A Northwest Indiana newspaper recently reported that Micah Beckwith, Indiana’s incoming Lieutenant Governor, is telling people to refuse to comply with hospital requirements to wear masks when visiting to avoid spreading respiratory illnesses. Beckwith, you will (not) be pleased to know, speaks to God, who evidently doesn’t want us to mask up…
Those of us who find people like Beckwith difficult–okay, impossible–to understand or take seriously, need to read Tim Alberta’s book, “The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory.” It’s eye-opening. And sleep-disturbing.
Alberta himself is a devout Evangelical Christian. His father was a Southern Baptist preacher, and it is very clear from the book that Alberta has not only remained wedded to that tradition, but is in possession of deep biblical knowledge. He is also, however, sane, and inhabits an America with which most of us are familiar.
He appears to be one of the declining number of deeply religious Christians who refuse to cherry-pick biblical passages in order to bolster very unChristian bigotries.
In the wake of his father’s death and the 2016 election, Alberta tried to get his head around a question that has stumped many of us: how could so many ostentatiously devout Christians be in thrall to a figure like Donald Trump? (In 2020, Trump’s share of the White Evangelical vote was a whopping 84 percent.) Alberta took a year and a half to visit numerous Evangelical congregations to try to understand what motivated them.
His book was the product of those visits. I found it terrifying.
This phenomenon, Alberta says, cannot simply be a matter of evangelicals mobilizing against abortion access and trying to save lives; after all, they have kept remarkably quiet when it comes to showing compassion for refugees or curbing gun violence, which is now, as Alberta notes, the leading cause of death for children in the United States.
What he finds instead is that under the veneer of Christian modesty simmers an explosive rage, propelling Americans who piously declare their fealty to Jesus to act as though their highest calling is to own the libs.
The book demonstrates that the “veneer” has pretty much peeled off. Alberta interviews some of the “usual suspects”– con-artist preachers of the Religious Right–and those interviews amply confirm what we “libs” have already concluded. Far more revealing were his interactions with members of the “flocks,” the congregants, a great many of whom had left churches where the pastors had declined to substitute MAGA politics for biblical sermonizing, and most of whom occupy an alternate, imaginary and unrecognizable America.
Two things about those reports especially dumbfounded me: the sheer number of people who embrace what Alberta calls “blood-and-soil Christian nationalism;” and the widespread rejection of logic, fact, science and basic humanity among those thousands of “biblical literalists”. As the linked review noted,
“The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory” charts a transformation in evangelicalism, from a midcentury moment when white American Christians were such a dominant force in the country that many could “afford to forget politics” to a time when many more feel, as one prominent pastor puts it, “under siege.” Alberta suggests that this panic has less to do with any existential threat to American Christianity than a rattled presumption of privilege. “Humility doesn’t come easy to the American evangelical,” he writes. “We are an immodest and excessively indulged people.”
A majority of these congregants have turned religion into politics, and substituted (their version of) the “real” America for God. In one sanctuary, Alberta sees “a lot of American flags” but not a single cross.” He found belligerent culture warriors who never spoke about helping immigrants or the poor, and noted that “bashing the left tends to stimulate conservative passions more reliably than trying to teach Jesus’ example of good deeds and turning the other cheek.”
A booth at the Faith and Freedom Coalition was selling T-shirts with “Let’s Go Brandon,” the conservative chant that stands for an expletive directed at Joe Biden. In case the expletive was unclear, the T-shirts included a hashtag #FJB. When Alberta questioned the propriety of such merchandise at a Christian event, the proprietor responded that he was protesting the “fact” that “we’ve taken God out of America.”
Shutdowns during the pandemic particularly incensed many of these culture warriors, and Alberta recounts multiple conversations with people who sound a lot like Indiana’s Micah Beckwith. COVID, they insist, was a liberal assault on Christianity and the church. (One woman insisted that Dr. Fauci had “invented” it.) Masks and vaccines are a liberal plot.
