interest in tent revivals, evangelists now cast out demons, heal the sick and raise the dead among uneducated low-information people in developing countries.
Evangelical means mean. Opposing anti-poverty programs, shaming and stigmatizing queers, making it harder for poor women to prevent pregnancy, blaming rape victims, diverting aid dollars into church coffers, threatening little kids with eternal torture, supporting war, denying the rights of other species, . . . need I go on?
Laid out like this—sex-obsessed, arrogant, bigoted, lying, greedy, ignorant, predatory and mean—one understands why a commentator like Croft might say that Trump is Evangelicalism. But reading closer, it becomes clear that Trump and Cruz and Rubio are not the problem.
Despite the best efforts of reformers like Rachel Held Evans, the Evangelical brand is toxic because of the stagnant priorities and behaviors of Evangelicals themselves. Desperate to safeguard an archaic set of social and theological agreements, Evangelical leaders bet that if they could secure political power they could force a halt to moral and spiritual evolution. They themselves wouldn’t have to grow and change.
They also believed that they could get something for nothing, that they could sell their brand and keep it too. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
In the business world, a corporation sometimes buys or licenses a premium brand in order to either upgrade their own brand desirability or to sell a lower quality product. Coca-Cola acquired Odwalla for example. Dean Foods acquired Silk soy milk. Target and Walmart license various designer labels for their made-in-China housewares and clothes. Donald Trump sells his name to real estate developers who use it to set an expectation of quality.
Once a premium brand or label is acquired, the parent company often uses the premium label to sell an inferior product. Alternately, if they acquired the whole company rather than just the name, they may gradually change the product, ratcheting down input costs (and quality) to the point that the premium brand becomes just another commodity. The profit advantage comes from the fact that it takes people a while to notice and change their brand perceptions. Also, being creatures of habit, a person may stick with a familiar brand even though the quality of the product itself has changed. In this way, a corporation can draw down the value of a brand the way that a person might draw down a bank account.
Republican Acquisition of the Evangelical “Brand”
A generation ago, the Republican Party realized that Evangelical Christianity could be a valuable acquisition. “Evangelical” had righteous, “family values” brand associations, the unassailable name of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and the organizing infrastructure and social capital of Evangelical churches. Republican operatives courted Evangelical leaders and promised them power and money—the power to turn back the clock on equal rights for women and queers, and the glitter of government subsidies for church enterprises including religious education, real estate speculation, and marketing campaigns that pair social services with evangelism.
As in any story about selling your soul, Evangelical leaders largely got what they bargained for, but at a price that only the devil fully understood in advance. Internally, Evangelical communities can be wonderfully kind, generous and mutually supportive. But today, few people other than Evangelical Christians themselves associate the term “Evangelical” with words like generous and kind. In fact, a secular person is likely to see a kind, generous Evangelical neighbor as a decent person in spite of their Christian beliefs, not because of them.
The Evangelical brand is so depleted and tainted at this point that Russell Moore, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention recently said that he will no longer call himself an “Evangelical Christian,” thanks—he implied—to association between Evangelicals and Trump. Instead he is using the term “Gospel Christian”—at least till the 2016 election is over. While Trump has received endorsements from Evangelical icons including Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Pat Robertson, other Evangelical leaders (e.g. here, here) have joined Moore in lamenting the deep and wide Evangelical attraction to Trump, which they say is antithetical to their values.
But how much, really, is the Trump brand antithetical to the Evangelical brand? Humanist commentator James Croft argues that Trump is what Evangelicalism, in the hands of the Religious Right, has become:
“The religious right in America has always been a political philosophy based on bullying, pandering, projecting strength to hide fear and weakness, and proud, aggressive ignorance. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Trump has merely distilled those elements into a decoction so deadly that even some evangelicals are starting to recognize the venom they have injected into American culture.”
Croft says that Pastors like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren use Jesus as a fig leaf “to drape over social views that would otherwise be revealed as nakedly evil.”
As a former Evangelical, I have to side with Croft: the Evangelical brand problem is much bigger than Trump and his candidacy or the morally-bankrupt priorities and theocratic aspirations of fellow Republican candidates Cruz and Rubio. Evangelicals may use the name of Jesus for cover, but even Jesus is too small a fig leaf to hide the fact outsiders looking at Evangelical Christianity see more prick than heart.
Here is what the Evangelical brand looks like from the outside:
Evangelical means obsessed with sex. Evangelicals are so desperate to fend off their own complicated sexual desires and self-loathing that they would rather watch queer teens commit suicide than deal with their homophobia. They abhor youth sexuality and female sexual pleasure to the point that they have driven an epidemic of teen pregnancy, unintended pregnancy and abortion—all because accurate information and contraceptive access might let the wrong kind of people (young unmarried and female people) have sex for the wrong reasons (pleasure and intimacy) without suffering for it.
Evangelical means arrogant. Wheaton College put Evangelical arrogance on national display when administrators decided to suspend and then fire a professor who dared to suggest that Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the same God.
Evangelical means fearful and bigoted. While more secular Europeans and Canadians offer aid to Syrian refugees, Evangelical Christians have instead sought to exclude Muslims. They have used their vast empire of telecommunications channels to inspire not charity but fear of imminent Sharia in the U.S. and of refugees more broadly. They have urged that Latin American refugees be sent home so that we can build a wall across the southern border before they come back.
Evangelical means indifferent to truth. Evangelicals refuse to acknowledge what is obvious to everyone else, including most other Christians—that the Bible is a human documentwoven through with moral and factual imperfections. Treating the Bible like the literally perfect word of God has forced Bible believers to make a high art out of self-deception, which they then apply to other inconvenient truths. They rewrite American History, embrace faux news, defend in court the right of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” to lie, and force doctors to do the same. The end justifies the means.
Evangelical means gullible and greedy. From televangelists and Prosperity Gospel to adulation of Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand, Evangelicalism faces the world as a religion of exploiters and exploited—both of which are hoping to make a quick buck.
Evangelical means ignorant. The only way to protect creationism is to keep people from understanding how science works and what scientists have discovered. As evidence accumulates related to evolutionary biology, insulating children requires a constant battle to keep accurate information out of textbooks. Insulating adults requires cultivating a deep suspicion of science and scholarship, an anti-intellectualism that diffuses out from this center and defines Evangelical culture at large.
Evangelical means predatory. Evangelical missionaries prey on the young and ignorant. They have fought all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure they can proselytize children in public grade schools. Having failed to block marriage equality in the States, they export Bible based gay-hate to Central Africa, where gays are more vulnerable. Since Americans lost interest in tent revivals, evangelists now cast out demons, heal the sick and raise the dead among uneducated low-information people in developing countries.
Evangelical means mean. Opposing anti-poverty programs, shaming and stigmatizing queers, making it harder for poor women to prevent pregnancy, blaming rape victims, diverting aid dollars into church coffers, threatening little kids with eternal torture, supporting war, denying the rights of other species, . . . need I go on?
Laid out like this—sex-obsessed, arrogant, bigoted, lying, greedy, ignorant, predatory and mean—one understands why a commentator like Croft might say that Trump is Evangelicalism. But reading closer, it becomes clear that Trump and Cruz and Rubio are not the problem.
Despite the best efforts of reformers like Rachel Held Evans, the Evangelical brand is toxic because of the stagnant priorities and behaviors of Evangelicals themselves. Desperate to safeguard an archaic set of social and theological agreements, Evangelical leaders bet that if they could secure political power they could force a halt to moral and spiritual evolution. They themselves wouldn’t have to grow and change.
They also believed that they could get something for nothing, that they could sell their brand and keep it too. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Christian Charity Gave Over $50 Million to Hate Groups, Report Reveals
Ilana Novick -truthdig
MAR 19, 2019
The National Christian Foundation is America’s eighth largest public charity, but it doesn’t build houses, educate children, feed the hungry, or provide other goods or services one might commonly associate with a charity. It’s also not a household name like the Red Cross, but that doesn’t prevent it from having vast influence. According to a new investigation from Sludge, the far-right, evangelical NCF “has donated $56.1 million on behalf of its clients to 23 nonprofits identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.”
These nonprofits include multiple anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hate groups. In fact, as reporter Alex Kotch points out, Inside Philanthropy has said that NCF “is probably the single biggest source of money fueling the pro-life and anti-LGBT movements over the past 15 years.”
In addition to not being a direct service charity, the NCF is also not a conventional foundation that a wealthy donor uses as a vehicle to grow and then give away their money to multiple other charities over time. Instead, it’s a donor-advised fund, offering its Christian donors “expert guidance and creative giving solutions,” Kotch writes.
Helaine Olen, writing in The Atlantic, calls these donor-advised funds a “waiting room for charitable donations,” in which anyone, not only the wealthy, can place money into the fund, let it grow, and then have it distribute the money gradually to organizations of the donor’s choice.
According to Kotch, these funds allow their clients “immediate tax breaks on donations.”
They also give individual donors who pay into the fund anonymity. While Sludge was able to use publicly available tax findings to determine which organizations NCF funded, the names of the fund’s donors stay hidden.
The biggest recipient of NCF funds, according to Sludge’s investigation, is Alliance Defending Freedom, a network of lawyers, who, Kotch writes, “have supported criminalizing homosexuality, sterilizing transgender people, and claimed that gay men are pedophiles.”
Kotch continues:
Alliance Defending Freedom took in $49.2 million from NCF from 2015-17. ADF received $46.3 million in contributions and grants during the 2016 fiscal year (from July 1, 2015, to June 30, 2016). It got $16.8 million from NCF in the calendar year of 2015, meaning that, if these years were aligned, NCF’s donations would have represented over one-third of ADF’s annual contributions.
The Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center says “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science,” including linking homosexuality to pedophilia, is another frequent beneficiary of NCF funds. Sludge found it received $5.3 million from 2015 to 2017.
While anti-LGBT organizations are the primary recipients of NCF’s funds, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant organizations also benefit:
Anti-Muslim groups ACT for America ($98,000), American Freedom Law Center ($40,000), David Horowitz Freedom Center ($40,000), and Virginia Christian Alliance ($3,600) have received thousands from NCF since mid-2014, and anti-immigrant nonprofits American Border Patrol ($100) and The Remembrance Project ($2,500) also got NCF funding.
Donor-advised funds, in general, are not required to have policies addressing hate groups. As Kotch explains, “these giant funds absolve themselves of any responsibility, saying that as long as the Internal Revenue Service has granted 501(c)(3) status to an organization, it’s fair game.”
At least one expert Sludge spoke to believes funds like NCF are funding hate groups intentionally, and could, if they chose, deny a client’s request to fund them.
Aaron Dorfman, president and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, told Sludge, “With the dramatic escalation of violence and intimidation by white nationalists and right-wing extremists, it’s way past due for sponsors of donor-advised funds to cut off any dollars flowing to hate groups.” And, he continued, “they have every right to exercise discretion by refusing a donor’s request to fund a hate group.”
NCF did not respond to Sludge’s requests for comment. Read the entire article here.
These nonprofits include multiple anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hate groups. In fact, as reporter Alex Kotch points out, Inside Philanthropy has said that NCF “is probably the single biggest source of money fueling the pro-life and anti-LGBT movements over the past 15 years.”
In addition to not being a direct service charity, the NCF is also not a conventional foundation that a wealthy donor uses as a vehicle to grow and then give away their money to multiple other charities over time. Instead, it’s a donor-advised fund, offering its Christian donors “expert guidance and creative giving solutions,” Kotch writes.
Helaine Olen, writing in The Atlantic, calls these donor-advised funds a “waiting room for charitable donations,” in which anyone, not only the wealthy, can place money into the fund, let it grow, and then have it distribute the money gradually to organizations of the donor’s choice.
According to Kotch, these funds allow their clients “immediate tax breaks on donations.”
They also give individual donors who pay into the fund anonymity. While Sludge was able to use publicly available tax findings to determine which organizations NCF funded, the names of the fund’s donors stay hidden.
The biggest recipient of NCF funds, according to Sludge’s investigation, is Alliance Defending Freedom, a network of lawyers, who, Kotch writes, “have supported criminalizing homosexuality, sterilizing transgender people, and claimed that gay men are pedophiles.”
Kotch continues:
Alliance Defending Freedom took in $49.2 million from NCF from 2015-17. ADF received $46.3 million in contributions and grants during the 2016 fiscal year (from July 1, 2015, to June 30, 2016). It got $16.8 million from NCF in the calendar year of 2015, meaning that, if these years were aligned, NCF’s donations would have represented over one-third of ADF’s annual contributions.
The Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center says “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science,” including linking homosexuality to pedophilia, is another frequent beneficiary of NCF funds. Sludge found it received $5.3 million from 2015 to 2017.
While anti-LGBT organizations are the primary recipients of NCF’s funds, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant organizations also benefit:
Anti-Muslim groups ACT for America ($98,000), American Freedom Law Center ($40,000), David Horowitz Freedom Center ($40,000), and Virginia Christian Alliance ($3,600) have received thousands from NCF since mid-2014, and anti-immigrant nonprofits American Border Patrol ($100) and The Remembrance Project ($2,500) also got NCF funding.
Donor-advised funds, in general, are not required to have policies addressing hate groups. As Kotch explains, “these giant funds absolve themselves of any responsibility, saying that as long as the Internal Revenue Service has granted 501(c)(3) status to an organization, it’s fair game.”
At least one expert Sludge spoke to believes funds like NCF are funding hate groups intentionally, and could, if they chose, deny a client’s request to fund them.
Aaron Dorfman, president and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, told Sludge, “With the dramatic escalation of violence and intimidation by white nationalists and right-wing extremists, it’s way past due for sponsors of donor-advised funds to cut off any dollars flowing to hate groups.” And, he continued, “they have every right to exercise discretion by refusing a donor’s request to fund a hate group.”
NCF did not respond to Sludge’s requests for comment. Read the entire article here.
on the positive side the child won't be raped!!!
Catholic school bans kindergartener because his parents are gay
David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - raw story
07 MAR 2019 AT 12:28 ET
A Kansas Catholic school has decided a prospective kindergarten student will not be admitted because his parents are in a same-sex relationship. Many in the local community are angered – so angered that the Archdiocese that runs the school has been publicly forced to defend its decision, a defense many are not supporting.
Father Craig Maxim from St. Ann Catholic Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, sent a letter to parishioners, CBS News reports, saying he “sought the advice of the archdiocese since as a parochial school we are subject to the guidance of the archdiocese on the application of church doctrine.”
“The archdiocese advised against admission,” Father Maxim told parents.
The school’s superintendent Kathy O’Hara said in a statement, “Church’s teaching on marriage is clear and is not altered by the laws of civil society.” Her statement clearly implies being gay is a “choice.”
Many are speaking out, as The Kansas City Star reports.
Over 1000 Catholics from St. Ann’s and surrounding parishes have signed a petition, a moving letter to Archbishop Joseph Naumann, urging the Archdiocese to reconsider and enroll the young student.
The Kansas City Star Editorial Board published a strong and lengthy, albeit respectful, rebuke of the Archdiocese’s decision, noting that while legally they have every right to deny the student, it appears they are “playing favorites among sinners.”
It asks, “Does the school admit the children of parents who aren’t Catholic? Check. What about those who may have had vasectomies, undergone in vitro fertilization, or divorced and remarried without church annulment? Check, check and check.”
The Board did not stop there.
“It’s also just reality that some heterosexual relationships that may appear ‘traditional’ on the surface can be anything but,” the editors wrote. “Who knows whether this male-female couple has an agreement that girl- or boyfriends on the side are A-OK? Or if those couples entered into marriages of convenience for reasons of inheritance, citizenship or social status? The school might see parents’ genders, but it can’t look inside their hearts — or their home lives.”
The family that is being discriminated against wishes to remain anonymous and have not responded in public.
Father Craig Maxim from St. Ann Catholic Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, sent a letter to parishioners, CBS News reports, saying he “sought the advice of the archdiocese since as a parochial school we are subject to the guidance of the archdiocese on the application of church doctrine.”
“The archdiocese advised against admission,” Father Maxim told parents.
The school’s superintendent Kathy O’Hara said in a statement, “Church’s teaching on marriage is clear and is not altered by the laws of civil society.” Her statement clearly implies being gay is a “choice.”
Many are speaking out, as The Kansas City Star reports.
Over 1000 Catholics from St. Ann’s and surrounding parishes have signed a petition, a moving letter to Archbishop Joseph Naumann, urging the Archdiocese to reconsider and enroll the young student.
The Kansas City Star Editorial Board published a strong and lengthy, albeit respectful, rebuke of the Archdiocese’s decision, noting that while legally they have every right to deny the student, it appears they are “playing favorites among sinners.”
It asks, “Does the school admit the children of parents who aren’t Catholic? Check. What about those who may have had vasectomies, undergone in vitro fertilization, or divorced and remarried without church annulment? Check, check and check.”
The Board did not stop there.
“It’s also just reality that some heterosexual relationships that may appear ‘traditional’ on the surface can be anything but,” the editors wrote. “Who knows whether this male-female couple has an agreement that girl- or boyfriends on the side are A-OK? Or if those couples entered into marriages of convenience for reasons of inheritance, citizenship or social status? The school might see parents’ genders, but it can’t look inside their hearts — or their home lives.”
The family that is being discriminated against wishes to remain anonymous and have not responded in public.
Vatican reveals it has secret rules for priests who father children
Spokesman says guidelines for those who break celibacy vows will not be made public
Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent
the guardian
Tue 19 Feb 2019 08.19 EST
The Vatican has acknowledged for the first time the existence of secret guidelines for priests who break their vows of celibacy and father children.
However, it declined to make its advice public, saying it was an internal matter. Alessandro Gisotti, a Vatican spokesman, told the New York Timesthat the “fundamental principle” of the 2017 document was the “protection of the child”.
The document requests that a cleric who has fathered a child leaves the priesthood to “assume his responsibilities as a parent by devoting himself exclusively to the child”. Gisotti told CBS News that the document was “for internal use … and is not intended for publication”.
Survivors of clerical sexual abuse from around the world are gathering in Rome this week to hold vigils and protests outside an unprecedented summit of senior bishops and other church figures called by Pope Francis.
The number of children born to priests is unknown although one support group, Coping International, has 50,000 users in 175 countries. Some children are the result of consensual relationships, but others are the result of rape or abuse.
According to Vincent Doyle, the son of a priest and the founder of Coping International, the issue of clerical offspring is “the next scandal” to confront the church. “There are kids everywhere,” he told the New York Times.
A commission set up by Francis to tackle clerical sexual abuse was tasked with looking at how the church should respond to the issue of priests’ offspring.
Irish bishops have published their own guidelines, saying that if a priest becomes a father, the “wellbeing of his child should be his first consideration”. The document adds: “A priest, as any new father, should face up to his responsibilities – personal, legal, moral and financial. At a minimum, no priest should walk away from his responsibilities.”
Some people have argued the Roman Catholic church should drop its requirement for priests to take a lifelong vow of celibacy. They say it may be a factor in sexual abuse, and that it deters people from signing up for the priesthood, with many countries now having an acute shortage of priests.
The eastern Catholic churches have a long tradition of married priests, and exceptions to the celibacy rule have been made on a case-by-case basis for former Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism.
But last month, Francis said he was opposed to any general change to the centuries-old tradition. “Personally, I think that celibacy is a gift to the church,” he said. “I would say that I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy, no.”
Exceptions could be considered in “very far places” where there was “a pastoral necessity” owing to a lack of priests, he said.
However, it declined to make its advice public, saying it was an internal matter. Alessandro Gisotti, a Vatican spokesman, told the New York Timesthat the “fundamental principle” of the 2017 document was the “protection of the child”.
The document requests that a cleric who has fathered a child leaves the priesthood to “assume his responsibilities as a parent by devoting himself exclusively to the child”. Gisotti told CBS News that the document was “for internal use … and is not intended for publication”.
Survivors of clerical sexual abuse from around the world are gathering in Rome this week to hold vigils and protests outside an unprecedented summit of senior bishops and other church figures called by Pope Francis.
The number of children born to priests is unknown although one support group, Coping International, has 50,000 users in 175 countries. Some children are the result of consensual relationships, but others are the result of rape or abuse.
According to Vincent Doyle, the son of a priest and the founder of Coping International, the issue of clerical offspring is “the next scandal” to confront the church. “There are kids everywhere,” he told the New York Times.
A commission set up by Francis to tackle clerical sexual abuse was tasked with looking at how the church should respond to the issue of priests’ offspring.
Irish bishops have published their own guidelines, saying that if a priest becomes a father, the “wellbeing of his child should be his first consideration”. The document adds: “A priest, as any new father, should face up to his responsibilities – personal, legal, moral and financial. At a minimum, no priest should walk away from his responsibilities.”
Some people have argued the Roman Catholic church should drop its requirement for priests to take a lifelong vow of celibacy. They say it may be a factor in sexual abuse, and that it deters people from signing up for the priesthood, with many countries now having an acute shortage of priests.
The eastern Catholic churches have a long tradition of married priests, and exceptions to the celibacy rule have been made on a case-by-case basis for former Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism.
But last month, Francis said he was opposed to any general change to the centuries-old tradition. “Personally, I think that celibacy is a gift to the church,” he said. “I would say that I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy, no.”
Exceptions could be considered in “very far places” where there was “a pastoral necessity” owing to a lack of priests, he said.
Shocking expose reveals more than 700 survivors of abuse from Southern Baptist leaders and staff
Sarah K. Burris - raw story
10 FEB 2019 AT 23:57 ET
While the Catholic church has suffered much of the attention for hiding child molesters and abusers, the Southern Baptist Convention was outed this week for hundreds of complaints.
An extensive joint report from the Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News outlined the accusations dating back to 1998. The project took the papers more than six months to gather the details and search for accusers.
The first of three parts was printed Sunday revealing 380 leaders and staff who were accused of some form of sexual abuse. Of those, approximately 220 have been convicted or took a plea deal and 100 remain behind bars.
These accused abusers left an estimated 700 victims in their wake. Some survivors were as young as 3-years-old.
“So many people’s faith is murdered,” said one accuser, whose alleged abuser is still a minister. “I mean, their faith is slaughtered by these predators.”
At least 35 church pastors, staff and volunteers participated in predatory behavior, yet they were able to find other jobs at different churches after the accusations. Like the Catholic church, there were many cases where the church never alerted law enforcement. Sadly, many also didn’t warn the congregations where the accused moved.
Some of those convicted became registered sex offenders and were still allowed to return to the pulpit — others who were accused never left.
According to the Chronicle and Express-News, the Southern Baptist Convention is being criticized by many victims for the corrupt handling of an obvious coverup of complaints of abuse.
One case detailed a Houston, Texas preacher who sexually assaulted a teenager, but now serves as the principal of a nonprofit that works with student groups. The name of the organization is named Touching the Future Today Inc.
The feature image inside the Chronicle’s story is a collage of the hundreds of mugshots that once looked out from pews. They were leaders whose victims sought guidance or advice but what they got was the furthest thing from God.
Read part one of the series here.
RELATED: How men like Art Briles bastardize faith and forgiveness as a short-cut to redemption
"I believe he is a man who does love the Lord and deserves a second chance."
An extensive joint report from the Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News outlined the accusations dating back to 1998. The project took the papers more than six months to gather the details and search for accusers.
The first of three parts was printed Sunday revealing 380 leaders and staff who were accused of some form of sexual abuse. Of those, approximately 220 have been convicted or took a plea deal and 100 remain behind bars.
These accused abusers left an estimated 700 victims in their wake. Some survivors were as young as 3-years-old.
“So many people’s faith is murdered,” said one accuser, whose alleged abuser is still a minister. “I mean, their faith is slaughtered by these predators.”
At least 35 church pastors, staff and volunteers participated in predatory behavior, yet they were able to find other jobs at different churches after the accusations. Like the Catholic church, there were many cases where the church never alerted law enforcement. Sadly, many also didn’t warn the congregations where the accused moved.
Some of those convicted became registered sex offenders and were still allowed to return to the pulpit — others who were accused never left.
According to the Chronicle and Express-News, the Southern Baptist Convention is being criticized by many victims for the corrupt handling of an obvious coverup of complaints of abuse.
One case detailed a Houston, Texas preacher who sexually assaulted a teenager, but now serves as the principal of a nonprofit that works with student groups. The name of the organization is named Touching the Future Today Inc.
The feature image inside the Chronicle’s story is a collage of the hundreds of mugshots that once looked out from pews. They were leaders whose victims sought guidance or advice but what they got was the furthest thing from God.
Read part one of the series here.
RELATED: How men like Art Briles bastardize faith and forgiveness as a short-cut to redemption
"I believe he is a man who does love the Lord and deserves a second chance."
Can religion explain why some Americans are so easily duped by fake news?
Sarah K. Burris - raw story
01 FEB 2019 AT 01:46 ET
Writer and reporter Kurt Andersen, in conjunction with Big Think, walked through the ways in which the United States has entered a kind of post-truth era.
In a video, the linguistic expert on President Donald Trump’s speaking style explained that people seem to be losing IQ points year after year and it’s all due to a slow decline in truth. He explained that in 2012, the Republican candidates who agreed in the scientific theory of evolution had dropped to one-third of the field. By 2016, just one candidate, Jeb Bush, believed in science. Even George W. Bush said that the cornerstone of biology shouldn’t be taught in schools, and if it was, it should be taught along with the religious belief of creationism.
Andersen explained that he doesn’t think the Republican Party is growing stupider each year; rather that they’re fearful to challenge the chosen reality of their voters.
“I don’t think all of them disbelieve in evolution – some of them – but they were all obliged to say yes to falsehood and magical thinking of this religious kind, and that’s where it becomes problematic,” he said.
“America has always been a Christian nation,” Andersen quoted. “That had always meant a different thing 100 years ago or even 50 years ago than it means today… Christian Protestant religion became extreme. It became more magical and supernatural in its beliefs in America than it has for hundreds of years or for any other place in the world.”
As Protestant Christians became more extreme, the Republican Party was similarly becoming more extreme.
“So, one thing that has happened, and one thing that has led the Republican Party to fantasy and wishful untruth more and more into its approach to policy…are now in the Republican mainstream,” Andersen argued.
Falsehoods like President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim or climate change is a Chinese hoax are all issues that are easy to believe if “fantasy and wishful untruths” are the norm. That makes it easier to accept conspiracy theories or fake news.
Anderson explained that he doesn’t care if people believe what they want to believe in private. However, when religious belief “bleeds over into how we manage and construct our economy and our society,” there’s a problem that will cause lasting trouble for the country.
(video)
In a video, the linguistic expert on President Donald Trump’s speaking style explained that people seem to be losing IQ points year after year and it’s all due to a slow decline in truth. He explained that in 2012, the Republican candidates who agreed in the scientific theory of evolution had dropped to one-third of the field. By 2016, just one candidate, Jeb Bush, believed in science. Even George W. Bush said that the cornerstone of biology shouldn’t be taught in schools, and if it was, it should be taught along with the religious belief of creationism.
Andersen explained that he doesn’t think the Republican Party is growing stupider each year; rather that they’re fearful to challenge the chosen reality of their voters.
“I don’t think all of them disbelieve in evolution – some of them – but they were all obliged to say yes to falsehood and magical thinking of this religious kind, and that’s where it becomes problematic,” he said.
“America has always been a Christian nation,” Andersen quoted. “That had always meant a different thing 100 years ago or even 50 years ago than it means today… Christian Protestant religion became extreme. It became more magical and supernatural in its beliefs in America than it has for hundreds of years or for any other place in the world.”
As Protestant Christians became more extreme, the Republican Party was similarly becoming more extreme.
“So, one thing that has happened, and one thing that has led the Republican Party to fantasy and wishful untruth more and more into its approach to policy…are now in the Republican mainstream,” Andersen argued.
Falsehoods like President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim or climate change is a Chinese hoax are all issues that are easy to believe if “fantasy and wishful untruths” are the norm. That makes it easier to accept conspiracy theories or fake news.
Anderson explained that he doesn’t care if people believe what they want to believe in private. However, when religious belief “bleeds over into how we manage and construct our economy and our society,” there’s a problem that will cause lasting trouble for the country.
(video)
spreading their bogus religion!!!
Christian right groups roll out their radical anti-woman campaign — overseas
Anti-choicers say they don't aim to punish women or end birth control. Their work overseas tells a different story
AMANDA MARCOTTE - salon
JANUARY 30, 2019 8:55PM (UTC)
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump famously said in a TV interview that there should be "some form of punishment" for women who get abortions. Anti-choice leaders reacted with postures of outraged denial, denying that they shared the politically unpalatable belief that women should be sent to prison for having abortions.
"Pro-life leaders have long said the post-abortive mother is a victim, not a perpetrator, and deserves support and acceptance, not hard time," Ben Johnson at LifeSite wrote at the time.
“That public relations rhetoric that anti-choice groups put out there, that they don’t want to punish women and have no interest in punishing women, it’s a lie," Peter Montgomery of People for the American Way told Salon. "It’s just not true.”
"They’re talking out of one side of their mouth in the U.S.," said Mary Alice Carter of Equity Forward. "But when you follow the money, you always see where people’s values really lie."
Carter was specifically referring to a little-known but powerful group called Human Life International (HLI), which shares a Virginia office building with LifeSite. HLI, which works internationally to oppose LGBT and women's rights, is the subject of a legal complaint filed with the IRS Wednesday morning by the Campaign for Accountability, which says that it "appears HLI abused its tax-exempt status by failing to report its lobbying expenditures" and "engaging in prohibited political campaign activity."
HLI denied these accusations to Salon, saying that the group has "never supported candidates in domestic nor foreign elections."
Alice Huling, counsel for the Campaign for Accountability, disagreed, saying that the group's activities "look to be pretty blatant violation of the tax laws."
The complaint itself details the surge in funding that flowed from HLI to the Philippines during a political fight over a bill that would make contraception available to the larger public. Previously, birth control had only been a luxury available to affluent people in the Philippines. HLI opposed the bill and worked to repeal the law after it had passed. According to the Campaign for Accountability, HLI failed to report the money it spent on lobbying and working with another group to endorse anti-contraception candidates, which is illegal under American tax law.
While the complaint focuses on anti-contraception organizing in the Philippines, HLI has also drawn fire in the past for its work in El Salvador, a country whose strict abortion ban has led to many women being imprisoned.
HLI leaders tell U.S. audiences that a woman who has an abortion do not understand "what an abortion really is" and is therefore "deceived into believing that abortion is [her] only option." In their view, a woman in that situation is a "victim" who deserves compassion and not jail time. But as the Guardian reported in 2017, HLI backed an effort to preserve the Salvadoran law that was leading to women being imprisoned for having abortions.
"According to documents seen by the Guardian, Human Life International has for years directed a steady flow of dollars to Sí a la Vida, the Salvadoran organization principally responsible for the country’s abortion ban," the Guardian reported.
Deborah Piroch of HLI downplayed this support to Salon, claiming that the Guardian's "feature was rife with errors" and that there was a "rebuttal" on their website. The supposed "rebuttal" described the Guardian article as "fake news" and claimed it was "absurd" to believe that women are being sent to prison in El Salvador for abortion.
In truth, that's far from absurd, and has been documented at the Washington Post and elsewhere. Most importantly, the alleged rebuttal did not deny HLI's relationship to Sí a la Vida or HLI's belief that El Salvador's anti-abortion law should remain in place. Instead, HLI tried to distract readers by pointing out that pro-choice activists have also been working in El Salvador, which no one denies.
When pressed about its relationship to Sí a la Vida specifically, HLI acknowledged that it worked with the group.
In response to Salon's questions about anti-contraception work in the Philippines, Piroch focused on claims that "hormonal contraception can prevent implantation" and therefore that those forms of birth control were "all potential abortifacients."
This anti-choice myth -- effectively equating contraception to abortion -- is commonly invoked to justify the attacks on birth control. It is entirely false. Pregnancy only begins when a fertilized egg implants in the uterus, so no method of contraception can accurately be called an "abortifacient." Moreover, hormonal contraception works primarily by suppressing ovulation. Therefore, a woman who uses no contraception will have far more fertilized eggs fail to implant, which happens about half the time.
This use of scare words like "abortifacient" is about distracting people from the real -- if politically unpopular -- source of opposition to expanding contraception access: Groups like HLI don't think people should be having non-procreative sex at all.
Birth control "deliberately makes infertile a sexual act within marriage that should be fertile," HLI's siteargues, adding that this belief that all sex should be "open to new life" should apply to "both Catholics and non-Catholics."
HLI actually argues that it's not true that contraception prevents abortion. Instead, the group contends, "increased demand for abortion is the result of the widespread use of contraception," because birth control leads to the "unleashing of the sexual urge."
Mary Alice Carter of Equity Forward countered by saying, “If you really want to try to reduce unintended pregnancy, and thus abortion, you should be the biggest advocate for access to contraception." She pointed to scientific research showing that access to contraception significantly lowers the abortion rate.
HLI's activism and published writing suggests, however, lowering the abortion rate is at best secondary concern to the group's real goal -- which is policing and punishing people for having non-procreative sex.
The group's work in the Philippines and El Salvador also highlights the way the religious right works to spread its radical, anti-sex and anti-female ideology: By targeting the most vulnerable people around the world, because it's easier to police and punish the sexuality of poor and vulnerable people than it is to go after more privileged folks.
As Peter Montgomery of PFAW pointed out to Salon, Alliance Defending Freedom portrays itself as a "religious freedom" group in the U.S., and largely focuses on politically palatable fights such as defending bakers and florists who object to doing work for same-sex couples. But its overseas work has included supporting laws that would imprison people for being gay, lead to the mandatory sterilization of trans people, and take children away from LGBT parents.
“HLI and its allies don’t want to talk about [imprisoning women for abortion] right now," Montgomery said. "I think they’d be willing to talk about it a lot more when they’re able to criminalize abortion the way they want to.”
"Pro-life leaders have long said the post-abortive mother is a victim, not a perpetrator, and deserves support and acceptance, not hard time," Ben Johnson at LifeSite wrote at the time.
“That public relations rhetoric that anti-choice groups put out there, that they don’t want to punish women and have no interest in punishing women, it’s a lie," Peter Montgomery of People for the American Way told Salon. "It’s just not true.”
"They’re talking out of one side of their mouth in the U.S.," said Mary Alice Carter of Equity Forward. "But when you follow the money, you always see where people’s values really lie."
Carter was specifically referring to a little-known but powerful group called Human Life International (HLI), which shares a Virginia office building with LifeSite. HLI, which works internationally to oppose LGBT and women's rights, is the subject of a legal complaint filed with the IRS Wednesday morning by the Campaign for Accountability, which says that it "appears HLI abused its tax-exempt status by failing to report its lobbying expenditures" and "engaging in prohibited political campaign activity."
HLI denied these accusations to Salon, saying that the group has "never supported candidates in domestic nor foreign elections."
Alice Huling, counsel for the Campaign for Accountability, disagreed, saying that the group's activities "look to be pretty blatant violation of the tax laws."
The complaint itself details the surge in funding that flowed from HLI to the Philippines during a political fight over a bill that would make contraception available to the larger public. Previously, birth control had only been a luxury available to affluent people in the Philippines. HLI opposed the bill and worked to repeal the law after it had passed. According to the Campaign for Accountability, HLI failed to report the money it spent on lobbying and working with another group to endorse anti-contraception candidates, which is illegal under American tax law.
While the complaint focuses on anti-contraception organizing in the Philippines, HLI has also drawn fire in the past for its work in El Salvador, a country whose strict abortion ban has led to many women being imprisoned.
HLI leaders tell U.S. audiences that a woman who has an abortion do not understand "what an abortion really is" and is therefore "deceived into believing that abortion is [her] only option." In their view, a woman in that situation is a "victim" who deserves compassion and not jail time. But as the Guardian reported in 2017, HLI backed an effort to preserve the Salvadoran law that was leading to women being imprisoned for having abortions.
"According to documents seen by the Guardian, Human Life International has for years directed a steady flow of dollars to Sí a la Vida, the Salvadoran organization principally responsible for the country’s abortion ban," the Guardian reported.
Deborah Piroch of HLI downplayed this support to Salon, claiming that the Guardian's "feature was rife with errors" and that there was a "rebuttal" on their website. The supposed "rebuttal" described the Guardian article as "fake news" and claimed it was "absurd" to believe that women are being sent to prison in El Salvador for abortion.
In truth, that's far from absurd, and has been documented at the Washington Post and elsewhere. Most importantly, the alleged rebuttal did not deny HLI's relationship to Sí a la Vida or HLI's belief that El Salvador's anti-abortion law should remain in place. Instead, HLI tried to distract readers by pointing out that pro-choice activists have also been working in El Salvador, which no one denies.
When pressed about its relationship to Sí a la Vida specifically, HLI acknowledged that it worked with the group.
In response to Salon's questions about anti-contraception work in the Philippines, Piroch focused on claims that "hormonal contraception can prevent implantation" and therefore that those forms of birth control were "all potential abortifacients."
This anti-choice myth -- effectively equating contraception to abortion -- is commonly invoked to justify the attacks on birth control. It is entirely false. Pregnancy only begins when a fertilized egg implants in the uterus, so no method of contraception can accurately be called an "abortifacient." Moreover, hormonal contraception works primarily by suppressing ovulation. Therefore, a woman who uses no contraception will have far more fertilized eggs fail to implant, which happens about half the time.
This use of scare words like "abortifacient" is about distracting people from the real -- if politically unpopular -- source of opposition to expanding contraception access: Groups like HLI don't think people should be having non-procreative sex at all.
Birth control "deliberately makes infertile a sexual act within marriage that should be fertile," HLI's siteargues, adding that this belief that all sex should be "open to new life" should apply to "both Catholics and non-Catholics."
