I’m not sure when people–okay, mostly Christian people–began using the term “faith-based” to mean “religious,” but like so many other euphemisms being thrown around these days, the term is inaccurate. Many of the earth’s religions aren’t “faith-based,” they are works based, focused upon behavior rather than belief. The term “Judeo-Christian” is a similar contrivance, a term that Christianizes in what may–or may not–have originally been an effort to appear religiously inclusive.
Whatever the original motivation for these terms, Project 2025 makes it quite clear that the “faith” that makes one entitled to call oneself an American is Christianity, and that any lingering “Judeo” part of “Judeo-Christian” is irrelevant.
A report in The Guardian focuses upon that element of Project 2025, using a current discriminatory law in Tennessee as an example of the approach favored by that document. In Tennessee, a Jewish couple who wanted to foster a child were rejected by a Christian state-funded foster care placement agency that informed them it only provided adoption services to “prospective adoptive families that share our belief system”.
Under First Amendment jurisprudence as it has existed thus far, taxpayer dollars cannot be used to favor some religions over others, or–for that matter–religion over non-religion. (Granted, Justice Alito is probably salivating at the prospect of overturning that long line of precedents…) If Trump is elected, however, and the agenda proposed in Project 2025 begins to be realized, Americans can kiss genuine religious liberty good-bye.
The predicament facing the Rutan-Rams could become more common under a second Trump administration. Project 2025, a 900-plus page blueprint for the next Republican administration and the policy brainchild of the conservative Heritage Foundation, contains an explicitly sympathetic view toward “faith-based adoption agencies” like the one that rejected the Rutan-Rams, who are “under threat from lawsuits” because of the agencies’ religious beliefs.
Project 2025’s Adoption Reform section calls for the passage of legislation to ensure providers “cannot be subjected to discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based on their beliefs about marriage”. It also calls for the repeal of an Obama-era regulation that prohibits discrimination against prospective parents and subsequent amendments made by the Biden administration.
According to a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, quoted in the article, the image of family portrayed by Project 2025 is “blatantly exclusionary. The Christian nationalist plan rejects unmarried parents, single parents and LGBTQ+ families.”
Project 2025 is divided into four broad pillars, the first of which is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”. A conservative vision of family pervades the document, and the authors call on policymakers “to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family”.
The plan envisions upholding “a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. It would remove nondiscrimination roadblocks governing faith-based grant recipients, such as the agency that denied the Rutan-Rams. The authors argue that “heterosexual, intact marriages” provide more stability for children than “all other family forms”. In addition to calling for the passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, which would allow adoption and foster care agencies to make placement decisions based on their “religious beliefs or moral convictions”, it also calls on Congress to ensure “religious employers” are exempt from nondiscrimination laws and free to make business decisions based on their religious beliefs.
That last paragraph sounds exactly like a speech by Indiana Congressman Jim Banks, currently running for U.S. Senate. Banks–and his clone Micah Beckwith, the Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor–who represent the core of the MAGA effort to remake the United States into a White Christian theocracy.
Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and author of a book titled How to End Christian Nationalism, contends that the scale and reach of Project 2025 pose a far greater danger to democracy than a patchwork of state laws.
“What’s different about Project 2025 is the sweeping nature of its plan,” said Tyler. “It would really rewrite the federal government and change policies in so many different areas at once in a way that would hasten our journey down that road to authoritarian theocracy.”
Trump’s effort to distance himself from Project 2025 runs into several inconvenient facts: his choice of a Vice-Presidential candidate who wrote the document’s introduction, the number of cronies who participated in its drafting, and the GOP’s official platform, which echoes several of its themes.
When President Biden says that America’s constitutional democracy is on the ballot in November, he wasn’t engaging in hyperbole.
It used to be an accepted fact that using the term “Christian” to describe or define a person meant someone who does good works to benefit all. John Lewis’ request that we concentrate our efforts on causing “good trouble” is an example during these Trump infested years. All of John Lewis’ leadership, his “good works” and his legacy are now lost figuratively and literally as is the original term “Christian”. Yet the majority of all appear to turn to the God figure as we understand he/she/it to be and the thinking people include science and evolution of life in general as being based on a higher power than ourselves. As my Atheist friend explained to me; they are not against God, they just put their “faith” in science, evolution and nature.
Our selfish seeking constant comfort and instant gratification of our wants, whether they are needed for survival or not, has become our undoing regarding evolution and nature. WE have brought about the escalation of Climate Change and Global Warming; Al Gore’s Academy Award winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” is an example of John Lewis’ “good trouble” as it brought to our attention the global effects of our actions. When his movie was made, and he shared the Nobel Prize for Science with a team of Swedish (I think) scientists and was accused of promoting a “slide show” by the Climate Change deniers. It was then taken up by the MAGAs resulting in Trump ending many EPA regulations set in place to save our lives and the earth. President Biden has tried to restore regulations as an important part of the Democratic Party foundation but due to the natural turn of events regarding his age, the party lost all “faith” in him to continue his job. Can we now put our faith in Vice President Kamala Harris to continue and progress further to “save the soul of our nation”? As she is campaigning for the presidency we need to be much more informed about what our current President Biden is working on and accomplishing; his job continues with no break in his responsibility. My FAITH is is President Biden carrying on, unfettered by the ongoing presidential campaign without him.
