"Having loyally argued for low taxes and small government for more than a generation, having deconstructed the separation of church and state laid out in the First Amendment, they now find themselves on the short end of their bargain with the GOP."
"He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon": trample the church-state dividing line, feed unabashedly at the government trough while claiming special privileges, and invite karmic retribution.
Marci Hamilton sheds no tears that white evangelicals and right-wing Catholics are now seeing federal funding ripped from their charitable organizations, because:
"White evangelicals are learning to be careful what you wish for. When religious groups obtain the right to receive taxpayer dollars for their missions, they also insert themselves into a pipeline that can be turned on and off at will."
At a point in history at which more than half of white Christians have voted for Trump three times, this last time setting off an orgy of chaos, destruction, and cruelty through which we're now beginning to live, the church itself offers the most glaring counterwitness imaginable to the gospel it prodlaims.
One can keep believing only by leaving the church behind.
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians #WhiteChristianNationalism #chaos #destruction #cruelty
/5
"So the church took the offer, and didn't even get a golden fiddle in exchange for its soul. And here, at last, we were. ...
Think of what made me leave my church. It wasn't somebody welcoming me into the new thing. It was the fact that I actually believed the truths I had learned and couldn't handle the lies any more."
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians #WhiteChristianNationalism #chaos #destruction #cruelty
/4
"Also, the Republican Party had already been a hate group for many years prior to that, and the church had been the enthusiastic, sustaining, energizing force behind that organization, as part of its overall capture by authoritarian state power, which had offered it relevance and influence in the form of enforced cultural domination over others."
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians #WhiteChristianNationalism #chaos #destruction #cruelty
/3
Moxon writes,
"The fact that the church collectively went for their deep-fried golden calf didn't surprise me in 2016—I was more naive than I am today (which suggests that in ten year I will be less naive than I am now) but I wasn't totally snowed, and I had been watching over the preceding years in a state of slowly dawning awareness."
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians #WhiteChristianNationalism #chaos #destruction #cruelty
/2
A.R. Moxon notes that he grew up a missionary kid, "which is sort of heavenly platinum status in christian communities." Despite his upbringing as the son of evangelical missionaries, he can no longer do church. He explains why: the "beautiful story" told by the Christian gospels, which is compelling, is belied by the behavior many churches and church folks.
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians #WhiteChristianNationalism #chaos #destruction #cruelty
/1
"With this sleight of hand, Trump’s 'Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias' order licenses persecution of Christian (or other) groups he declares disloyal, while permitting favoritism of white evangelical Protestants to masquerade as religious liberty."
"In the royal MAGA court, 'Christian' isn’t a term that describes someone who is a follower of Jesus or a member of a church. It is a privileged, protected status awarded by the Great Leader to politically useful religious people, preferably white rather than Black, and evangelical rather than mainline or Catholic or Orthodox."
"In his bombastic proclamations, Trump repeatedly asserts, incorrectly, that Christian identity and opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights are synonymous. But today, such an equation is true for only a small fraction of America’s major religious groups—principally white evangelical Protestants and Latino Protestants (who also predominantly identify racially as white and theologically as evangelical)."
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #ReligiousFreedom #abortion #LGBTQ
/2
"Among the deluge of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump was a curious one that went largely under the radar: an order 'Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.' The order purports to 'end the anti-Christian weaponization of government,' charging that 'the previous Administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.'”
~ Robert P. Jones
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #ReligiousFreedom
/1
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/what-anti-christian-bias-does-for
"They feel as though they have been denied the social power and cultural influence to which they are entitled, and even though literally nothing has changed beyond a president who didn’t even win the popular vote by a whole percentage point running roughshod over the entire federal government, they are frantically declaring a vibe shift."
#Trump #MAGA #Republicans #cruelty #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians
/5
"The word has not just magically become acceptable to say, and everyone who would have thought someone was an asshole for using it still thinks they are an asshole for using it. The difference is that those saying it now feel as though they have social power they did not have before the election.
That, really, has been the crux of everything for several years now."
#Trump #MAGA #Republicans #cruelty #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians
/4
"That being said, like Glinda explained to Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz, the power to use that word was inside them all along. It was never illegal. It just had the effect of making people think that whoever said it was an asshole, which it still does."
#Trump #MAGA #Republicans #cruelty #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians
/3
"They’re near-ecstatic about it, which is weird because, aside from being a slur and unnecessarily hurtful to people with intellectual disabilities and the families and friends who love them, it has the effect of making anyone who uses it in that sense sound far less intelligent than the person they’re hoping to denigrate."
#Trump #MAGA #Republicans #cruelty #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians
/2
'The greatest victory of the last election, for what appears to be a truly startling number of people, is the belief that they can now use the word 'retard' with abandon, and not in the context of music theory."
~Robyn Pennacchia
#Trump #MAGA #Republicans #cruelty #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteChristians
/1
https://www.wonkette.com/p/the-rights-brave-new-world-vibe-shift
Kristin Du Mez notes that because her field of study is American evangelicalism and because large sectors of American evangelicalism are closely linked to authoritarianism, she has for some years now studied the rise of authoritarianism in US culture and political life, and sought to ring a warning bell about it.
#WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #Republicans #Trump #authoritarianism #cruelty #racism #WhiteSupremacy
/4
Political scientist Brooklyn Walker notes that scholarly studies including the General Social Survey find the following:
"Christian nationalism is strongly and positively correlated with both racial resentment and authoritarianism."
The three go predictably go together as a kind of unholy trinity, and that trinity is deeply enmeshed in Trump.
#WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #Republicans #Trump #authoritarianism #cruelty #racism #WhiteSupremacy
/3
"What happens when 80% of believers infuse an authoritarian movement with religious obligation? And when their political participation is enough to saddle a secular nation with the results?
Jesus Ad Christianity wants to have Jesus and ignore him, too. It wants to hide rotten fruit in beautiful Gospel boxes."
#WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #Republicans #Trump #authoritarianism #cruelty
/2
Holly Berkley Fletcher reflects on the monstrously expensive "Jesus ad" some US Christians mounted for the Super Bowl:
"In my experience and in my study of American religious history, white American Christians have long expended more energy convincing themselves they are good—and by extension, deserving of power—than they have actually striving to be good."
#WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #Republicans #Trump #authoritarianism #cruelty
/1
https://hollyberkleyfletcher.substack.com/p/jesus-ad-christianity