HLI actually argues that it's not true that contraception prevents abortion. Instead, the group contends, "increased demand for abortion is the result of the widespread use of contraception," because birth control leads to the "unleashing of the sexual urge."
Mary Alice Carter of Equity Forward countered by saying, “If you really want to try to reduce unintended pregnancy, and thus abortion, you should be the biggest advocate for access to contraception." She pointed to scientific research showing that access to contraception significantly lowers the abortion rate.
HLI's activism and published writing suggests, however, lowering the abortion rate is at best secondary concern to the group's real goal -- which is policing and punishing people for having non-procreative sex.
The group's work in the Philippines and El Salvador also highlights the way the religious right works to spread its radical, anti-sex and anti-female ideology: By targeting the most vulnerable people around the world, because it's easier to police and punish the sexuality of poor and vulnerable people than it is to go after more privileged folks.
As Peter Montgomery of PFAW pointed out to Salon, Alliance Defending Freedom portrays itself as a "religious freedom" group in the U.S., and largely focuses on politically palatable fights such as defending bakers and florists who object to doing work for same-sex couples. But its overseas work has included supporting laws that would imprison people for being gay, lead to the mandatory sterilization of trans people, and take children away from LGBT parents.
“HLI and its allies don’t want to talk about [imprisoning women for abortion] right now," Montgomery said. "I think they’d be willing to talk about it a lot more when they’re able to criminalize abortion the way they want to.”
A third of US Catholics think priests are not honest or ethical
Poll shows confidence in church at record low after report on sexual abuse in Pennsylvania
Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent
the guardian
Fri 11 Jan 2019 05.36 EST
The proportion of US Catholics who regard priests as honest and ethical has plummeted to a record low of fewer than one in three, according to a survey.
The fall of 18 percentage points between 2017 and 2018 is attributed to the last year’s scandals over clerical sexual abuse.
Fewer than half of the Catholics surveyed by Gallup said they had confidence in organised religion, a drop of eight percentage points over the period.
The poll was conducted four months after the publication of a scathing grand jury report into sexual abuse and its cover-up by Catholic priests and bishops in Pennsylvania.
An investigation found that at least 300 priests had abused about 1,000 children and vulnerable adults over 70 years, and that their superiors had either stood by or in some cases actively covered up criminal acts.
Since the publication of the Pennsylvania report, at least 13 US states have opened formal investigations and some senior Catholics, including the archbishop of Washington, have resigned.
Positive views about the honest and ethical standards of clergy have almost halved in a decade, from 61% to 31%, but the most recent figures show the largest annual fall.
Confidence in the institutions of the church fell to 44% last year compared with 52% in 2017, although the figure was above a low of 39% in 2007.
The crisis in the church has been illustrated by a fall in attendance. In 2018, 36% of Catholics said they had been to church in the past seven days, a small drop from the 39% average between 2014 and 2017, but a dramatic shift since 1975 when 75% reported weekly attendance.
However, the proportion of Catholics among the US population has remained relatively stable. Overall, 22% of Americans identified as Catholic in 2018, compared with an average of 25% over the past 70 years. More than half - 52% - said religion was very important in their lives.
Gallup said: “Given the sheer breadth of the alleged and confirmed sexual abuse, the erosion of Catholics’ views of the clergy’s ethical standards is perhaps to be expected. The church’s handling of many of these cases undoubtedly weighs heavily on Catholics’ minds and likely plays a part in shaping their more increasingly negative views of the church and organised religion as a whole.”
Pope Francis has ordered bishops from around the world to the Vatican next month for an unprecedented summit to discuss the sexual abuse crisis. He has been criticised for failing to take decisive action in the face of scandals in many countries.
The fall of 18 percentage points between 2017 and 2018 is attributed to the last year’s scandals over clerical sexual abuse.
Fewer than half of the Catholics surveyed by Gallup said they had confidence in organised religion, a drop of eight percentage points over the period.
The poll was conducted four months after the publication of a scathing grand jury report into sexual abuse and its cover-up by Catholic priests and bishops in Pennsylvania.
An investigation found that at least 300 priests had abused about 1,000 children and vulnerable adults over 70 years, and that their superiors had either stood by or in some cases actively covered up criminal acts.
Since the publication of the Pennsylvania report, at least 13 US states have opened formal investigations and some senior Catholics, including the archbishop of Washington, have resigned.
Positive views about the honest and ethical standards of clergy have almost halved in a decade, from 61% to 31%, but the most recent figures show the largest annual fall.
Confidence in the institutions of the church fell to 44% last year compared with 52% in 2017, although the figure was above a low of 39% in 2007.
The crisis in the church has been illustrated by a fall in attendance. In 2018, 36% of Catholics said they had been to church in the past seven days, a small drop from the 39% average between 2014 and 2017, but a dramatic shift since 1975 when 75% reported weekly attendance.
However, the proportion of Catholics among the US population has remained relatively stable. Overall, 22% of Americans identified as Catholic in 2018, compared with an average of 25% over the past 70 years. More than half - 52% - said religion was very important in their lives.
Gallup said: “Given the sheer breadth of the alleged and confirmed sexual abuse, the erosion of Catholics’ views of the clergy’s ethical standards is perhaps to be expected. The church’s handling of many of these cases undoubtedly weighs heavily on Catholics’ minds and likely plays a part in shaping their more increasingly negative views of the church and organised religion as a whole.”
Pope Francis has ordered bishops from around the world to the Vatican next month for an unprecedented summit to discuss the sexual abuse crisis. He has been criticised for failing to take decisive action in the face of scandals in many countries.
Scientists have established a link between brain damage and religious fundamentalism
Bobby Azarian / Raw Story - alternet
January 6, 2019
A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.
Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.
Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.
Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.
To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.
Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.
Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.
According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.
The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.
These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.
The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.
By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.
Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.
Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.
Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.
To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.
Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.
Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.
According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.
The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.
These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.
The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.
By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.
Here are 6 hints that Baby Jesus stories were late additions to early Christian lore
The wonder-filled birth story of the baby Jesus was centuries in the making.
By Valerie Tarico / AlterNet
December 21, 2018, 3:14 AM GMT
Picture a creche with baby Jesus in a manger and shepherds and angels and three kings and a star over the stable roof. We think of this traditional scene as representing the Christmas story, but it actually mixes elements from two different nativity stories in the Bible, one in Matthew and one in Luke, with a few embellishments that got added in later centuries. What was the historical kernel? Most likely we will never know, because it appears that the Bible’s nativity stories are themselves highly-embellished late add-ons to the Gospels.
Here are six hints that the story so familiar to us might have been unfamiliar to early Jesus worshipers.
1. Paul’s Silence –The earliest texts in the New Testament are letters written during the first half of the first century by Paul and other people who used his name. These letters, or Epistles as they are called, give no hint that Paul or the forgers who used his name had heard about any signs and wonders surrounding the birth of Jesus, nor that his mother was a virgin impregnated by God in spirit form. Paul simply says that he was a Jew, born to a woman.
2. Mark’s Silence –The Gospel of Mark—thought to be the earliest of the four gospels and, so, closest to actual events—doesn’t contain a nativity or “infancy” story, even though it otherwise looks to be the primary source document for Matthew and Luke. In Mark, the divinity of Jesus gets established by wonders at the beginning of his ministry, and some Christian sects have believed that he was adopted by God at this point.
Why is Mark thought to be where the authors of Matthew and Luke got material? For starters, some passages in Mark, Matthew, and Luke would likely get flagged by plagiarism software. But in the original Greek, Mark is the most primitive and least polished of the three. It also is missing powerful passages like the Sermon on the Mount and has endings that vary from copy to copy. These are some of the reasons that scholars believe it predates the other two. Unlike Paul, the author of Mark was writing a life history of Jesus, one that was full of miracles. It would have been odd for him to simply leave out the auspicious miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus—unless those stories didn’t yet exist.
3. A Tale of Two Tales – Beyond a few basics, the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke have remarkably little overlap. In both, Jesus is born in Bethlehem of a virgin Mary who is betrothed to a man named Joseph. That’s where the similarity ends.
In Matthew’s story, an unnamed angel appears to Joseph, astrologers arrive bearing symbolic gifts, a special star appears in the east, Herod seeks to kill Jesus, warnings come during dreams, and the holy family flees to safety in Egypt just before boy infants are slaughtered across Judea.
In Luke’s story, the angel Gabriel appears to the future parents of John the Baptist. They miraculously conceive, but his father is made mute as a punishment for doubting. Gabriel then appears to Mary. During a visit between the two prospective mothers, who are cousins, John the Baptist in the womb recognizes Jesus in the womb and leaps. Later when John is named, his father miraculously regains the power of speech. A census forces Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem, where there is no room in the inn. Jesus is born and laid in a manger/cradle, and angels sing to shepherds who visit the baby. After his naming, his parents take him to the Jerusalem temple where he is recognized and blessed by a holy man and a resident prophetess, and then the family returns to their home in Nazareth instead of going to Egypt.
Some Christians try to harmonize these stories but a simpler explanation is that they represent two different branches in the tree of oral tradition. The study of European fairy tales shows that different versions of the stories tend to split off, with characters and magical elements diverging over time much like an evolutionary tree. The Matthew and Luke nativity stories likely underwent a similar process, meaning that oral traditions circulated and evolved for some time before the two authors inscribed their respective versions. Scholars debate how much the authors further revised the stories they received.
It’s interesting to note that each author inserted a dubious historical event (an impossible census in one and an unlikely mass infanticide in the other) to make his plotline work. Dubious histories become credible only after potential eyewitnesses die off—so their presence is one more indicator that one or more generations lapsed before the stories took their present form.
4. Pagan Parallels – Luke’s story appears to be slanted toward a Roman audience, and in fact the idea of gods impregnating human women was a common trope that many Jews and Christians have recognized as pagan. Progressive theologian Marcus Borg argued that the point of the story was to pivot fealty from Caesar Augustus to Jesus. According to Roman imperial theology, Augustus had been conceived when the god Apollo impregnated his human mother, Atia. Titles inscribed on coins and temples during his reign included “Son of God,” “Lord,” and “Savior.” They also included the phrase “peace on earth,” which Luke has his angels sing to shepherds.
5. Say What?! –By the second chapter of Luke, the parents of Jesus behave as if they have forgotten the astounding signs and wonders that accompanied his birth. When the boy is twelve, Mary and Joseph take him to Jerusalem for a festival, where they lose him in the crowd and find him three days later among the teachers in the temple. When they scold him, he says ‘“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them’(Luke 2:49-50).
Wait. They didn’t know what he was talking about?! This otherwise bizarre narrative glitch, which directly follows the nativity story, suggests that the former was tacked on at a later time.
6. Divinity Rising – If we line up the four gospels in the estimated order they were written—Mark (60CE), Matthew (70-90CE), Luke (80-95CE), then John (90-100CE), an interesting pattern emerges. Jesus becomes divine earlier and earlier. In Mark, as mentioned, he is shown to be divine when he is baptized (and perhaps is uniquely adopted or entered by God at that point). In Matthew and Luke, he is fathered by the Holy Spirit and is sinless from birth. In John, he is the Logos, present at the creation of the world—though also born of a woman. This sequence suggests that theologies explaining the divinity of Jesus emerged gradually and evolved as Christianity crystalized and spread.
After the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were bundled into the Catholic Bible, the two infancy stories merged. The three astrologers became Kings riding camels. Mary got her own “immaculate conception” and became, to some, a sinless perpetual virgin. The place of Jesus birth became a stable filled with adoring animals. And the holy birthday moved to winter solstice, weaving in delicious and delightful pagan traditions including feasting, tree decorating and festivals of light. The birth of a long-awaited messiah fused with the rebirth of the sun—and their joint birthday party became, in the dead of winter, a celebration of bounty and beauty and love and hope that captivated hearts even beyond the bounds of Christianity.
Here are six hints that the story so familiar to us might have been unfamiliar to early Jesus worshipers.
1. Paul’s Silence –The earliest texts in the New Testament are letters written during the first half of the first century by Paul and other people who used his name. These letters, or Epistles as they are called, give no hint that Paul or the forgers who used his name had heard about any signs and wonders surrounding the birth of Jesus, nor that his mother was a virgin impregnated by God in spirit form. Paul simply says that he was a Jew, born to a woman.
2. Mark’s Silence –The Gospel of Mark—thought to be the earliest of the four gospels and, so, closest to actual events—doesn’t contain a nativity or “infancy” story, even though it otherwise looks to be the primary source document for Matthew and Luke. In Mark, the divinity of Jesus gets established by wonders at the beginning of his ministry, and some Christian sects have believed that he was adopted by God at this point.
Why is Mark thought to be where the authors of Matthew and Luke got material? For starters, some passages in Mark, Matthew, and Luke would likely get flagged by plagiarism software. But in the original Greek, Mark is the most primitive and least polished of the three. It also is missing powerful passages like the Sermon on the Mount and has endings that vary from copy to copy. These are some of the reasons that scholars believe it predates the other two. Unlike Paul, the author of Mark was writing a life history of Jesus, one that was full of miracles. It would have been odd for him to simply leave out the auspicious miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus—unless those stories didn’t yet exist.
3. A Tale of Two Tales – Beyond a few basics, the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke have remarkably little overlap. In both, Jesus is born in Bethlehem of a virgin Mary who is betrothed to a man named Joseph. That’s where the similarity ends.
In Matthew’s story, an unnamed angel appears to Joseph, astrologers arrive bearing symbolic gifts, a special star appears in the east, Herod seeks to kill Jesus, warnings come during dreams, and the holy family flees to safety in Egypt just before boy infants are slaughtered across Judea.
In Luke’s story, the angel Gabriel appears to the future parents of John the Baptist. They miraculously conceive, but his father is made mute as a punishment for doubting. Gabriel then appears to Mary. During a visit between the two prospective mothers, who are cousins, John the Baptist in the womb recognizes Jesus in the womb and leaps. Later when John is named, his father miraculously regains the power of speech. A census forces Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem, where there is no room in the inn. Jesus is born and laid in a manger/cradle, and angels sing to shepherds who visit the baby. After his naming, his parents take him to the Jerusalem temple where he is recognized and blessed by a holy man and a resident prophetess, and then the family returns to their home in Nazareth instead of going to Egypt.
Some Christians try to harmonize these stories but a simpler explanation is that they represent two different branches in the tree of oral tradition. The study of European fairy tales shows that different versions of the stories tend to split off, with characters and magical elements diverging over time much like an evolutionary tree. The Matthew and Luke nativity stories likely underwent a similar process, meaning that oral traditions circulated and evolved for some time before the two authors inscribed their respective versions. Scholars debate how much the authors further revised the stories they received.
It’s interesting to note that each author inserted a dubious historical event (an impossible census in one and an unlikely mass infanticide in the other) to make his plotline work. Dubious histories become credible only after potential eyewitnesses die off—so their presence is one more indicator that one or more generations lapsed before the stories took their present form.
4. Pagan Parallels – Luke’s story appears to be slanted toward a Roman audience, and in fact the idea of gods impregnating human women was a common trope that many Jews and Christians have recognized as pagan. Progressive theologian Marcus Borg argued that the point of the story was to pivot fealty from Caesar Augustus to Jesus. According to Roman imperial theology, Augustus had been conceived when the god Apollo impregnated his human mother, Atia. Titles inscribed on coins and temples during his reign included “Son of God,” “Lord,” and “Savior.” They also included the phrase “peace on earth,” which Luke has his angels sing to shepherds.
5. Say What?! –By the second chapter of Luke, the parents of Jesus behave as if they have forgotten the astounding signs and wonders that accompanied his birth. When the boy is twelve, Mary and Joseph take him to Jerusalem for a festival, where they lose him in the crowd and find him three days later among the teachers in the temple. When they scold him, he says ‘“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them’(Luke 2:49-50).
Wait. They didn’t know what he was talking about?! This otherwise bizarre narrative glitch, which directly follows the nativity story, suggests that the former was tacked on at a later time.
6. Divinity Rising – If we line up the four gospels in the estimated order they were written—Mark (60CE), Matthew (70-90CE), Luke (80-95CE), then John (90-100CE), an interesting pattern emerges. Jesus becomes divine earlier and earlier. In Mark, as mentioned, he is shown to be divine when he is baptized (and perhaps is uniquely adopted or entered by God at that point). In Matthew and Luke, he is fathered by the Holy Spirit and is sinless from birth. In John, he is the Logos, present at the creation of the world—though also born of a woman. This sequence suggests that theologies explaining the divinity of Jesus emerged gradually and evolved as Christianity crystalized and spread.
After the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were bundled into the Catholic Bible, the two infancy stories merged. The three astrologers became Kings riding camels. Mary got her own “immaculate conception” and became, to some, a sinless perpetual virgin. The place of Jesus birth became a stable filled with adoring animals. And the holy birthday moved to winter solstice, weaving in delicious and delightful pagan traditions including feasting, tree decorating and festivals of light. The birth of a long-awaited messiah fused with the rebirth of the sun—and their joint birthday party became, in the dead of winter, a celebration of bounty and beauty and love and hope that captivated hearts even beyond the bounds of Christianity.
Exorcisms have been part of Christianity for centuries
The Conversation - raw story
17 DEC 2018 AT 07:04 ET
A painting showing Saint Francis Borgia, a 16th century saint,, performing an exorcism. Francisco Goya
“The Exorcist,” a horror film released 45 years ago, is a terrifying depiction of supernatural evil. The film tells the story of a young American girl who is possessed by a demon and eventually exorcised by a Catholic priest.
Many viewers were drawn in by the film’s portrayal of exorcism in Christianity. As a scholar of Christian theology, my own research into the history of Christian exorcisms reveals how the notion of engaging in battle against demons has been an important way that Christians have understood their faith and the world.
Early and medieval Christianity
The Bible’s account of the life of Jesus features several exorcism stories. The Gospels, reflecting views common in Judaism in the first century A.D., portray demons as spirits opposed to God that haunt, possess or tempt people to evil.
Possessed individuals are depicted as displaying bizarre and erratic behaviors. In the Gospel of Luke, for example, a boy is possessed by a demon that makes him foam at the mouth and experience violent spasms. Jesus is shown to have a unique power to cast out demons and promises that his followers can do the same.
In the centuries that followed, accounts of using Jesus’ name for casting out demons are common. Origen, an early Christian theologian, writing in the second century, explains how the name of Jesus is used by Christians to expel “evil spirits from … souls and bodies.”
Over the years exorcism came to be associated more widely with the Christian faith. Several Christian writers mention exorcisms taking place publicly as a way to convince people to become Christians. They argued that people should convert because the exorcisms Christians performed were more effective than those of “pagans.”
Early Christian texts mention various exorcism methods that Christians used, including making the sign of the cross over possessed persons or even breathing on them.
Minor exorcism
Beginning some time in the early Middle Ages, specific priests were uniquely trained and sanctioned for exorcism. This remains the case today in Roman Catholicism, while Eastern Orthodox traditions allow all priests to perform exorcisms.
Early Christians also practiced what is sometimes called a “minor exorcism.” This type of exorcism is not for those considered to be acutely possessed.
This took place before or during the ritual of baptism, a ceremony whereby someone officially joins the Church. The practice emerges from the assumption that all people are generally susceptible to evil spiritual forces. For this reason some sort of prayer or statement against the power of the devil would often be recited during catechesis, a period of preparation prior to baptism, baptism, or both.
Demons and Protestants
Between the 15th to 17th centuries, there was an increased concern about demons in Western Europe. Not only are there abundant accounts of priests exorcising individuals from this time period, but also of animals, inanimate objects and even land.
The narratives are also much more detailed. When someone possessed by a demon was confronted by an exorcist priest, it was believed that the demon would be aggravated and cause the individual to engage in more intense and violent behavior. There are reports of physical altercations, floating around the room, and speaking or screaming loudly and angrily during the exorcism process.
Protestants, who were skeptical of many Catholic rituals, combated demonic possession with more informal practices such as impromptu prayer for the afflicted individual.
During the Enlightenment, between 17th to 19th centuries, Europeans began to cast doubt on so-called “superstitious” elements of religion. Many intellectuals and even church leaders argued that people’s experiences of demons could be explained away by psychology and other sciences. Exorcism began to be viewed by many as unnecessary or even dangerous.
Exorcism today
Many Christian denominations still practice some form of minor exorcism. Before people are baptized in the Episcopal Church, for example, they are asked: “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?”
The Catholic Church still has an active ministry devoted to performing exorcisms of possessed individuals. The current practice includes safeguards that require, among others, persons suspected of being possessed to undergo medical and psychiatric evaluation before an exorcism takes place.
Exorcism is particularly common in Pentecostalism, a form of Christianity that has grown rapidly in recent decades. This branch of Christianity emphasizes spiritual experience in everyday life. Pentecostals practice something akin to exorcism but which is typically called “deliverance.” Pentecostals maintain that possessed persons can be delivered through prayer by other Christians or recognized spiritual leader. Pentecostalism is an international Christian tradition and specific deliverance practices can vary widely around the world.
In the United States belief in demons remains high. Over half of all Americans believethat demons can possess individuals.
So, despite modern-day skepticism, exorcism remains a common practice of Christians around the world.
Many viewers were drawn in by the film’s portrayal of exorcism in Christianity. As a scholar of Christian theology, my own research into the history of Christian exorcisms reveals how the notion of engaging in battle against demons has been an important way that Christians have understood their faith and the world.
Early and medieval Christianity
The Bible’s account of the life of Jesus features several exorcism stories. The Gospels, reflecting views common in Judaism in the first century A.D., portray demons as spirits opposed to God that haunt, possess or tempt people to evil.
Possessed individuals are depicted as displaying bizarre and erratic behaviors. In the Gospel of Luke, for example, a boy is possessed by a demon that makes him foam at the mouth and experience violent spasms. Jesus is shown to have a unique power to cast out demons and promises that his followers can do the same.
In the centuries that followed, accounts of using Jesus’ name for casting out demons are common. Origen, an early Christian theologian, writing in the second century, explains how the name of Jesus is used by Christians to expel “evil spirits from … souls and bodies.”
Over the years exorcism came to be associated more widely with the Christian faith. Several Christian writers mention exorcisms taking place publicly as a way to convince people to become Christians. They argued that people should convert because the exorcisms Christians performed were more effective than those of “pagans.”
Early Christian texts mention various exorcism methods that Christians used, including making the sign of the cross over possessed persons or even breathing on them.
Minor exorcism
Beginning some time in the early Middle Ages, specific priests were uniquely trained and sanctioned for exorcism. This remains the case today in Roman Catholicism, while Eastern Orthodox traditions allow all priests to perform exorcisms.
Early Christians also practiced what is sometimes called a “minor exorcism.” This type of exorcism is not for those considered to be acutely possessed.
This took place before or during the ritual of baptism, a ceremony whereby someone officially joins the Church. The practice emerges from the assumption that all people are generally susceptible to evil spiritual forces. For this reason some sort of prayer or statement against the power of the devil would often be recited during catechesis, a period of preparation prior to baptism, baptism, or both.
Demons and Protestants
Between the 15th to 17th centuries, there was an increased concern about demons in Western Europe. Not only are there abundant accounts of priests exorcising individuals from this time period, but also of animals, inanimate objects and even land.
The narratives are also much more detailed. When someone possessed by a demon was confronted by an exorcist priest, it was believed that the demon would be aggravated and cause the individual to engage in more intense and violent behavior. There are reports of physical altercations, floating around the room, and speaking or screaming loudly and angrily during the exorcism process.
Protestants, who were skeptical of many Catholic rituals, combated demonic possession with more informal practices such as impromptu prayer for the afflicted individual.
During the Enlightenment, between 17th to 19th centuries, Europeans began to cast doubt on so-called “superstitious” elements of religion. Many intellectuals and even church leaders argued that people’s experiences of demons could be explained away by psychology and other sciences. Exorcism began to be viewed by many as unnecessary or even dangerous.
Exorcism today
Many Christian denominations still practice some form of minor exorcism. Before people are baptized in the Episcopal Church, for example, they are asked: “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?”
The Catholic Church still has an active ministry devoted to performing exorcisms of possessed individuals. The current practice includes safeguards that require, among others, persons suspected of being possessed to undergo medical and psychiatric evaluation before an exorcism takes place.
Exorcism is particularly common in Pentecostalism, a form of Christianity that has grown rapidly in recent decades. This branch of Christianity emphasizes spiritual experience in everyday life. Pentecostals practice something akin to exorcism but which is typically called “deliverance.” Pentecostals maintain that possessed persons can be delivered through prayer by other Christians or recognized spiritual leader. Pentecostalism is an international Christian tradition and specific deliverance practices can vary widely around the world.
In the United States belief in demons remains high. Over half of all Americans believethat demons can possess individuals.
So, despite modern-day skepticism, exorcism remains a common practice of Christians around the world.
Once upon a time ...right-wing Christians demonized Christmas
It's the Christmas tale the Religious Right doesn't want you to hear: Their spiritual forebearers hated the holiday and even banned its celebration.
By Rob Boston / Church & State - alternet
December 5, 2018, 5:00 AM GMT
It's ironic to hear Religious Right groups portray themselves as the great defenders of Christmas - their spiritual forebears hated the holiday and even banned its celebration.
The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay frowned on Christmas revelry, considering the holiday a Roman Catholic affectation. A law in the colony barred anyone from taking the day off work, feasting or engaging in other celebrations on Christmas, under penalty of a five-shilling fine.
The law was repealed in 1681, but Christmas celebrations remained unpopular in New England and other colonies for many years. That did not change after the Revolution, because many Americans viewed Christmas as a Tory custom, a reminder of the expelled British.
Although Christmas became popular in the South as early as the 1830s, other regions were apathetic. Writer Tom Flynn notes in his 1993 book The Trouble with Christmas that Congress did not begin adjourning on Christmas Day until 1856. Public schools in New England were often open on Dec. 25, as were many factories and offices. Many Protestant churches refused to hold services, considering the holiday "popish."
Not until after the Civil War did Christmas begin to seriously affect American cultural and religious life. European immigration increased sharply after the war, and many of the newcomers came from countries with strong Christmas traditions. Germans, Italians, Poles, Swedes, Norwegians and others brought the holiday and many of its features, including Christmas trees and Santa Claus, to America in a big way.
The celebration spread, and in 1870 Christmas was declared a federal holiday by Congress. But practices in the states continued to vary. As late as 1931, Flynn reports, nine states still called for public schools to remain open on Christmas Day.
It might also surprise Religious Right activists to learn that many of the Christmas traditions they defend so vociferously have, at best, a tenuous connection to Christianity.
Several of the holiday's most common features grow out of pre-Christian religions. The ancient Romans celebrated Saturnalia in mid-December, a time of general merriment, feasting and gift exchanges. Slaves were given time off and were even permitted to play dice games in public. During this period, many Romans decorated their homes with evergreens as a reminder that life would persevere through the dark days of winter.
Evergreen trees had long been viewed as a symbol of fertility by Pagan peoples. When winter came and most trees lost their leaves and appeared to die, the evergreen was a reminder that life would endure and that long days, warmer weather and a harvest would come again. Germans were early boosters of the Christmas tree and brought it to America. (The pious legend that Martin Luther decorated the first Christmas tree is not taken seriously by scholars.)
Candles, a necessary item during the dark winter period, were a common Saturnalia gift. Some scholars consider them a precursor to Christmas lights.
Originally celebrated on Dec. 17, the Roman Saturnalia eventually expanded to last an entire week, ending on Dec. 23.
So where did the Dec. 25 date for Christmas come from?
Many scholars believe that date came from another Roman festival, one that became popular around the middle of the third century - the feast of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun.
During this festival, various gods related to the sun in the Roman pantheon were honored. The festival was most popular during the reign of the emperor Aurelian (270-275 A.D.), who attributed his military victories to the sun god and may have wanted to establish a solar deity as supreme in the Roman pantheon. Images of Sol Invictus remained popular and appeared on Roman coinage even during the reign of Constantine the Great (306-337 A.D.).
There is some evidence that early Christians celebrated the festival alongside Pagans, and that church leaders, seeing these practices under way, simply appropriated the date for the birth of Jesus as Christianity grew and became the dominant religion of the empire throughout the fourth and fifth centuries.
Michael Grant, the late scholar of the ancient world, noted in his 1985 book The Roman Emperors that Dec. 25 was "a bequest of the solar cult to Christianity, converted into Christmas Day."
Legal codes laid down by the emperors Theodosius I and later Justinian made Christianity the state religion and banned Paganism. Church leaders were generally tolerant of people taking old practices and adding a Christian gloss to them. Overt worship of Pagan gods disappeared but the Dec.25 date - and many residual practices associated with the old festival - remained.
As strange as it may seem, when Religious Right legal groups go to court to battle the "War on Christmas," they may really be defending practices historically associated with the worship not of the son of God but the sun in the sky.
The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay frowned on Christmas revelry, considering the holiday a Roman Catholic affectation. A law in the colony barred anyone from taking the day off work, feasting or engaging in other celebrations on Christmas, under penalty of a five-shilling fine.
The law was repealed in 1681, but Christmas celebrations remained unpopular in New England and other colonies for many years. That did not change after the Revolution, because many Americans viewed Christmas as a Tory custom, a reminder of the expelled British.
Although Christmas became popular in the South as early as the 1830s, other regions were apathetic. Writer Tom Flynn notes in his 1993 book The Trouble with Christmas that Congress did not begin adjourning on Christmas Day until 1856. Public schools in New England were often open on Dec. 25, as were many factories and offices. Many Protestant churches refused to hold services, considering the holiday "popish."
Not until after the Civil War did Christmas begin to seriously affect American cultural and religious life. European immigration increased sharply after the war, and many of the newcomers came from countries with strong Christmas traditions. Germans, Italians, Poles, Swedes, Norwegians and others brought the holiday and many of its features, including Christmas trees and Santa Claus, to America in a big way.
The celebration spread, and in 1870 Christmas was declared a federal holiday by Congress. But practices in the states continued to vary. As late as 1931, Flynn reports, nine states still called for public schools to remain open on Christmas Day.
It might also surprise Religious Right activists to learn that many of the Christmas traditions they defend so vociferously have, at best, a tenuous connection to Christianity.
Several of the holiday's most common features grow out of pre-Christian religions. The ancient Romans celebrated Saturnalia in mid-December, a time of general merriment, feasting and gift exchanges. Slaves were given time off and were even permitted to play dice games in public. During this period, many Romans decorated their homes with evergreens as a reminder that life would persevere through the dark days of winter.
Evergreen trees had long been viewed as a symbol of fertility by Pagan peoples. When winter came and most trees lost their leaves and appeared to die, the evergreen was a reminder that life would endure and that long days, warmer weather and a harvest would come again. Germans were early boosters of the Christmas tree and brought it to America. (The pious legend that Martin Luther decorated the first Christmas tree is not taken seriously by scholars.)
Candles, a necessary item during the dark winter period, were a common Saturnalia gift. Some scholars consider them a precursor to Christmas lights.
Originally celebrated on Dec. 17, the Roman Saturnalia eventually expanded to last an entire week, ending on Dec. 23.
So where did the Dec. 25 date for Christmas come from?
Many scholars believe that date came from another Roman festival, one that became popular around the middle of the third century - the feast of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun.
During this festival, various gods related to the sun in the Roman pantheon were honored. The festival was most popular during the reign of the emperor Aurelian (270-275 A.D.), who attributed his military victories to the sun god and may have wanted to establish a solar deity as supreme in the Roman pantheon. Images of Sol Invictus remained popular and appeared on Roman coinage even during the reign of Constantine the Great (306-337 A.D.).
There is some evidence that early Christians celebrated the festival alongside Pagans, and that church leaders, seeing these practices under way, simply appropriated the date for the birth of Jesus as Christianity grew and became the dominant religion of the empire throughout the fourth and fifth centuries.
Michael Grant, the late scholar of the ancient world, noted in his 1985 book The Roman Emperors that Dec. 25 was "a bequest of the solar cult to Christianity, converted into Christmas Day."
Legal codes laid down by the emperors Theodosius I and later Justinian made Christianity the state religion and banned Paganism. Church leaders were generally tolerant of people taking old practices and adding a Christian gloss to them. Overt worship of Pagan gods disappeared but the Dec.25 date - and many residual practices associated with the old festival - remained.
As strange as it may seem, when Religious Right legal groups go to court to battle the "War on Christmas," they may really be defending practices historically associated with the worship not of the son of God but the sun in the sky.
Here’s why even the Bible itself discredits the Christmas story of the ‘virgin birth’ of Jesus
VALERIE TARICO - COMMENTARY- raw story
03 DEC 2018 AT 09:33 ET
Christmas nativity scene with baby Jesus, Mary & Joseph in barn. (Shutterstock)
Celestial messengers, natural wonders and a virgin birth establish the baby Jesus as someone special. Why does the rest of the New Testament ignore these auspicious beginnings?
Sometime toward the end of the first century, the writer of Luke told a story that would become one of the most treasured in all of Western Civilization, the birth of the baby Jesus. It opens with an announcement known as the Annunciation. A messenger angel named Gabriel appears to a young Jewish virgin, Mary, telling her that the spirit of God will enter her and she will give birth to a child who is both human and divine:
The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. (Luke 1:30-34 NRSV)
Two Wonder-filled Stories Merge
Our modern Christmas story is a composite drawn from two gospels, meaning devotional accounts of the life of Jesus, known as the books of Matthew and Luke. Both accounts underscore that Mary, a virgin, was impregnated by God alone. The writer of Matthew doesn’t repeat the Annunciation, but he does say that Mary’s fiancé Joseph wants to end their betrothal when he discovers that Mary is pregnant. An angel tells Joseph in a dream that her pregnancy is “of the Holy Spirit,” and so he keeps her a virgin until she gives birth to Jesus. (Matthew 1:18-25)
Mary’s virginity is just one of several ways that the authors of the gospels signal to readers that this is no ordinary birth. Each accounts includes several supernatural wonders and pronouncements of God’s favor.
Because the gospels were aimed at different audiences, the auspicious events differ from story to story. Matthew: A rising star is seen by astrologers who bring gifts that foreshadow the baby’s future. Luke: A chorus of angels singing to shepherds on the hills. Matthew: A jealous king murders baby boys to protect his throne but the family of the holy child, having been warned in a dream, escapes. Luke: A prophet and prophetess recognize the infant’s divine spark.
Christmas pageants that merge these elements into a single story have delighted children and adults alike for centuries. The traditional manger scene or crèche merges them into a single panorama.
Grand Beginnings are Soon Forgotten
Many people might find it surprising that these auspicious infancy stories are never referenced elsewhere in the New Testament, for example in the letters of Paul or in the other two gospels that made their way into the Christian Bible. Even in the book of Luke itself, by the time Jesus is a boy, it is almost as if even his parents have forgotten the extraordinary circumstances of his birth. When he turns twelve, his family travels to Jerusalem, where his parents lose him. After three days, they find him in the temple:
When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. (Luke 2:48-50 NRSV).
Why would two authors describe a virgin birth announced by an angel and accompanied by natural wonders and then, not long after, have their characters behave as if it didn’t happen? That seems like an oddly wasted opportunity for writers who were seeking to establish both their own credibility and the credibility of their fledgling religion. Why don’t the dramatic astrological and biological signs of divinity surrounding the birth of Jesus get more play?
Christianity’s virgin birth narrative, both what it says and why it is poorly integrated into the rest of the Bible, is a fascinating study in cultural evolution. Specifically, it illustrates a process called “syncretism” whereby religions merge over time when cultures come into contact.
The New Testament Is Out of Order
Mainstream Bible scholarship tells us that the marvel-filled stories about the birth of Jesus don’t get referenced later in the New Testament because they were written after many of the books that follow them. When the books of the New Testament are arranged chronologically using the best information available, the gospels of Matthew and Luke are numbers 11 and 20 respectively. They come after letters that are believed to be authentic writings of Paul, for example, and after the gospel of Mark, which may have been a source for both authors but fails to mention an auspicious birth.
In addition, the birth narratives may have been late additions to the gospels themselves, which would explain why they seem forgotten later in the story. Evidence for this can be seen in how different versions of the gospels changed over time.
But the Catholic councils that decided which texts would go into the New Testament didn’t know that. They lacked the modern tools of linguistic analysis, archeology and anthropology and the mindset of antiquities scholarship. They believed that the books called Matthew and Luke were written by men named Matthew and Luke, one a disciple of Jesus and the other a companion of Paul, who had gotten some stories second hand and had been eye witnesses to others. The councils put the gospels first (and the book of Revelation last) because they were trying to assemble a coherent narrative.
Christianity Adapted to the Roman World
In 2012, Jesus scholar Marcus Borg published Evolution of the Word: Reading the Bible in the Order It was Written. Borg encourages readers to explore the 27 books of the New Testament in the order they were written to see how Christian thinking unfolded over time. Ordering the texts as they were written also allows scholars to put the evolution of Christianity in a historical context.
Read this way, one trend line is that the stories about Jesus become more magical over time. For example, John, the last gospel written, has Jesus making the boldest claims about his own deity. Another trend line is that over time, Jesus worship picks up bits of other cultures as Christianity spreads among the gentiles of the Roman Empire. Borg describes “an increasing accommodation within the cultural conventions of the time.” Some of those conventions came from Greek mythology and Roman civic religion.
The Earliest References to Jesus’ Birth Are More Mundane than Magical
The earliest mention of the birth of Jesus comes in Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia, likely written between 49 and 55 C.E, or about half a century before the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Paul’s description makes no mention of a virgin birth. He says simply that, “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law” (Galatians 4:4).
In another letter, Paul seems to imply that Jesus came into the world in the usual way. In Romans 1:1-3 he refers to . . . the gospel of God…concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” The phrase “seed of David” refers specifically to the genealogy of Joseph, the husband of Mary.