“When President Biden says that America’s constitutional democracy is on the ballot in November, he wasn’t engaging in hyperbole.”
The extreme care taken by the leaders of our church (in an earlier life for me) in order to maintain 501c tax exempt status seem quaint now compared to the blatant efforts neatly predicted in Project 2025. What a profound distortion of the explicit efforts of the founders efforts to separate church and state, thus avoiding the horrors of a theocracy. Sounds more and more like the life of modern Iranians, or Saudis. Oh wait, those are Muslim theocracies, thus comparisons cannot be made. Really? Sounds much the same to what I can see. This is serious, folks. Just like in those theocratic dictatorships, Project 2025 lays out specific Christian nationalist steps toward an American theocratic dictatorship. That would not be my country, I can tell you that. I’m voting for Kamalot, for democracy, to embrace our ideals, for freedom. There is no other choice for this Republic, if we want to keep it.
Just two things … (1) Religion keeps coming to the rescue of truth, sanity and rationality. (2) The Heritage Foundation and its kin are most certainly NOT conservative. They are radical, right-wing reactionary groups intending to overthrow democracy and our Constitution. How is that “conservative”?
Judeo Christian actually means, one from the other! Not, one is the other! Jesus Christ was a Jew, he quoted the Hebrew scriptures. The Christian Greek scriptures echo the Hebrew scriptures and refer to them constantly throughout the New testament. Therefore, it would be considered one from the other.
I think we toss the term faith around quite a bit, some people claim that faith is a joke, and then figure the sun is going to rise in the east and set in the West everyday. So is that faith?
“Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.” (Hebrews 11:1)—-True faith is not credulity, that is, a readiness to believe something without sound evidence or just because a person wants it to be so. Genuine faith requires basic or fundamental knowledge and acquaintance with evidence!!!
Do we have faith in the ability of men? Or mankind? Why? Where in history has mankind actually prevailed in doing right by his fellow man? When do we have faith that politicians will not why, steel, and cheat? What about murder? What about depriving the poorest, necessities of life? Nowhere in human history does it show that mankind can solve its problems without destroying himself, and everything else. If there is ever any step forward, it’s followed by a sprint backwards. As we can see by all of the unraveling of hard fought gains made through the civil Rights era.
John Lewis saw the hypocrisy, he almost died a couple of times during his youthful protesting. He decided to get involved in politics, and, died on the steps there still fighting and still losing.
The apostle Paul stated, … “Let no one seduce you in any manner, because it will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness gets revealed, the son of destruction.”
Jesus Christ also stated in Matthew, “Not everyone saying to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of the heavens, but only the one doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens will. 22 Many will say to me in that day: ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them: ‘I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!”
Along with lawlessness we also have parabosas which is the Greek term for transgression, and we know that claiming or feigning ignorance of law does not make one immune to the law. Moses, Abraham, Jesus Christ, The apostle Paul, all said the very same thing! Judeo Christian belief!
Will there be an agency set up to conduct religious based “security” clearances for prospective applicants for any social services and/or government job? Will there be religion police, roving the community making sure everyone (and you can bet it will be women who they would most often target) is compliant or not secretly resisting or even lying about their “beliefs”. Physical exams to insure that no one is secretly of another faith tradition? Children being encouraged to report on parents who deviate from the rules?
Doing away with any form of contraception, no access to abortion for any reason, repeal of no-fault divorce are all on the agenda. Women forced to stay in abusive relationships as jdv has stated.
All of the above smack of state governance of personal beliefs, something I believe is impossible to prove and therefore enforce. Inquisition was the Catholic use of that same idea. It was a complete and utter failure for all of the horrifically enforced compliance. If anything it and policies like it foster creative forms of resistance and the undermining of the actual declared purpose of belief purity.
The Christian Taliban will not be an exaggeration of the actuality of such policies. Straight, White, Christian (Really?) men will be in charge by entitlement.
What could possibly go wrong?
Some people are aware of the insanity of Project 2025. Most people just give you a strange look when you ask what they know. Only about a third seem to read. They are the people who know the names of the candidates. One third gets all information from right winged media. They are the ones who believe that tfg is responsible for everything that Biden has done. The last third are too busy just dealing with their life. They continue to believe that nothing ever changes, because that’s the way it works. They are who we need to speak to.
