I would hide under my bed, but it’s a platform bed. There isn’t enough room.
As America barrels toward November 5th (or, as I’ve come to call it, Judgement Day), I encounter vastly more reporting on the people who form the MAGA base, a Christian Nationalist cohort that I just don’t encounter in my daily life. Without those reports, I would probably agree with my husband, who insists that there simply can’t be that many voters who aren’t repelled by Trump and his weird, disjointed fascist rhetoric.
I really, really want to believe that. I want confirmation of my lifelong belief in the good will and good sense of the American public. But then I come across articles like a recent one in The Atlantic.
In the final moments of the last day, some 2,000 people were on their feet, arms raised and cheering under a big white tent in the grass outside a church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. By then they’d been told that God had chosen them to save America from Kamala Harris and a demonic government trying to “silence the Church.” They’d been told they had “authority” to establish God’s Kingdom, and reminded of their reward in heaven. Now they listened as an evangelist named Mario Murillo told them exactly what was expected of Christians like them.
“We are going to prepare for war,” he shouted, and a few minutes later: “I’m not on the Earth to be blessed; I’m on the Earth to be armed and dangerous.”
The event had been cast as an old-fashioned tent revival, but it was entirely political–amplifying (as if we needed amplification) the reality that fundamentalist Christianity has morphed into a political, rather than religious, identity. This particular effort targeted “souls” in swing states.
It was an unapologetic exercise in religious radicalization happening in plain sight, just off a highway and down the street from a Panera. The point was to transform a like-minded crowd of Donald Trump–supporting believers into “God-appointed warriors” ready to do whatever the Almighty might require of them in November and beyond.
So far, thousands of people have attended the traveling event billed as the “Courage Tour,” including the vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance, who was a special guest this past weekend in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. The series is part of a steady drumbeat of violent rhetoric, prayer rallies, and marches coming out of the rising Christian movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, whose ultimate goal is not just Trump’s reelection but Christian dominion—a Kingdom of God. When Trump speaks of “my beautiful Christians,” he usually means these Christians and their leaders—networks of apostles and prophets with hundreds of thousands of followers, many of whom stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, a day preceded by events such as those happening now.
This particular series of events was organized by an influential “prophet” named Lance Wallnau, best known for having urged his followers to travel to Washington, D.C., on January 6, and who described that day’s efforts to overturn the election as part of a new “Great Awakening.”
The article describes what happens when the organizers get people under the tent. Attendees will be met with intense pressure to move them “from passivity to action” and to enlist them into “God’s army.” According to the article, there are loudspeakers, drums, lights and “a huge video screen roughly 20 feet wide and eight feet high.”
It is a deliberate process, one choreographed to the last line, and in Eau Claire, on the grass outside Oasis Church, the four days began with a kind of promise.
“The first thing I’m going to say is you did not come to see me,” Murillo said. “You came to see Jesus Christ.”
Because Jesus–according to these pastors–wants them to go to the polls and elect Donald Trump.
There’s much more in the article, if you have the stomach to read it in its entirety. The “Christians” portrayed have nothing in common with the Christians I know, or the churches with which I am familiar. It’s hard for me to believe that thousands–millions–of people do subscribe to this massive distortion of a faith tradition, but then I recall that some seventy million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020, and another eighty million didn’t bother to vote at all.
Most of those non-voters probably weren’t Christian Nationalists , but they also weren’t sufficiently concerned about the possibility of a Trump victory to cast a ballot. How many of the apathetic will vote this year–and for whom?
If I lose some weight, maybe I can crawl under that platform bed.
Maybe it’s group hypnosis. More likely it’s programming.
The documentary “Bad Faith” is a real eye opener. And you want to know something else that’s scary – an admitted Christian Nationalist could be our next Lt. Governor. If Braun and Beckwith are voted into office, I predict that Indiana will be the laughing stock of our country within 6 months.
From time to time during my lifetime, I’ve wondered how the people of Germany let the Nazis get into power. Lately, it’s become all too clear how it happened. Is there room for more than one person under your bed…
Of course it’s disturbing. That’s what over-the-top religion is intended to be. It’s really nothing new. Throughout history, humans have invented and used one religion or another to act as the vehicle for their own form of tribalism. Hate? Violence? Division? All part of the fetid scheme to use myths and fairy tales to justify their own reptilian instincts.
Modern societies are way too large and way too complex to have any “faith” schemes act as their guiding principles. In a way, though, it’s a window for us to look back and see what sort of creatures humans were 200,000 years ago.