So Why Divine Insemination?
Symbologist and retired religion professor Dr. Tony Nugent, tells us that the miraculous elements of the Christmas story have their roots in ancient mythic traditions that predated and surrounded nascent Christianity. In Greek and Roman mythology, heroes and great men often were born from the union of a god and a human woman. For example, in the story of Hercules, Zeus impregnates his mother by taking the form of her husband. Helen of Troy is conceived when Zeus takes the form of a swan and either seduces or rapes her mother Leda. Danaë, the mother of Perseus, is impregnated by a shower of gold. Mars, the Roman god of war fathers the twins Romulus and Remus through Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin. Even Augustus, Pythagoras, and Alexander the Great were reputed to have human mothers and divine fathers.
The idea of gods or demi-gods mating with human women was familiar throughout the Ancient Near East. It appears in the book of Genesis:
When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4, NRSV)
Early Christians disagreed over when, exactly Jesus became divine. Jewish converts promoted a theory called “adoptionism” in which Jesus is uniquely adopted as God’s son later in life. The Gospel of Mark for example, suggests that this happens at the time of his baptism. Paul suggests that it happens when he is resurrected. The authors of Matthew and Luke, clearly had a view in this debate—they believed that the sonship of Jesus began at birth, and they made their case in terms that would be both familiar and persuasive to people of their time.
An Ambiguous Prophecy Helps the Story Along
One key goal of the gospel writers was to show that the life of Jesus had been predicted by Hebrew prophesies and that the details of his life fulfilled these prophecies. Many Christians to this day take the fulfilled prophecies of the gospel stories as proof positive that stories are true. The naturalistic explanation, of course, is that the gospel writers (or the oral and written traditions they received) may have shaped their stories about Jesus to fit the Hebrew scriptures. And the careful documentation of Mary’s sexual history—or lack thereof—offers one bit of evidence that they did exactly that.
After telling readers that Jesus was fathered by God himself in spirit form, the writer of Matthew adds the following words:
“All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’” (Matthew 1: 22-23).
The quotation is taken from the book of Isaiah (7:14), and in the context of the time it is understood as predicting a hopeful future for the Kingdom of Hezekiah. But the Christian who first linked this passage to the person of Jesus must have been delighted.
Early Judaism was very focused on purity—pure foods, unblemished bodies, and female sexual abstinence that ensured pure bloodlines for God’s chosen people. The Apostle Paul made sexual purity central to mainstream Roman Christianity. To a believer steeped in Rome’s tradition of divine insemination and Judaism’s tradition of virtuous virginity, a divine virgin birth might seem like exactly how Jesus should be born.
The twist is this: The Hebrew word used by the writer of Isaiah is almah, which can mean either a young woman who hasn’t had sex or simply a young women who hasn’t yet bourn a child. Anglican theologian John Shelby Spong tells us that a different word Hebrew word betulah, is used 50 times in the Hebrew Bible when the writer wants to refer specifically and clearly to a woman who hasn’t had sex. (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Treatment of Women by a Male Dominated Church.) But the gospel writers relied on a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Septuagint. In the Septuagint, the word almah is translated as parthenos, which also can mean either young girl or virgin, but which is strongly associated with the virgin goddess Athena.
Would the writers of Matthew and Luke have emphasized Mary’s virginity if they had been privy to the original Hebrew? We will never know. What we do know is this. The story of a virginal young woman who is impregnated by a god and gives birth to a man who changes history appeals to the human imagination. It is a trope that has emerged in many mythic traditions and endured across centuries, cultures and continents. After it took root in Christianity, alternatives fell by the wayside, and the story of the baby Jesus, born to a virgin amidst signs and wonders, became the most celebrated and cherished story in the Bible.
Sometime toward the end of the first century, the writer of Luke told a story that would become one of the most treasured in all of Western Civilization, the birth of the baby Jesus. It opens with an announcement known as the Annunciation. A messenger angel named Gabriel appears to a young Jewish virgin, Mary, telling her that the spirit of God will enter her and she will give birth to a child who is both human and divine:
The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. (Luke 1:30-34 NRSV)
Two Wonder-filled Stories Merge
Our modern Christmas story is a composite drawn from two gospels, meaning devotional accounts of the life of Jesus, known as the books of Matthew and Luke. Both accounts underscore that Mary, a virgin, was impregnated by God alone. The writer of Matthew doesn’t repeat the Annunciation, but he does say that Mary’s fiancé Joseph wants to end their betrothal when he discovers that Mary is pregnant. An angel tells Joseph in a dream that her pregnancy is “of the Holy Spirit,” and so he keeps her a virgin until she gives birth to Jesus. (Matthew 1:18-25)
Mary’s virginity is just one of several ways that the authors of the gospels signal to readers that this is no ordinary birth. Each accounts includes several supernatural wonders and pronouncements of God’s favor.
Because the gospels were aimed at different audiences, the auspicious events differ from story to story. Matthew: A rising star is seen by astrologers who bring gifts that foreshadow the baby’s future. Luke: A chorus of angels singing to shepherds on the hills. Matthew: A jealous king murders baby boys to protect his throne but the family of the holy child, having been warned in a dream, escapes. Luke: A prophet and prophetess recognize the infant’s divine spark.
Christmas pageants that merge these elements into a single story have delighted children and adults alike for centuries. The traditional manger scene or crèche merges them into a single panorama.
Grand Beginnings are Soon Forgotten
Many people might find it surprising that these auspicious infancy stories are never referenced elsewhere in the New Testament, for example in the letters of Paul or in the other two gospels that made their way into the Christian Bible. Even in the book of Luke itself, by the time Jesus is a boy, it is almost as if even his parents have forgotten the extraordinary circumstances of his birth. When he turns twelve, his family travels to Jerusalem, where his parents lose him. After three days, they find him in the temple:
When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. (Luke 2:48-50 NRSV).
Why would two authors describe a virgin birth announced by an angel and accompanied by natural wonders and then, not long after, have their characters behave as if it didn’t happen? That seems like an oddly wasted opportunity for writers who were seeking to establish both their own credibility and the credibility of their fledgling religion. Why don’t the dramatic astrological and biological signs of divinity surrounding the birth of Jesus get more play?
Christianity’s virgin birth narrative, both what it says and why it is poorly integrated into the rest of the Bible, is a fascinating study in cultural evolution. Specifically, it illustrates a process called “syncretism” whereby religions merge over time when cultures come into contact.
The New Testament Is Out of Order
Mainstream Bible scholarship tells us that the marvel-filled stories about the birth of Jesus don’t get referenced later in the New Testament because they were written after many of the books that follow them. When the books of the New Testament are arranged chronologically using the best information available, the gospels of Matthew and Luke are numbers 11 and 20 respectively. They come after letters that are believed to be authentic writings of Paul, for example, and after the gospel of Mark, which may have been a source for both authors but fails to mention an auspicious birth.
In addition, the birth narratives may have been late additions to the gospels themselves, which would explain why they seem forgotten later in the story. Evidence for this can be seen in how different versions of the gospels changed over time.
But the Catholic councils that decided which texts would go into the New Testament didn’t know that. They lacked the modern tools of linguistic analysis, archeology and anthropology and the mindset of antiquities scholarship. They believed that the books called Matthew and Luke were written by men named Matthew and Luke, one a disciple of Jesus and the other a companion of Paul, who had gotten some stories second hand and had been eye witnesses to others. The councils put the gospels first (and the book of Revelation last) because they were trying to assemble a coherent narrative.
Christianity Adapted to the Roman World
In 2012, Jesus scholar Marcus Borg published Evolution of the Word: Reading the Bible in the Order It was Written. Borg encourages readers to explore the 27 books of the New Testament in the order they were written to see how Christian thinking unfolded over time. Ordering the texts as they were written also allows scholars to put the evolution of Christianity in a historical context.
Read this way, one trend line is that the stories about Jesus become more magical over time. For example, John, the last gospel written, has Jesus making the boldest claims about his own deity. Another trend line is that over time, Jesus worship picks up bits of other cultures as Christianity spreads among the gentiles of the Roman Empire. Borg describes “an increasing accommodation within the cultural conventions of the time.” Some of those conventions came from Greek mythology and Roman civic religion.
The Earliest References to Jesus’ Birth Are More Mundane than Magical
The earliest mention of the birth of Jesus comes in Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia, likely written between 49 and 55 C.E, or about half a century before the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Paul’s description makes no mention of a virgin birth. He says simply that, “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law” (Galatians 4:4).
In another letter, Paul seems to imply that Jesus came into the world in the usual way. In Romans 1:1-3 he refers to . . . the gospel of God…concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” The phrase “seed of David” refers specifically to the genealogy of Joseph, the husband of Mary.
So Why Divine Insemination?
Symbologist and retired religion professor Dr. Tony Nugent, tells us that the miraculous elements of the Christmas story have their roots in ancient mythic traditions that predated and surrounded nascent Christianity. In Greek and Roman mythology, heroes and great men often were born from the union of a god and a human woman. For example, in the story of Hercules, Zeus impregnates his mother by taking the form of her husband. Helen of Troy is conceived when Zeus takes the form of a swan and either seduces or rapes her mother Leda. Danaë, the mother of Perseus, is impregnated by a shower of gold. Mars, the Roman god of war fathers the twins Romulus and Remus through Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin. Even Augustus, Pythagoras, and Alexander the Great were reputed to have human mothers and divine fathers.
The idea of gods or demi-gods mating with human women was familiar throughout the Ancient Near East. It appears in the book of Genesis:
When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4, NRSV)
Early Christians disagreed over when, exactly Jesus became divine. Jewish converts promoted a theory called “adoptionism” in which Jesus is uniquely adopted as God’s son later in life. The Gospel of Mark for example, suggests that this happens at the time of his baptism. Paul suggests that it happens when he is resurrected. The authors of Matthew and Luke, clearly had a view in this debate—they believed that the sonship of Jesus began at birth, and they made their case in terms that would be both familiar and persuasive to people of their time.
An Ambiguous Prophecy Helps the Story Along
One key goal of the gospel writers was to show that the life of Jesus had been predicted by Hebrew prophesies and that the details of his life fulfilled these prophecies. Many Christians to this day take the fulfilled prophecies of the gospel stories as proof positive that stories are true. The naturalistic explanation, of course, is that the gospel writers (or the oral and written traditions they received) may have shaped their stories about Jesus to fit the Hebrew scriptures. And the careful documentation of Mary’s sexual history—or lack thereof—offers one bit of evidence that they did exactly that.
After telling readers that Jesus was fathered by God himself in spirit form, the writer of Matthew adds the following words:
“All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’” (Matthew 1: 22-23).
The quotation is taken from the book of Isaiah (7:14), and in the context of the time it is understood as predicting a hopeful future for the Kingdom of Hezekiah. But the Christian who first linked this passage to the person of Jesus must have been delighted.
Early Judaism was very focused on purity—pure foods, unblemished bodies, and female sexual abstinence that ensured pure bloodlines for God’s chosen people. The Apostle Paul made sexual purity central to mainstream Roman Christianity. To a believer steeped in Rome’s tradition of divine insemination and Judaism’s tradition of virtuous virginity, a divine virgin birth might seem like exactly how Jesus should be born.
The twist is this: The Hebrew word used by the writer of Isaiah is almah, which can mean either a young woman who hasn’t had sex or simply a young women who hasn’t yet bourn a child. Anglican theologian John Shelby Spong tells us that a different word Hebrew word betulah, is used 50 times in the Hebrew Bible when the writer wants to refer specifically and clearly to a woman who hasn’t had sex. (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Treatment of Women by a Male Dominated Church.) But the gospel writers relied on a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Septuagint. In the Septuagint, the word almah is translated as parthenos, which also can mean either young girl or virgin, but which is strongly associated with the virgin goddess Athena.
Would the writers of Matthew and Luke have emphasized Mary’s virginity if they had been privy to the original Hebrew? We will never know. What we do know is this. The story of a virginal young woman who is impregnated by a god and gives birth to a man who changes history appeals to the human imagination. It is a trope that has emerged in many mythic traditions and endured across centuries, cultures and continents. After it took root in Christianity, alternatives fell by the wayside, and the story of the baby Jesus, born to a virgin amidst signs and wonders, became the most celebrated and cherished story in the Bible.
these stories as myths, rather than literal histories!!!
Ancient Mythic Origins of the Christmas Story
Posted on January 9, 2009
valerietarico.com
Valerie Tarico interviews Dr. Tony Nugent, scholar of world religions. Dr. Nugent is a symbologist, an expert in ancient symbols. He taught at Seattle University for fifteen years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and is an ordained Presbyterian minister.
Tarico: Many Americans have heard that December 25 was a birthday of Roman gods long before it was chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Some people also know that our delightful mélange of Christmas festivities originated in ancient Norse, Roman and Druid traditions – or, in the case of Rudolph, on Madison Avenue. But where does the Christmas story itself come from: Jesus in the manger, the angels and wise men?
Nugent: The familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus’s parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They act surprised by his odd behavior. There is never any other mention in the New Testament of these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that contain them. To make matters more interesting, the stories themselves have inconsistencies and ambiguities – contradictory genealogies, for example. Our Christmas story (singular) is actually a composite.
Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: “a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child.” The Hebrew word in Isaiah is “almah,” which means simply “young woman.” But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as “virgin.” Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.
Tarico: That’s a lot of added complications. If the rest of the New Testament doesn’t refer to these stories or need them, then how did we end up with them? Where do they come from?
Nugent: One part of the answer comes from Hellenistic culture. (It is no accident all New Testament books written in Greek.) In this tradition, when a man did something extraordinary there was the assumption that he did this because he was different, either divine or semi-divine. They would make up a story about how he came to be divine. Almost all Greek heroes were said to be born of a human woman and a god–even Alexander the Great, Augustus and Pythagoras.
The father typically was Zeus or Apollo. The god would come and sleep with the woman, pretending to be the husband or as a bolt of lightning, or some such. Greek mythology also shows up in the book of Genesis: the gods lusting after the women and coming down and mating with them.
Tarico: Why were they added to the Christian story?
Nugent: Jewish Christians, the first Christians, didn’t believe in the virgin birth. They believed that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Part of their Christology was “adoptionism”–they thought Jesus was adopted as the unique son of God at some time later in life. There were disagreements about when – Mark suggests the baptism, Paul suggests the resurrection.
Over time, gentile Christianity replaced Jewish Christianity. There were Jewish-Roman Wars. The Jewish Christians were marginalized and oppressed. The Gentile branch became dominant. Eventually we get the gospel of John which pushes the sonship of Jesus back to the beginning of time. This writer is at the other end of the spectrum from the Jewish Christians.
But Matthew and Luke think that the sonship of Jesus began at birth. And they want to tell a story that reinforces this point. Matthew and Luke are the source of the Christmas story as most of us learned it.
Tarico: Why didn’t the writers do a better job of cleaning the contradictions?
Nugent: They did, some. This is called the “orthodox corruption of scripture.” But it appears that these birth stories were added toward the end, so scripture got frozen before they could get integrated.
Tarico: I was raised that the bible was the literally perfect, “inerrant” word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. What you are saying about the Christmas story sure calls into question this point of view.
Nugent: Which Bible?! There are thousands of manuscript variations. Most biblical stories are probably fiction, not non-fiction. They are mythology in the deepest sense of the word. But we need to get beyond the issue of whether biblical reports happened in the historical, physical sense to understand what they mean spiritually and mythically.
Tarico: Ok. Back to Christmas. Of all the images from the Christmas story, the one that people fall in love with most is angels. The Christmas story is full of angels, beings of light. Is this because of the solstice tradition?
Nugent: Actually it comes from the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures that were eventually adopted into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. It also comes from the Jewish literature written between the Old and New Testaments that didn’t get into the biblical canon. Some of these are even quoted in the New Testament, for example Enoch, from the 2nd Century BC. It’s all about angels.
Tarico: What are angels in these stories? Who are they?
Nugent: The Bible calls them the sons of God, the Divine Council. The word used for God in parts of the Hebrew Bible, Elohim, is plural implying a family of deities. Angels are the lesser gods of the deposed pantheon of ancient Israel. They are under the rulership of Yahweh. Together with Yahweh they are part of Elohim, a plural word that we translate “God” in the book of Genesis. Elohim/God says “Let us make humans in our image.” Christians understand this to refer to the trinity, but that is a later interpretation.
These angels came from the ancient pantheons of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Many of these gods come from stars. There is a strong astral dimension. “Heavenly Hosts” are stars.
Tarico: The Luke story focuses on one angel specifically: Gabriel. Is he the archangel?
Nugent: Gabriel is the Angel of the Lord. He is one of two angels who are named in the Jewish canon and the Christian canon outside of the apocrypha: Gabriel and Michael. They are the angels of mercy and judgment. Gabriel means “Strong One of El.” He is first named in Daniel.
If you go into an Eastern Orthodox church you have two icons on the north and south. Michael is on the North to fight with Satan who lives there. Gabriel is on the south. He is more like what the angels originally were, which is messengers of the gods. That is what angel means. The idea that God has a special messenger is exactly what we read about in the Middle Eastern mythologies. Each of the earlier gods has his own special messenger. Enki, who becomes Yaweh, has Isimud. The goddess Inana has Ninshubur. Each high god will have an envoy or assistant, who is a lesser god. The angel of the lord is the same thing. The distinction between angels and gods came later.
Tarico: So Gabriel is a star person? Or one of those semi-divine descendants of gods and women.
Nugent: He is one of the gods who would come down to earth.
Tarico: Why do you say that?
Nugent: The offspring of the gods mating with women are called Gaborim–from the same root as Gabriel. In the second century, Gabriel appears in the Epistula Apostolorum. It talks about Jesus and these secret teachings that he gave to his apostles after the resurrection. One of the secrets is that he is actually Gabriel. After Gabriel took on flesh and united with Mary, then he becomes Jesus. The idea that Christ was an angel was extremely popular in the early church. Later we find this really strict separation between humans and angels; between gods and angels. (more)
Tarico: We have time for just one more favorite Christmas story: The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi.
Nugent: The Magi are astrologers. They are Zoroastrian priests. Just to the east of the Roman Empire was the Persian Empire, which was Zoroastrian. They see this star at its rising (the better translations don’t say in the East). The astrologers paid a lot of attention to this. It is likely that what this refers to was a heliacal rising, which is the first time that a star appears over the horizon during the course of a year. They thought this was a sign of the Jewish messiah. Scholars speculate that they would have been living in Babylon, where there were lots of Jewish merchants. The Jews had been there from the time of the Jewish exile from Babylonia. We have cuneiform records from them.
Tarico: Are you assuming that this story is historical?
Nugent: Think of it as a frog and pond. The pond is real, the frog is not. They are fictional stories in a real setting. They don’t always get the details of the setting right, but they are fictional characters in real places. The Magi follow their star from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The author has in mind a real star that would be in front of you in this situation. It would have to be a star in the far southern sky. Remember what I said about the Heavenly Host being stars? The star in Matthew and the angel in Luke are two variants of the same mythology.
Tarico: My former fundamentalist head is spinning. Is there anything else you’d like to say in closing?
Nugent: We need to be able to appreciate these stories as myths, rather than literal histories. When you understand where they come from, then you can understand their spiritual significance for the writers and for us.
RELATED: Most Christians whining about the ‘War on Christmas’ don’t understand this fact about the holiday’s history
If it feels like the “War on Christmas” is getting really old, it is.
Tarico: Many Americans have heard that December 25 was a birthday of Roman gods long before it was chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Some people also know that our delightful mélange of Christmas festivities originated in ancient Norse, Roman and Druid traditions – or, in the case of Rudolph, on Madison Avenue. But where does the Christmas story itself come from: Jesus in the manger, the angels and wise men?
Nugent: The familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus’s parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They act surprised by his odd behavior. There is never any other mention in the New Testament of these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that contain them. To make matters more interesting, the stories themselves have inconsistencies and ambiguities – contradictory genealogies, for example. Our Christmas story (singular) is actually a composite.
Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: “a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child.” The Hebrew word in Isaiah is “almah,” which means simply “young woman.” But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as “virgin.” Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.
Tarico: That’s a lot of added complications. If the rest of the New Testament doesn’t refer to these stories or need them, then how did we end up with them? Where do they come from?
Nugent: One part of the answer comes from Hellenistic culture. (It is no accident all New Testament books written in Greek.) In this tradition, when a man did something extraordinary there was the assumption that he did this because he was different, either divine or semi-divine. They would make up a story about how he came to be divine. Almost all Greek heroes were said to be born of a human woman and a god–even Alexander the Great, Augustus and Pythagoras.
The father typically was Zeus or Apollo. The god would come and sleep with the woman, pretending to be the husband or as a bolt of lightning, or some such. Greek mythology also shows up in the book of Genesis: the gods lusting after the women and coming down and mating with them.
Tarico: Why were they added to the Christian story?
Nugent: Jewish Christians, the first Christians, didn’t believe in the virgin birth. They believed that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Part of their Christology was “adoptionism”–they thought Jesus was adopted as the unique son of God at some time later in life. There were disagreements about when – Mark suggests the baptism, Paul suggests the resurrection.
Over time, gentile Christianity replaced Jewish Christianity. There were Jewish-Roman Wars. The Jewish Christians were marginalized and oppressed. The Gentile branch became dominant. Eventually we get the gospel of John which pushes the sonship of Jesus back to the beginning of time. This writer is at the other end of the spectrum from the Jewish Christians.
But Matthew and Luke think that the sonship of Jesus began at birth. And they want to tell a story that reinforces this point. Matthew and Luke are the source of the Christmas story as most of us learned it.
Tarico: Why didn’t the writers do a better job of cleaning the contradictions?
Nugent: They did, some. This is called the “orthodox corruption of scripture.” But it appears that these birth stories were added toward the end, so scripture got frozen before they could get integrated.
Tarico: I was raised that the bible was the literally perfect, “inerrant” word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. What you are saying about the Christmas story sure calls into question this point of view.
Nugent: Which Bible?! There are thousands of manuscript variations. Most biblical stories are probably fiction, not non-fiction. They are mythology in the deepest sense of the word. But we need to get beyond the issue of whether biblical reports happened in the historical, physical sense to understand what they mean spiritually and mythically.
Tarico: Ok. Back to Christmas. Of all the images from the Christmas story, the one that people fall in love with most is angels. The Christmas story is full of angels, beings of light. Is this because of the solstice tradition?
Nugent: Actually it comes from the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures that were eventually adopted into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. It also comes from the Jewish literature written between the Old and New Testaments that didn’t get into the biblical canon. Some of these are even quoted in the New Testament, for example Enoch, from the 2nd Century BC. It’s all about angels.
Tarico: What are angels in these stories? Who are they?
Nugent: The Bible calls them the sons of God, the Divine Council. The word used for God in parts of the Hebrew Bible, Elohim, is plural implying a family of deities. Angels are the lesser gods of the deposed pantheon of ancient Israel. They are under the rulership of Yahweh. Together with Yahweh they are part of Elohim, a plural word that we translate “God” in the book of Genesis. Elohim/God says “Let us make humans in our image.” Christians understand this to refer to the trinity, but that is a later interpretation.
These angels came from the ancient pantheons of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Many of these gods come from stars. There is a strong astral dimension. “Heavenly Hosts” are stars.
Tarico: The Luke story focuses on one angel specifically: Gabriel. Is he the archangel?
Nugent: Gabriel is the Angel of the Lord. He is one of two angels who are named in the Jewish canon and the Christian canon outside of the apocrypha: Gabriel and Michael. They are the angels of mercy and judgment. Gabriel means “Strong One of El.” He is first named in Daniel.
If you go into an Eastern Orthodox church you have two icons on the north and south. Michael is on the North to fight with Satan who lives there. Gabriel is on the south. He is more like what the angels originally were, which is messengers of the gods. That is what angel means. The idea that God has a special messenger is exactly what we read about in the Middle Eastern mythologies. Each of the earlier gods has his own special messenger. Enki, who becomes Yaweh, has Isimud. The goddess Inana has Ninshubur. Each high god will have an envoy or assistant, who is a lesser god. The angel of the lord is the same thing. The distinction between angels and gods came later.
Tarico: So Gabriel is a star person? Or one of those semi-divine descendants of gods and women.
Nugent: He is one of the gods who would come down to earth.
Tarico: Why do you say that?
Nugent: The offspring of the gods mating with women are called Gaborim–from the same root as Gabriel. In the second century, Gabriel appears in the Epistula Apostolorum. It talks about Jesus and these secret teachings that he gave to his apostles after the resurrection. One of the secrets is that he is actually Gabriel. After Gabriel took on flesh and united with Mary, then he becomes Jesus. The idea that Christ was an angel was extremely popular in the early church. Later we find this really strict separation between humans and angels; between gods and angels. (more)
Tarico: We have time for just one more favorite Christmas story: The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi.
Nugent: The Magi are astrologers. They are Zoroastrian priests. Just to the east of the Roman Empire was the Persian Empire, which was Zoroastrian. They see this star at its rising (the better translations don’t say in the East). The astrologers paid a lot of attention to this. It is likely that what this refers to was a heliacal rising, which is the first time that a star appears over the horizon during the course of a year. They thought this was a sign of the Jewish messiah. Scholars speculate that they would have been living in Babylon, where there were lots of Jewish merchants. The Jews had been there from the time of the Jewish exile from Babylonia. We have cuneiform records from them.
Tarico: Are you assuming that this story is historical?
Nugent: Think of it as a frog and pond. The pond is real, the frog is not. They are fictional stories in a real setting. They don’t always get the details of the setting right, but they are fictional characters in real places. The Magi follow their star from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The author has in mind a real star that would be in front of you in this situation. It would have to be a star in the far southern sky. Remember what I said about the Heavenly Host being stars? The star in Matthew and the angel in Luke are two variants of the same mythology.
Tarico: My former fundamentalist head is spinning. Is there anything else you’d like to say in closing?
Nugent: We need to be able to appreciate these stories as myths, rather than literal histories. When you understand where they come from, then you can understand their spiritual significance for the writers and for us.
RELATED: Most Christians whining about the ‘War on Christmas’ don’t understand this fact about the holiday’s history
If it feels like the “War on Christmas” is getting really old, it is.
Christian historians may have exaggerated persecution of faithful at the hands of Romans: archaeologists
TOM BOGGIONI - raw story
25 NOV 2018 AT 16:16 ET
A ccording to a report at the Daily Beast, archaeologists working in Jordan claim that Christian historians may have inflated reports about the torture of the faithful at the hands of Romans.
The report states that “In his Church History, Eusebius of Caesarea, the first Christian historian, tells the story of the rise of Christianity from a regional Jewish splinter group to the dominant religion of the Roman empire. Eusebius wrote in the fourth century and was at least acquainted, if not actually friendly, with the Roman emperor Constantine. A main focus of Eusebius’s history was the persecution.”
Archaeologists working at a mine in Jordan where Christians were reportedly the subject of such indescribable torture beg to differ — based upon their findings.
The report states that Megan Perry, a bio-anthropologist from East Carolina University, has spent years analyzing excavated human remains from a cemetery near a Byzantine mining camp at Phaeno. According to the results of her analysis — recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology — what she found doesn’t match up with what has previously been claimed by Christian writers.
According to the Beast, remains of the workers in the mine suggest, “… good health that many of these individuals seemed to have enjoyed. An analysis of skeletal indicators of iron-deficiencies led her to conclude that ‘the general health of the Faynan population is not substantially poorer than the health of residents of a typical Byzantine agricultural village.'”
The report adds that Perry’s findings show that locals “also had lower-than-expected levels of bone degeneration, considering their supposedly hard lifestyle.”
In an interview, Perry was asked about claims of torture and she said that her research didn’t bear the reports out.
“When I asked Perry if she or Lotus Abu-Keraki (the first to examine the samples for her MA thesis in 2000), had seen evidence of torture or martyrdom she said that she had not,” the Beast’s Candida Moss writes, adding that Perry told her, “Neither of us note evidence of beheading in the cervical vertebrae, nor evidence that eyes were removed using sharp utensils, or that feet were maimed. Cauterization [for example, of the eyes that Eusebius tells us were removed] would be more difficult to identify in skeletal remains, since it generally just impacts soft tissue.”
Perry did add that her sample was small, stating “her team worked only on 45 skeletons from the cemetery,” and that conditions and the archaelogical record elsewhere where Christians and Romans interacted might offer different conclusions.
“It is therefore possible that they simply did not examine any of the ‘innumerable’ Christian martyrs that Eusebius says were sent to the mines,” Moss wrote, adding that Perry remarked, “While the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, no evidence for individuals subjected to bodily harm or shipped in from outside regions was found in this 4th-6th-century cemetery.”
The report states that “In his Church History, Eusebius of Caesarea, the first Christian historian, tells the story of the rise of Christianity from a regional Jewish splinter group to the dominant religion of the Roman empire. Eusebius wrote in the fourth century and was at least acquainted, if not actually friendly, with the Roman emperor Constantine. A main focus of Eusebius’s history was the persecution.”
Archaeologists working at a mine in Jordan where Christians were reportedly the subject of such indescribable torture beg to differ — based upon their findings.
The report states that Megan Perry, a bio-anthropologist from East Carolina University, has spent years analyzing excavated human remains from a cemetery near a Byzantine mining camp at Phaeno. According to the results of her analysis — recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology — what she found doesn’t match up with what has previously been claimed by Christian writers.
According to the Beast, remains of the workers in the mine suggest, “… good health that many of these individuals seemed to have enjoyed. An analysis of skeletal indicators of iron-deficiencies led her to conclude that ‘the general health of the Faynan population is not substantially poorer than the health of residents of a typical Byzantine agricultural village.'”
The report adds that Perry’s findings show that locals “also had lower-than-expected levels of bone degeneration, considering their supposedly hard lifestyle.”
In an interview, Perry was asked about claims of torture and she said that her research didn’t bear the reports out.
“When I asked Perry if she or Lotus Abu-Keraki (the first to examine the samples for her MA thesis in 2000), had seen evidence of torture or martyrdom she said that she had not,” the Beast’s Candida Moss writes, adding that Perry told her, “Neither of us note evidence of beheading in the cervical vertebrae, nor evidence that eyes were removed using sharp utensils, or that feet were maimed. Cauterization [for example, of the eyes that Eusebius tells us were removed] would be more difficult to identify in skeletal remains, since it generally just impacts soft tissue.”
Perry did add that her sample was small, stating “her team worked only on 45 skeletons from the cemetery,” and that conditions and the archaelogical record elsewhere where Christians and Romans interacted might offer different conclusions.
“It is therefore possible that they simply did not examine any of the ‘innumerable’ Christian martyrs that Eusebius says were sent to the mines,” Moss wrote, adding that Perry remarked, “While the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, no evidence for individuals subjected to bodily harm or shipped in from outside regions was found in this 4th-6th-century cemetery.”
Here’s how the philosophers of selfishness came to use Christianity as their cover story
Amanda Marcotte, Salon - raw story
24 NOV 2018 AT 12:14 ET
Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business will be happy to tell you that waiters always fight each other to avoid working Sunday lunch shift. Not because they want to sleep in, but because it’s a widespread belief that the post-church crowd is loud, demanding and unwilling to tip appropriately. In the food service industry, “Christian” is synonymous with “selfish.”
Unfair stereotype? Probably. Big groups, regardless of affiliation, tend to tip poorly. More to the point, waiters probably remember the bad Christian tippers more because the hypocrisy is so stunning. The image of a man piously preening about what a good Christian he is in church only to turn around and refuse the basic act of decency that is paying someone what you owe them perfectly symbolizes a lurking suspicion in American culture that the harder someone thumps the Bible, the more selfish and downright sadistic a person he is. And that perception—that showy piety generally goes hand in hand with very un-Christ-like behavior—is not an urban myth at all. On the contrary, it’s the daily reality of American culture and politics.
Bill Maher recently had a rant on his show that went viral addressing this very issue, bad tippers who leave sermons or notes scolding waiters instead of paying them what they’re owed. His larger point is a much more important one: It’s absolutely disgusting how the politicians who make the biggest show of how much they love Jesus would be the first in line to bash him if he returned with a message of clothing the naked and feeding the poor. The Jesus of the Bible multiplied the loaves and fishes. His loudest followers these day gripe about feeding people, claiming it creates a “culture of dependency.” They may even comb through the Bible to take quotes out of context to justify their selfishness toward the poor, as Rep. Steven Fincher did when he claimed the Bible says, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” The fact that those jobs are unavailable didn’t give him a moment’s pause when suggesting this very un-Christ-like plan to his fellow Americans.
There are plenty of progressive Christians who genuinely try to live out Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself, described in the Bible as the root of Jesus’ entire philosophy. That said, statistics bear out the sense that people who are more invested in being perceived as pious also embrace the most selfish policies. Self-identified conservatives and Republicans claim go to church regularly at twice the rate of self-identified liberals. People who go to church more than once a week are far more conservative than the rest of the population. Indeed, the research suggests how often you report being in the pews is the most reliable indicator of how you’re going to vote. (Though it may not be a reliable indicator of how often you actually go to church. In the grand tradition of showy piety, people who claim to be avid church-goers often lie about it to pollsters.)
The attempts to reconcile the correlation between displays of piety and support for selfish policies get complex on the right, with conservatives often arguing that hating your neighbor at the voting booth doesn’t count because church charities supposedly make up for it. (They don’t.) In reality, the relationship between Christian piety and support for selfish policies is fairly straightforward. It’s not that being Christian makes you conservative. It’s that being conservative makes being a loud and pious Christian extremely attractive.
Without Christianity, the underlying mean-spiritedness of conservative policies is simply easier to spot. Without religion, you’re stuck making libertarian-style arguments that sound like things cackling movie villains would say, like Ayn Rand saying civilization should reject “the morality of altruism.” Since Christianity teaches altruism and generosity, it provides excellent cover for people who want to be selfish, a sheep’s clothing made of Jesus to cover up the child-starving wolf beneath. Since Christians are “supposed” to be good people, people who really aren’t good are lining up to borrow that reputation to advance their agenda.
The fact that conservatism causes obnoxious Christian piety in American culture is most obvious when looking at some of the theological developments that have accrued since the philosophers of selfishness decided to use Christianity as their cover story. The “prosperity gospel” that has developed in recent years is a classic example.
The prosperity gospel teaches, to be blunt, that you can tell how much God favors you by how rich you are. While some on the Christian right reject this idea as a tad crude, it’s still wildly popular and its adherents, like Oral Roberts, are some of the major architects and organizers for the Christian right. It’s a perfect example of how conservative ideology leads to pious Christianity. People want to believe that the rich are better than everyone else and the poor don’t deserve squat, so they find a way to blame God for it rather than own their own greed and selfishness.
Pope Francis may be entirely sincere when he says he wants Catholic clergy to deemphasize the right-wing political pandering in favor of highlighting values that are more in line with liberalism, such as compassion and generosity to the poor, but the odds are slim of this message making inroads with church leaders in the United States. The church needs conservatives who need to believe they’re good and holy people despite their selfish beliefs. Without them, who will show up and tithe? Liberals? Most of them are sleeping in on Sundays, secure that their commitment to social justice makes them good people regardless of how visibly pious they are.
The fact of the matter is that the purposes religion serves in America are shrinking in number. Our cultural identity is increasingly shaped by pop culture, not faith or ethnic identity. Our holidays are more about shopping and having a chance to catch up with far-flung family these days, not showing devotion to a deity. Spiritual needs are often addressed through modern means like psychotherapy and self-help. People build communities through hobbies and interests more than through faith communities bound by geography, ethnicity and family.
Increasingly, the only thing religion has left to justify itself is that it provides cover for people who want to have bigoted, selfish beliefs but want to believe they are good people anyway. As these social trends continue, we can expect the alignment between public piety and grotesquely selfish political beliefs to get worse, not better.
Unfair stereotype? Probably. Big groups, regardless of affiliation, tend to tip poorly. More to the point, waiters probably remember the bad Christian tippers more because the hypocrisy is so stunning. The image of a man piously preening about what a good Christian he is in church only to turn around and refuse the basic act of decency that is paying someone what you owe them perfectly symbolizes a lurking suspicion in American culture that the harder someone thumps the Bible, the more selfish and downright sadistic a person he is. And that perception—that showy piety generally goes hand in hand with very un-Christ-like behavior—is not an urban myth at all. On the contrary, it’s the daily reality of American culture and politics.
Bill Maher recently had a rant on his show that went viral addressing this very issue, bad tippers who leave sermons or notes scolding waiters instead of paying them what they’re owed. His larger point is a much more important one: It’s absolutely disgusting how the politicians who make the biggest show of how much they love Jesus would be the first in line to bash him if he returned with a message of clothing the naked and feeding the poor. The Jesus of the Bible multiplied the loaves and fishes. His loudest followers these day gripe about feeding people, claiming it creates a “culture of dependency.” They may even comb through the Bible to take quotes out of context to justify their selfishness toward the poor, as Rep. Steven Fincher did when he claimed the Bible says, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” The fact that those jobs are unavailable didn’t give him a moment’s pause when suggesting this very un-Christ-like plan to his fellow Americans.
There are plenty of progressive Christians who genuinely try to live out Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself, described in the Bible as the root of Jesus’ entire philosophy. That said, statistics bear out the sense that people who are more invested in being perceived as pious also embrace the most selfish policies. Self-identified conservatives and Republicans claim go to church regularly at twice the rate of self-identified liberals. People who go to church more than once a week are far more conservative than the rest of the population. Indeed, the research suggests how often you report being in the pews is the most reliable indicator of how you’re going to vote. (Though it may not be a reliable indicator of how often you actually go to church. In the grand tradition of showy piety, people who claim to be avid church-goers often lie about it to pollsters.)