John Sorg; the apostles spoke their view of the words and acts of Jesus. Both Testament books of Bible are man’s views of the words and acts of God and Jesus and we really cannot discount the idea that God did not create man, man created God to give voice to their own words and actions.
Part of the problem is the deception that is employed, especially by Christofascists, in denying Project 2025 as what they want. Beckwith is a clown, but has solid supporters who identify with him, maybe because he values ignorance, having told people not to read academic sources about American history because of “secular bias.” He also gets away w/quoting his chats w/”The Lord,” adding details or conversations as he (Beckwith) sees fit. In an article from Fort Wayne, Beckwith is quoted as saying: “It was like the Lord hit me with a ton of bricks. He said, ‘Micah, if you do not get involved in the political battle, they will warp and destroy everything that I have set up in this nation that is rooted in Judeo-Christian principles.’ Those principles go away, then our nation goes away.”
I said, in a blog (one of about 20 pulled by Facebook following complaints that my (footnoted) blogs are misleading), that Beckwith’s deity is kind of wimpy-ass if its “Judeo-Christian” work will be destroyed unless a clown like Beckwith comes to the rescue. Here’s the thing: they’re glad to smile and make people think they are middle-of-the-road (whatever that road is) and simply religious. We have to reach these people. A lot of people don’t realize the evil (& Beckwith & company are evil) we face. The first day of in-person early voting is critical. Once a vote is cast, it can’t be changed. I’ll close on a positive note. There is a very real possibility that at least three of Indiana’s nine seats in the House can be flipped, and that Pres/VP, Gov/Lt Gov, US Senate and Ind AG all go blue.
Authoritarians need all the power they can get, both on Earth and in their future lives, to cope with the diversity of the planet.
If trump is elected and all the tax-exempt orgs that support the American Christian Taliban’s Project 2025 start implementing their radical agenda I believe our democracy will implode with a bloody revolution against those faux Christians. The 2nd Amendment radicals that have accumulated personal arsenals will finally have a valid reason to use their weapons.
Peggy,
Well said. The problem with DEMs messaging is that they can’t put it into “kitchen table” words. They fail to understand that many voters have a 6th grade education without critical thinking. As the old rock song said “Gotta Make it Real”…what will happen to me, my life, my kids if Project 2025 happens.
I don’t believe our “constitutional democracy” exists as defined by Ben Franklin and the other Founders. They replaced a Theistic Monarchy with a Secular Oligarchy.
Therefore, this election is no more paramount than any other we’ve had because the oligarchy still oppresses us–they control most major institutions in the US, including the media and both political parties. If you’ve noticed, the media that got rid of Biden is now in love with Kamala. Poor Trump can’t get a break from the media; even Fox News shows Kamala with a slight lead. #Treasonous #LOL
The most important aspect now is that Kamala and her media support have energized the young citizens, who I said were abandoning Biden in droves. He’d been losing them for 3.5 years.
As for the post today, John Sorg knows his religion rather well; I cannot imagine how FUBAR Washington will become if Trump is elected and the GOP attempts to implement P2025. Whose Christian religion will be adopted by the right-wingers in Washington? There are like two thousand Christian sects in the US, so which one will the GOP choose? Does anybody see the Southern Baptists and Catholics agreeing on which version of Christianity the Founders intend for us to follow?
As I said, it will be four years of a major clusterfuc*. Will we need to add a Priest or Reverend to the SCOTUS to assist with biblical translations? Can anybody see Trump becoming a religious leader in Washington?
As JD questioned above, “What could possibly go wrong?”
Poor Sheila will need an army of assistants to keep up with all the daily Washington and Indiana debacles unfolding in this country. It will be a major distraction while the oligarchy pilfers and denies wealth and income to the working and lower classes. I guess it will be the last four years the GOP will see in the White House for many years.
I get it now,,, stepford families.
FYI🙂
Hebrews 11
Hebrews
11* And faith is assuming the validity of hopes, putting unseen things to the test. 2* For it is as to this the old-timers are vouched for.
3 It is by faith we apprehend that the worlds were set in order by a word of God’s, so that it is not out of observable things that what we see was made.
4 It was by faith Abel offered to God more of a sacrifice than Cain, through which he had himself attested to be righteous, God testifying over his gifts; and it is through it he still speaks after he dies.
5 It was by faith Enoch was translated so as not to see death, and was not to be found because God had translated him; for before the translation he was vouched for as having pleased God, 6* but without faith it is impossible to please; for he who comes to God has to believe that he is and that to those who seek him he proves a paymaster.
7 It was by faith Noah, receiving a revelation about what could not yet be seen, was on his guard and constructed an ark for the saving of his family, through which he pronounced condemnation on the world and became heir to the righteousness that comes in the way of faith.