I had done a two-minute weekly spot on John Schmitz’s Facebook podcast, “Mouthwash,” for a couple of years. About a month ago I had to quit. I did not want to enable untruths (a/k/a lies) to be spread w/people believing all viewpoints were allowed. Our debate coach, Dr Weiss, believed our communications, personal as well as political, shape decisions. Beckwith is worse than people imagine. E.g., teaches “Constitutional history” (& says this was intended to be, and is, a Christian country) but hasn’t a clue. Last week on a podcast he said, “I’m a student of history,” then explained why the U.S. did the right thing in landing at Normandy rather than dropping the bomb. Problem: it would be over a year, with the Manhattan Project going at warp speed, after D-Day before the bomb even was built and tested. Germany (as another person pointed out) already had surrendered. On my podcast (Civil Discourse Now) last evening, Cassie Jackson and I discussed several of the problems w/Beckwith. Bottom line: if that ticket is elected, we are [insert the four-letter word on which Cohen v California, 403 US 15, was focused and ad the suffix “ed”]. If that ticket is elected, Beckwith’s not that far, in distance or number of a 70+ year-old’s heart beats, from the Office of Governor.
With all that said, President Biden, thanks to SCOTUS, has full immunity for official acts. I would believe Dems are very aware of the threats we face come Election Day and afterwards. And different from J6, Dems are in control. So I would think any attempt to take over our government, unrest, etc, would be considered an official act that Biden could act upon. A least this is what I’m counting on.
These people aren’t Psuedo-Christian. They are Anti-Christian! Jesus told us to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and welcome the stranger, among other things.
He frequently disobeyed the tenants of his religion, healing people on the Sabbath, not washing hands before some rituals are two instances that instantly come to mind.
Urging the election of a particular candidate in an official church function should negate their tax exemption.
The issue of The Atlantic that arrived in the mail yesterday has as its lead article, a comparison between Trump and George Washington. You can imagine how Trump looks when compared with a real leader, and one who was not power-hungry.
OMG, half the country is mad? I keep seeing the facts supporting that but hoping beyond hope that it can’t be true. Say it ain’t so, Joe, or rather Kamala! We’ve all seen the smallish cults do things that leave us aghast, aka Jim Jones et al, but now we’re looking at the 30’s German blueprint coming to fruition before our very eyes. The water is heating up to unbearable while us frogs are screaming for the Dems and Kamala to do something to turn down the heat! Or more to the point, for the electorate to pay attention to what this dictator-to-be is actually telling us he will do. Or listen to what almost everyone who ever worked with this inhuman being says about his fascist bent. It’s real, folks! I feel sick to my stomach, even more so than when I realized that Hillary went down to defeat in the Electoral College to this clown. This time he has built the machinery to really make it happen. No small capital insurrection here. This will be the real deal if he wins, or loses and ties our country’s legal system into knots with the help of those judicial sycophants he elevated to positions of power. The founders simply did not in their wildest dreams think that someone with the darkest of intentions like orangeman could build a half-country strong cult as he has. The greatest aspirational dream of a country of hope, of good folks living together with diverse ideas, backgrounds, countries of origin, religion (or no religion), gender, color, etc., is in mortal danger. I am very afraid, but I still think if everyone voted, that there are more of us than there are of them.
Yes, I’m glad Peggy mentioned the IRS. Last I checked, Joe Biden is in charge of the IRS, so why hasn’t the IRS negated these churches’ nonprofit status?
The 501c3 documents make it very clear that social organizations are forbidden from involving themselves in politics. One primary reason is that political campaign contributions are not tax deductible, but contributions to a church are deductible. Churches are circumventing the laws once again to benefit their donors.
I read another article arguing about Lance Wallnau’s “revivals,” especially since they brought JD Vance to speak. It’s a clear violation of laws for nonprofit status. If the Democrats won’t take on these phony far-right political organizations using religion as a cover, who will? As they said, this is a war, and it’s time to take off the gloves and hammer these conmen.
More and more articles reaching my inbox and on X are finding evidence of intended violence and tampering with Election Day and beyond. The goal is to threaten violence so voters will stay away. Fear is used hourly on Fox News and right-wing podcasts to motivate their base. Will fear work on Democratic voters?
Unless there is a Hoosier miracle, we can expect Beckwith to be in our Indy Capitol. I don’t think Braun has the guts to reel him in, so, as others have eluded, we will be on the national news frequently. Beckwith’s social media accounts will be quoted quite often. Also, if he is a preacher in a non-profit church, will he have to give up his preacher job while serving Hoosiers in Indianapolis?
The political basis behind these trappings of pseudo-religion must be that people following these nightmares are made to believe that even though we are all the same species (I think so, anyway), some markings separate the better ones from the worst ones. A fight to the death is a sign from their god as to who is which.
All of this from the safest, most comfortable humans ever.
It’s a form of cannibalism.
I guess we aren’t the species that we thought homo sapiens to be. We are being led away from civilization back to some primitive form.
That’s certainly not a new idea—consider the Crusades—but one that most of us thought was so far in the past that it would not rise again. Now, it’s popping up all over the world.
Pulpits are not for politics! Peggy is right. It should negate their tax exemption