The attempts to reconcile the correlation between displays of piety and support for selfish policies get complex on the right, with conservatives often arguing that hating your neighbor at the voting booth doesn’t count because church charities supposedly make up for it. (They don’t.) In reality, the relationship between Christian piety and support for selfish policies is fairly straightforward. It’s not that being Christian makes you conservative. It’s that being conservative makes being a loud and pious Christian extremely attractive.
Without Christianity, the underlying mean-spiritedness of conservative policies is simply easier to spot. Without religion, you’re stuck making libertarian-style arguments that sound like things cackling movie villains would say, like Ayn Rand saying civilization should reject “the morality of altruism.” Since Christianity teaches altruism and generosity, it provides excellent cover for people who want to be selfish, a sheep’s clothing made of Jesus to cover up the child-starving wolf beneath. Since Christians are “supposed” to be good people, people who really aren’t good are lining up to borrow that reputation to advance their agenda.
The fact that conservatism causes obnoxious Christian piety in American culture is most obvious when looking at some of the theological developments that have accrued since the philosophers of selfishness decided to use Christianity as their cover story. The “prosperity gospel” that has developed in recent years is a classic example.
The prosperity gospel teaches, to be blunt, that you can tell how much God favors you by how rich you are. While some on the Christian right reject this idea as a tad crude, it’s still wildly popular and its adherents, like Oral Roberts, are some of the major architects and organizers for the Christian right. It’s a perfect example of how conservative ideology leads to pious Christianity. People want to believe that the rich are better than everyone else and the poor don’t deserve squat, so they find a way to blame God for it rather than own their own greed and selfishness.
Pope Francis may be entirely sincere when he says he wants Catholic clergy to deemphasize the right-wing political pandering in favor of highlighting values that are more in line with liberalism, such as compassion and generosity to the poor, but the odds are slim of this message making inroads with church leaders in the United States. The church needs conservatives who need to believe they’re good and holy people despite their selfish beliefs. Without them, who will show up and tithe? Liberals? Most of them are sleeping in on Sundays, secure that their commitment to social justice makes them good people regardless of how visibly pious they are.
The fact of the matter is that the purposes religion serves in America are shrinking in number. Our cultural identity is increasingly shaped by pop culture, not faith or ethnic identity. Our holidays are more about shopping and having a chance to catch up with far-flung family these days, not showing devotion to a deity. Spiritual needs are often addressed through modern means like psychotherapy and self-help. People build communities through hobbies and interests more than through faith communities bound by geography, ethnicity and family.
Increasingly, the only thing religion has left to justify itself is that it provides cover for people who want to have bigoted, selfish beliefs but want to believe they are good people anyway. As these social trends continue, we can expect the alignment between public piety and grotesquely selfish political beliefs to get worse, not better.
White Christians are in retreat — and they’re getting more isolated and less tolerant
Amanda Marcotte, Salon - raw story
21 OCT 2018 AT 16:33 ET
Last year, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) put out a new report on religion in America that measured a truly remarkable shift: For the first time, almost certainly in the country’s history, people who identify as white Christians are a minority of Americans. Four out of every five Americans were self-described white Christians in 1976, but now that group only constitutes 43 percent of the U.S. population.
There are a lot of reasons for this shift, study author Robert P. Jones, who heads PRRI and is the author of “The End of White Christian America,” explained to Salon in an interview. To a large extent, Jones said, it’s the trend of “young, white people leaving Christian churches that is driving up the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans.”
This reflects, he added, “a culture clash between particularly conservative white churches and denominations and younger Americans” over issues like science, particularly climate change and evolution, and especially the rights of LGBT people.
It’s a battle that goes a long way towards explaining the “Nashville statement,” released last month by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. While the statement includes some language criticizing straight people who fail to practice “chastity outside of marriage,” by and large it is meant as an attack on LGBT Americans, suggesting, for instance, that no good Christians can “approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism.”
“The younger generation, Americans under the age of 30 — more than eight in 10 of them support same-sex marriage,” Jones said, adding that the issue has become “a litmus test issue for many millennials in the country.”
“It’s not just that conservative white Christians have lost this argument with a broader liberal culture,” he noted. “It’s that they’ve lost it with their own kids and grandchildren.”
Statistics seem to bear this out. A slim majority of young white evangelicals now support same-sex marriage, while older generations of white evangelicals overwhelmingly oppose it. That difference doesn’t even take into account the huge numbers of young people who were raised in evangelical denominations and then left their churches, often because they disapprove of religious homophobia.
These trends lead Jones to believe that the Nashville statement was not really aimed at the larger American culture. Rather, it was an attempt by older, more conservative evangelicals to “reassert a view that has certainly lost its footing” with their own children and grandchildren. This is why, he speculated, the language is less “fire and brimstone” in nature than similar documents in the past.
A recent Washington Post op-ed by Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also suggests that the Nashville statement is an effort to sell the younger generation on accepting homophobia by soft-pedaling the hate.
“In releasing the Nashville Statement, we, in fact, are acting out of love and concern for people who are increasingly confused about what God has clarified in Holy Scripture,” Mohler wrote. (“Confused” is conservative Christian-speak for gay, bisexual or transgender — identities that the Nashville statement directly denies exist.)
Mohler went on to insist that the document was simply an effort to clarify and build on a view that marriage is “a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman” and that “[c]hastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage are affirmed.”
This “love the sinner, hate the sin” spin was a hard sell before, and in the age of Donald Trump, it’s downright laughable. Not only did white evangelicals vote for Trump, but they voted for him in even greater numbers than they had for any other Republican before him — giving Trump even more support than they gave George W. Bush, who is one of their own. The more churchy the white evangelical, the more likely he or she is to support Trump. Many of the signatories of the Nashville statement (though not Mohler) also publicly lent their support to Trump. Signatory James Dobson even justified his choice by saying that Trump “appears to be tender to things of the Spirit,” which can only be described as a ludicrous claim, whether one is religious or not.
Trump committed adultery during his first two marriages and during his current marriage, has bragged on tape about apparently assaulting women. When asked about forgiveness during a Christian-oriented campaign event designed to make him look like a believer, Trump made clear that he had never asked God for forgiveness for these or any other sins and seemed confused about why he would have needed to.
The white evangelical support for Trump, coupled with the continued denunciation of LGBT people, makes it clear this is not and never was about morality, sexual or otherwise. Instead, “morality” is a fig leaf for the true agenda of the Christian right, which is asserting a strict social hierarchy based on gender.
The same-sex marriage question is a stand-in issue, Jones argued, for “a whole worldview” that is “a kind of patriarchal view of the family, with the father head of the household and the mother staying home.”
“I think that’s why this fight is as visceral as it is,” he added.
Trump may be an unrepentant sinner, but he is a supporter of this patriarchal worldview, where straight men are in charge, women are quiet and submissive and people who fall outside these old-school heterosexual norms are marginalized. Voting for him was an obvious attempt by white evangelicals to impose this worldview on others, including (and perhaps especially) their own children, who are starting to ask hard questions about a moral order based on hierarchy and rigid gender roles instead of one built on empathy and kindness.
There are a lot of reasons for this shift, study author Robert P. Jones, who heads PRRI and is the author of “The End of White Christian America,” explained to Salon in an interview. To a large extent, Jones said, it’s the trend of “young, white people leaving Christian churches that is driving up the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans.”
This reflects, he added, “a culture clash between particularly conservative white churches and denominations and younger Americans” over issues like science, particularly climate change and evolution, and especially the rights of LGBT people.
It’s a battle that goes a long way towards explaining the “Nashville statement,” released last month by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. While the statement includes some language criticizing straight people who fail to practice “chastity outside of marriage,” by and large it is meant as an attack on LGBT Americans, suggesting, for instance, that no good Christians can “approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism.”
“The younger generation, Americans under the age of 30 — more than eight in 10 of them support same-sex marriage,” Jones said, adding that the issue has become “a litmus test issue for many millennials in the country.”
“It’s not just that conservative white Christians have lost this argument with a broader liberal culture,” he noted. “It’s that they’ve lost it with their own kids and grandchildren.”
Statistics seem to bear this out. A slim majority of young white evangelicals now support same-sex marriage, while older generations of white evangelicals overwhelmingly oppose it. That difference doesn’t even take into account the huge numbers of young people who were raised in evangelical denominations and then left their churches, often because they disapprove of religious homophobia.
These trends lead Jones to believe that the Nashville statement was not really aimed at the larger American culture. Rather, it was an attempt by older, more conservative evangelicals to “reassert a view that has certainly lost its footing” with their own children and grandchildren. This is why, he speculated, the language is less “fire and brimstone” in nature than similar documents in the past.
A recent Washington Post op-ed by Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also suggests that the Nashville statement is an effort to sell the younger generation on accepting homophobia by soft-pedaling the hate.
“In releasing the Nashville Statement, we, in fact, are acting out of love and concern for people who are increasingly confused about what God has clarified in Holy Scripture,” Mohler wrote. (“Confused” is conservative Christian-speak for gay, bisexual or transgender — identities that the Nashville statement directly denies exist.)
Mohler went on to insist that the document was simply an effort to clarify and build on a view that marriage is “a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman” and that “[c]hastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage are affirmed.”
This “love the sinner, hate the sin” spin was a hard sell before, and in the age of Donald Trump, it’s downright laughable. Not only did white evangelicals vote for Trump, but they voted for him in even greater numbers than they had for any other Republican before him — giving Trump even more support than they gave George W. Bush, who is one of their own. The more churchy the white evangelical, the more likely he or she is to support Trump. Many of the signatories of the Nashville statement (though not Mohler) also publicly lent their support to Trump. Signatory James Dobson even justified his choice by saying that Trump “appears to be tender to things of the Spirit,” which can only be described as a ludicrous claim, whether one is religious or not.
Trump committed adultery during his first two marriages and during his current marriage, has bragged on tape about apparently assaulting women. When asked about forgiveness during a Christian-oriented campaign event designed to make him look like a believer, Trump made clear that he had never asked God for forgiveness for these or any other sins and seemed confused about why he would have needed to.
The white evangelical support for Trump, coupled with the continued denunciation of LGBT people, makes it clear this is not and never was about morality, sexual or otherwise. Instead, “morality” is a fig leaf for the true agenda of the Christian right, which is asserting a strict social hierarchy based on gender.
The same-sex marriage question is a stand-in issue, Jones argued, for “a whole worldview” that is “a kind of patriarchal view of the family, with the father head of the household and the mother staying home.”
“I think that’s why this fight is as visceral as it is,” he added.
Trump may be an unrepentant sinner, but he is a supporter of this patriarchal worldview, where straight men are in charge, women are quiet and submissive and people who fall outside these old-school heterosexual norms are marginalized. Voting for him was an obvious attempt by white evangelicals to impose this worldview on others, including (and perhaps especially) their own children, who are starting to ask hard questions about a moral order based on hierarchy and rigid gender roles instead of one built on empathy and kindness.
New survey reveals that most evangelical Christians don’t know the central tenets of their own religion
Tom Boggioni - raw story
19 OCT 2018 AT 14:53 ET
A ccording to a religious survey conducted by the Ligonier Ministries, a large swath of Christian evangelicals appear to not understand basic core beliefs of their religion no matter how much they profess to love Jesus.
As pointed out at the Friendly Atheist, the ministry commissioned a survey of 3,000 self-described evangelicals to gauge their knowledge of the Bible, and more than a few were described afterward as “deeply confused.”
Posing the question, “What do Americans believe about God, salvation, ethics, and the Bible?” the responses show that, for many, their belief is deeper than their knowledge of the Bible.
According to the summary, “A majority of evangelicals said (1) that most people are basically good, (2) that God accepts the worship of all religions, and (3) that Jesus was the first and greatest being created by God the Father. However, all these beliefs are contrary to the historic Christian faith.”
As State of Theology explains, the Bible specifically teaches that people are not universally good by pointing out, “This idea flatly contradicts the Bible, which teaches the radical corruption of every human being and declares that no one does good by nature (Rom. 3:10–12). This is why we need the gospel in the first place—because none of us is good.”
Specifically, the cited passage states: “None is righteous, no, not one: no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
Those who agreed that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam,” seem to have forgotten the admonishment from God — in the Ten Commandments, no less — that “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”
State of Theology adds, “The Bible is clear that the gospel is the only way of salvation, and God will not accept the worship of other faiths. It is only through Jesus Christ and by His Spirit that we are able to worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).”
According to the survey, there is some dispute over how harshly God treats sins –even the smallest one — by reporting, “An alarming 69% of people disagree that even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation, with 58% strongly disagreeing.”
As State of the Theology puckishly adds, “If God is not holy, then sin is not a big deal. It is because of our understanding of God’s holiness that we understand how significant sin is.”
As pointed out at the Friendly Atheist, the ministry commissioned a survey of 3,000 self-described evangelicals to gauge their knowledge of the Bible, and more than a few were described afterward as “deeply confused.”
Posing the question, “What do Americans believe about God, salvation, ethics, and the Bible?” the responses show that, for many, their belief is deeper than their knowledge of the Bible.
According to the summary, “A majority of evangelicals said (1) that most people are basically good, (2) that God accepts the worship of all religions, and (3) that Jesus was the first and greatest being created by God the Father. However, all these beliefs are contrary to the historic Christian faith.”
As State of Theology explains, the Bible specifically teaches that people are not universally good by pointing out, “This idea flatly contradicts the Bible, which teaches the radical corruption of every human being and declares that no one does good by nature (Rom. 3:10–12). This is why we need the gospel in the first place—because none of us is good.”
Specifically, the cited passage states: “None is righteous, no, not one: no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
Those who agreed that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam,” seem to have forgotten the admonishment from God — in the Ten Commandments, no less — that “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”
State of Theology adds, “The Bible is clear that the gospel is the only way of salvation, and God will not accept the worship of other faiths. It is only through Jesus Christ and by His Spirit that we are able to worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).”
According to the survey, there is some dispute over how harshly God treats sins –even the smallest one — by reporting, “An alarming 69% of people disagree that even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation, with 58% strongly disagreeing.”
As State of the Theology puckishly adds, “If God is not holy, then sin is not a big deal. It is because of our understanding of God’s holiness that we understand how significant sin is.”
Here’s how Bible stories mimic common literary tropes about magic and wizardry
Valerie Tarico - COMMENTARY - raw story
08 OCT 2018 AT 10:25 ET
The Bible is full of magic.
In the centuries since the biblical texts were written, Abrahamic religions have refined and promoted the view that all supernatural events are part of a divine contest between God and the devil, with the miraculous on one side and the occult on the other. Pentecostals and some other biblical literalists still hold this view today. To them, supernatural forces regularly cause ripples in our natural world. Some of these supernatural signs and wonders come from God and are good; others are not. That is why one should vigorously avoid gateways to the devil like palm reading, seances, or even indulging in fantasy stories like Harry Potter.
This may be what Christian fundamentalists teach today, but during the formative years of the Hebrew religion and even Christianity, things weren’t so crystalized. Evidence in Genesis suggests that Hebrew beliefs were evolving from polytheism to monotheism, with a layer in between of monolatry—belief in many gods but worship of one. The Torah shows hints of conflicts that were part of this process.
As monotheism displaced prior forms of worship, traditional folk magic became associated with earlier and competing religious traditions. It was replaced gradually by more encompassing theologies and condemned by an increasingly powerful priesthood.
But despite the best efforts of the priestly class, some ancient practices had staying power.
As Sam Harris put it, we are talking about cultures that would have thought the wheelbarrow a radical invention. It is important to remember that. Even the most forward-thinking people of the time had no idea what caused illness or rain, birth or death; and the Bible writers, whether forward-thinking or not, had no way to escape their cultural context.
In the earliest texts of the Old Testament (the Torah), some kinds of folk magic are simply assumed to be part of everyday life. In the stories that have been handed down, these practices coexist with grand supernatural events attributed to the God of Abraham, Yahweh. These magical beliefs are not unique to the early Hebrew religion; they are part of the broader cultural fabric of the Ancient Near East.
Nor do the writers of the New Testament texts escape this magical worldview. In the nativity stories, the signs and wonders surrounding the birth of Jesus were of a sort familiar to people of the time. Similarly, the miracles attributed to the adult Jesus in the gospels are mostly of a sort commonly attributed to priests, sorcerers, god-men, and minor deities.
The Bible, as I said, is full of magic. Divination, astrology and fortunetelling, potions, conjuring, numerology, transmutation or alchemy, spell-casting and incantations, curses, healings, charms and talismans, conjuring . . . each of these can be found in the Bible—including in stories about people and events that have God’s approval—just as they can be found in stories from around the world.
Mind you, some Bible writers also warn repeatedly against many of these practices, which are associated with competing gods and cultures (see, for example, Deuteronomy 18:10-11). But even though these men seek to purge their religion of outside influences, they can’t help but fall into the pre-scientific worldview of their age, which is woven through with folk magic and wizardry.
Here are just a few examples.
Divination – In Genesis (44:5), Joseph has a silver drinking cup, which he uses for divining. The passage likely refers to the practice of scrying, in which a vessel is filled with water and the fortuneteller gazes into it, similar to the technique reportedly used by Nostradamus. Exodus (28:30) refers two divining objects, the Urim and Thummim, perhaps two flat stones, that the High Priest consults to determine the will of God. In other passages, lots, meaning marked pieces of wood or stone like dice, are used by more ordinary people for a similar purpose (Numbers 26:55, Proverbs 16:33, Proverbs 18:18). In the book of Daniel, the protagonist—a Hebrew prophet—is employed for a number of years by the King of Babylon as the manager of his “magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners” (Daniel 5:11).
Jumping ahead to the New Testament book of Matthew, a visit from three foreign astrologers known as the three magi or wise men gives credence to the divinity of Jesus. They bring gifts that portend later events in his life. Today, some Christians engage in a form of divination known as bibliomancy—seeking messages from God by opening the Bible to a random page and putting a finger on a random verse. Bibliomancy dates back at least to the 11th Century.
Potions – In Genesis, Rachel, the wife of Jacob, acquires magical mandrake roots to assist her in getting pregnant (Genesis 30:14-22). These may have been eaten in small bits or ground into a potion. The book of Numbers tells how a priest can make a magic potion that will cause a woman to abort any fetus she is carrying, but only if she has been unfaithful to her husband (Numbers 5:12-31). The potion is to be administered while the priest pronounces a curse.
Conjuring – When King Saul finds himself floundering in a war with the Philistines and can’t get God’s advice through his priests and prophets, he disguises himself, visits a witch and asks her to call up the spirit of Samuel, which she does. The spirit appears. (1 Samuel 28:11–15).
Numerology –Ancient peoples often attributed special meaning or significance to some numbers, and this pattern can be seen in the Bible. The number 12 (also significant in Babylonian, Zoroastrian and classical Greek religions) stands out. Think of the 12 tribes of Israel and 12 apostles of Jesus. The book of Revelation speaks of 12 pearls, 12 angels, 12×12 (144) righteous virgin men who will reach paradise, and 12 foundations of the heavenly Jerusalem, which has walls that are 12×12 stadia, 12 gates, and a size of 12,000 furlongs. Still today, some Jews and Christians analyze the numbers in the Bible for special hidden meanings.
Spell-casting and curses – In the book of Genesis (30:31-43), Jacob gets his father-in-law to agree that he can keep any spotted sheep and goats, which are uncommon. He then puts spotted sticks in front of the animals whenever they are breeding, causing them to have spotted offspring—ultimately building great flocks and becoming wealthy. In modern times, a breed of piebald sheep in England are called Jacob sheep, after the story.
Although the Bible specifically prohibits sorcery—casting spells to harm people (see, especially, Deuteronomy 18:10-11)—some of God’s messengers do just that, and they seem to do so with God’s approval. In the Hebrew book of 2 Kings (2:23-25), for example, the Prophet Elisha calls down a black magic curse on 42 boys who are taunting him, and they are killed by a bear. In the New Testament book of Acts, Paul similarly kills two people by cursing them (Acts 5:9-10) and, in another story, makes one go blind (Acts 13:6-12). Jesus himself curses a fig tree so that it withers and dies (Mark 11:12-25).
Magical healings—Miracle healings performed by Jesus are an integral part of the gospel stories. Like many other kinds of magic in the Bible, these would have fit patterns familiar at the time. From the standpoint of modern trinitarian theology in which Jesus is an avatar of God almighty, he could have eradicated an entire category of malaise like leprosy or blindness. Instead, the Jesus of the gospel writers performs healings on people in front of him. Often he cures with words or touch. One time he makes mud out of dirt and spit and then pastes it onto the eyes of a blind man (John 9:6).
Transmutation, alchemy—Turning one substance into another is another common form of magic, which Jesus performs by turning water into wine (John 2:1-11). The Roman Catholic Church will later claim that the ritual of Eucharist turns wine and bread into flesh and blood.
Magic by any other name is magic all the same.
This list just scratches the surface on biblical magic. In the Old Testament, incantations and rituals fend off evil and human sacrifice alters the course of war. Signs and wonders abound, as do curses. Supernatural messengers convey warnings and promises. And God’s chosen people develop an elaborate set of dietary and sanitary rituals aimed at avoiding divine wrath.
Are these stories of miracles? Some Christians might protest that they are different. But were any of the above to occur in modern life, the Church would most certainly proclaim that a miracle had occurred—either that or black magic.
As I have said before, separating miracle from magic creates a distinction without a difference, save in the mind of a person who thinks that one comes from God and the other does not. From the time of the early Church through the present, Christians have rejected magic that leaders perceive as drawing power from other religions or occult practices, while at the same time embracing the same kinds of magic when the source of power is claimed to be the Christian God.
In the Middle Ages, chards of the Gethsemane cross and bits of foreskin from the baby Jesus were bought and sold in European markets and sometimes ensconced in elaborate reliquaries of silver and gold. In the minds of believers, objects that had touched Jesus acted as conduits for answered prayer. This common kind of superstition is known as magical contagion. Similarly, believers wore amulets bearing protective symbols like embossed images of patron saints or the cross necklace, which is now often worn more as a social marker—a way of communicating that one belongs to the tribe of Christians.
Medieval Christian beliefs blended the supernatural worldview of the Ancient Near East with local superstitions, as when a believer would make the sign of the cross after seeing a black cat or use holly and mistletoe to celebrate the birth of Christ. Statues of Jesus, Mary and saints became pilgrimage destinations—places of particular spiritual power and locations for miraculous healings akin to more ancient temples and oracles. Echoes of these beliefs and behaviors continue to the present, even though the significance of some has faded. The domain of the miraculous has shrunk, but it has not gone away.
In the centuries since the biblical texts were written, Abrahamic religions have refined and promoted the view that all supernatural events are part of a divine contest between God and the devil, with the miraculous on one side and the occult on the other. Pentecostals and some other biblical literalists still hold this view today. To them, supernatural forces regularly cause ripples in our natural world. Some of these supernatural signs and wonders come from God and are good; others are not. That is why one should vigorously avoid gateways to the devil like palm reading, seances, or even indulging in fantasy stories like Harry Potter.
This may be what Christian fundamentalists teach today, but during the formative years of the Hebrew religion and even Christianity, things weren’t so crystalized. Evidence in Genesis suggests that Hebrew beliefs were evolving from polytheism to monotheism, with a layer in between of monolatry—belief in many gods but worship of one. The Torah shows hints of conflicts that were part of this process.
As monotheism displaced prior forms of worship, traditional folk magic became associated with earlier and competing religious traditions. It was replaced gradually by more encompassing theologies and condemned by an increasingly powerful priesthood.
But despite the best efforts of the priestly class, some ancient practices had staying power.
As Sam Harris put it, we are talking about cultures that would have thought the wheelbarrow a radical invention. It is important to remember that. Even the most forward-thinking people of the time had no idea what caused illness or rain, birth or death; and the Bible writers, whether forward-thinking or not, had no way to escape their cultural context.
In the earliest texts of the Old Testament (the Torah), some kinds of folk magic are simply assumed to be part of everyday life. In the stories that have been handed down, these practices coexist with grand supernatural events attributed to the God of Abraham, Yahweh. These magical beliefs are not unique to the early Hebrew religion; they are part of the broader cultural fabric of the Ancient Near East.
Nor do the writers of the New Testament texts escape this magical worldview. In the nativity stories, the signs and wonders surrounding the birth of Jesus were of a sort familiar to people of the time. Similarly, the miracles attributed to the adult Jesus in the gospels are mostly of a sort commonly attributed to priests, sorcerers, god-men, and minor deities.
The Bible, as I said, is full of magic. Divination, astrology and fortunetelling, potions, conjuring, numerology, transmutation or alchemy, spell-casting and incantations, curses, healings, charms and talismans, conjuring . . . each of these can be found in the Bible—including in stories about people and events that have God’s approval—just as they can be found in stories from around the world.
Mind you, some Bible writers also warn repeatedly against many of these practices, which are associated with competing gods and cultures (see, for example, Deuteronomy 18:10-11). But even though these men seek to purge their religion of outside influences, they can’t help but fall into the pre-scientific worldview of their age, which is woven through with folk magic and wizardry.
Here are just a few examples.
Divination – In Genesis (44:5), Joseph has a silver drinking cup, which he uses for divining. The passage likely refers to the practice of scrying, in which a vessel is filled with water and the fortuneteller gazes into it, similar to the technique reportedly used by Nostradamus. Exodus (28:30) refers two divining objects, the Urim and Thummim, perhaps two flat stones, that the High Priest consults to determine the will of God. In other passages, lots, meaning marked pieces of wood or stone like dice, are used by more ordinary people for a similar purpose (Numbers 26:55, Proverbs 16:33, Proverbs 18:18). In the book of Daniel, the protagonist—a Hebrew prophet—is employed for a number of years by the King of Babylon as the manager of his “magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners” (Daniel 5:11).
Jumping ahead to the New Testament book of Matthew, a visit from three foreign astrologers known as the three magi or wise men gives credence to the divinity of Jesus. They bring gifts that portend later events in his life. Today, some Christians engage in a form of divination known as bibliomancy—seeking messages from God by opening the Bible to a random page and putting a finger on a random verse. Bibliomancy dates back at least to the 11th Century.
Potions – In Genesis, Rachel, the wife of Jacob, acquires magical mandrake roots to assist her in getting pregnant (Genesis 30:14-22). These may have been eaten in small bits or ground into a potion. The book of Numbers tells how a priest can make a magic potion that will cause a woman to abort any fetus she is carrying, but only if she has been unfaithful to her husband (Numbers 5:12-31). The potion is to be administered while the priest pronounces a curse.
Conjuring – When King Saul finds himself floundering in a war with the Philistines and can’t get God’s advice through his priests and prophets, he disguises himself, visits a witch and asks her to call up the spirit of Samuel, which she does. The spirit appears. (1 Samuel 28:11–15).
Numerology –Ancient peoples often attributed special meaning or significance to some numbers, and this pattern can be seen in the Bible. The number 12 (also significant in Babylonian, Zoroastrian and classical Greek religions) stands out. Think of the 12 tribes of Israel and 12 apostles of Jesus. The book of Revelation speaks of 12 pearls, 12 angels, 12×12 (144) righteous virgin men who will reach paradise, and 12 foundations of the heavenly Jerusalem, which has walls that are 12×12 stadia, 12 gates, and a size of 12,000 furlongs. Still today, some Jews and Christians analyze the numbers in the Bible for special hidden meanings.
Spell-casting and curses – In the book of Genesis (30:31-43), Jacob gets his father-in-law to agree that he can keep any spotted sheep and goats, which are uncommon. He then puts spotted sticks in front of the animals whenever they are breeding, causing them to have spotted offspring—ultimately building great flocks and becoming wealthy. In modern times, a breed of piebald sheep in England are called Jacob sheep, after the story.
Although the Bible specifically prohibits sorcery—casting spells to harm people (see, especially, Deuteronomy 18:10-11)—some of God’s messengers do just that, and they seem to do so with God’s approval. In the Hebrew book of 2 Kings (2:23-25), for example, the Prophet Elisha calls down a black magic curse on 42 boys who are taunting him, and they are killed by a bear. In the New Testament book of Acts, Paul similarly kills two people by cursing them (Acts 5:9-10) and, in another story, makes one go blind (Acts 13:6-12). Jesus himself curses a fig tree so that it withers and dies (Mark 11:12-25).
Magical healings—Miracle healings performed by Jesus are an integral part of the gospel stories. Like many other kinds of magic in the Bible, these would have fit patterns familiar at the time. From the standpoint of modern trinitarian theology in which Jesus is an avatar of God almighty, he could have eradicated an entire category of malaise like leprosy or blindness. Instead, the Jesus of the gospel writers performs healings on people in front of him. Often he cures with words or touch. One time he makes mud out of dirt and spit and then pastes it onto the eyes of a blind man (John 9:6).
Transmutation, alchemy—Turning one substance into another is another common form of magic, which Jesus performs by turning water into wine (John 2:1-11). The Roman Catholic Church will later claim that the ritual of Eucharist turns wine and bread into flesh and blood.
Magic by any other name is magic all the same.
This list just scratches the surface on biblical magic. In the Old Testament, incantations and rituals fend off evil and human sacrifice alters the course of war. Signs and wonders abound, as do curses. Supernatural messengers convey warnings and promises. And God’s chosen people develop an elaborate set of dietary and sanitary rituals aimed at avoiding divine wrath.
Are these stories of miracles? Some Christians might protest that they are different. But were any of the above to occur in modern life, the Church would most certainly proclaim that a miracle had occurred—either that or black magic.
As I have said before, separating miracle from magic creates a distinction without a difference, save in the mind of a person who thinks that one comes from God and the other does not. From the time of the early Church through the present, Christians have rejected magic that leaders perceive as drawing power from other religions or occult practices, while at the same time embracing the same kinds of magic when the source of power is claimed to be the Christian God.
In the Middle Ages, chards of the Gethsemane cross and bits of foreskin from the baby Jesus were bought and sold in European markets and sometimes ensconced in elaborate reliquaries of silver and gold. In the minds of believers, objects that had touched Jesus acted as conduits for answered prayer. This common kind of superstition is known as magical contagion. Similarly, believers wore amulets bearing protective symbols like embossed images of patron saints or the cross necklace, which is now often worn more as a social marker—a way of communicating that one belongs to the tribe of Christians.
Medieval Christian beliefs blended the supernatural worldview of the Ancient Near East with local superstitions, as when a believer would make the sign of the cross after seeing a black cat or use holly and mistletoe to celebrate the birth of Christ. Statues of Jesus, Mary and saints became pilgrimage destinations—places of particular spiritual power and locations for miraculous healings akin to more ancient temples and oracles. Echoes of these beliefs and behaviors continue to the present, even though the significance of some has faded. The domain of the miraculous has shrunk, but it has not gone away.
|
|
AG Shapiro: ‘The Vatican had knowledge of the cover-up’
LIZ NAVRATIL
Harrisburg Bureau
HARRISBURG — Vatican officials knew of efforts to cover up sexual abuse by priests in Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Tuesday morning during multiple appearances on national news shows.
"We have evidence that the Vatican had knowledge of the cover-up," Shapiro said during an appearance on NBC's Today show. He said later in the interview that he "can't speak specifically to Pope Francis."
Shapiro's remark appears related to a couple dozen references to the Vatican in parts of the state grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse, along with attached responses from people criticized within the document.
Many of those mentions concerned requests from Pennsylvania church officials to the Vatican that an abusive priest be removed from the priesthood following an allegation of sexual abuse or rape. Procedurally, the pope removes a priest.
The report notes that the grand jury reviewed copies of some of those requests in the course of its two-year investigation. "Often called 'The Acts' of the subject priest, the summaries were often the most detailed documents within Diocesan records and contained decades of long-held secrets only disclosed in an effort finally to remove an offending priest from the priesthood," according to the report.
It was not clear from the grand jury report how much information was included in those requests about diocesan officials' responses to allegations against the priests.
Multiple church leaders in their own responses to the report denied a cover-up. Some noted that the process for defrocking a priest is lengthy and, in some instances, bishops suspended priests from active ministry while the requests were pending. Among those who have criticized the report's fairness or accuracy is Cardinal Donald Wuerl, currently archbishop of Washington; he had previously served as bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Shapiro, during a separate interview on CBS This Morning, said, "I believe that statements made by bishops in Pennsylvania, by Cardinal Wuerl specifically, to deny this, does further the cover-up. It covers up the cover-up."
The attorney general's remarks came days after revelations that a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. alleged in a letter that Pope Francis knew of abuse accusations against former Washington archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick prior to his resignation this summer.
"We have evidence that the Vatican had knowledge of the cover-up," Shapiro said during an appearance on NBC's Today show. He said later in the interview that he "can't speak specifically to Pope Francis."
Shapiro's remark appears related to a couple dozen references to the Vatican in parts of the state grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse, along with attached responses from people criticized within the document.
Many of those mentions concerned requests from Pennsylvania church officials to the Vatican that an abusive priest be removed from the priesthood following an allegation of sexual abuse or rape. Procedurally, the pope removes a priest.
The report notes that the grand jury reviewed copies of some of those requests in the course of its two-year investigation. "Often called 'The Acts' of the subject priest, the summaries were often the most detailed documents within Diocesan records and contained decades of long-held secrets only disclosed in an effort finally to remove an offending priest from the priesthood," according to the report.
It was not clear from the grand jury report how much information was included in those requests about diocesan officials' responses to allegations against the priests.
Multiple church leaders in their own responses to the report denied a cover-up. Some noted that the process for defrocking a priest is lengthy and, in some instances, bishops suspended priests from active ministry while the requests were pending. Among those who have criticized the report's fairness or accuracy is Cardinal Donald Wuerl, currently archbishop of Washington; he had previously served as bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Shapiro, during a separate interview on CBS This Morning, said, "I believe that statements made by bishops in Pennsylvania, by Cardinal Wuerl specifically, to deny this, does further the cover-up. It covers up the cover-up."
The attorney general's remarks came days after revelations that a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. alleged in a letter that Pope Francis knew of abuse accusations against former Washington archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick prior to his resignation this summer.
For some Catholics, it is demons that taunt priests with sexual desire
The Conversation - raw story
23 AUG 2018 AT 07:18 ET
Thirteenth-century frescoes of demons.
St. Jacob’s Church, Kastelaz
A Pennsylvania grand jury recently released a report on the systematic ways Catholic priests aided and abetted one another to sexually abuse children for 70 years.
It reveals once again how the strict patriarchal hierarchy of the Catholic Church gives rise to conspiracies of silence and allows for routine cover-up of crimes. Cover-ups are also encouraged by clericalism – the belief that ordained priests are inherently superior and closer to God than the laity. This much has been demonstrated by countless observers.
But there is another, lesser-known factor contributing to the abuse, that I want to point out as a scholar of spiritual warfare in some forms of Christianity. This factor lies in the realm of belief: In some strands of Catholic thought, when priests abuse children, it is because they have been tempted by demons, and succumbed.
History of demon beliefs
The Catholic Church invites priests to view sexuality as a battle in the war between good and evil. Spiritual warfare is one name for this view of the world and it has a long history in Catholic teachings.
The idea of demons has been around since antiquity – in the Mediterranean world, the Middle East and elsewhere. In Christianity, preoccupation with demons reached its peak in the Middle Ages. Demons were explicitly defined by the church in 1215 under Pope Innocent III.
Theologians worked to identify classes and ranks of demons who operated under the authority of the devil himself. Demons were seen as fallen angels who disobeyed God and worked to subvert God and goodness.
Demons are malevolent beings who lord over specific domains of sin. Christians are called to battle evil, including evil that comes by way of the demonic. The more pious one is, the more intense will be the attacks from the demons.
After the Second Vatican Council of 1964, demons faded out of focus and exorcisms were rare. But my research shows that the spiritual warfare world view is on the rise in the Catholic Church. This is despite the fact that demons and exorcisms are largely viewed by most American Catholics as remnants of a medieval past.
The return of demons and exorcisms
In 1999, Pope John Paul II brought back a focus on the formal rites of exorcism – the official ritual that priests use to rid a person from demonic affliction or possession. The pope later recommended that every diocese in the Catholic world appoint and train an exorcist.
The Catholic Church in the United States took up the call and in 2012 founded the Pope Leo XII Institute in Illinois to support “the spiritual formation of priests to bring the light of Christ to dispel evil.” To this day it serves as a “school for exorcism and deliverance” of the laity from demons.
The institute offers workshops for clergy such as “Angels and Demons, Natures and Attributes.”
Under this belief system, in the battle for souls, demons can establish relationships with people who open the door to them through sin and disobedience to God. If someone masturbates, for example, which is a mortal sin, they are opening the door wider to demons of more serious sexual perversion.
Such demons include figures mentioned in the Bible such as Baal, the ancient Phoenician sun God, and his consort Ashtoreth, now viewed as a force of sexual immorality and perversion. Jezebel, the ninth-century B.C. Phoenician princess, lives into the modern era as a demonic personality who encourages illicit sexual acts, violence and rape.
Devil and role-play in one church
Writing for Commonweal, an American Catholic journal, one ex-seminarian described a formation, or training, workshop sponsored by his seminary. He described how participants were given nametags with the names of demons on them and asked to play the role of demons to tempt one another. He explained how they would choose one person and “hiss and curse” to entice him to “watch pornography” and “masturbate.”
The point, of course, was to train the participants how to choose chastity and to stand strong against sexual desire.
To be clear, this is only one documented instance. However, I would argue that it points to the Church’s current preoccupation with evil spirits and the need for priests to ritually remove that evil.