8 It was by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out to a place he was to get for an inheritance, and did go out, not knowing where he was going. 9 It was by faith he lived in an immigrant’s condition in the country he had the promise of as if in a country not his own, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the co-heirs of the same promise; 10 for he was waiting for the city that has the foundations, of which God is architect and artisan. 11 It was by faith Sarah herself too received power for founding a line of descendants even out of her time of life, since she regarded the giver of the promise as trustworthy; 12* because of which, also, there were born from one—and one who had gone dead, at that—descendants numerous as the stars in the sky or as the uncountable sand on the seashore.
13 In faith all these died, not having received the promised things but having seen and greeted them at a distance and avowed that on the earth they were strangers living away from their home. 14* For those who say things of that sort make it manifest that they are wanting a home. 15* And if they had been remembering that one from which they had gone out, they would have had a suitable time for going back; 16 but as it is, they are bent on a better one, that is, a heavenly one. For which reason God is not ashamed of them, of being designated as their God; for he has got a city ready for them.
17 It was by faith Abraham, when put to the test, brought Isaac as a sacrifice, and he who had taken the promises to himself, 18 to whom the word had been spoken “it will be by Isaac that issue shall be called yours,” was sacrificing his only son, 19 counting on it that God is powerful enough to raise from the dead, wherefrom he did, figuratively speaking, receive him.
20 It was by faith, too, Isaac gave Jacob and Esau a blessing about future things.
21 It was by faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and did reverence on the top of his staff.
22 It was by faith Joseph, when passing away, mentioned the coming out of the sons of Israel from Egypt and gave a command about his bones.
23 It was by faith Moses, when born, was hidden three months by his parents because they saw the child was a pretty one, and they were not afraid of the king’s order.
24 It was by faith Moses, when he grew up, renounced being known as Pharaoh’s daughter’s son, 25 choosing rather to share the hardships of God’s people than to have temporary enjoyment from a sin, 26 regarding the insults given to the Christ as a greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt; for he had his eye on the wages to be paid. 27 It was by faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s rage, for he bore up as seeing the Invisible One. 28 It was by faith he celebrated the passover and the application of the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them.
29 It was by faith they crossed the Red Sea as if along dry ground; attempting which, the Egyptians were swallowed up.
30* It was by faith the walls of Jericho fell after seven days of circling around them.
31 It was by faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who had been disobedient, she having received the spies with peace.
32 And why say more? for the time will fail me as I tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, and David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith put down kingdoms, did service to the right, won promises, stopped lions’ mouths, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were brought to powerfulness from weakness, became strong in war, routed camps of aliens. 35** Women received their dead in resurrection; and others were beaten to death and did not accept a chance of getting off, in order that a better resurrection might be theirs; 36 and others experienced derisive indignities and lashes, and chains and prison life moreover. 37* They were stoned, sawed in two, put to the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, suffering want, distress, hardship, 38 they of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.
39 And all these, though by faith they had themselves vouched for, did not receive what was promised, 40 as God looked forward to something better regarding us, so that they were not to come to completeness apart from us.
The Christian Nationalists, Fundamentalist, and Southern Baptist that all seem to be in the same small tent are the ones pushing this 2025 agenda, but where does that leave other religions or non religious folks not driving that bus but forced to ride in the back of their church bus as it speeds toward the cliff of religious war ?
Can anyone with religious insight tell us what that looks like ?
Saying the word “God” personifies, limits what is to a thought? There’s a lot out there and a lot going on and to still one’s soul to see realistically and deal with it all respectively takes patience and effort. We have the inherent right to conserve the good in our lives and progress from there. Interference in that life quest is unjust and needs to be defended against and pushed back on.
I’m a fan of Joe Campbell’s life work of the study of myth and religion of many cultures over time. He even learned Aramaic so he could read original Christian texts for himself. In the diverse world of religion there are many aspects that are shared. Questions of transitions of life and death and all the in between.
Cambell also concluded that Judeo-Christianity is not a Western development. The Western movement is Spirit with no need for churches.
It seems to me that democracy is the appropriate milieu to realize that life. Project 2025 is unjust blocking of our development and fulfillment and needs to be blocked.
I’ve heard that trumps game is to get states to withhold certification of the vote and throw the election result to the House and/or Supreme Court?
One of the most unique elements of the United States is the freedom to practice and believe in any religion or none. We now have an element that wants to impose their religion on everyone. To force certain religious beliefs on everyone no matter what they think. We are facing a new civil war where people like Jim Banks think they are in charge and they demand everyone follow him. We as a whole need to reject Banks and those like him to preserve out nation and way of life.
“…providers cannot be subjected to discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based on their beliefs about marriage”.
The above, in context, and the sentence that follows it are clearly, themselves, discriminatory!
The religious among us spend so much time trying to set themselves apart and above all others. What a waste. It seems to me that all of them are drinking water from the same river.
The religious among us spend so much time trying to set themselves apart and above all others. What a waste of time and energy.