It is sobering that one seminary should choose to offer those training for a life of service and celibacy, a role-play of hissing demon impersonators, as a way to govern their conduct.
Medieval practices in today’s church?
Ascribing sexual desire to demonic temptation takes away the blame from the perpetrators. It puts the cause, the consequences, and questions of accountability into an invisible world populated by angels and demons, sin and repentance.
Suggesting that the offending priests were afflicted by demons is a version of “the devil made me do it.”
There is a second heartbreak. Many of the abused report feeling guilty, as if they had sinned themselves. I have heard from my own research participants that because sinning opens the door to more demons and more sin, then some abuse survivors think of themselves as being in relationships with personal demons and more vulnerable to demonic attack.
As investigations continue into the institutional factors allowing for this horrific abuse, it may also be pertinent to look into some of the intellectual and theological elements at the heart of the Catholic tradition.
For some branches of the Church, this includes the medieval world of demons.
It reveals once again how the strict patriarchal hierarchy of the Catholic Church gives rise to conspiracies of silence and allows for routine cover-up of crimes. Cover-ups are also encouraged by clericalism – the belief that ordained priests are inherently superior and closer to God than the laity. This much has been demonstrated by countless observers.
But there is another, lesser-known factor contributing to the abuse, that I want to point out as a scholar of spiritual warfare in some forms of Christianity. This factor lies in the realm of belief: In some strands of Catholic thought, when priests abuse children, it is because they have been tempted by demons, and succumbed.
History of demon beliefs
The Catholic Church invites priests to view sexuality as a battle in the war between good and evil. Spiritual warfare is one name for this view of the world and it has a long history in Catholic teachings.
The idea of demons has been around since antiquity – in the Mediterranean world, the Middle East and elsewhere. In Christianity, preoccupation with demons reached its peak in the Middle Ages. Demons were explicitly defined by the church in 1215 under Pope Innocent III.
Theologians worked to identify classes and ranks of demons who operated under the authority of the devil himself. Demons were seen as fallen angels who disobeyed God and worked to subvert God and goodness.
Demons are malevolent beings who lord over specific domains of sin. Christians are called to battle evil, including evil that comes by way of the demonic. The more pious one is, the more intense will be the attacks from the demons.
After the Second Vatican Council of 1964, demons faded out of focus and exorcisms were rare. But my research shows that the spiritual warfare world view is on the rise in the Catholic Church. This is despite the fact that demons and exorcisms are largely viewed by most American Catholics as remnants of a medieval past.
The return of demons and exorcisms
In 1999, Pope John Paul II brought back a focus on the formal rites of exorcism – the official ritual that priests use to rid a person from demonic affliction or possession. The pope later recommended that every diocese in the Catholic world appoint and train an exorcist.
The Catholic Church in the United States took up the call and in 2012 founded the Pope Leo XII Institute in Illinois to support “the spiritual formation of priests to bring the light of Christ to dispel evil.” To this day it serves as a “school for exorcism and deliverance” of the laity from demons.
The institute offers workshops for clergy such as “Angels and Demons, Natures and Attributes.”
Under this belief system, in the battle for souls, demons can establish relationships with people who open the door to them through sin and disobedience to God. If someone masturbates, for example, which is a mortal sin, they are opening the door wider to demons of more serious sexual perversion.
Such demons include figures mentioned in the Bible such as Baal, the ancient Phoenician sun God, and his consort Ashtoreth, now viewed as a force of sexual immorality and perversion. Jezebel, the ninth-century B.C. Phoenician princess, lives into the modern era as a demonic personality who encourages illicit sexual acts, violence and rape.
Devil and role-play in one church
Writing for Commonweal, an American Catholic journal, one ex-seminarian described a formation, or training, workshop sponsored by his seminary. He described how participants were given nametags with the names of demons on them and asked to play the role of demons to tempt one another. He explained how they would choose one person and “hiss and curse” to entice him to “watch pornography” and “masturbate.”
The point, of course, was to train the participants how to choose chastity and to stand strong against sexual desire.
To be clear, this is only one documented instance. However, I would argue that it points to the Church’s current preoccupation with evil spirits and the need for priests to ritually remove that evil.
It is sobering that one seminary should choose to offer those training for a life of service and celibacy, a role-play of hissing demon impersonators, as a way to govern their conduct.
Medieval practices in today’s church?
Ascribing sexual desire to demonic temptation takes away the blame from the perpetrators. It puts the cause, the consequences, and questions of accountability into an invisible world populated by angels and demons, sin and repentance.
Suggesting that the offending priests were afflicted by demons is a version of “the devil made me do it.”
There is a second heartbreak. Many of the abused report feeling guilty, as if they had sinned themselves. I have heard from my own research participants that because sinning opens the door to more demons and more sin, then some abuse survivors think of themselves as being in relationships with personal demons and more vulnerable to demonic attack.
As investigations continue into the institutional factors allowing for this horrific abuse, it may also be pertinent to look into some of the intellectual and theological elements at the heart of the Catholic tradition.
For some branches of the Church, this includes the medieval world of demons.
Harvard Bible scholar says passage condemning gays was rewritten — original specifically said gay sex was fine
Martin Cizmar - raw story
21 JUL 2018 AT 22:33 ET
The original version of Leviticus expressly permitted gay sex, a Biblical scholar writes in the New York Times.
Idan Dershowitz is a fellow at Harvard and has studied the development of the Old Testament carefully, including Leviticus 20:13 which reads that “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
This was likely the first law anywhere banning gay sex, Dershowitz says, and it was added a century after the original, which expressly permitted it.
“Like many ancient texts, Leviticus was created gradually over a long period and includes the words of more than one writer. Many scholars believe that the section in which Leviticus 18 appears was added by a comparatively late editor, perhaps one who worked more than a century after the oldest material in the book was composed,” he writes.
Dershowitz laid out his claim that the original version expressly permitted gay sex in a scholarly article for Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel.
“There is good evidence that an earlier version of the laws in Leviticus 18 permitted sex between men,” he argues. “In addition to having the prohibition against same-sex relations added to it, the earlier text, I believe, was revised in an attempt to obscure any implication that same-sex relations had once been permissible.”
His argument hinges on textual analysis, which he says offers “strong evidence of editorial intervention.”
“One can only imagine how different the history of civilization might have been had the earlier version of Leviticus 18’s laws entered the biblical canon,” he writes.
Read the full piece here.
Idan Dershowitz is a fellow at Harvard and has studied the development of the Old Testament carefully, including Leviticus 20:13 which reads that “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
This was likely the first law anywhere banning gay sex, Dershowitz says, and it was added a century after the original, which expressly permitted it.
“Like many ancient texts, Leviticus was created gradually over a long period and includes the words of more than one writer. Many scholars believe that the section in which Leviticus 18 appears was added by a comparatively late editor, perhaps one who worked more than a century after the oldest material in the book was composed,” he writes.
Dershowitz laid out his claim that the original version expressly permitted gay sex in a scholarly article for Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel.
“There is good evidence that an earlier version of the laws in Leviticus 18 permitted sex between men,” he argues. “In addition to having the prohibition against same-sex relations added to it, the earlier text, I believe, was revised in an attempt to obscure any implication that same-sex relations had once been permissible.”
His argument hinges on textual analysis, which he says offers “strong evidence of editorial intervention.”
“One can only imagine how different the history of civilization might have been had the earlier version of Leviticus 18’s laws entered the biblical canon,” he writes.
Read the full piece here.
Here Are 5 of the Craziest Christian Fundamentalist Sects, Cults or Movements That Feel Empowered in the Trump Era
Extremist groups are coming out of the woodwork.
By Alex Henderson / AlterNet
July 19, 2018, 8:30 AM GMT
President Donald Trump—despite his alleged sexual activity with porn star Stormy Daniels, two divorces, lack of Biblical knowledge and a reputation for having a very foul mouth at times—has, ironically, become an icon of the Christian Right in the United States. His predecessor at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Barack Obama, actually has a long history of going to church and clearly possesses a greater knowledge of the Bible. Regardless, the Christian Right considers Obama an enemy and Trump a staunch ally—and with Trump in office, extremist groups are coming out of the woodwork more and more.
Here are some of the craziest far-right sects, organizations or Christian fundamentalist movements that are feeling empowered in the Trump era.
1. POTUS Shield
Led by television evangelist Frank Amedia, POTUS Shield is a new organization of far-right Christian fundamentalists that describes itself as “warriors, worshippers and watchmen”—and the one they are watching out for, through prayer, is Trump (POTUS stands for “President of the United States). Amedia insists that before Trump’s inauguration, God paid him a visit in the middle of the night and asked him to help form a protective shield of prayer around Trump—who the group believes was sent by God to promote a Christian fundamentalist takeover of government. Others active in POTUS Shield include Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council, and Lou Engle (known for his large anti-abortion, anti-gay and pro-Republican prayer rallies).
2. People of Praise
After Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the people on Trump’s “short list” of possible nominees for a replacement was Amy Coney Barrett—a 46-year-old federal appellate judge who, the New York Times reported in 2017, was involved in a group called People of Praise (Brett Kavanaugh, not Barrett, eventually received Trump’s nomination). And given People of Praise’s beliefs, Barrett shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the High Court.
People of Praise is a predominantly Catholic group, although it has some non-Catholic members and incorporates Pentecostal practices (speaking in tongues, for example). Considered a cult within mainstream Catholicism, People of Praise require members to swear an oath of loyalty to the group and teach that while women can have some leadership positions, they must ultimately submit to male authority. In the past, People of Praise used the terms “handmaid” and “handmaiden” to describe women—which is downright chilling if one is familiar with Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” or the 1990 film and 2017/2018 television that were based on the book.
3. Quiverfull
The Christian Right’s hatred of reproductive freedom goes way beyond its opposition to abortion; some fundamentalists are equally opposed to all forms of contraception. And this anti-contraception ideology is exemplified by the looney Quiverfull movement. Quiverfull is a not a sect or denomination per se, but a movement within fundamentalist Protestant Christianity—and those who embrace it could be anything from Pentecostal to Calvinist. Quiverfull ideology asserts that it is a sin for Christian couples to do anything that might prevent a pregnancy; therefore, birth control pills and IUDs for women or condoms and vasectomies for men are considered tools of the Devil. And according to Quiverfull, Christian wives must have as many babies as possible while remaining totally submissive to their husbands. Other Quiverfull rules: wives cannot have their own bank accounts or e-mail addresses without their husbands’ permission, and they must always be sexually available to their husbands whether they’re in the mood for sex or not.
4. Project Blitz
Project Blitz is not a Christian fundamentalist church or sect, but rather, a coalition of Christian fundamentalist activists with a political agenda: to make sure that state legislatures are flooded with as many theocratic bills as possible. Working with Republicans who are sympathetic to their dominionist views—anti gay, anti-abortion, anti-contraception—Project Blitz believes that it is important for bills to be introduced regardless of how far they get. The more bills that are introduced, Project Blitz believes, the more likely they are to achieve some home runs eventually.
5. WallBuilders
In Texas, David Barton has been very active in both Republican politics and far-right fundamentalist Christianity. In addition to being a former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party and serving as director of Keep the Promise PAC—a political action committee that supported Sen. Ted Cruz’ presidential campaign in 2016—Barton founded WallBuilders, which has taught through books and videos that the separation of church and state is not constitutional and that the government should be run according to strict Biblical law. And Barton has been active in the Providence Foundation, another group with dominionist views.
Here are some of the craziest far-right sects, organizations or Christian fundamentalist movements that are feeling empowered in the Trump era.
1. POTUS Shield
Led by television evangelist Frank Amedia, POTUS Shield is a new organization of far-right Christian fundamentalists that describes itself as “warriors, worshippers and watchmen”—and the one they are watching out for, through prayer, is Trump (POTUS stands for “President of the United States). Amedia insists that before Trump’s inauguration, God paid him a visit in the middle of the night and asked him to help form a protective shield of prayer around Trump—who the group believes was sent by God to promote a Christian fundamentalist takeover of government. Others active in POTUS Shield include Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council, and Lou Engle (known for his large anti-abortion, anti-gay and pro-Republican prayer rallies).
2. People of Praise
After Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the people on Trump’s “short list” of possible nominees for a replacement was Amy Coney Barrett—a 46-year-old federal appellate judge who, the New York Times reported in 2017, was involved in a group called People of Praise (Brett Kavanaugh, not Barrett, eventually received Trump’s nomination). And given People of Praise’s beliefs, Barrett shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the High Court.
People of Praise is a predominantly Catholic group, although it has some non-Catholic members and incorporates Pentecostal practices (speaking in tongues, for example). Considered a cult within mainstream Catholicism, People of Praise require members to swear an oath of loyalty to the group and teach that while women can have some leadership positions, they must ultimately submit to male authority. In the past, People of Praise used the terms “handmaid” and “handmaiden” to describe women—which is downright chilling if one is familiar with Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” or the 1990 film and 2017/2018 television that were based on the book.
3. Quiverfull
The Christian Right’s hatred of reproductive freedom goes way beyond its opposition to abortion; some fundamentalists are equally opposed to all forms of contraception. And this anti-contraception ideology is exemplified by the looney Quiverfull movement. Quiverfull is a not a sect or denomination per se, but a movement within fundamentalist Protestant Christianity—and those who embrace it could be anything from Pentecostal to Calvinist. Quiverfull ideology asserts that it is a sin for Christian couples to do anything that might prevent a pregnancy; therefore, birth control pills and IUDs for women or condoms and vasectomies for men are considered tools of the Devil. And according to Quiverfull, Christian wives must have as many babies as possible while remaining totally submissive to their husbands. Other Quiverfull rules: wives cannot have their own bank accounts or e-mail addresses without their husbands’ permission, and they must always be sexually available to their husbands whether they’re in the mood for sex or not.
4. Project Blitz
Project Blitz is not a Christian fundamentalist church or sect, but rather, a coalition of Christian fundamentalist activists with a political agenda: to make sure that state legislatures are flooded with as many theocratic bills as possible. Working with Republicans who are sympathetic to their dominionist views—anti gay, anti-abortion, anti-contraception—Project Blitz believes that it is important for bills to be introduced regardless of how far they get. The more bills that are introduced, Project Blitz believes, the more likely they are to achieve some home runs eventually.
5. WallBuilders
In Texas, David Barton has been very active in both Republican politics and far-right fundamentalist Christianity. In addition to being a former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party and serving as director of Keep the Promise PAC—a political action committee that supported Sen. Ted Cruz’ presidential campaign in 2016—Barton founded WallBuilders, which has taught through books and videos that the separation of church and state is not constitutional and that the government should be run according to strict Biblical law. And Barton has been active in the Providence Foundation, another group with dominionist views.
Shock over ruling that 'brides of Christ' need not be virgins
Consecrated virgins say they are disappointed by Vatican’s new guidance
Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent
the guardian
Mon 16 Jul 2018 07.34 EDT
Christian women who have pledged lifelong virginity as “brides of Christ” have expressed shock at a Vatican document that suggests literal virginity is not a prerequisite for their consecration.
The Vatican’s new instruction on consecrated virginity, Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago, was published earlier this month after requests from bishops who reported an increasing number of women being called to the vocation.
There are an estimated 5,000 consecrated virgins in at least 42 countries, with the largest numbers in France, Italy and Argentina.
Consecrated virgins are unmarried women who offer their physical virginity as a gift to Christ, and devote time to penance, works of mercy and prayer. Unlike nuns, they do not live in enclosed communities or wear special clothing. Most have jobs, and they provide for their own needs.
The 39-page Vatican document offers detailed guidance on the vocation, including advising up to two years’ preparation before consecration.
It says consecrated virgins “are dedicated to the Lord Jesus in virginity … They experience the spiritual fertility of an intimate relationship with him”.
But the clause that has surprised some says actual virginity is not essential for a woman to become a consecrated virgin.
“The call to give witness to the church’s virginal, spousal and fruitful love for Christ is not reducible to the symbol of physical integrity,” it says.
“Thus to have kept her body in perfect continence or to have practiced the virtue of chastity in an exemplary way, while of great importance with regard to the discernment, are not essential prerequisites in the absence of which admittance to consecration is not possible.”
In a statement, the US Association of Consecrated Virgins, which says there are 235 consecrated virgins across America, said the document was “deeply disappointing in its denial of integral virginity as the essential and natural foundation of the vocation”.
“It is shocking to hear from Mother Church that physical virginity may no longer be considered an essential prerequisite for consecration to a life of virginity,” it added.
Women dress as brides for the consecration ceremony, in which they pledge perpetual virginity.
Theresa Jordan, who was consecrated along with two other women in Detroit last June, said: “It’s a promise that we make to be faithful to Christ all our life. [We] make him a promise of our virginity as a gift back to him.”
The Vatican’s new instruction on consecrated virginity, Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago, was published earlier this month after requests from bishops who reported an increasing number of women being called to the vocation.
There are an estimated 5,000 consecrated virgins in at least 42 countries, with the largest numbers in France, Italy and Argentina.
Consecrated virgins are unmarried women who offer their physical virginity as a gift to Christ, and devote time to penance, works of mercy and prayer. Unlike nuns, they do not live in enclosed communities or wear special clothing. Most have jobs, and they provide for their own needs.
The 39-page Vatican document offers detailed guidance on the vocation, including advising up to two years’ preparation before consecration.
It says consecrated virgins “are dedicated to the Lord Jesus in virginity … They experience the spiritual fertility of an intimate relationship with him”.
But the clause that has surprised some says actual virginity is not essential for a woman to become a consecrated virgin.
“The call to give witness to the church’s virginal, spousal and fruitful love for Christ is not reducible to the symbol of physical integrity,” it says.
“Thus to have kept her body in perfect continence or to have practiced the virtue of chastity in an exemplary way, while of great importance with regard to the discernment, are not essential prerequisites in the absence of which admittance to consecration is not possible.”
In a statement, the US Association of Consecrated Virgins, which says there are 235 consecrated virgins across America, said the document was “deeply disappointing in its denial of integral virginity as the essential and natural foundation of the vocation”.
“It is shocking to hear from Mother Church that physical virginity may no longer be considered an essential prerequisite for consecration to a life of virginity,” it added.
Women dress as brides for the consecration ceremony, in which they pledge perpetual virginity.
Theresa Jordan, who was consecrated along with two other women in Detroit last June, said: “It’s a promise that we make to be faithful to Christ all our life. [We] make him a promise of our virginity as a gift back to him.”
Trumpvangelicals use Christianity to oppress minorities — the #SlaveholderReligion hashtag highlights how
Noor Al-Sibai - raw story
11 JUL 2018 AT 10:37 ET
Christianity has long been used by tyrants to justify oppression, but a new Twitter hashtag highlights the ways so-called followers of Christ use “slaveholder religion” to oppressive ends in the Trump era.
The term “slaveholder religion” has recently been popularized by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, whose book Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion hit shelves earlier this year. In an interview with the Religion News Service, Wilson-Hartgrove traced the lineage of the term to Frederick Douglass, who “made this distinction in the 19th century between the Christianity of the slaveholder and the Christianity of Christ.”
“Douglass knew that the slavemaster called himself Christian and had a whole way or reading the Bible and understanding God that went along with that,” the North Carolinian author and activist told RNS. “Douglass also knew Jesus for himself, and knew that he was a Christian. And that these two ways of living out the faith that go by the name of Christianity were diametrically opposed.”
Wilson-Hartgrove likely has inspiration from a more recent African American icon: Dr. William Barber, a North Carolinian reverend whose resurgence of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People Campaign counts the author as one of its members.
While Wilson-Hartgrove has brought “slaveholder religion” into the world of Christian publishing, Rev. Barber has introduced it into the consciousness of his social media followers through the #SlaveholderReligion hashtag.
On Wednesday, Barber called out “Christian nationalist” and Trump spiritual adviser Paula White for insisting that Jesus’ status as a refugee is different than people who enter American borders without documents. The president’s spiritual adviser argued that people are taking the Bible “out of context” with their comparisons between Christ and Central Americans fleeing violence — a distinction Barber suggested is an example of the slaveholder religion mentality.
“Jesus was a refugee & did break the law,” Rev. Barber tweeted. “He was crucified as a felon under Roman law.”
He called White a “Christian nationalist” and charged her with “enabling injustice” with her Biblical interpretations that echo the slaveholder religion ethos.
---
“If we don’t help people name & condemn #SlaveholderReligion, they are left to believe this is the teaching of the church,” the reverend continued. Trump & the GOP have elevated Christian nationalism to a place where many confuse it w/orthodox faith.”
Barber then wrote that he is “prayerfully joining” Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, his Poor People’s Campaign co-chair, along with Oakland, California’s Bishop Yvette Flunder and Wilson-Hartgrove “to challenge Trumpvangelicals to a public conversation about what the Bible really says.”
Along with links to the current immigration debate, the #SlaveholderReligion hashtag also took on another Trump target recently when Wilson-Hartgrove identified it as the mentality behind recently-resigned EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s claim that God was with him in his tenure in the administration.
“The most obviously corrupt Cabinet official in recent history resigns in the name of family values, contending that God made his [grift] possible & praying continued blessings on the object of his idolatry,” the author tweeted.
The term “slaveholder religion” has recently been popularized by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, whose book Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion hit shelves earlier this year. In an interview with the Religion News Service, Wilson-Hartgrove traced the lineage of the term to Frederick Douglass, who “made this distinction in the 19th century between the Christianity of the slaveholder and the Christianity of Christ.”
“Douglass knew that the slavemaster called himself Christian and had a whole way or reading the Bible and understanding God that went along with that,” the North Carolinian author and activist told RNS. “Douglass also knew Jesus for himself, and knew that he was a Christian. And that these two ways of living out the faith that go by the name of Christianity were diametrically opposed.”
Wilson-Hartgrove likely has inspiration from a more recent African American icon: Dr. William Barber, a North Carolinian reverend whose resurgence of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People Campaign counts the author as one of its members.
While Wilson-Hartgrove has brought “slaveholder religion” into the world of Christian publishing, Rev. Barber has introduced it into the consciousness of his social media followers through the #SlaveholderReligion hashtag.
On Wednesday, Barber called out “Christian nationalist” and Trump spiritual adviser Paula White for insisting that Jesus’ status as a refugee is different than people who enter American borders without documents. The president’s spiritual adviser argued that people are taking the Bible “out of context” with their comparisons between Christ and Central Americans fleeing violence — a distinction Barber suggested is an example of the slaveholder religion mentality.
“Jesus was a refugee & did break the law,” Rev. Barber tweeted. “He was crucified as a felon under Roman law.”
He called White a “Christian nationalist” and charged her with “enabling injustice” with her Biblical interpretations that echo the slaveholder religion ethos.
---
“If we don’t help people name & condemn #SlaveholderReligion, they are left to believe this is the teaching of the church,” the reverend continued. Trump & the GOP have elevated Christian nationalism to a place where many confuse it w/orthodox faith.”
Barber then wrote that he is “prayerfully joining” Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, his Poor People’s Campaign co-chair, along with Oakland, California’s Bishop Yvette Flunder and Wilson-Hartgrove “to challenge Trumpvangelicals to a public conversation about what the Bible really says.”
Along with links to the current immigration debate, the #SlaveholderReligion hashtag also took on another Trump target recently when Wilson-Hartgrove identified it as the mentality behind recently-resigned EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s claim that God was with him in his tenure in the administration.
“The most obviously corrupt Cabinet official in recent history resigns in the name of family values, contending that God made his [grift] possible & praying continued blessings on the object of his idolatry,” the author tweeted.
‘Egocentric’ US Christians believe God will look just like them — according to science
Tom Boggioni - raw story
12 JUN 2018 AT 11:36 ET
According to a study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, American Christians expect to see a familiar face when they to ascend to Heaven — a God that looks remarkably like them.
In the study, 511 self-identified U.S. Christians were shown hundreds of randomly varying pairs of faces and selected which face appeared more like how they imagined God to appear.
“Literature and art have long depicted God as a stern and elderly white man, but do people actually see Him this way? We use reverse correlation to understand how a representative sample of American Christians visualize the face of God, which we argue is indicative of how believers think about God’s mind,” the study’s abstract, which was published at PLOS, explained.
“In contrast to historical depictions, Americans generally see God as young, Caucasian, and loving, but perceptions vary by believers’ political ideology and physical appearance,” the abstract continues. “All participants see God as similar to themselves on attractiveness, age, and, to a lesser extent, race. These differences are consistent with past research showing that people’s views of God are shaped by their group-based motivations and cognitive biases. Our results also speak to the broad scope of religious differences: even people of the same nationality and the same faith appear to think differently about God’s appearance.”
Due to what scientists call “egocentricity,” most described a God that looked like themselves.
“Do people see a God who looks like them? Egocentrism suggests that people see the world and other people through the lens of the self. Perhaps the same is true with God, such that He shares not only people’s opinions, but also their facial features,” the researchers explained.
“These findings are striking in two respects. First, though many Christians claim that God’s appearance is unknowable [13], our sample of believers did appear to have stable representations of God’s face that included differentiable physical features (e.g. masculinity, youthfulness, and Whiteness) and psychological characteristics (e.g. lovingness). Second, even though American Christians ostensibly believe in the same God, people perceived Him in their own way, their perceptions reflecting their political ideologies and their own personal appearance.” You can dig into the whole study here.
In the study, 511 self-identified U.S. Christians were shown hundreds of randomly varying pairs of faces and selected which face appeared more like how they imagined God to appear.
“Literature and art have long depicted God as a stern and elderly white man, but do people actually see Him this way? We use reverse correlation to understand how a representative sample of American Christians visualize the face of God, which we argue is indicative of how believers think about God’s mind,” the study’s abstract, which was published at PLOS, explained.
“In contrast to historical depictions, Americans generally see God as young, Caucasian, and loving, but perceptions vary by believers’ political ideology and physical appearance,” the abstract continues. “All participants see God as similar to themselves on attractiveness, age, and, to a lesser extent, race. These differences are consistent with past research showing that people’s views of God are shaped by their group-based motivations and cognitive biases. Our results also speak to the broad scope of religious differences: even people of the same nationality and the same faith appear to think differently about God’s appearance.”
Due to what scientists call “egocentricity,” most described a God that looked like themselves.
“Do people see a God who looks like them? Egocentrism suggests that people see the world and other people through the lens of the self. Perhaps the same is true with God, such that He shares not only people’s opinions, but also their facial features,” the researchers explained.
“These findings are striking in two respects. First, though many Christians claim that God’s appearance is unknowable [13], our sample of believers did appear to have stable representations of God’s face that included differentiable physical features (e.g. masculinity, youthfulness, and Whiteness) and psychological characteristics (e.g. lovingness). Second, even though American Christians ostensibly believe in the same God, people perceived Him in their own way, their perceptions reflecting their political ideologies and their own personal appearance.” You can dig into the whole study here.
america under ASSAULT by fascist!!!
Project Blitz: The legislative assault by Christian nationalists to reshape America
Since Donald Trump became president, rightwing groups are helping flood state legislatures with bills that promote hardline Christian conservative views
David Taylor in New York
the guardian
Mon 4 Jun 2018 04.00 EDT
The emboldened religious right has unleashed a wave of legislation across the United States since Donald Trump became president, as part of an organised bid to impose hardline Christian values across American society.
A playbook known as Project Blitz, developed by a collection of Christian groups, has provided state politicians with a set of off-the-shelf pro-Christian “model bills”.
Some legislation uses verbatim language from the “model bills’” created by a group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF), set up by a former Republican congressman which has a stated aim to “protect religious freedom, preserve America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer”.
At least 75 bills have been brought forward in more than 20 states during 2017 and 2018 which appear to be modelled on or have similar objectives to the playbook, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a campaign group which tracks legislation that undermines the principle of separation of church and state.
Opponents warn that the CPCF (which claims more than 600 politicians as members across state legislatures ) is using the banner of “religious freedom” to impose Christianity on American public, political and cultural life.
In Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee so-called “In God We Trust” bills have become law since 2017, which will see the phrase emblazoned on public buildings, hung in schools and displayed on the side of public vehicles including police cars.
But the Project Blitz playbook sees those largely symbolic bills as just the first stage on the way to more hardline laws. They are presented as measures to preserve religious liberty, but are intended to give businesses, pastors and childcare providers the right to discriminate against LGBT people in line with their “sincerely held religious beliefs”.
Samantha Sokol, who studied the bills for the Americans United for Separation of Church and State campaign group said: “In God We Trust bills are the most common. We had 26 of those, they really just exploded this year. .
“I think that it is due to the promotion of Project Blitz. They have sent this playbook to state legislators and told them that these In God We Trust bills are the first step.”
She added: “Some would see these bills as very trivial and unimportant but even the most simple or trivial bills would really undermine American religious freedom and separation of church and state, and undermine the promise of our public schools that kids are welcome, whether they are religious or non-religious, whether they are evangelical Christians or not.”
Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a think-tank which studies the political right, was first to write about Project Blitz, which he said had been hiding in plain sight.
“It’s very rare that you come across a major primary source document that changes the way you view everything, and this is one of those times. This is a 116-page strategy manual hidden away on a website explaining at least what a section of the religious right are doing in the United States. To me that’s astounding.”
The playbook came to wider attention in April after Clarkson was tipped off to its existence. He also highlighted recordings of conference calls where leading figures in the CPCF set out their plans to flood state legislatures with bills.
One of the steering team behind Project Blitz is David Barton, the Texas-based founder of an organisation called WallBuilders, which takes its inspiration from the Old Testament in describing a a mission of “rebuilding our nation’s foundations”.
In a recording of a call with state legislators, he describes in detail the strategy behind Project Blitz, which he said packages together about two dozen bills in separate categories based on the type of opposition they are likely to receive. There are three categories of bills in Project Blitz.
The first category of “In God We Trust” bills are likely to trigger opposition saying the bills are a waste of time, or the sponsor of the bill ‘just wants to fight culture wars and divide people”.
Part of the strategy is to pave the way for later political attacks, painting an election opponent as ‘anti-faith’. Recent attacks on a Minnesota Democratic politician by Republican opponents followed exactly those lines.
Barton told legislators on the call: “They are gonna be things people yell at, but they help move the ball down the court, really if we can do this, get this going with all the states, it’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side, it’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this.”
Category two include bills for a range of proclamations or resolutions – declaring a religious freedom day, or Christian heritage week that can then be used to get religious teaching into schools. The playbook adds: “If any legislator opposes this, it will be helpful to get him or her on the record against this heritage and freedom.”
Category three bills will have the greatest impact but will be “the most hotly contested” the playbook says – they include resolutions in favour of “biblical values concerning marriage and sexuality”, such as “establishing public policy favoring adoption by intact heterosexual, marriage-based families” and “establishing public policy favoring intimate sexual relations only between married, heterosexual couples”.
The playbook warns that the most far-reaching model bills – designed to deny LGBT people access to adoption services or marriage services – are “more dangerous” because they will face well-organised and financed opposition.
According to the Americans United for Separation of Church and State analysis, Oklahoma and Georgia have brought forward but not passed “adoption refusal” Child Protection bills. And six states have “wedding services refusal” measures, often framed as Pastor Protection bills, although none have become law.
A recording of the call is still on the CPCF website, dated 13 February2016, although it actually appears to have taken place in February 2017, because it refers to events of the early days of the Trump administration.
THE CPCF did not respond to request for comment on Project Blitz. Lea Carawan, director of the CPCF said on the call that
the Trump administration was more receptive than any in over 30 years, adding: “We believe this is just the beginning. There is a powerful momentum that is happening.”
Trump - on his third marriage and mired in controversy after paying off a porn actress - has been a useful ally for Christian evangelicals, appointing more than 20 conservative judges, including filling the supreme court vacancy with conservative justice Neil Gorsuch.
---
Andrew Whitehead, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Clemson University, recently published a study titled Make America Christian Again, which concluded that the more someone believed the United States was and should remain a Christian nation, the more likely they were to vote Trump in 2016.
Whitehead described the so-called quest for ‘dominion’ as the aim of Christian nationalists who consider that the Christian faith and their particular interpretation should be imposed.
Clarkson, whose research first highlighted Project Blitz, said: “It’s a Christian supremacist agenda, the idea that God intended and mandates Christians to lead and control the United States for the religious vision that they hold and the policy implications that flow from it.
“If you are a more liberal Christian , a Jew or a Muslim or a non-believer of any sort, or whatever you happen to be, you’re a second class citizen at best.
A playbook known as Project Blitz, developed by a collection of Christian groups, has provided state politicians with a set of off-the-shelf pro-Christian “model bills”.
Some legislation uses verbatim language from the “model bills’” created by a group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF), set up by a former Republican congressman which has a stated aim to “protect religious freedom, preserve America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer”.
At least 75 bills have been brought forward in more than 20 states during 2017 and 2018 which appear to be modelled on or have similar objectives to the playbook, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a campaign group which tracks legislation that undermines the principle of separation of church and state.
Opponents warn that the CPCF (which claims more than 600 politicians as members across state legislatures ) is using the banner of “religious freedom” to impose Christianity on American public, political and cultural life.
In Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee so-called “In God We Trust” bills have become law since 2017, which will see the phrase emblazoned on public buildings, hung in schools and displayed on the side of public vehicles including police cars.
But the Project Blitz playbook sees those largely symbolic bills as just the first stage on the way to more hardline laws. They are presented as measures to preserve religious liberty, but are intended to give businesses, pastors and childcare providers the right to discriminate against LGBT people in line with their “sincerely held religious beliefs”.
Samantha Sokol, who studied the bills for the Americans United for Separation of Church and State campaign group said: “In God We Trust bills are the most common. We had 26 of those, they really just exploded this year. .
“I think that it is due to the promotion of Project Blitz. They have sent this playbook to state legislators and told them that these In God We Trust bills are the first step.”
She added: “Some would see these bills as very trivial and unimportant but even the most simple or trivial bills would really undermine American religious freedom and separation of church and state, and undermine the promise of our public schools that kids are welcome, whether they are religious or non-religious, whether they are evangelical Christians or not.”
Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a think-tank which studies the political right, was first to write about Project Blitz, which he said had been hiding in plain sight.
“It’s very rare that you come across a major primary source document that changes the way you view everything, and this is one of those times. This is a 116-page strategy manual hidden away on a website explaining at least what a section of the religious right are doing in the United States. To me that’s astounding.”
The playbook came to wider attention in April after Clarkson was tipped off to its existence. He also highlighted recordings of conference calls where leading figures in the CPCF set out their plans to flood state legislatures with bills.
One of the steering team behind Project Blitz is David Barton, the Texas-based founder of an organisation called WallBuilders, which takes its inspiration from the Old Testament in describing a a mission of “rebuilding our nation’s foundations”.
In a recording of a call with state legislators, he describes in detail the strategy behind Project Blitz, which he said packages together about two dozen bills in separate categories based on the type of opposition they are likely to receive. There are three categories of bills in Project Blitz.
The first category of “In God We Trust” bills are likely to trigger opposition saying the bills are a waste of time, or the sponsor of the bill ‘just wants to fight culture wars and divide people”.
Part of the strategy is to pave the way for later political attacks, painting an election opponent as ‘anti-faith’. Recent attacks on a Minnesota Democratic politician by Republican opponents followed exactly those lines.
Barton told legislators on the call: “They are gonna be things people yell at, but they help move the ball down the court, really if we can do this, get this going with all the states, it’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side, it’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this.”
Category two include bills for a range of proclamations or resolutions – declaring a religious freedom day, or Christian heritage week that can then be used to get religious teaching into schools. The playbook adds: “If any legislator opposes this, it will be helpful to get him or her on the record against this heritage and freedom.”
Category three bills will have the greatest impact but will be “the most hotly contested” the playbook says – they include resolutions in favour of “biblical values concerning marriage and sexuality”, such as “establishing public policy favoring adoption by intact heterosexual, marriage-based families” and “establishing public policy favoring intimate sexual relations only between married, heterosexual couples”.
The playbook warns that the most far-reaching model bills – designed to deny LGBT people access to adoption services or marriage services – are “more dangerous” because they will face well-organised and financed opposition.
According to the Americans United for Separation of Church and State analysis, Oklahoma and Georgia have brought forward but not passed “adoption refusal” Child Protection bills. And six states have “wedding services refusal” measures, often framed as Pastor Protection bills, although none have become law.
A recording of the call is still on the CPCF website, dated 13 February2016, although it actually appears to have taken place in February 2017, because it refers to events of the early days of the Trump administration.
THE CPCF did not respond to request for comment on Project Blitz. Lea Carawan, director of the CPCF said on the call that
the Trump administration was more receptive than any in over 30 years, adding: “We believe this is just the beginning. There is a powerful momentum that is happening.”
Trump - on his third marriage and mired in controversy after paying off a porn actress - has been a useful ally for Christian evangelicals, appointing more than 20 conservative judges, including filling the supreme court vacancy with conservative justice Neil Gorsuch.
---
Andrew Whitehead, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Clemson University, recently published a study titled Make America Christian Again, which concluded that the more someone believed the United States was and should remain a Christian nation, the more likely they were to vote Trump in 2016.
Whitehead described the so-called quest for ‘dominion’ as the aim of Christian nationalists who consider that the Christian faith and their particular interpretation should be imposed.
Clarkson, whose research first highlighted Project Blitz, said: “It’s a Christian supremacist agenda, the idea that God intended and mandates Christians to lead and control the United States for the religious vision that they hold and the policy implications that flow from it.
“If you are a more liberal Christian , a Jew or a Muslim or a non-believer of any sort, or whatever you happen to be, you’re a second class citizen at best.
Here Are 5 Founding Fathers Whose Skepticism About Christianity Would Make Them Unelectable Today
Thomas Jefferson believed that a rational form of religion would take root in America. Was he ever wrong.
By Rob Boston / AlterNet
June 2, 2018, 4:06 AM GMT
To hear the Religious Right tell it, men like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were 18th-century versions of Jerry Falwell in powdered wigs and stockings. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Unlike many of today’s candidates, the founders didn’t find it necessary to constantly wear religion on their sleeves. They considered faith a private affair. Contrast them to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who says he wouldn’t vote for an atheist for president because non-believers lack the proper moral grounding to guide the American ship of state), Texas Gov. Rick Perry (who hosted a prayer rally and issued an infamous ad accusing President Barack Obama of waging a “war on religion”) and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (whose uber-Catholicism leads him to oppose not just abortion but birth control).
There was a time when Americans voted for candidates who were skeptical of core concepts of Christianity like the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus and the virgin birth. The question is, could any of them get elected today? The sad answer is probably not.
Here are five founding fathers whose views on religion would most likely doom them to defeat today:
1. George Washington. The father of our country was nominally an Anglican but seemed more at home with Deism. The language of the Deists sounds odd to today’s ears because it’s a theological system of thought that has fallen out of favor. Deists believed in God but didn’t necessarily see him as active in human affairs. The god of the Deists was a god of first cause. He set things in motion and then stepped back.
Washington often employed Deistic terms. His god was a “supreme architect” of the universe. Washington saw religion as necessary for good moral behavior but didn’t necessarily accept all Christian dogma. He seemed to have a special gripe against communion and would usually leave services before it was offered.
Washington was widely tolerant of other beliefs. He is the author of one of the great classics of religious liberty – the letter to Touro Synagogue (1790). In this letter, Washington assured America’s Jews that they would enjoy complete religious liberty in America; not mere toleration in an officially “Christian” nation. He outlines a vision of a multi-faith society where all are free.
“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation,” wrote Washington. “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.”
Stories of Washington’s deep religiosity, such as tales of him praying in the snow at Valley Forge, can be ignored. They are pious legends invented after his death.
2. John Adams. The man who followed Washington in office was a Unitarian, although he was raised a Congregationalist and never officially left that church. Adams rejected belief in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, core concepts of Christian dogma. In his personal writings, Adams makes it clear that he considered some Christian dogma to be incomprehensible.
In February 1756, Adams wrote in his diary about a discussion he had had with a man named Major Greene. Greene was a devout Christian who sought to persuade Adams to adopt conservative Christian views. The two argued over the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity. Questioned on the matter of Jesus’ divinity, Greene fell back on an old standby: some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for we puny humans to understand.
Adams was not impressed. In his diary he wrote, “Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”
As president, Adams signed the famous Treaty of Tripoli, which boldly stated, “[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion….”
3. Thomas Jefferson. It’s almost impossible to define Jefferson’s subtle religious views in a few words. As he once put it, “I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.” But one thing is clear: His skepticism of traditional Christianity is well established. Our third president did not believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin and other core Christian doctrines. He was hostile to many conservative Christian clerics, whom he believed had perverted the teachings of that faith.
Jefferson once famously observed to Adams, “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
Although not an orthodox Christian, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral teacher. In one of his most unusual acts, Jefferson edited the New Testament, cutting away the stories of miracles and divinity and leaving behind a very human Jesus, whose teachings Jefferson found “sublime.” This “Jefferson Bible” is a remarkable document – and it would ensure his political defeat today. (Imagine the TV commercials the Religious Right would run: Thomas Jefferson hates Jesus! He mutilates Bibles!)
Jefferson was confident that a coolly rational form of religion would take root in the fertile intellectual soil of America. He once predicted that just about everyone would become Unitarian. (Despite his many talents, the man was no prophet.)
Jefferson took political stands that would infuriate today’s Religious Right and ensure that they would work to defeat him. He refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and fasting, saying that such religious duties were no part of the chief executive’s job. His assertion that the First Amendment erects a “wall of separation between church and state” still rankles the Religious Right today.
4. James Madison. Jefferson’s close ally would be similarly unelectable today. Madison is perhaps the most enigmatic of all the founders when it comes to religion. To this day, scholars still debate his religious views.
Nominally Anglican, Madison, some of his biographers believe, was really a Deist. He went through a period of enthusiasm for Christianity as a young man, but this seems to have faded. Unlike many of today’s politicians, who eagerly wear religion on their sleeves and brag about the ways their faith will guide their policy decisions, Madison was notoriously reluctant to talk publicly about his religious beliefs.
Madison was perhaps the strictest church-state separationist among the founders, taking stands that make the ACLU look like a bunch of pikers. He opposed government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military. As president, Madison rejected a proposed census because it involved counting people by profession. For the government to count the clergy, Madison said, would violate the First Amendment.
Madison, who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, also opposed government-issued prayer proclamations. He issued a few during the War of 1812 at the insistence of Congress but later concluded that his actions had been unconstitutional. As president, he vetoed legislation granting federal land to a church and a plan to have a church in Washington care for the poor through a largely symbolic charter. In both cases, he cited the First Amendment.
One can hear the commercials now: "James Madison is an anti-religious fanatic. He even opposes prayer proclamations during time of war."
5. Thomas Paine. Paine never held elective office, but he played an important role as a pamphleteer whose stirring words helped rally Americans to independence. Washington ordered that Paine’s pamphlet “The American Crisis” be read aloud to the Continental Army as a morale booster on Dec. 23, 1776. “Common Sense” was similarly popular with the people. These seminal documents were crucial to winning over the public to the side of independence.
So Paine’s a hero, right? He was also a radical Deist whose later work, The Age of Reason, still infuriates fundamentalists. In the tome, Paine attacked institutionalized religion and all of the major tenets of Christianity. He rejected prophecies and miracles and called on readers to embrace reason. The Bible, Paine asserted, can in no way be infallible. He called the god of the Old Testament “wicked” and the entire Bible “the pretended word of God.” (There go the Red States!)
What can we learn from this? Americans have the right to reject candidates for any reason, including their religious beliefs. But they ought to think twice before tossing someone aside just because he or she is skeptical of orthodox Christianity. After all, that description includes some of our nation’s greatest leaders.
Unlike many of today’s candidates, the founders didn’t find it necessary to constantly wear religion on their sleeves. They considered faith a private affair. Contrast them to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who says he wouldn’t vote for an atheist for president because non-believers lack the proper moral grounding to guide the American ship of state), Texas Gov. Rick Perry (who hosted a prayer rally and issued an infamous ad accusing President Barack Obama of waging a “war on religion”) and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (whose uber-Catholicism leads him to oppose not just abortion but birth control).
There was a time when Americans voted for candidates who were skeptical of core concepts of Christianity like the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus and the virgin birth. The question is, could any of them get elected today? The sad answer is probably not.
Here are five founding fathers whose views on religion would most likely doom them to defeat today:
1. George Washington. The father of our country was nominally an Anglican but seemed more at home with Deism. The language of the Deists sounds odd to today’s ears because it’s a theological system of thought that has fallen out of favor. Deists believed in God but didn’t necessarily see him as active in human affairs. The god of the Deists was a god of first cause. He set things in motion and then stepped back.
Washington often employed Deistic terms. His god was a “supreme architect” of the universe. Washington saw religion as necessary for good moral behavior but didn’t necessarily accept all Christian dogma. He seemed to have a special gripe against communion and would usually leave services before it was offered.
Washington was widely tolerant of other beliefs. He is the author of one of the great classics of religious liberty – the letter to Touro Synagogue (1790). In this letter, Washington assured America’s Jews that they would enjoy complete religious liberty in America; not mere toleration in an officially “Christian” nation. He outlines a vision of a multi-faith society where all are free.
“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation,” wrote Washington. “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.”
Stories of Washington’s deep religiosity, such as tales of him praying in the snow at Valley Forge, can be ignored. They are pious legends invented after his death.
2. John Adams. The man who followed Washington in office was a Unitarian, although he was raised a Congregationalist and never officially left that church. Adams rejected belief in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, core concepts of Christian dogma. In his personal writings, Adams makes it clear that he considered some Christian dogma to be incomprehensible.
In February 1756, Adams wrote in his diary about a discussion he had had with a man named Major Greene. Greene was a devout Christian who sought to persuade Adams to adopt conservative Christian views. The two argued over the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity. Questioned on the matter of Jesus’ divinity, Greene fell back on an old standby: some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for we puny humans to understand.
Adams was not impressed. In his diary he wrote, “Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”
As president, Adams signed the famous Treaty of Tripoli, which boldly stated, “[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion….”
3. Thomas Jefferson. It’s almost impossible to define Jefferson’s subtle religious views in a few words. As he once put it, “I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.” But one thing is clear: His skepticism of traditional Christianity is well established. Our third president did not believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin and other core Christian doctrines. He was hostile to many conservative Christian clerics, whom he believed had perverted the teachings of that faith.
Jefferson once famously observed to Adams, “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
Although not an orthodox Christian, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral teacher. In one of his most unusual acts, Jefferson edited the New Testament, cutting away the stories of miracles and divinity and leaving behind a very human Jesus, whose teachings Jefferson found “sublime.” This “Jefferson Bible” is a remarkable document – and it would ensure his political defeat today. (Imagine the TV commercials the Religious Right would run: Thomas Jefferson hates Jesus! He mutilates Bibles!)
Jefferson was confident that a coolly rational form of religion would take root in the fertile intellectual soil of America. He once predicted that just about everyone would become Unitarian. (Despite his many talents, the man was no prophet.)
Jefferson took political stands that would infuriate today’s Religious Right and ensure that they would work to defeat him. He refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and fasting, saying that such religious duties were no part of the chief executive’s job. His assertion that the First Amendment erects a “wall of separation between church and state” still rankles the Religious Right today.
4. James Madison. Jefferson’s close ally would be similarly unelectable today. Madison is perhaps the most enigmatic of all the founders when it comes to religion. To this day, scholars still debate his religious views.
Nominally Anglican, Madison, some of his biographers believe, was really a Deist. He went through a period of enthusiasm for Christianity as a young man, but this seems to have faded. Unlike many of today’s politicians, who eagerly wear religion on their sleeves and brag about the ways their faith will guide their policy decisions, Madison was notoriously reluctant to talk publicly about his religious beliefs.
Madison was perhaps the strictest church-state separationist among the founders, taking stands that make the ACLU look like a bunch of pikers. He opposed government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military. As president, Madison rejected a proposed census because it involved counting people by profession. For the government to count the clergy, Madison said, would violate the First Amendment.
Madison, who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, also opposed government-issued prayer proclamations. He issued a few during the War of 1812 at the insistence of Congress but later concluded that his actions had been unconstitutional. As president, he vetoed legislation granting federal land to a church and a plan to have a church in Washington care for the poor through a largely symbolic charter. In both cases, he cited the First Amendment.
One can hear the commercials now: "James Madison is an anti-religious fanatic. He even opposes prayer proclamations during time of war."
5. Thomas Paine. Paine never held elective office, but he played an important role as a pamphleteer whose stirring words helped rally Americans to independence. Washington ordered that Paine’s pamphlet “The American Crisis” be read aloud to the Continental Army as a morale booster on Dec. 23, 1776. “Common Sense” was similarly popular with the people. These seminal documents were crucial to winning over the public to the side of independence.
So Paine’s a hero, right? He was also a radical Deist whose later work, The Age of Reason, still infuriates fundamentalists. In the tome, Paine attacked institutionalized religion and all of the major tenets of Christianity. He rejected prophecies and miracles and called on readers to embrace reason. The Bible, Paine asserted, can in no way be infallible. He called the god of the Old Testament “wicked” and the entire Bible “the pretended word of God.” (There go the Red States!)
What can we learn from this? Americans have the right to reject candidates for any reason, including their religious beliefs. But they ought to think twice before tossing someone aside just because he or she is skeptical of orthodox Christianity. After all, that description includes some of our nation’s greatest leaders.
Joel Osteen built a cult-like empire by giving desperate Americans ‘an empty box of hope’
Tana Ganeva - raw story
31 MAY 2018 AT 13:51 ET
A feature in the Houston Chronicle published Thursday called “Preacher’s Son” charts mega church pastor Joel Osteen’s path to building a million-dollar multi-media empire.
Osteen doesn’t bother with complex theological questions. He also avoids contentious issues like abortion and gay rights.
Instead, the article notes, he shills a vague, sunny optimism that’s irresistible to Americans grappling with everything from illness and divorce to problems at work.
A sampling of Osteen’s preaching, broadcast from the stage of Houston’s Lakewood Church, the biggest church in the country: “God is arranging things in your favor. You have a backbone made of steel. All you have to do is believe.”
Osteen’s media empire includes a television show—watched by 10 million Americans—websites, podcasts, self-help books, CDs, DVDs, a 24-hour Sirius XM station. He has 8.58 million Twitter followers and this morning he advised them that, “We all face challenges, but we don’t have to get discouraged, God controls the universe. He won’t allow anything to happen unless He has a way to bring good out of it.”
Some religious scholars object to Osteen’s vast wealth and luxury life style, the Chronicle notes.
“There’s always the question of how much money is too much for a pastor to earn,” Carl Trueman, a pastor and professor of church history at the Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, told the paper. “When you’re looking at his lavish private lifestyle, I’d say that’s too much.”
Others pointed out that Osteen’s message wrongly sells an unwarranted optimism that might be dangerous for his audience. “All you get is an empty box of hope for a better life someday,” another critic noted.
Osteen is not concerned.
“I’ve outlasted the critics and figured out what I feel like I’m supposed to do,” he said in one of two lengthy interviews with the Houston Chronicle. “If you have a message to get out, there has never been a better day.”
The reporter, who attended one of Osteen’s sermons, observed that “From the first word to the last, he never stops smiling.”
Osteen doesn’t bother with complex theological questions. He also avoids contentious issues like abortion and gay rights.
Instead, the article notes, he shills a vague, sunny optimism that’s irresistible to Americans grappling with everything from illness and divorce to problems at work.
A sampling of Osteen’s preaching, broadcast from the stage of Houston’s Lakewood Church, the biggest church in the country: “God is arranging things in your favor. You have a backbone made of steel. All you have to do is believe.”
Osteen’s media empire includes a television show—watched by 10 million Americans—websites, podcasts, self-help books, CDs, DVDs, a 24-hour Sirius XM station. He has 8.58 million Twitter followers and this morning he advised them that, “We all face challenges, but we don’t have to get discouraged, God controls the universe. He won’t allow anything to happen unless He has a way to bring good out of it.”
Some religious scholars object to Osteen’s vast wealth and luxury life style, the Chronicle notes.
“There’s always the question of how much money is too much for a pastor to earn,” Carl Trueman, a pastor and professor of church history at the Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, told the paper. “When you’re looking at his lavish private lifestyle, I’d say that’s too much.”
Others pointed out that Osteen’s message wrongly sells an unwarranted optimism that might be dangerous for his audience. “All you get is an empty box of hope for a better life someday,” another critic noted.
Osteen is not concerned.
“I’ve outlasted the critics and figured out what I feel like I’m supposed to do,” he said in one of two lengthy interviews with the Houston Chronicle. “If you have a message to get out, there has never been a better day.”
The reporter, who attended one of Osteen’s sermons, observed that “From the first word to the last, he never stops smiling.”
Christian fundamentalism is linked to higher rates of infant mortality: study
Tana Ganeva - raw story
30 MAY 2018 AT 14:54 ET
Counties that are more religiously conservative have higher rates of infant mortality, according to a new study published in the May issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Researchers analyzed rates of infant deaths and cross-checked that data with whether an area had a greater number of conservative Protestants, or leaned towards mainline Protestants and Catholics.
Sociologist Ginny Garcia-Alexander, a lead author of the study, examined the number of deaths from four weeks through the first year. She explained in a Portland State University research update that babies who die during that period of development die because of birth defects, which tend to be prevented by advances in medical knowledge. Previous studies have shown that communities that lean towards religious fundamentalism might be more likely to reject scientific advances.
Later in life child mortality is linked to outside factors like poverty.
“This is continuing to show us that there are things that we can do in our communities to improve health outcomes,” Garcia-Alexander said.
“And to the extent that people who belong to religious organizations are aware of that, knowing that you are a communicator of health information, that can be a really valuable way to harness the power of the group and the community to communicate helpful practices for infant health and public health interventions.”
Researchers analyzed rates of infant deaths and cross-checked that data with whether an area had a greater number of conservative Protestants, or leaned towards mainline Protestants and Catholics.
Sociologist Ginny Garcia-Alexander, a lead author of the study, examined the number of deaths from four weeks through the first year. She explained in a Portland State University research update that babies who die during that period of development die because of birth defects, which tend to be prevented by advances in medical knowledge. Previous studies have shown that communities that lean towards religious fundamentalism might be more likely to reject scientific advances.
Later in life child mortality is linked to outside factors like poverty.
“This is continuing to show us that there are things that we can do in our communities to improve health outcomes,” Garcia-Alexander said.
“And to the extent that people who belong to religious organizations are aware of that, knowing that you are a communicator of health information, that can be a really valuable way to harness the power of the group and the community to communicate helpful practices for infant health and public health interventions.”
ignorant people!!!
68% Of White Evangelicals Believe America Shouldn’t House Refugees
by jake thomas - the intellectualist
5/30/18
The most likely to support refugee resettlement were religiously unaffiliated Americans.
Among the various groups surveyed in a recent Pew Research Center poll, Americans who identified as religiously unaffiliated were the most likely to support refugee resettlement in the United States, while the least likely to support such policy were white evangelical Protestants.
From Vox:
The study, which was conducted by Pew, found that 68 percent of white evangelicals believed that the United States “does not have a responsibility” to house refugees, while just 25 percent believes that it does. This is higher than the American national average: 51 percent of Americans overall believe the United States does have a responsibility to allow in refugees, while just 43 percent believe it does not.
The perspective of white evangelical Protestants on the refugee crisis is particularly striking because it’s relatively unusual among Christian religious groups. For example, 43 percent of white mainline Protestants believe that America has a responsibility to house refugees, as do 50 percent of Catholics and 63 percent of black Protestants. The highest level of support from any group cited in the study was from those who identified as religiously unaffiliated, of whom a full 65 percent support American housing of refugees.
White evangelical Christians are increasingly aligning themselves with the Republican party platform, but Vox notes that this development appears to work both ways:
As Trump’s policies become increasingly designed to appeal to that base (as, for example, with his recent move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem), it’s likewise increasingly clear that the relationship between the two is symbiotic.
And the line between white evangelical theology and GOP party platform is all but disappearing.
Among the various groups surveyed in a recent Pew Research Center poll, Americans who identified as religiously unaffiliated were the most likely to support refugee resettlement in the United States, while the least likely to support such policy were white evangelical Protestants.
From Vox:
The study, which was conducted by Pew, found that 68 percent of white evangelicals believed that the United States “does not have a responsibility” to house refugees, while just 25 percent believes that it does. This is higher than the American national average: 51 percent of Americans overall believe the United States does have a responsibility to allow in refugees, while just 43 percent believe it does not.
The perspective of white evangelical Protestants on the refugee crisis is particularly striking because it’s relatively unusual among Christian religious groups. For example, 43 percent of white mainline Protestants believe that America has a responsibility to house refugees, as do 50 percent of Catholics and 63 percent of black Protestants. The highest level of support from any group cited in the study was from those who identified as religiously unaffiliated, of whom a full 65 percent support American housing of refugees.
White evangelical Christians are increasingly aligning themselves with the Republican party platform, but Vox notes that this development appears to work both ways:
As Trump’s policies become increasingly designed to appeal to that base (as, for example, with his recent move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem), it’s likewise increasingly clear that the relationship between the two is symbiotic.
And the line between white evangelical theology and GOP party platform is all but disappearing.
What’s ancient Aramaic for “sucker”? “Duplantis donor”
Christian preacher: The government should execute gay people because Jesus
New Civil Rights Movement - radar
29 MAY 2018 AT 18:02 ET
Christian preacher Matt Powell says the government should execute gay people because the Bible says so.
“As far as homosexuality goes, you know, I believe the Bible puts the death penalty on it,” Powell told atheist YouTube personality Skylar Fiction in an interview.
“I believe it’s disgusting,” Powell added, speaking of homosexuality. Friendly Atheist’s Hemant Mehta first reported on Powell’s remarks.
At one point Fiction felt the need to ask Powell if he were just trolling him, because his views are so extreme they resemble the Westboro Baptist Church.
“You don’t believe that gay people should be stoned to death, do you?” Fiction, attempting to clarify Powell’s remarks, asked.
“I believe the Bible puts the death penalty on it,” Preacher Powell responded, referring to homosexuality. “Obviously, not by me or anybody in a regular society, obviously. I believe it’s the government’s job to execute criminals. I believe that the Bible says clearly that homosexuality is a criminal crime. It’s a crime. It’s one of the worst crimes ever,” the preacher said. He added that not all sins are created equal.
“Is that what you’re advocating for? That our government should stone gays to death to execute them?” Fiction again asked.
“By whatever means they execute people. And obviously, I believe in humane, you know, putting to death,” Powell continued. Fiction reminded him that execution is not humane.
Powell also said, falsely, that every study shows gay people contract HIV/AIDS at a rate 50 times higher than non-gay people.
Later in the interview Fiction pressured Powell to explain why he believes God is good. Powell was unable do so, other than by saying God says he is.
“As far as homosexuality goes, you know, I believe the Bible puts the death penalty on it,” Powell told atheist YouTube personality Skylar Fiction in an interview.
“I believe it’s disgusting,” Powell added, speaking of homosexuality. Friendly Atheist’s Hemant Mehta first reported on Powell’s remarks.
At one point Fiction felt the need to ask Powell if he were just trolling him, because his views are so extreme they resemble the Westboro Baptist Church.
“You don’t believe that gay people should be stoned to death, do you?” Fiction, attempting to clarify Powell’s remarks, asked.
“I believe the Bible puts the death penalty on it,” Preacher Powell responded, referring to homosexuality. “Obviously, not by me or anybody in a regular society, obviously. I believe it’s the government’s job to execute criminals. I believe that the Bible says clearly that homosexuality is a criminal crime. It’s a crime. It’s one of the worst crimes ever,” the preacher said. He added that not all sins are created equal.
“Is that what you’re advocating for? That our government should stone gays to death to execute them?” Fiction again asked.
“By whatever means they execute people. And obviously, I believe in humane, you know, putting to death,” Powell continued. Fiction reminded him that execution is not humane.
Powell also said, falsely, that every study shows gay people contract HIV/AIDS at a rate 50 times higher than non-gay people.
Later in the interview Fiction pressured Powell to explain why he believes God is good. Powell was unable do so, other than by saying God says he is.
'Jesus never charged a leper a co-pay': rise of the religious left
From healthcare to tax and immigration, Rev William Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign are driven by faith to focus on the disadvantaged
by Lauren Gambino in Washington
the guardian
In his prayer at the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem last week, a prayer delivered against a backdrop of violence in Gaza, the evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress said Donald Trump was a moral leader who stood “on the right side of you, oh God”.
Half a world away, outside the Capitol in Washington, the Rev William Barber led a moment of silence for the 60 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers.
As one group of faith leaders celebrates the fruits of a decades-long alliance with the Republican party, another is mounting a multi-faith challenge to the dominance of the Christian right, an attempt to recapture the moral agenda.
“There is no religious left and religious right,” Barber, a pastor and political leader in North Carolina, told the Guardian. “There is only a moral center. And the scripture is very clear about where you have to be to be in the moral center – you have to be on the side of the poor, the working, the sick, the immigrant.”
Frustrated by conservative Christians focus on culture wars over issues such as abortion and gay marriage, Barber leads an ascendent grassroots movement that is trying to turn the national conversation to what they believe are the core teachings of the Bible: care for the poor, heal the sick, welcome the stranger.
The Poor People’s Campaign, a revival of Martin Luther King’s final effort to unite poor Americans across racial lines, last week brought together activists from several faiths, the Women’s March, the labor movement and other liberal organizations to launch 40 days of civil disobedience and protest against inequality, racism, ecological devastation and militarism. As many as 1,000 people were arrested during the first wave. More expect to be held in future.
Barber, a co-chair of the campaign, says some conservative faith leaders have “cynically” interpreted the Bible’s teachings to demonize homosexuality, abortion, scientific facts and other religions. They are guilty, he says, of “theological malpractice” and “modern-day heresy”.
Religious conservatives are listening to Barber’s criticism. On occasion, they have returned fire. After he excoriated a group of conservative ministers for praying for Trump at the White House and accused them of not caring for the poor, the pastors held a press conference and suggested Barber visit their churches.
“They say so much about the issues where the Bible says so little,” Barber said, repeating a refrain he often deploys to criticize the religious right. “But they speak so little about the issues where the Bible says so much.
“Jesus set up free healthcare clinics everywhere he went. He healed everybody and never charged a leper a co-pay.”
He reserves particular contempt for politicians who rely on racial dog whistles, voter suppression and gerrymandering.
“Slavemaster religion had a strange morality that somehow you could worship on Sunday and still have slaves on Monday,” he said. “But as we would say today, those preachers were not practicing religion. They were practicing racism under the cover of religion. We still see some of that today.”
‘We are surely trying to impact politics’
The demands of the Poor People’s Campaign are as ambitious as they are progressive. They have called for a repeal of the Republican tax cuts, federal and state minimum wage laws and universal single-payer healthcare. Other proposals also mirror those of politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
“We are surely trying to impact politics,” said Liz Theoharis, a co-chair. “And we are surely trying to make sure that our elected officials take these issues seriously. But this goes far beyond any one election or election year.”
Barber and Theoharis imagine a new “southern strategy” that undoes racial divisions. For months they have barnstormed poor and working-class communities deep in Trump country, in an effort to build a multi-faith alliance.
“We visited homes where there was raw sewage in their yard,” Theoharis said. “In these communities, these issues are not seen as progressive or Democratic. They’re seen as human rights issues.”
Daniel Schultz, a writer at Religion Dispatches and a minister in the United Church of Christ, has long argued that the left is ill-equipped to rival the Christian conservatives alliance with Republicans. He believes progressive people of faith would be better served by a model like Indivisible, which trains local activists to resist Trump’s agenda.
“Rev Barber has a great moral message,” he said, “but I don’t want the next Democratic candidate for president to feel he has to kiss his ring to get elected.”
Nonetheless, the religious right helped deliver the White House to Trump, a thrice-married billionaire accused of sexually harassing more than a dozen women and of paying off a porn star over an alleged sexual encounter. They are seeing results.
Trump has moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which many evangelicals believe accords with biblical prophecy. He has installed several judges and a supreme court justice who appear likely to advance anti-abortion causes. He also ended taxpayer funding for clinics that facilitate abortions, moved to restrict transgender people from serving in the military and strengthened the ability of religious leaders to preach politics from the pulpit.
That string of victories is a reminder of how hard Trump is working to keep the support of Christian conservatives ahead of this year’s midterms.
And yet Trump’s policies on immigration, healthcare and the environment are also mobilizing faith-based activists on the left. The Poor People’s Campaign wants to kickstart a voter mobilization effort. It does not plan to endorse candidates or join forces with any party. But it certainly hopes to gain political sway.
“This isn’t just about the next 40 days,” Barber said. “This is about building a movement that lasts.”
Sister Simone Campbell, a liberal Catholic activist who supports the campaign, said she feared the movement’s broad demands may be an obstacle to building long-term cohesion. But, she said, “they’re trying to create a counter-energy that can make a difference.
“I’m a person of faith so I live in hope.”
Half a world away, outside the Capitol in Washington, the Rev William Barber led a moment of silence for the 60 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers.
As one group of faith leaders celebrates the fruits of a decades-long alliance with the Republican party, another is mounting a multi-faith challenge to the dominance of the Christian right, an attempt to recapture the moral agenda.
“There is no religious left and religious right,” Barber, a pastor and political leader in North Carolina, told the Guardian. “There is only a moral center. And the scripture is very clear about where you have to be to be in the moral center – you have to be on the side of the poor, the working, the sick, the immigrant.”
Frustrated by conservative Christians focus on culture wars over issues such as abortion and gay marriage, Barber leads an ascendent grassroots movement that is trying to turn the national conversation to what they believe are the core teachings of the Bible: care for the poor, heal the sick, welcome the stranger.
The Poor People’s Campaign, a revival of Martin Luther King’s final effort to unite poor Americans across racial lines, last week brought together activists from several faiths, the Women’s March, the labor movement and other liberal organizations to launch 40 days of civil disobedience and protest against inequality, racism, ecological devastation and militarism. As many as 1,000 people were arrested during the first wave. More expect to be held in future.
Barber, a co-chair of the campaign, says some conservative faith leaders have “cynically” interpreted the Bible’s teachings to demonize homosexuality, abortion, scientific facts and other religions. They are guilty, he says, of “theological malpractice” and “modern-day heresy”.
Religious conservatives are listening to Barber’s criticism. On occasion, they have returned fire. After he excoriated a group of conservative ministers for praying for Trump at the White House and accused them of not caring for the poor, the pastors held a press conference and suggested Barber visit their churches.
“They say so much about the issues where the Bible says so little,” Barber said, repeating a refrain he often deploys to criticize the religious right. “But they speak so little about the issues where the Bible says so much.
“Jesus set up free healthcare clinics everywhere he went. He healed everybody and never charged a leper a co-pay.”
He reserves particular contempt for politicians who rely on racial dog whistles, voter suppression and gerrymandering.
“Slavemaster religion had a strange morality that somehow you could worship on Sunday and still have slaves on Monday,” he said. “But as we would say today, those preachers were not practicing religion. They were practicing racism under the cover of religion. We still see some of that today.”
‘We are surely trying to impact politics’
The demands of the Poor People’s Campaign are as ambitious as they are progressive. They have called for a repeal of the Republican tax cuts, federal and state minimum wage laws and universal single-payer healthcare. Other proposals also mirror those of politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
“We are surely trying to impact politics,” said Liz Theoharis, a co-chair. “And we are surely trying to make sure that our elected officials take these issues seriously. But this goes far beyond any one election or election year.”
Barber and Theoharis imagine a new “southern strategy” that undoes racial divisions. For months they have barnstormed poor and working-class communities deep in Trump country, in an effort to build a multi-faith alliance.
“We visited homes where there was raw sewage in their yard,” Theoharis said. “In these communities, these issues are not seen as progressive or Democratic. They’re seen as human rights issues.”
Daniel Schultz, a writer at Religion Dispatches and a minister in the United Church of Christ, has long argued that the left is ill-equipped to rival the Christian conservatives alliance with Republicans. He believes progressive people of faith would be better served by a model like Indivisible, which trains local activists to resist Trump’s agenda.
“Rev Barber has a great moral message,” he said, “but I don’t want the next Democratic candidate for president to feel he has to kiss his ring to get elected.”
Nonetheless, the religious right helped deliver the White House to Trump, a thrice-married billionaire accused of sexually harassing more than a dozen women and of paying off a porn star over an alleged sexual encounter. They are seeing results.
Trump has moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which many evangelicals believe accords with biblical prophecy. He has installed several judges and a supreme court justice who appear likely to advance anti-abortion causes. He also ended taxpayer funding for clinics that facilitate abortions, moved to restrict transgender people from serving in the military and strengthened the ability of religious leaders to preach politics from the pulpit.
That string of victories is a reminder of how hard Trump is working to keep the support of Christian conservatives ahead of this year’s midterms.
And yet Trump’s policies on immigration, healthcare and the environment are also mobilizing faith-based activists on the left. The Poor People’s Campaign wants to kickstart a voter mobilization effort. It does not plan to endorse candidates or join forces with any party. But it certainly hopes to gain political sway.
“This isn’t just about the next 40 days,” Barber said. “This is about building a movement that lasts.”
Sister Simone Campbell, a liberal Catholic activist who supports the campaign, said she feared the movement’s broad demands may be an obstacle to building long-term cohesion. But, she said, “they’re trying to create a counter-energy that can make a difference.
“I’m a person of faith so I live in hope.”
Ex-evangelist rips ‘moron’ Christians for thinking Trump’s Jerusalem embassy will hasten the second coming of Jesus
Tom Boggioni -raw story
20 MAY 2018 AT 14:01 ET
Appearing on AM Joy on Sunday morning, a former evangelist-turned-filmmaker swatted down Christians who were gleeful that President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, believing it will hasten the return of Jesus.
Speaking with MSNBC host Joy Reid, religious reform activist Frank Schaeffer was asked about Pastor Robert Jeffress who was invited to speak at the embassy opening despite the fact that he has previously said Jews are condemned to Hell if they don’t convert.
Noting Jeffress, also said God let six million Jews perish in the Holocaust to get them to “come back to the land of Israel,” Reid asked, “Why would these two groups be in the same space? Israelis and people who believe that they are going to Hell?”
“The reason they are in the same space — while Palestinians are being shot by snipers over a wall in a 60 to nothing confrontation where 60 Palestinians were killed and no Israeli soldiers are killed at that moment that that is going on — there are white evangelical Trump supporters talking about the embassy coming into Jerusalem as a sort of act of god,” Schaeffer began.
“But actually it is not by chance,” he elaborated. “The Israeli government and the present prime minister have made it clear that lobbying for the Jerusalem embassy and also support of Israel has focused on pandering to the extremists, the lunatic fringe. Forgive me, the moron fringe of the evangelical white movement in America that believes that Israel had to return to the original borders described in the Bible in order for Jesus to come back.”
“And by the way,” he noted. “When he does come back it is to burn most of the Jews who have not believed in him while he’s setting up the new Earth and the new heaven. So we are now looking at exactly what happens with so much evil in the world that comes down to tribalized religious thinking. ”
Speaking with MSNBC host Joy Reid, religious reform activist Frank Schaeffer was asked about Pastor Robert Jeffress who was invited to speak at the embassy opening despite the fact that he has previously said Jews are condemned to Hell if they don’t convert.
Noting Jeffress, also said God let six million Jews perish in the Holocaust to get them to “come back to the land of Israel,” Reid asked, “Why would these two groups be in the same space? Israelis and people who believe that they are going to Hell?”
“The reason they are in the same space — while Palestinians are being shot by snipers over a wall in a 60 to nothing confrontation where 60 Palestinians were killed and no Israeli soldiers are killed at that moment that that is going on — there are white evangelical Trump supporters talking about the embassy coming into Jerusalem as a sort of act of god,” Schaeffer began.
“But actually it is not by chance,” he elaborated. “The Israeli government and the present prime minister have made it clear that lobbying for the Jerusalem embassy and also support of Israel has focused on pandering to the extremists, the lunatic fringe. Forgive me, the moron fringe of the evangelical white movement in America that believes that Israel had to return to the original borders described in the Bible in order for Jesus to come back.”
“And by the way,” he noted. “When he does come back it is to burn most of the Jews who have not believed in him while he’s setting up the new Earth and the new heaven. So we are now looking at exactly what happens with so much evil in the world that comes down to tribalized religious thinking. ”
The Four Horsemen of evangelical hypocrisy: How they whitewashed Donald Trump
Instead of speaking truth to power, these evangelical leaders are using proximity to power to their advantage
DAVID B. GOWLER
MAY 18, 2018 10:00AM (UTC)
This week’s opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem is another reminder that Sen. Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” speech, an early denunciation of the evils of McCarthyism in the 1950s, still remains politically relevant, particularly to the Republican Party in the age of Donald Trump. Smith decried the lack of leadership that she believed could result in “national suicide” and urged her Republican colleagues to maintain their political integrity and intellectual honesty: “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”
Smith’s speech alludes to the “Four Horsemen” of Revelation 6:1-8. In its biblical context, these horsemen serve as apocalyptic images of God’s judgment awaiting humankind in the end times. Her four horsemen, though, are human-inspired pestilences damaging both the Republican Party and the United States.
Smith’s biblical imagery makes the speech especially applicable to a certain subset of the Republican Party — white evangelical Christians who support a president whose life exemplifies everything Jesus’ teachings oppose. But for some white evangelicals, the ends justify the means. For example, since many of them believe that the restoration of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital is one of the factors leading to the end of the world as portrayed in the Book of Revelation, it is no accident that two white evangelical pastors offered prayers at the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem.
The Four Horsemen of Rationalization
Donald Trump rode to political victory on all four horses of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear — but his white evangelical enablers provide religious rationalizations for all of them.
1. Franklin Graham
Franklin Graham believes that God intended Donald Trump to be president, and he remains a vocal defender of Trump, even after many scandals that normally would offend Christian morality (e.g., Stormy Daniels). Graham admits that Trump is not “President Perfect” but declares that Trump has a “concern for Christian values” and “a concern to protect Christians whether it’s here at home or around the world.”
2. Jerry Falwell Jr.
Jerry Falwell Jr. announced, “I think evangelicals have found their dream president,” citing the close relationship between the White House and “faith leaders.” He also declared that it “is no longer relevant” to complain about Trump’s temperament or behavior not being “presidential,” since Trump had “single-handedly changed the definition” of presidential because he was “authentic, successful and down to earth.”
In addition, Falwell defended Trump by comparing him to King David: “God called King David a man after God’s own heart even though he was an adulterer and a murderer. You have to choose the leader that would make the best king or president and not necessarily someone who would be a good pastor.”
In fact, the prophet Nathan condemned King David for his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah, and David confessed his sins.
3. Robert Jeffress
Robert Jeffress’ bigoted remarks are legion, and he also vigorously supports Trump and his policies, including Trump’s vulgar slur against Haiti and African nations and his harsh, restrictive immigration policies (e.g., Jeffress said that God “is not necessarily an open borders guy”).
Incredibly, Jeffress claims that (white) evangelicals are “not compromising their beliefs in order to support this great president” and “still believe in the commandment ‘Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star.’”
4. Tony Perkins
Tony Perkins famously told Politico that as far as Stormy Daniels was concerned, white evangelicals gave Trump a “mulligan.” Perkins also stated that white evangelicals “were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists. And I think they are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.” When asked about that pesky turn-the-other-cheek teaching of Jesus, Perkins replied, “You know, you only have two cheeks. Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”
Trump’s 2016 rallies did include punching, but it was usually the sucker-punching of protesters that, indirectly, was encouraged by the bully-like Trump.
Common Patterns of these Horsemen of Rationalization
All four white evangelical leaders distinguish between the obligations of Christians to follow Jesus’ teachings and the political obligations of governments. As Falwell argued: “Jesus said love our neighbors as ourselves but never told Caesar how to run Rome — he never said Roman soldiers should turn the other cheek in battle or that Caesar should allow all the barbarians to be Roman citizens or that Caesar should tax the rich to help the poor. That’s our job.” Likewise, Jeffress insisted, in defense of Trump’s 2017 “refugee ban,” that “the Bible never calls on government to act as a Good Samaritan.”
Jesus was an eschatological Jewish prophet who proclaimed, in some sense, the restoration of Israel. As such, he is similar to the prophet Amos, a poor, marginalized outsider who calls for justice and righteousness and proclaims the judgment of God against an entire nation because of social injustice, judicial and economic corruption, and religious arrogance.
Jesus, an impoverished first-century artisan — not an adviser to the emperor — also spoke prophetic words of judgment against the oppressors of his people. Even his famous “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” statement is a classic example of non-elite resistance against an extractive taxation system that transferred wealth from the majority of people in the Roman Empire to the ruling elites. Since the denarius coin that Jesus referenced would have been inscribed, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus,” Jesus is in fact suggesting, “Give that blasphemous coin back to that blasphemous emperor.”
Instead of speaking truth to power like the prophets Nathan, Amos and Jesus, today’s white evangelicals use their proximity to power to their advantage. They champion Trump because he champions their cause. As Perkins observes, “From a policy standpoint, [Trump] has delivered more than any other president in my lifetime,” a statement echoed by Falwell and many others.
That claim is correct. Other Republican presidents have largely given lip service to the issues most important to white evangelical leaders. Trump, from a policy perspective, has been the best friend they have ever had in the White House.
No Sense of Decency
Are there any of the Ten Commandments that Donald Trump hasn’t broken? These white evangelical leaders have excused all sorts of behavior they allegedly believe is sinful, such as lying and adultery; their code of ethics has proved to be flexible, not biblical. They have turned from the ethics of the Ten Commandments to the idolatrous political allure of the Golden Calf, an idol made by the Israelites while Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments.
These white evangelicals, by rendering to Caesar what is God’s, have not only lost their integrity; they have lost their credibility as religious leaders. Their hypocrisy, their worship of political power and money, damages the cause in which they claim to believe and betrays the teachings of the person they claim to worship. Whatever political advantages they gain will be short-lived. As Amanda Marcotte writes, “the Christian right may be winning elections in the short term, but it’s also driving people out of the pews, which is likely to lead to long-term defeat.”
What happens when you render unto Caesar that which is God’s? To paraphrase another saying of Jesus: You may gain the whole world, but you lose your soul.
The nation’s nightmare of McCarthyism lasted four years after Sen. Smith’s speech, and its demise is often credited, among other things, to Joseph Welch's famous rebuke to McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
The answer to that question about white evangelicals is that — in stark contrast to Margaret Chase Smith — they do not.
Smith’s speech alludes to the “Four Horsemen” of Revelation 6:1-8. In its biblical context, these horsemen serve as apocalyptic images of God’s judgment awaiting humankind in the end times. Her four horsemen, though, are human-inspired pestilences damaging both the Republican Party and the United States.
Smith’s biblical imagery makes the speech especially applicable to a certain subset of the Republican Party — white evangelical Christians who support a president whose life exemplifies everything Jesus’ teachings oppose. But for some white evangelicals, the ends justify the means. For example, since many of them believe that the restoration of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital is one of the factors leading to the end of the world as portrayed in the Book of Revelation, it is no accident that two white evangelical pastors offered prayers at the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem.
The Four Horsemen of Rationalization
Donald Trump rode to political victory on all four horses of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear — but his white evangelical enablers provide religious rationalizations for all of them.
1. Franklin Graham
Franklin Graham believes that God intended Donald Trump to be president, and he remains a vocal defender of Trump, even after many scandals that normally would offend Christian morality (e.g., Stormy Daniels). Graham admits that Trump is not “President Perfect” but declares that Trump has a “concern for Christian values” and “a concern to protect Christians whether it’s here at home or around the world.”
2. Jerry Falwell Jr.
Jerry Falwell Jr. announced, “I think evangelicals have found their dream president,” citing the close relationship between the White House and “faith leaders.” He also declared that it “is no longer relevant” to complain about Trump’s temperament or behavior not being “presidential,” since Trump had “single-handedly changed the definition” of presidential because he was “authentic, successful and down to earth.”
In addition, Falwell defended Trump by comparing him to King David: “God called King David a man after God’s own heart even though he was an adulterer and a murderer. You have to choose the leader that would make the best king or president and not necessarily someone who would be a good pastor.”
In fact, the prophet Nathan condemned King David for his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah, and David confessed his sins.
3. Robert Jeffress
Robert Jeffress’ bigoted remarks are legion, and he also vigorously supports Trump and his policies, including Trump’s vulgar slur against Haiti and African nations and his harsh, restrictive immigration policies (e.g., Jeffress said that God “is not necessarily an open borders guy”).
Incredibly, Jeffress claims that (white) evangelicals are “not compromising their beliefs in order to support this great president” and “still believe in the commandment ‘Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star.’”
4. Tony Perkins
Tony Perkins famously told Politico that as far as Stormy Daniels was concerned, white evangelicals gave Trump a “mulligan.” Perkins also stated that white evangelicals “were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists. And I think they are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.” When asked about that pesky turn-the-other-cheek teaching of Jesus, Perkins replied, “You know, you only have two cheeks. Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”
Trump’s 2016 rallies did include punching, but it was usually the sucker-punching of protesters that, indirectly, was encouraged by the bully-like Trump.
Common Patterns of these Horsemen of Rationalization
All four white evangelical leaders distinguish between the obligations of Christians to follow Jesus’ teachings and the political obligations of governments. As Falwell argued: “Jesus said love our neighbors as ourselves but never told Caesar how to run Rome — he never said Roman soldiers should turn the other cheek in battle or that Caesar should allow all the barbarians to be Roman citizens or that Caesar should tax the rich to help the poor. That’s our job.” Likewise, Jeffress insisted, in defense of Trump’s 2017 “refugee ban,” that “the Bible never calls on government to act as a Good Samaritan.”
Jesus was an eschatological Jewish prophet who proclaimed, in some sense, the restoration of Israel. As such, he is similar to the prophet Amos, a poor, marginalized outsider who calls for justice and righteousness and proclaims the judgment of God against an entire nation because of social injustice, judicial and economic corruption, and religious arrogance.
Jesus, an impoverished first-century artisan — not an adviser to the emperor — also spoke prophetic words of judgment against the oppressors of his people. Even his famous “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” statement is a classic example of non-elite resistance against an extractive taxation system that transferred wealth from the majority of people in the Roman Empire to the ruling elites. Since the denarius coin that Jesus referenced would have been inscribed, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus,” Jesus is in fact suggesting, “Give that blasphemous coin back to that blasphemous emperor.”
Instead of speaking truth to power like the prophets Nathan, Amos and Jesus, today’s white evangelicals use their proximity to power to their advantage. They champion Trump because he champions their cause. As Perkins observes, “From a policy standpoint, [Trump] has delivered more than any other president in my lifetime,” a statement echoed by Falwell and many others.
That claim is correct. Other Republican presidents have largely given lip service to the issues most important to white evangelical leaders. Trump, from a policy perspective, has been the best friend they have ever had in the White House.
No Sense of Decency
Are there any of the Ten Commandments that Donald Trump hasn’t broken? These white evangelical leaders have excused all sorts of behavior they allegedly believe is sinful, such as lying and adultery; their code of ethics has proved to be flexible, not biblical. They have turned from the ethics of the Ten Commandments to the idolatrous political allure of the Golden Calf, an idol made by the Israelites while Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments.
These white evangelicals, by rendering to Caesar what is God’s, have not only lost their integrity; they have lost their credibility as religious leaders. Their hypocrisy, their worship of political power and money, damages the cause in which they claim to believe and betrays the teachings of the person they claim to worship. Whatever political advantages they gain will be short-lived. As Amanda Marcotte writes, “the Christian right may be winning elections in the short term, but it’s also driving people out of the pews, which is likely to lead to long-term defeat.”
What happens when you render unto Caesar that which is God’s? To paraphrase another saying of Jesus: You may gain the whole world, but you lose your soul.
The nation’s nightmare of McCarthyism lasted four years after Sen. Smith’s speech, and its demise is often credited, among other things, to Joseph Welch's famous rebuke to McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
The answer to that question about white evangelicals is that — in stark contrast to Margaret Chase Smith — they do not.
Theologian who says abused women shouldn’t whine about ‘a little smacking’ preaches on the ‘good kind’ of body shame
Noor Al-Sibai - raw story
11 MAY 2018 AT 15:10 ET
A theologian favored by the controversial Duggar family recently advised a woman to have the “good kind” of body shame when she wrote to him about body image issues.
Sarabeth Caplin at Patheos’ “The Friendly Atheist” blog wrote Friday that Christian author John Piper “once advised abused women to endure ‘a little smacking'” — and has now suggested there is a Christ-like way to feel ashamed of one’s body.
“You said, ‘Ever since puberty, I have hated my body.’ I wonder if it might be worth considering that there is a good hatred of the body and a bad hatred of the body,” Piper wrote in response to a fan on a recent post for his website, Desiring God. “The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:27, ‘I discipline [pummel] my body’ — literally, ‘I give my body a black eye’ — ‘and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.’ You don’t beat up on your friend. You beat up on your enemies.”
While the theologian admitted that one’s corporal body is “in one sense is a friend,” he ultimately concluded that it is more often a foe because it can be taken over by devilish temptations.
“There’s another sense in which the body is not a friend,” Piper continued. “It has become the base of operations for much enemy activity, and it has become complicit in that attack of the evil one on us.”
“Have you ever asked, ‘Instead of saying, ‘I should stop hating my body,’” he suggested, “maybe I should say, ‘I should start hating my body in the right way; I should start hating my body because it tempts me to sin?'”
To hate one’s body in this correct, Christ-like way “would be a very significant liberation,” Piper concluded.
Sarabeth Caplin at Patheos’ “The Friendly Atheist” blog wrote Friday that Christian author John Piper “once advised abused women to endure ‘a little smacking'” — and has now suggested there is a Christ-like way to feel ashamed of one’s body.
“You said, ‘Ever since puberty, I have hated my body.’ I wonder if it might be worth considering that there is a good hatred of the body and a bad hatred of the body,” Piper wrote in response to a fan on a recent post for his website, Desiring God. “The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:27, ‘I discipline [pummel] my body’ — literally, ‘I give my body a black eye’ — ‘and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.’ You don’t beat up on your friend. You beat up on your enemies.”
While the theologian admitted that one’s corporal body is “in one sense is a friend,” he ultimately concluded that it is more often a foe because it can be taken over by devilish temptations.
“There’s another sense in which the body is not a friend,” Piper continued. “It has become the base of operations for much enemy activity, and it has become complicit in that attack of the evil one on us.”
“Have you ever asked, ‘Instead of saying, ‘I should stop hating my body,’” he suggested, “maybe I should say, ‘I should start hating my body in the right way; I should start hating my body because it tempts me to sin?'”
To hate one’s body in this correct, Christ-like way “would be a very significant liberation,” Piper concluded.
‘Dying because of hypocrisy’: Ex-megachurch pastor says Trump-loving evangelicals are digging their own graves
Brad Reed - raw story
07 MAY 2018 AT 09:52 ET
John Pavlovitz, a former megachurch pastor who now serves as pastor of North Raleigh Community Church in North Carolina, took evangelical Christian conservatives to the woodshed over the weekend with a brutal post on his personal website that accused them of digging their own graves by unquestioningly backing President Donald Trump.
At the start of his post, Pavlovitz says that the Christian right in America was slowly killing itself, and he doesn’t shy away from saying why.
“You’re dying because of your hypocrisy,” he writes. “People see the ever-widening chasm between who you say you are and what they regularly experience in your presence. They see the great disparity between the expansive hospitality of Jesus and the narrow prejudice you are so often marked by. They see Christ’s deep affection for the poor, hurting, and marginalized—and both your quiet indifference and open hostility toward them.”
The biggest and most obvious hypocrisy, writes Pavlovitz, is the way that evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr. have latched onto Trump — a man whom Pavlovitz says embodies none of what Christians should strive for when searching for leaders.
“They’ve listened to you preach incessantly about the immorality of the world, the dangers of greed, the corrupt nature of power, the poison of untruth, the evils of sexual perversion — and watched you willingly align with a President embodying all of these,” he writes. “They see that you are so often the very kind of malevolent ugliness that you forever warned was coming to assail the world.”
Read the whole post at this link.
At the start of his post, Pavlovitz says that the Christian right in America was slowly killing itself, and he doesn’t shy away from saying why.
“You’re dying because of your hypocrisy,” he writes. “People see the ever-widening chasm between who you say you are and what they regularly experience in your presence. They see the great disparity between the expansive hospitality of Jesus and the narrow prejudice you are so often marked by. They see Christ’s deep affection for the poor, hurting, and marginalized—and both your quiet indifference and open hostility toward them.”
The biggest and most obvious hypocrisy, writes Pavlovitz, is the way that evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr. have latched onto Trump — a man whom Pavlovitz says embodies none of what Christians should strive for when searching for leaders.
“They’ve listened to you preach incessantly about the immorality of the world, the dangers of greed, the corrupt nature of power, the poison of untruth, the evils of sexual perversion — and watched you willingly align with a President embodying all of these,” he writes. “They see that you are so often the very kind of malevolent ugliness that you forever warned was coming to assail the world.”
Read the whole post at this link.
Franklin Graham’s Astonishing Ungodly Hypocrisy
Franklin Graham in 1998 condemned President Bill Clinton's sins. In 2018, he's defending President Donald Trump's.
By David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement
May 5, 2018, 7:57 PM GMT
Franklin Graham, the heir to the Rev. Billy Graham empire and legacy, is nothing like his father. Billy Graham preached to millions, and advised eleven presidents, Democrats and Republicans, including President Barack Obama. Graham, by comparison, preaches on Facebook, and has politicized his ministry to the point where it no longer bears any relationship to the Christian Bible.
Graham is one of President Donald Trump's top defenders – especially on matters of sin: President Trump's sins.
In January, as the news that President Trump paid porn star Stormy Danielshush money was shaping, Graham urged the American people to believe Trump's denials that there was no affair – and to do so for the good of the nation.
"He said he didn’t do it. So okay, let’s say he didn’t do it. But we just have to think of our country," Graham told MSNBC.
"I found the president to be truthful with me," Graham said, adding, "we just have to give the man the benefit of the doubt."
"Now did he have an affair with this woman? I have no clue. But I believe at 70 years of age, the president is a much different person today than he was four years ago, five years ago, ten years ago or whatever."
So, Trump, a proven serial liar, a man who has bragged on tape about sexual assault and about having affairs, deserves "the benefit of the doubt," because Franklin Graham found him to be "truthful."
This week, Graham continued his defense of Trump's sex life.
"I think this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody's business. And we've got other business at hand that we need to deal with," Graham told The Associated Press, as the American Family Association published (via Joe.My.God., video below.)
Graham actually said Trump's sex life is "nobody's business." His paying off a porn star is "nobody's business." His affair just months after his youngest son was born is "nobody's business."
"I don't have concern, in a sense, because these things happened many years ago – and there's such bigger problems in front of us as a nation that we need to be dealing with than other things in his life a long time ago. I think some of these things – that's for him and his wife to deal with," Graham insisted.
"I don’t defend those kinds of relationships he had. But the country knew the kind of person he was back then, and they still made the decision to make him the president of the United States," Graham said, forgetting that 3 million more chose not to make his President.
"I think when the country went after President Clinton, the Republicans, that was a great mistake that should never have happened."
Really?
Because the Franklin Graham of 2018 sounds very different from the Franklin Graham of 1998.
"Private conduct does have public consequences," Graham wrote in a 1998 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, "Clinton's Sins Aren't Private."
"Just look at how many have already been pulled under by the wake of the president's sin: Mr. Clinton's wife and daughter, Ms. Lewinsky, her parents, White House staff members, friends and supporters, public officials and an unwitting American public," Graham wrote.
Does this seem familiar?
He continued, saying, "the God of the Bible says that what one does in private does matter. Mr. Clinton's months-long extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family. If he will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?"
What will prevent him from doing the same to the American public? We already know the answer: nothing.
"A repentant spirit that says, 'I'm sorry. I was wrong. I won't do it again. I ask for your forgiveness,' would go a long way toward personal and national healing," Graham advises.
Americans should not hold their breath.
Graham even looks to the story of King David of the Bible, ironically saying that Nathan in that story "perhaps" was "God's special prosecutor."
It's doubtful Graham would look upon Robert Mueller in that same light.
Graham is one of President Donald Trump's top defenders – especially on matters of sin: President Trump's sins.
In January, as the news that President Trump paid porn star Stormy Danielshush money was shaping, Graham urged the American people to believe Trump's denials that there was no affair – and to do so for the good of the nation.
"He said he didn’t do it. So okay, let’s say he didn’t do it. But we just have to think of our country," Graham told MSNBC.
"I found the president to be truthful with me," Graham said, adding, "we just have to give the man the benefit of the doubt."
"Now did he have an affair with this woman? I have no clue. But I believe at 70 years of age, the president is a much different person today than he was four years ago, five years ago, ten years ago or whatever."
So, Trump, a proven serial liar, a man who has bragged on tape about sexual assault and about having affairs, deserves "the benefit of the doubt," because Franklin Graham found him to be "truthful."
This week, Graham continued his defense of Trump's sex life.
"I think this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody's business. And we've got other business at hand that we need to deal with," Graham told The Associated Press, as the American Family Association published (via Joe.My.God., video below.)
Graham actually said Trump's sex life is "nobody's business." His paying off a porn star is "nobody's business." His affair just months after his youngest son was born is "nobody's business."
"I don't have concern, in a sense, because these things happened many years ago – and there's such bigger problems in front of us as a nation that we need to be dealing with than other things in his life a long time ago. I think some of these things – that's for him and his wife to deal with," Graham insisted.
"I don’t defend those kinds of relationships he had. But the country knew the kind of person he was back then, and they still made the decision to make him the president of the United States," Graham said, forgetting that 3 million more chose not to make his President.
"I think when the country went after President Clinton, the Republicans, that was a great mistake that should never have happened."
Really?
Because the Franklin Graham of 2018 sounds very different from the Franklin Graham of 1998.
"Private conduct does have public consequences," Graham wrote in a 1998 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, "Clinton's Sins Aren't Private."
"Just look at how many have already been pulled under by the wake of the president's sin: Mr. Clinton's wife and daughter, Ms. Lewinsky, her parents, White House staff members, friends and supporters, public officials and an unwitting American public," Graham wrote.
Does this seem familiar?
He continued, saying, "the God of the Bible says that what one does in private does matter. Mr. Clinton's months-long extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family. If he will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?"
What will prevent him from doing the same to the American public? We already know the answer: nothing.
"A repentant spirit that says, 'I'm sorry. I was wrong. I won't do it again. I ask for your forgiveness,' would go a long way toward personal and national healing," Graham advises.
Americans should not hold their breath.
Graham even looks to the story of King David of the Bible, ironically saying that Nathan in that story "perhaps" was "God's special prosecutor."
It's doubtful Graham would look upon Robert Mueller in that same light.
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION IS FIGHTING AN UPHILL BATTLE AGAINST WHITE EVANGELICALS’ TENDENCY TO CHOOSE MAKE-BELIEVE AS A SELF-JUSTIFICATION FOR WELL-HONED IGNORANCE
frank schaeffer
April 29, 2018
White evangelicals grew up on a theology that trains people to be those who can’t tell the difference between reality and make-believe. They then opt for make-believe again and again because fantasy is kinder and more malleable than reality. No wonder they embraced Trump’s lies.
White evangelical Trump supporters are now addicted to their ignorance, doubling and tripling down on it, digging in their heels, unwilling to surrender their inner fantasy-land and clinging to fantastical certainties utterly unarmored from any verifiable reality.
Here’s what is at stake in beating back Trump’s supporters’ anti-reality: Our instinct to survive and thrive in the real world is being attacked by the evangelicals’ instinct to dismiss the real world as the enemy of their magical thinking that thrives only by branding facts as ‘fake.’
Evangelical Trump supporters’ dissociation from reality is the enemy of civilization that depends on orienting citizens to a common fact-accepting reality. American civilization circa 2018 is thus fighting an uphill battle against white evangelicals’ tendency to choose make-believe as a self-justification for their well-honed ignorance.
Civilization used to be a bulwark that kept us from rolling faster and faster toward self-justifying ignorance of the kind evangelicals now have perfected in order to believe the unbelievable about everything from the universe, to Trump, to sexuality, to climate change.
What drives evangelical Trump supporters’ magical thinking is self-insulation from hard truths and an appetite for pretending they are “dealing with” political problems by saying, “Only people who don’t believe as we do have those problems! You must become like us or burn forever! Convert!”
Evangelical Trump supporters’ personal burden of inner proof gets lighter and lighter through a vicious cycle. Evangelicals’ theological make-believe magical thinking bolsters their general ignorance which, in turn, liberates them to… indulge in more make-believe magical thinking. As such they are the greatest threat to American civilization we face.
Proof?
Without white evangelical voters’ support:
Trump is just another mobster crook whoremaster con-artist selling gold-plated failure as success to the gullible.
With white evangelical support:
Trump is the president of the United States of America, busy tarnishing our country forever.
White evangelical Trump supporters are now addicted to their ignorance, doubling and tripling down on it, digging in their heels, unwilling to surrender their inner fantasy-land and clinging to fantastical certainties utterly unarmored from any verifiable reality.
Here’s what is at stake in beating back Trump’s supporters’ anti-reality: Our instinct to survive and thrive in the real world is being attacked by the evangelicals’ instinct to dismiss the real world as the enemy of their magical thinking that thrives only by branding facts as ‘fake.’
Evangelical Trump supporters’ dissociation from reality is the enemy of civilization that depends on orienting citizens to a common fact-accepting reality. American civilization circa 2018 is thus fighting an uphill battle against white evangelicals’ tendency to choose make-believe as a self-justification for their well-honed ignorance.
Civilization used to be a bulwark that kept us from rolling faster and faster toward self-justifying ignorance of the kind evangelicals now have perfected in order to believe the unbelievable about everything from the universe, to Trump, to sexuality, to climate change.
What drives evangelical Trump supporters’ magical thinking is self-insulation from hard truths and an appetite for pretending they are “dealing with” political problems by saying, “Only people who don’t believe as we do have those problems! You must become like us or burn forever! Convert!”
Evangelical Trump supporters’ personal burden of inner proof gets lighter and lighter through a vicious cycle. Evangelicals’ theological make-believe magical thinking bolsters their general ignorance which, in turn, liberates them to… indulge in more make-believe magical thinking. As such they are the greatest threat to American civilization we face.
Proof?
Without white evangelical voters’ support:
Trump is just another mobster crook whoremaster con-artist selling gold-plated failure as success to the gullible.
With white evangelical support:
Trump is the president of the United States of America, busy tarnishing our country forever.
It’s time we rethink the devil for our modern era
Jeremy Sherman, AlterNet - raw story
21 APR 2018 AT 06:56 ET
The devil needs updating. With what we know now we can do a whole lot better than the primitive authors of ancient texts ever did.
The devil originates among the Essene Hebrews and really takes off among the early Christians, Luke in particular. He’s a function of religious rivalries, a mythical character of pure evil who spawned one’s religious enemies, and made them so vile it’s a virtue to vanquish them. The devil thus represented all that was evil in one’s eyes and in the eyes of whatever god one imagined serving.
The devil was in the eye of the beholder. Whatever you hated was of the devil. Of course, you’ll find this definition offensive if you believe the devil and the god you worship are real, and if you think they’re real, you probably think they’re the most real things in the universe.
So a further refinement. The devil is a subjective fiction that his inventors claim is among the most real forces in the universe. The devil is a subjective fiction claimed as objective fact, fake objectivity, subjectivity pretending to be objective.
If you’re very religious, you probably resent this fake objectivity in your religious rivals who clearly don’t know how to tell your objective truth from subjective fiction. If you don’t trust religion at all you probably regard this fake objectivity as one of religion’s worse features, the source of a whole lot of religious people calling other religious people the devil’s spawn throughout history, and therefore, an idea whose time has passed.
But is it time to retire the devil? I don’t think so.
I’m a psycho-proctologist. I study assholes or buttheads, jerks, pigs, people who do way more harm than good. In a way, I study devils. Let me tell you why: In a free society, I don’t want to tell people what to do. Do whatever but do it within the bounds of basic decency. Give me liberty but don’t let me be a jerk.
That requires knowing what an asshole really is, and it can’t just be anyone we don’t like because that’s just more fake objectivity leading to everyone calling everyone they don’t like an asshole.
As a psycho-proctologist, I’m inclined to rethink the devil. I really believe there are evil people who have to be stopped, I really have to figure out how to tell who’s evil and my definition can’t be grounded in my preferences, or it’s just more fake objectivity.
The primitive authors of our religions saw good and evil, God and the devil, as fundamental principles in the universe, more fundamental than physics.
We now know that’s absurd. The universe is at least 14 billion years old and for the first two-thirds of that span, there was nothing but physical phenomena. In physics and chemistry, things just happen. Nothing is either good or bad. It just is.
Someday we may find out that life started somewhere much earlier than it did on Earth. Even so, it’s obvious, life started after physical phenomena.
Things are only good or bad for someone. The first someones aren’t the gods we can imagine but organisms. Good and bad originate as whatever helps or hinders an organism’s survival and reproduction. Good is what biologists mean by functional or adaptive – useful or beneficial to an organism in context. There’s no universal good other than whatever helps an organism, given its environment.
Physics and chemistry make no sense of good and bad. Biology makes no sense without good and bad, adaptation and function.
Good and bad emerge with biology as subjective and selfish. The organisms alive today are survivors of a roughly four-billion-year championship. We’d say things turned out well for us, compared to how they turned out for the billions of extinct lineages that didn’t make it this far.
By that standard, any dominant organism is good, good at the only game in town for billions of years, biological reproductive success.
But things are different for humans — obviously, or else the height of goodness would be anyone who raped and pillaged his way to a seat of dominance, power and fertility, a Genghis Khan or other authoritarian dictator, the kind of person we’re more likely to think of as evil, the devil.
So what then is a devil? Someone so full of themselves that they would do such a thing without regard for others. Someone with extraordinary powers who uses them solely for selfish gain.
I love Marvel Comics movies, not that I watch many. I love them as the modern way to satisfy the apparently deep-seated human appetite for gods and devils. Many of us get a much more vivid thrill out of them than any church service or sacred text passage, and without taking them too seriously. That’s how I believe religions work best, as vivid fictions expressing cultural values.
I wish Christians treated Christ that way, more like Santa or Marvel comic heroes, fictions and sometimes fictionalized historical characters taken seriously when young though appreciated when old too.
Marvel makes clear how to think about deities and devils: A deity uses his or her superpowers for the general welfare. A devil uses his or her superpowers selfishly.
We humans have superpowers compared to other organisms. The assholes or jerks are those who use them as an organism would, selfishly, without regard for the harm they do to others
The devil originates among the Essene Hebrews and really takes off among the early Christians, Luke in particular. He’s a function of religious rivalries, a mythical character of pure evil who spawned one’s religious enemies, and made them so vile it’s a virtue to vanquish them. The devil thus represented all that was evil in one’s eyes and in the eyes of whatever god one imagined serving.
The devil was in the eye of the beholder. Whatever you hated was of the devil. Of course, you’ll find this definition offensive if you believe the devil and the god you worship are real, and if you think they’re real, you probably think they’re the most real things in the universe.
So a further refinement. The devil is a subjective fiction that his inventors claim is among the most real forces in the universe. The devil is a subjective fiction claimed as objective fact, fake objectivity, subjectivity pretending to be objective.
If you’re very religious, you probably resent this fake objectivity in your religious rivals who clearly don’t know how to tell your objective truth from subjective fiction. If you don’t trust religion at all you probably regard this fake objectivity as one of religion’s worse features, the source of a whole lot of religious people calling other religious people the devil’s spawn throughout history, and therefore, an idea whose time has passed.
But is it time to retire the devil? I don’t think so.
I’m a psycho-proctologist. I study assholes or buttheads, jerks, pigs, people who do way more harm than good. In a way, I study devils. Let me tell you why: In a free society, I don’t want to tell people what to do. Do whatever but do it within the bounds of basic decency. Give me liberty but don’t let me be a jerk.
That requires knowing what an asshole really is, and it can’t just be anyone we don’t like because that’s just more fake objectivity leading to everyone calling everyone they don’t like an asshole.
As a psycho-proctologist, I’m inclined to rethink the devil. I really believe there are evil people who have to be stopped, I really have to figure out how to tell who’s evil and my definition can’t be grounded in my preferences, or it’s just more fake objectivity.
The primitive authors of our religions saw good and evil, God and the devil, as fundamental principles in the universe, more fundamental than physics.
We now know that’s absurd. The universe is at least 14 billion years old and for the first two-thirds of that span, there was nothing but physical phenomena. In physics and chemistry, things just happen. Nothing is either good or bad. It just is.
Someday we may find out that life started somewhere much earlier than it did on Earth. Even so, it’s obvious, life started after physical phenomena.
Things are only good or bad for someone. The first someones aren’t the gods we can imagine but organisms. Good and bad originate as whatever helps or hinders an organism’s survival and reproduction. Good is what biologists mean by functional or adaptive – useful or beneficial to an organism in context. There’s no universal good other than whatever helps an organism, given its environment.
Physics and chemistry make no sense of good and bad. Biology makes no sense without good and bad, adaptation and function.
Good and bad emerge with biology as subjective and selfish. The organisms alive today are survivors of a roughly four-billion-year championship. We’d say things turned out well for us, compared to how they turned out for the billions of extinct lineages that didn’t make it this far.
By that standard, any dominant organism is good, good at the only game in town for billions of years, biological reproductive success.
But things are different for humans — obviously, or else the height of goodness would be anyone who raped and pillaged his way to a seat of dominance, power and fertility, a Genghis Khan or other authoritarian dictator, the kind of person we’re more likely to think of as evil, the devil.
So what then is a devil? Someone so full of themselves that they would do such a thing without regard for others. Someone with extraordinary powers who uses them solely for selfish gain.
I love Marvel Comics movies, not that I watch many. I love them as the modern way to satisfy the apparently deep-seated human appetite for gods and devils. Many of us get a much more vivid thrill out of them than any church service or sacred text passage, and without taking them too seriously. That’s how I believe religions work best, as vivid fictions expressing cultural values.
I wish Christians treated Christ that way, more like Santa or Marvel comic heroes, fictions and sometimes fictionalized historical characters taken seriously when young though appreciated when old too.
Marvel makes clear how to think about deities and devils: A deity uses his or her superpowers for the general welfare. A devil uses his or her superpowers selfishly.
We humans have superpowers compared to other organisms. The assholes or jerks are those who use them as an organism would, selfishly, without regard for the harm they do to others
Sunday's Doonesbury - Lowering The Bar
wasting your time!!!
When You Argue With a Fundamentalist You Don't Know What You're Asking For
How do we talk to people who see the world as collateral damage in the pursuit of the Heavenly Kingdom? Is it even worth trying to nudge people out of that worldview?
By Nellie Smith / Religion Dispatches - alternet
April 19, 2018, 2:49 AM GMT
One of the biggest questions I received after writing about Trump, evangelicals, and the end of the world for RD was this: how do we talk to people who see the world as collateral damage in the pursuit of the Heavenly Kingdom? Is it even worth trying to nudge people out of that worldview?
My post-evangelical advice? Be very, very gentle—you don’t know what you’re asking.
Here’s an exhibit. When I was twenty-one years old, someone finally knocked it through my thick head that the earth was old. I was halfway through Geology 100 when, on one otherwise dull afternoon, the professor said something—I don’t even remember what—and a puzzle piece snapped into place. I sat up straight. The earth was old. Not six thousand years old. Billions of years. What did that mean?
I’d grown up evangelical Christian. We weren’t as conservative as some—and, to the outside eye, we probably looked pretty normal—but like so many others, we were fully immersed in the evangelical worldview. While you wouldn’t find us picketing abortion clinics, all the core ideas were there under the surface: we were Biblical literalists and against same-sex marriage. We believed America was God’s country, voted Republican and pro-life, and expected the rapture at any minute. We were also six-day creationists, with science textbooks that warned us to beware of any statement that contradicted the Bible.
That’s why, back at home after my Geology epiphany, I could do nothing but stare blankly out the front door and feel the roll and pitch of the world as it fell from beneath my feet. It seemed, quite literally, as if there were nothing solid under me, only a great vacuum in which to flail. I grabbed the door handle and stood there, dazed, for a long time.
Eventually, I pulled myself together. But there was a chink in the armor. Every time a church leader talked about Adam and Eve or the creation of the earth, I thought about the broad swaths of time that came before humans, of the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, of the fragile fossils behind the glass in the Ohio State laboratory. When someone talked about the layers of sediment in the Grand Canyon or the evolutionary structure of a bird’s wing, I thought, “Well, they have it right. Except for that one thing, and no one’s perfect so it doesn’t really matter.”
That one thing did matter. It was a chemical in the solution that would, over the next decade, dissolve my world.
And here’s the thing: it was the dissolution of a world. People who didn’t grow up in the American evangelical bubble often don’t realize what they’re demanding when they ask an evangelical to accept a fact that is contradicted by their church’s interpretation of the Bible. To those bought in—excepting, perhaps, that small demographic of Christians who identify as evangelical and are truly progressive—evangelicalism is not a collection of facts. It is an entire reality, based not on logic but on a web of ideas, all of which must be wholeheartedly accepted for any of it to work. It is complete unto itself, self-contained, self-justifying, self-sustaining. It’s your community, your life, your entire way of thinking, and your gauge for what is true in the world. Evangelicalism feels so right from the inside.
And, for an evangelical, there are no small doubts: growing up in many evangelical churches means to be told, repeatedly, that the devil will always seek a foothold, and once you give him one you’re well on the road to hell, to losing your faith, to destroying your witness. That’s scary stuff. To begin to doubt evangelicalism is not simply a mental exercise. For many like me, it’s to feel a void opening, the earth dropping out from beneath you. It’s to face the prospect of invalidating your entire existence.
So know this when you talk to an evangelical: in attempting to persuade them to your point of view—even on a topic that seems minor to you—you’re not asking for them to change their mind, you’re asking them to punch a hole in the fabric of their reality, to begin the process of destroying their world. And, as anyone who has had the experience knows, world-destroying is not fun. It is, frankly, terrifying.
That’s not to say that realities can’t change. Mine did. But few individuals can be argued out of an entire worldview. Realities shift when ideas bloom and ideas are slow and patient, creeping in through unguarded portals and establishing themselves without much fanfare. However well-intentioned you are, bludgeoning people with fact after argument after fact will only entrench them in their position and reinforce a perception of being persecuted by the world.
What does work? In my experience, it’s empathy, honest conversation, and a whole lot of patience. Although I’d been probing at the weaknesses of fundamentalist ideas since I was a kid, my ideas only really started to shift as I developed relationships with people who didn’t fit my worldview. These were people who respected me, who accepted me unconditionally, and who stayed in dialogue, never shaming me even when I said things that were ill-informed or demonstrably false. Some of them had been hurt or discriminated against because of evangelical ideology and their kindness to me wasn’t fair or deserved. In retrospect, their acceptance of me looks a whole lot like an uncomfortable word that evangelicals love to throw around: grace.
Such grace is admittedly a lot to ask. I would never demand it of anyone and I frankly don’t know that I’ve gotten there myself. But for those who can manage it—who can listen to damaging ideas and somehow still be tender, who can ask lots of questions and really listen to the answers, who can resist the urge to shame, and who can be in it for the long haul—my experience is evidence that everyday human kindness can absolutely be the catalyst for change. Misconceptions can be worn down by the substantive grit of a real story. But know that it takes time. It takes lots of time.
And, in the end, you should be realistic: for many who grew up as I did, the cost of leaving their worldview, community, and reality will simply be too great, no matter what you say or do.
My post-evangelical advice? Be very, very gentle—you don’t know what you’re asking.
Here’s an exhibit. When I was twenty-one years old, someone finally knocked it through my thick head that the earth was old. I was halfway through Geology 100 when, on one otherwise dull afternoon, the professor said something—I don’t even remember what—and a puzzle piece snapped into place. I sat up straight. The earth was old. Not six thousand years old. Billions of years. What did that mean?
I’d grown up evangelical Christian. We weren’t as conservative as some—and, to the outside eye, we probably looked pretty normal—but like so many others, we were fully immersed in the evangelical worldview. While you wouldn’t find us picketing abortion clinics, all the core ideas were there under the surface: we were Biblical literalists and against same-sex marriage. We believed America was God’s country, voted Republican and pro-life, and expected the rapture at any minute. We were also six-day creationists, with science textbooks that warned us to beware of any statement that contradicted the Bible.
That’s why, back at home after my Geology epiphany, I could do nothing but stare blankly out the front door and feel the roll and pitch of the world as it fell from beneath my feet. It seemed, quite literally, as if there were nothing solid under me, only a great vacuum in which to flail. I grabbed the door handle and stood there, dazed, for a long time.
Eventually, I pulled myself together. But there was a chink in the armor. Every time a church leader talked about Adam and Eve or the creation of the earth, I thought about the broad swaths of time that came before humans, of the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, of the fragile fossils behind the glass in the Ohio State laboratory. When someone talked about the layers of sediment in the Grand Canyon or the evolutionary structure of a bird’s wing, I thought, “Well, they have it right. Except for that one thing, and no one’s perfect so it doesn’t really matter.”
That one thing did matter. It was a chemical in the solution that would, over the next decade, dissolve my world.
And here’s the thing: it was the dissolution of a world. People who didn’t grow up in the American evangelical bubble often don’t realize what they’re demanding when they ask an evangelical to accept a fact that is contradicted by their church’s interpretation of the Bible. To those bought in—excepting, perhaps, that small demographic of Christians who identify as evangelical and are truly progressive—evangelicalism is not a collection of facts. It is an entire reality, based not on logic but on a web of ideas, all of which must be wholeheartedly accepted for any of it to work. It is complete unto itself, self-contained, self-justifying, self-sustaining. It’s your community, your life, your entire way of thinking, and your gauge for what is true in the world. Evangelicalism feels so right from the inside.
And, for an evangelical, there are no small doubts: growing up in many evangelical churches means to be told, repeatedly, that the devil will always seek a foothold, and once you give him one you’re well on the road to hell, to losing your faith, to destroying your witness. That’s scary stuff. To begin to doubt evangelicalism is not simply a mental exercise. For many like me, it’s to feel a void opening, the earth dropping out from beneath you. It’s to face the prospect of invalidating your entire existence.
So know this when you talk to an evangelical: in attempting to persuade them to your point of view—even on a topic that seems minor to you—you’re not asking for them to change their mind, you’re asking them to punch a hole in the fabric of their reality, to begin the process of destroying their world. And, as anyone who has had the experience knows, world-destroying is not fun. It is, frankly, terrifying.
That’s not to say that realities can’t change. Mine did. But few individuals can be argued out of an entire worldview. Realities shift when ideas bloom and ideas are slow and patient, creeping in through unguarded portals and establishing themselves without much fanfare. However well-intentioned you are, bludgeoning people with fact after argument after fact will only entrench them in their position and reinforce a perception of being persecuted by the world.
What does work? In my experience, it’s empathy, honest conversation, and a whole lot of patience. Although I’d been probing at the weaknesses of fundamentalist ideas since I was a kid, my ideas only really started to shift as I developed relationships with people who didn’t fit my worldview. These were people who respected me, who accepted me unconditionally, and who stayed in dialogue, never shaming me even when I said things that were ill-informed or demonstrably false. Some of them had been hurt or discriminated against because of evangelical ideology and their kindness to me wasn’t fair or deserved. In retrospect, their acceptance of me looks a whole lot like an uncomfortable word that evangelicals love to throw around: grace.
Such grace is admittedly a lot to ask. I would never demand it of anyone and I frankly don’t know that I’ve gotten there myself. But for those who can manage it—who can listen to damaging ideas and somehow still be tender, who can ask lots of questions and really listen to the answers, who can resist the urge to shame, and who can be in it for the long haul—my experience is evidence that everyday human kindness can absolutely be the catalyst for change. Misconceptions can be worn down by the substantive grit of a real story. But know that it takes time. It takes lots of time.
And, in the end, you should be realistic: for many who grew up as I did, the cost of leaving their worldview, community, and reality will simply be too great, no matter what you say or do.
Alabama Evangelical ‘visionary’ busted on seven new felony child sex charges
DOMINIQUE JACKSON - raw story
17 APR 2018 AT 15:00 ET
Evangelist Acton Bowen, 37, was arrested on seven new sexual assaults charges, according to AL.com.
On early Tuesday morning, Bowen was sent to Etowah County Detention and placed on a bond for $500,000.
He faces two counts of second-degree sodomy, two counts of enticing a child for immoral purposes and three counts of second-degree sexual abuse, according to jail records.
Sheriff Todd Entrekin, said Bowen abused minors between the ages of 12-17. The abuse occurred over several years, and the survivors are all adults now. His new charges involve more than one person.
Previously, Bowen, was charged with molesting a young boy. Hoover police Capt. Gregg Rector said on Tuesday that these new allegations are making his worst nightmare come true.
“While working this case, our detectives developed great working relationships with investigators from the Etowah County Sheriff’s Office, as well as several other agencies,” Rector said. “When we met with the first victim, our worst fear was that there could be more young boys who had been by molested and preyed upon by Acton Bowen. It appears our worst fears are now becoming reality.”
Bowen, is the founder of Acton Bowen Outreach Ministries, and has described himself as visionary. In defense, he denied all allegations against him. In a statement, Bowen said, “I have not done what I am accused of and have not acted inappropriately in any way,” he said. “My family and I trust the legal system and the people who are entrusted with the duty of protecting each of our rights. I believe the truth will stand and I will be vindicated of this false accusation. We ask that each of you keep everyone involved in this process in your prayers.”
His wife, Ashley Bowen, has since filed for a divorce.
On early Tuesday morning, Bowen was sent to Etowah County Detention and placed on a bond for $500,000.
He faces two counts of second-degree sodomy, two counts of enticing a child for immoral purposes and three counts of second-degree sexual abuse, according to jail records.
Sheriff Todd Entrekin, said Bowen abused minors between the ages of 12-17. The abuse occurred over several years, and the survivors are all adults now. His new charges involve more than one person.
Previously, Bowen, was charged with molesting a young boy. Hoover police Capt. Gregg Rector said on Tuesday that these new allegations are making his worst nightmare come true.
“While working this case, our detectives developed great working relationships with investigators from the Etowah County Sheriff’s Office, as well as several other agencies,” Rector said. “When we met with the first victim, our worst fear was that there could be more young boys who had been by molested and preyed upon by Acton Bowen. It appears our worst fears are now becoming reality.”
Bowen, is the founder of Acton Bowen Outreach Ministries, and has described himself as visionary. In defense, he denied all allegations against him. In a statement, Bowen said, “I have not done what I am accused of and have not acted inappropriately in any way,” he said. “My family and I trust the legal system and the people who are entrusted with the duty of protecting each of our rights. I believe the truth will stand and I will be vindicated of this false accusation. We ask that each of you keep everyone involved in this process in your prayers.”
His wife, Ashley Bowen, has since filed for a divorce.
Why are Millennials running from religion? Blame hypocrisy
White evangelicals embrace scandal-plagued Trump. Black churches enable fakes. Why should we embrace this?
D. WATKINS
04.08.2018•7:00 AM
I think we can safely say that President Donald Trump has changed American politics forever. He won the White House with no political experience, didn’t release his tax returns, and the extent to which Russia was involved in tilting the election is still under investigation. In the midst of all of Trump’s deception and corruption, there’s one rule he had to follow: yielding to the word of God.
Be a good person by treating others well, say your prayers, be humble, thank God, and you have a pretty good shot at getting into heaven. That’s how it was explained to me. Now, some of my friends were holy rollers whose families took praise to the next level: They went church ten times in a seven-day week, even on Tuesdays, wore suits, quoted Bible verses and washed away their sins by being baptized in front their congregations. But extreme or not, the majority of Americans are taught one way or another that Jesus died for us and our lives should be devoted to making it up to him.
God is on our money and has been inserted into our Pledge of Allegiance, so don’t even think about running for president without spending huge portions of your campaign explaining your relationship with God and how he found you — we assume God is a he — and distancing yourself from Muslims while pandering to Christians and Catholics up and down the Bible belt. It all seems phony — fake as a $3 bill with George Bush on the front — and especially when it comes to Trump's appeal to conservative Christians.
Seriously, you are going to tell me that Donald Trump, who received 81 percent of the vote from white so-called Evangelicals, is a devout Christian? False praisers and prophets looking for profits aren’t a new thing.
My grandmother was one of those church women who proudly suited up, tied her chalk-polished white shoes up extra tight and went to war for her pastor, baking dinners, working street ministries or attending whatever event he asked her to attend, and at times giving her last to make sure the church kept the lights on. But she lived in a different time. My grandma was a Baby Boomer, so she hailed from a time when religion meant something, back when the black church was the center of the black community.
Imagine having a place where you can go to meet up and strategize with like-minded people. A place where you can go to eat, celebrate, rejoice, dance and sing until your lungs ache. No money? No problem. This place would never turn you away; in fact, they might even give you some money in a time of need, help you raise funds to start that business or connect you with resources to ensure your success. This place also offered all of that in addition to marriage counseling and programs for children. Most importantly, the black church offered hope.
“The black church was the creation of a black people whose daily existence was an encounter with the overwhelming and brutalizing reality of white power,” theologian James Cone, author of "Black Theology and Black Power," wrote. "For the slaves, it was the sole source of personal identity and the sense of community. Though slaves had no social, economic or political ties to people, they had one humiliating factor in common — serfdom.”
The black church was an extension of slavery that derived from one of the most powerful tools of white slave masters. Owners and overseers liked to dangle the idea of Christianity to slaves, teaching them that a cocktail of accepting white Jesus, hard work and obedience would prohibit them from being slaves in heaven. Some masters would even allow their slaves to wear their old clothes and worship on Sundays.
My grandma, like many people in her generation, never questioned the origin of the traditions they subscribed to, and why would she? By the time she came of age, the church was the only consistent resource in black communities. She passed that on to her children, who tried to pass it on to us, but our relationship to religion had evolved by the time I was a teenager in the '90s.
“Open up!” my friend Block yelled. He beat on the door until the hinges rattled. I sat on the floor in the next room, nursing a half cup of vodka. The walls were so thin that you could hear dust form. “Open up! Or I’m gonna see dude myself!”
Block’s sister came out the room. Her face was puffy and shiny from tears. She flopped her back on the wall and slid to the floor before telling him that her boyfriend told her, “you a stupid b**ch if you think I’m leaving my family for you!”
She was a teenager like us and had been seeing dude for a while.
“I’m gonna beat his head in,” Block told her. “Come on, D!”
She pleaded for him to stop as he stormed out. I chugged my drink and tripped out of the door behind him.
“What’s the move?” I asked.
Block sparked a cigarette, cracked his car window and blew a cloud out. “She been messin with the preacher dude from up the block for a minute. He been gassin her up, making her think they was gonna be together and she just cry all of the time. I'm sick of this clown. I’m a crack his jaw.”
“Haaaaaa, yo, we gonna go fight a preacher?” I blurted, trying to hold my laughter in. “What, you gonna crack him over the head with a stack of Bibles? Drop me off, man. My grandma would roll over in her grave! And I'm not letting you go to jail for assaulting a preacher.”
“What should I do?”
I told him to tell his sister to stay away from the guy. He didn’t beat her or anything, he just broke her heart. That’s what religion represented to me at that time in my life: heartbreak. Church people prayed, suffered and never really had anything, just like in the slave days. And my perception of a lot of church dudes was lower than the chances of that preacher leaving his family for Block's sister. We drank, blew weed, hustled, chased girls and ran the streets because we were young criminals. Church people from the neighborhood did all of the same things, but looked down on us because they put on suits and prayed on Sundays. Knowing preachers and deacons who dipped into our dating pool wasn’t a strange thing; they drove cars like ours or better and wore designer clothes and jewelry like us. We basically looked the same to outsiders.
I don't think all churches are bad. A lot of pastors do great work. However, rogue preachers are everywhere, and a lot of people who are blinded by the need for that hope our grandmas talked about can't tell the difference.
I have no personal experiences with white churches other than I heard that their services aren't as long. A black church sermon could easily be eight hours of songs and preaching — throw your whole Sunday away — whereas I think white church only lasts 20 minutes. But again, I don’t know; I've never been. I do know that white church people who identify as Christians are responsible for every major American war, bombing other countries, the genocide of Native Americas, the horrific mid-Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, and now Donald Trump, who probably has had more scandals than any other president in the history of our country.
Trump collects scandals like trading cards: championing sexual harassment and assault, calling entire countries full of black Christian s**t holes, allegedly hiding a string of affairs with women like adult film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Through all of this, the evangelicals, the holy rollers — the white Christians — are silent. I remember them demanding Bill Clinton’s head during the Monica Lewinsky affair in the '90s. Is it because Trump is pro-life and Clinton wasn’t? Because a sin is a sin, right? Or is it just hypocrisy?
Either way, unlike in the days of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, my grandma's day and Clinton's, information is everywhere. We are in the era of the 24-hour news cycle where everyone has access to everything, which means evangelicals are definitely watching and choosing to remain silent, thus uniting many people who represent the modern black church and white church with their actions and forcing me to see them as one and the same: phony. The talk doesn't match their actions.
Millennials are definitely taking note, and continue to abandon the church. A 2015 Pew Research Center study found 35 percent of millennials identify their religion as "none" — that's twice the percentage of Boomers. If Christian hypocrisy isn't addressed, organized religion won't last.
Be a good person by treating others well, say your prayers, be humble, thank God, and you have a pretty good shot at getting into heaven. That’s how it was explained to me. Now, some of my friends were holy rollers whose families took praise to the next level: They went church ten times in a seven-day week, even on Tuesdays, wore suits, quoted Bible verses and washed away their sins by being baptized in front their congregations. But extreme or not, the majority of Americans are taught one way or another that Jesus died for us and our lives should be devoted to making it up to him.
God is on our money and has been inserted into our Pledge of Allegiance, so don’t even think about running for president without spending huge portions of your campaign explaining your relationship with God and how he found you — we assume God is a he — and distancing yourself from Muslims while pandering to Christians and Catholics up and down the Bible belt. It all seems phony — fake as a $3 bill with George Bush on the front — and especially when it comes to Trump's appeal to conservative Christians.
Seriously, you are going to tell me that Donald Trump, who received 81 percent of the vote from white so-called Evangelicals, is a devout Christian? False praisers and prophets looking for profits aren’t a new thing.
My grandmother was one of those church women who proudly suited up, tied her chalk-polished white shoes up extra tight and went to war for her pastor, baking dinners, working street ministries or attending whatever event he asked her to attend, and at times giving her last to make sure the church kept the lights on. But she lived in a different time. My grandma was a Baby Boomer, so she hailed from a time when religion meant something, back when the black church was the center of the black community.
Imagine having a place where you can go to meet up and strategize with like-minded people. A place where you can go to eat, celebrate, rejoice, dance and sing until your lungs ache. No money? No problem. This place would never turn you away; in fact, they might even give you some money in a time of need, help you raise funds to start that business or connect you with resources to ensure your success. This place also offered all of that in addition to marriage counseling and programs for children. Most importantly, the black church offered hope.
“The black church was the creation of a black people whose daily existence was an encounter with the overwhelming and brutalizing reality of white power,” theologian James Cone, author of "Black Theology and Black Power," wrote. "For the slaves, it was the sole source of personal identity and the sense of community. Though slaves had no social, economic or political ties to people, they had one humiliating factor in common — serfdom.”
The black church was an extension of slavery that derived from one of the most powerful tools of white slave masters. Owners and overseers liked to dangle the idea of Christianity to slaves, teaching them that a cocktail of accepting white Jesus, hard work and obedience would prohibit them from being slaves in heaven. Some masters would even allow their slaves to wear their old clothes and worship on Sundays.
My grandma, like many people in her generation, never questioned the origin of the traditions they subscribed to, and why would she? By the time she came of age, the church was the only consistent resource in black communities. She passed that on to her children, who tried to pass it on to us, but our relationship to religion had evolved by the time I was a teenager in the '90s.
“Open up!” my friend Block yelled. He beat on the door until the hinges rattled. I sat on the floor in the next room, nursing a half cup of vodka. The walls were so thin that you could hear dust form. “Open up! Or I’m gonna see dude myself!”
Block’s sister came out the room. Her face was puffy and shiny from tears. She flopped her back on the wall and slid to the floor before telling him that her boyfriend told her, “you a stupid b**ch if you think I’m leaving my family for you!”
She was a teenager like us and had been seeing dude for a while.
“I’m gonna beat his head in,” Block told her. “Come on, D!”
She pleaded for him to stop as he stormed out. I chugged my drink and tripped out of the door behind him.
“What’s the move?” I asked.
Block sparked a cigarette, cracked his car window and blew a cloud out. “She been messin with the preacher dude from up the block for a minute. He been gassin her up, making her think they was gonna be together and she just cry all of the time. I'm sick of this clown. I’m a crack his jaw.”
“Haaaaaa, yo, we gonna go fight a preacher?” I blurted, trying to hold my laughter in. “What, you gonna crack him over the head with a stack of Bibles? Drop me off, man. My grandma would roll over in her grave! And I'm not letting you go to jail for assaulting a preacher.”
“What should I do?”
I told him to tell his sister to stay away from the guy. He didn’t beat her or anything, he just broke her heart. That’s what religion represented to me at that time in my life: heartbreak. Church people prayed, suffered and never really had anything, just like in the slave days. And my perception of a lot of church dudes was lower than the chances of that preacher leaving his family for Block's sister. We drank, blew weed, hustled, chased girls and ran the streets because we were young criminals. Church people from the neighborhood did all of the same things, but looked down on us because they put on suits and prayed on Sundays. Knowing preachers and deacons who dipped into our dating pool wasn’t a strange thing; they drove cars like ours or better and wore designer clothes and jewelry like us. We basically looked the same to outsiders.
I don't think all churches are bad. A lot of pastors do great work. However, rogue preachers are everywhere, and a lot of people who are blinded by the need for that hope our grandmas talked about can't tell the difference.
I have no personal experiences with white churches other than I heard that their services aren't as long. A black church sermon could easily be eight hours of songs and preaching — throw your whole Sunday away — whereas I think white church only lasts 20 minutes. But again, I don’t know; I've never been. I do know that white church people who identify as Christians are responsible for every major American war, bombing other countries, the genocide of Native Americas, the horrific mid-Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, and now Donald Trump, who probably has had more scandals than any other president in the history of our country.
Trump collects scandals like trading cards: championing sexual harassment and assault, calling entire countries full of black Christian s**t holes, allegedly hiding a string of affairs with women like adult film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Through all of this, the evangelicals, the holy rollers — the white Christians — are silent. I remember them demanding Bill Clinton’s head during the Monica Lewinsky affair in the '90s. Is it because Trump is pro-life and Clinton wasn’t? Because a sin is a sin, right? Or is it just hypocrisy?
Either way, unlike in the days of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, my grandma's day and Clinton's, information is everywhere. We are in the era of the 24-hour news cycle where everyone has access to everything, which means evangelicals are definitely watching and choosing to remain silent, thus uniting many people who represent the modern black church and white church with their actions and forcing me to see them as one and the same: phony. The talk doesn't match their actions.
Millennials are definitely taking note, and continue to abandon the church. A 2015 Pew Research Center study found 35 percent of millennials identify their religion as "none" — that's twice the percentage of Boomers. If Christian hypocrisy isn't addressed, organized religion won't last.
On Opting Out of Religion
Religions are about control. Control of self. Control of group. Control of thought. Control of ideas. Pretty much all of them have those characteristics. None, however, have control over individual human beings, really. None have control over truth.
In the United States, most people are exposed to Christianity. It's the dominant religion in these parts. It's almost impossible to escape learning about the story Christianity tells. It's easy to buy into it, especially when you're a youngster and have no knowledge other than what you are learning at the moment, and not much history to fall back on.
Many people simply accept the lessons and go along with those teachings. Maybe most people. It's easy to do. It's easy to "give god the glory," accept that "god works in mysterious ways," and believe that it all goes back to some deity, somehow, despite all the evidence to the contrary you learn as you grow into adulthood.
Many, but not everybody. Some people simply opt out at some point. They think. They reason. They compare other types of knowledge, and simply opt out. At some point, they look at those religious teachings and recognize them for the fables and myths they are. They learned a lot of good lessons for how to behave in society. They retain those, but simply opt out of the rest.
Some continue to participate in religious activities. It's a social outlet. Others just walk away and find other opportunities to commune with society. There are many ways to opt out. It doesn't matter how you do it, really. But, if you think and reason and ponder, it's hard not to opt out of old myths and fables. It gets harder the more you think about it.
I opted out at about age 20. Permanently and completely. I've never looked back. I can see no point in looking back.
Anyone can opt out at any time. We have agency over what we believe and what we do not believe. Truly we do. Think about it.
------
How did Jesus and the Hebrews become WHITE?
http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Jesus/Jesus.htm
How did the Hebrews turn White? Of course they didn't really; just in the imaginations, and then the histories of White people. Who for probably practical reasons, decided that Hebrews, and also the Blacks who originally lived in the Country's that they took over, should all become White for posterity's sake.
Seeing as how it only takes three generations to turn a Black person into a White person (and visa versa). No doubt there came a time when as Europe's formerly bi-racial populations, became more homogeneously White, White people decided that they could no longer acknowledge that all that they knew and had, was derived from the minds and labors of Black people - even down to their religious beliefs. The logic no doubt being that Whites could not progress to their full potential, if they were always looking up to Blacks, as the personification of knowledge and wisdom. So a change had to be made, and at some point, by somebody, that change began.
Of course, we have no way of knowing when this process of Whitinizing Blacks began, or who did it, or where it was first done. But we do have some materials by which we can track the process, somewhat.
But first, let us go back to see what Hebrews REALLY looked like. The earliest authentic pictures of real Hebrews that we have, date back to before Christ. They are Assyrian relief's showing Hebrews, and others that they conquered, in pictorial scenes detailing the battles fought, with associated text. These relief's decorated Assyrian palaces, and were no doubt used to gloat over their conquest of the Hebrews and others. Here we are using pictures of: Assyrian King Shalmaneser IIIs "Black Obelisk" (858 B.C.). Assyrian king Tiglath-pilesar III’s relief's of his conquest of a city near the Sea of Galilee (730 B.C.). Assyrian King Sennacherib’s relief's of the conquest of the Judean City of Lachish (701 B.C.). The four pictures below, are from those Assyrian relief's. (These relief's are stored in the British Museum, London England).
Seeing as how it only takes three generations to turn a Black person into a White person (and visa versa). No doubt there came a time when as Europe's formerly bi-racial populations, became more homogeneously White, White people decided that they could no longer acknowledge that all that they knew and had, was derived from the minds and labors of Black people - even down to their religious beliefs. The logic no doubt being that Whites could not progress to their full potential, if they were always looking up to Blacks, as the personification of knowledge and wisdom. So a change had to be made, and at some point, by somebody, that change began.
Of course, we have no way of knowing when this process of Whitinizing Blacks began, or who did it, or where it was first done. But we do have some materials by which we can track the process, somewhat.
But first, let us go back to see what Hebrews REALLY looked like. The earliest authentic pictures of real Hebrews that we have, date back to before Christ. They are Assyrian relief's showing Hebrews, and others that they conquered, in pictorial scenes detailing the battles fought, with associated text. These relief's decorated Assyrian palaces, and were no doubt used to gloat over their conquest of the Hebrews and others. Here we are using pictures of: Assyrian King Shalmaneser IIIs "Black Obelisk" (858 B.C.). Assyrian king Tiglath-pilesar III’s relief's of his conquest of a city near the Sea of Galilee (730 B.C.). Assyrian King Sennacherib’s relief's of the conquest of the Judean City of Lachish (701 B.C.). The four pictures below, are from those Assyrian relief's. (These relief's are stored in the British Museum, London England).
|
|
|
It is worth mentioning, that the Hebrews were just as literate, and just as artistic as the other Black civilizations around them. The reason that we have to depend on outside sources for pictures of them, is because Whites destroyed all that the Hebrews ever created. Even down to the very religious writings that they claim to worship by. That fact is that ALL Hebrew writings, even the SEPTUAGINT {the original Bible}, which was only roughly Hebrew (it was made for the Greek King of Egypt, Ptolemy II (Philadelphus) in 282-246 B.C.), has been destroyed. Everything except for the "Dead Sea Scrolls" which were found in 1947, in Qumran, a village situated about twenty miles east of Jerusalem. The Scrolls are under the joint custody of the Catholic Church and the Israelis. The translated contents of those Scrolls has never been made public, and probably never will be - no doubt the differences in teachings and facts would be irreconcilable. (A few inconsequential snippets have been made public - the entire Scrolls is a huge work, which contains the entire old Testament plus many other works).
Why wasn't the material in these pages destroyed? Because after it's fall, Assyria came under the control of the Persian Empire, which was itself a Black Empire. It then came under the control of Greeks, who were at that time, seeking to merge with the Black Persians, not in denying that they were Black people. Then Assyria again came under Persian control, and then finally under the control of the original Black Arabs. So at the time when Whites were destroying vestiges of Black history, they had no access to the Assyrian artifacts.
But at those times when Whites did have control of an area, they seem to have been very through in destroying all vestiges of the former Black inhabitants; there is nothing left to suggest that Carthage was a Black city, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilizations are some of the oldest known, yet very little is left - next to nothing in the Indus valley. Ancient Anatolia (Turkey), was home to many great and famous civilizations, but very little has been found there. The Egyptian artifacts, of which there are many, were mostly recovered in modern times, when Whites rather than simply destroy, instead modify artifacts; sometimes just by breaking the noses off, in order to make them look like White people, and then proudly display them as proof of the White mans greatness.
The Khazars, a Turkish tribe who had established a Kingdom in the Caucasus region, and converted to Judaism in the 8th century A.D. Must have seen the doings of the Romans and Greeks, and seen it as an opportunity for them to take over the Hebrew identity, and thus control of the orthodox branch of the Hebrew religion - which indeed they did. They logically thinking that if Jesus can be White, why not then, the entire Hebrew nation - which was by then a diaspora anyway. The Islamist side-stepped the entire issue by forbidding imagery of any kind.
Why wasn't the material in these pages destroyed? Because after it's fall, Assyria came under the control of the Persian Empire, which was itself a Black Empire. It then came under the control of Greeks, who were at that time, seeking to merge with the Black Persians, not in denying that they were Black people. Then Assyria again came under Persian control, and then finally under the control of the original Black Arabs. So at the time when Whites were destroying vestiges of Black history, they had no access to the Assyrian artifacts.
But at those times when Whites did have control of an area, they seem to have been very through in destroying all vestiges of the former Black inhabitants; there is nothing left to suggest that Carthage was a Black city, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilizations are some of the oldest known, yet very little is left - next to nothing in the Indus valley. Ancient Anatolia (Turkey), was home to many great and famous civilizations, but very little has been found there. The Egyptian artifacts, of which there are many, were mostly recovered in modern times, when Whites rather than simply destroy, instead modify artifacts; sometimes just by breaking the noses off, in order to make them look like White people, and then proudly display them as proof of the White mans greatness.
The Khazars, a Turkish tribe who had established a Kingdom in the Caucasus region, and converted to Judaism in the 8th century A.D. Must have seen the doings of the Romans and Greeks, and seen it as an opportunity for them to take over the Hebrew identity, and thus control of the orthodox branch of the Hebrew religion - which indeed they did. They logically thinking that if Jesus can be White, why not then, the entire Hebrew nation - which was by then a diaspora anyway. The Islamist side-stepped the entire issue by forbidding imagery of any kind.
Color struck: America's White Jesus is a global export and false product
By Wesley Muhammad, PhD.
What color was Jesus? Most American Christians—Black and White—would dismiss this question as both irrelevant and unanswerable as the Gospels fail to give us a physical description. The irony is that most of these same Americans in their heart of hearts are pretty confident any way that they know what color Jesus was. They attend churches with images of a tall, long haired, full bearded White man depicted in stained glass windows or painted on walls, and they return home to the same depictions framed in their living room or illustrating their family Bibles.
Further compounding the irony is the fact that America actually has an obsession with the (presumed) color of Christ and has exported her White Americanized Savior around the world, as recently documented by Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey in their book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012).
In fact, the world’s most popular and recognizable image of Christ is a distinctly 19th-20th century American creation. It is true that versions of the “White Christ” appear in European art as early as the 4th century of the Christian era, but these images coexisted with other, nonwhite representations throughout European history. The popularity of the cult of the Black Madonna and Black Christ throughout Europe is evidence of the fact that the European ‘White Christs’ never acquired the authority and authenticity that the White Christ now has globally. This Christ and his authority are American phenomena. As a predominantly Protestant nation Early America rejected the imaging of Christ that characterized European Catholicism.
By the mid-19th century, however, in response to American expansion, splintering during the Civil War and subsequent reconstructing, “Whiteness” took on a new significance and a newly- empowered “White Jesus” rose to prominence as the sanctifying symbol of a new national unity and power. As Blum and Harvey observe:
“By wrapping itself with the alleged form of Jesus, whiteness gave itself a holy face … With Jesus as white, Americans could feel that sacred whiteness stretched back in time thousands of years and forward in sacred space to heaven and the second coming … The white Jesus promised a white past, a white present, and a future of white glory.”
As America rose to superpower status in the 20th century she became the world’s leading producer and global exporter of White Jesus imagery through film, art, American business, and Christian missions, and has thereby defined the world’s view of the Son of God. This globally recognizable Jesus is a totally American product. Indeed, he is an American. Warner Sallman’s iconic image of Jesus called Head of Christ (1941) became the most widely reproduced piece of artwork in world history and its depiction the most recognizable face of Jesus in the world. By the 1990s it had been printed over 500 million times and achieved global iconic status. With smooth white skin, long, flowing blondish-brown hair, long beard and blue eyes, this Nordic Christ consciously disguised any hint of Jesus’s Semitic, oriental origin—and departed from the older European depictions. It both shaped and was shaped by emerging American ideas of whiteness. The beloved White Jesus of today’s world was Made in America.
What, then, did Jesus actually look like? Despite the absence of a detailed description of Jesus’s physical appearance in the Gospels (though John the Revelator saw the risen Christ apparently with wooly hair and black feet, Rev. 1:14-15), there are non-biblical evidences that actually allow us to visualize the Son of God from Nazareth.
Revelation 1:14-15 - King James Version (KJV)
14) His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
15) And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
The first century Jewish writer Josephus (37-100 AD) penned the earliest non-biblical testimony of Jesus. He reportedly had access to official Roman records on which he based his information and in his work Halosis or the “Capture (of Jerusalem),” written around 72 A.D., Josephus discussed “the human form of Jesus and his wonderful works.” Unfortunately his texts have passed through Christian hands which altered them, removing offensive material.
Fortunately, however, Biblical scholar Robert Eisler in a classic 1931 study of Josephus’ Testimony was able to reconstruct the unaltered testimony based on a newly-discovered Old Russian translation that preserved the original Greek text. According to Eisler’s reconstruction, the oldest non-Biblical description of Jesus read as follows:
“At that time also there appeared a certain man of magic power … if it be meet to call him a man, [whose name is Jesus], whom [certain] Greeks call a son of [a] God, but his disciples [call] the true prophet … he was a man of simple appearance, mature age, black-skinned (melagchrous), short growth, three cubits tall, hunchbacked, prognathous (lit. ‘with a long face’ [macroprosopos]), a long nose, eyebrows meeting above the nose … with scanty [curly] hair, but having a line in the middle of the head after the fashion of the Nazaraeans, with an undeveloped beard.”
This short, black-skinned, mature, hunchbacked Jesus with a unibrow, short curly hair and undeveloped beard bears no resemblance to the Jesus Christ taken for granted today by most of the Christian world: the tall, long haired, long bearded, white-skinned and blue eyed Son of God. Yet, this earliest textual record matches well the earliest iconographic evidence.
The earliest visual depiction of Jesus is a painting found in 1921 on a wall of the baptismal chamber of the house-church at Dura Europos, Syria and dated around 235 A.D. The Jesus that is “Healing the Paralytic Man” (Mark 2:1-12) is short and dark-skinned with a small curly afro - see below.
This description has now been supported by the new science of forensic anthropology. In 2002 British forensic scientists and Israeli archaeologists reconstructed what they believe is the most accurate image of Jesus based off of data obtained from the multi-disciplinary approach. In December 2002 Popular Science Magazine published a cover story on the findings which confirm that Jesus would have been short, around 5”1’, hair “short with tight curls,” a weather-beaten face “which would have made him appear older,” dark eyes and complexion: “he probably looked a great deal more like a dark-skinned Semite than Westerners are used to seeing,” they concluded. The textual, visual, and scientific evidence agrees, then: Jesus likely was a short, dark-skinned Semite with short curly hair and dark eyes.
Colossians 1:15 describes Christ as the “image of the unseen God” and in the Gospel of John (12:45; 14:9) Jesus declares that whoever sees him has seen God. What Jesus “looks like” then is not irrelevant as it is in some way a pointer to God Himself.
Further compounding the irony is the fact that America actually has an obsession with the (presumed) color of Christ and has exported her White Americanized Savior around the world, as recently documented by Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey in their book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012).
In fact, the world’s most popular and recognizable image of Christ is a distinctly 19th-20th century American creation. It is true that versions of the “White Christ” appear in European art as early as the 4th century of the Christian era, but these images coexisted with other, nonwhite representations throughout European history. The popularity of the cult of the Black Madonna and Black Christ throughout Europe is evidence of the fact that the European ‘White Christs’ never acquired the authority and authenticity that the White Christ now has globally. This Christ and his authority are American phenomena. As a predominantly Protestant nation Early America rejected the imaging of Christ that characterized European Catholicism.
By the mid-19th century, however, in response to American expansion, splintering during the Civil War and subsequent reconstructing, “Whiteness” took on a new significance and a newly- empowered “White Jesus” rose to prominence as the sanctifying symbol of a new national unity and power. As Blum and Harvey observe:
“By wrapping itself with the alleged form of Jesus, whiteness gave itself a holy face … With Jesus as white, Americans could feel that sacred whiteness stretched back in time thousands of years and forward in sacred space to heaven and the second coming … The white Jesus promised a white past, a white present, and a future of white glory.”
As America rose to superpower status in the 20th century she became the world’s leading producer and global exporter of White Jesus imagery through film, art, American business, and Christian missions, and has thereby defined the world’s view of the Son of God. This globally recognizable Jesus is a totally American product. Indeed, he is an American. Warner Sallman’s iconic image of Jesus called Head of Christ (1941) became the most widely reproduced piece of artwork in world history and its depiction the most recognizable face of Jesus in the world. By the 1990s it had been printed over 500 million times and achieved global iconic status. With smooth white skin, long, flowing blondish-brown hair, long beard and blue eyes, this Nordic Christ consciously disguised any hint of Jesus’s Semitic, oriental origin—and departed from the older European depictions. It both shaped and was shaped by emerging American ideas of whiteness. The beloved White Jesus of today’s world was Made in America.
What, then, did Jesus actually look like? Despite the absence of a detailed description of Jesus’s physical appearance in the Gospels (though John the Revelator saw the risen Christ apparently with wooly hair and black feet, Rev. 1:14-15), there are non-biblical evidences that actually allow us to visualize the Son of God from Nazareth.
Revelation 1:14-15 - King James Version (KJV)
14) His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
15) And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
The first century Jewish writer Josephus (37-100 AD) penned the earliest non-biblical testimony of Jesus. He reportedly had access to official Roman records on which he based his information and in his work Halosis or the “Capture (of Jerusalem),” written around 72 A.D., Josephus discussed “the human form of Jesus and his wonderful works.” Unfortunately his texts have passed through Christian hands which altered them, removing offensive material.
Fortunately, however, Biblical scholar Robert Eisler in a classic 1931 study of Josephus’ Testimony was able to reconstruct the unaltered testimony based on a newly-discovered Old Russian translation that preserved the original Greek text. According to Eisler’s reconstruction, the oldest non-Biblical description of Jesus read as follows:
“At that time also there appeared a certain man of magic power … if it be meet to call him a man, [whose name is Jesus], whom [certain] Greeks call a son of [a] God, but his disciples [call] the true prophet … he was a man of simple appearance, mature age, black-skinned (melagchrous), short growth, three cubits tall, hunchbacked, prognathous (lit. ‘with a long face’ [macroprosopos]), a long nose, eyebrows meeting above the nose … with scanty [curly] hair, but having a line in the middle of the head after the fashion of the Nazaraeans, with an undeveloped beard.”
This short, black-skinned, mature, hunchbacked Jesus with a unibrow, short curly hair and undeveloped beard bears no resemblance to the Jesus Christ taken for granted today by most of the Christian world: the tall, long haired, long bearded, white-skinned and blue eyed Son of God. Yet, this earliest textual record matches well the earliest iconographic evidence.
The earliest visual depiction of Jesus is a painting found in 1921 on a wall of the baptismal chamber of the house-church at Dura Europos, Syria and dated around 235 A.D. The Jesus that is “Healing the Paralytic Man” (Mark 2:1-12) is short and dark-skinned with a small curly afro - see below.
This description has now been supported by the new science of forensic anthropology. In 2002 British forensic scientists and Israeli archaeologists reconstructed what they believe is the most accurate image of Jesus based off of data obtained from the multi-disciplinary approach. In December 2002 Popular Science Magazine published a cover story on the findings which confirm that Jesus would have been short, around 5”1’, hair “short with tight curls,” a weather-beaten face “which would have made him appear older,” dark eyes and complexion: “he probably looked a great deal more like a dark-skinned Semite than Westerners are used to seeing,” they concluded. The textual, visual, and scientific evidence agrees, then: Jesus likely was a short, dark-skinned Semite with short curly hair and dark eyes.
Colossians 1:15 describes Christ as the “image of the unseen God” and in the Gospel of John (12:45; 14:9) Jesus declares that whoever sees him has seen God. What Jesus “looks like” then is not irrelevant as it is in some way a pointer to God Himself.