These are the people who elected Donald Trump.
The book is chilling. Read it.
How do we defeat such pervasive dysfunction? It runs so deep. They seem immune to education. Facts do not matter. So we need to ???
No, Sheila, I won’t read Alberta’s book. I’ve been watching and reading and listening to the ravings of those who embrace myths and fairy tales to justify their own intellectual vapidity. I don’t nee any more reminders of how weak minds pervert any goodness in the species. The blatant hypocrisy of such “faith-based” reasoning is nauseating, disgusting and disheartening.
These will be the assholes who celebrate nuclear war while they and everyone else suffer from radiation poisoning. After all, this is God’s will, right?
One is supposed to try and find good or positive things in any screed, but evangelicals as described above stumble through life as if it’s another war of the faeries. We’re ready for another, modern version of “The Lord of the Rings”.
Religion continues to come to the rescue of sanity.
The “Christian MAG42Ats” follow the teachings of GOP Jesus ( he shows up on my “you tube” occasionally,) not Yeshua, the Christ of the New Testament who says turn the other cheek. GOP Jesus says get out your gun and shoot him. After giving the sermon on the mount of olives , Yeshua feeds the people with a fish and loaf. GOP Jesus takes the the fish and loaf and leaves. There’s more, but I hope you get the idea.
I agree with Vernon; I am living with enough fear without looking further for documentation that my fear is real. We are living the life of “Lord of the Flies”; a book on the required reading list for middle-school age children, it scared the holy sh+t out of me during my 40s. The children required to read “Lord of the Flies” are now adults raising the generation of children who are killing one another, the highest killer of children according to statistics.
I received a news item on my cell phone announcing the death of Anita Bryant; the singer who became the top spokesperson for anti-LGBTQs which led my quirky mental process to Dan White’s killing of San Francisco’s Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. Like Trump’s protection from full prosecution for his criminal acts through decades, the warped legal system used the “Twinkie Defense” resulting in Dan White’s five year sentence for two murders which resulted in his early release. What will we see this morning in the “sentencing” of Trump by this Christian MAGA controlled legal system? A “Ketchup” based defense?
The “Christian MAGA” control of the federal government has made me both ashamed and afraid to admit to being a Christian.
“COVID, they insist, was a liberal assault on Christianity and the church. (One woman insisted that Dr. Fauci had “invented” it.) Masks and vaccines are a liberal plot.” The “Christian MAGAs” insult the deaths of the MILLIONS globally who died suffering from Covid-19; many in other countries buried in mass graves like the Jews and Hitler’s others chosen for his “Final Solution”.
We here in the United States and territories and any new “States” Trump acquires are facing the 21st Center Holocaust and are ill-equipped to fight it.
I keep reminding myself that every act of kindness and love now has ripples that move far into the future, and we cannot know what those acts will produce in time.
It is important to resist as much as we can now, even if it seems futile, keep your hands up and defend yourself so we can prepare for the next opportunity that will eventually come our way.
As to reading that book, that falls into the category of “know your enemy and know yourself”, to quote Sun Tzu.
I read Alberta’s book last year, right about the time the Republicans named Trump as their official candidate. I grew up in rural, conservative Christian Indiana and am deeply troubled by so many of my friends and family who seem to have abandoned the fundamental teachings of Christ for this hateful Christian Nationalism (especially the ones who voted for Trump THREE times). I am increasingly horrified by my state and country. Every day brings a new WTAF. Before the election I might have recommended Alberta’s book. Now there’s nothing I recall about the book that helps me feel better about any of what is happening all around me or understand more clearly what I can do about it.
Several deeply held religious beliefs are necessary to expose oneself to become MAGA. Christianity from the pulpit or TV. News from Fox. Rants by MTV (Musk, Trump, Vance. Corporatism from going to work.
These can affect both Human and Artificial Intelligence.
Humans learn by going to work, worrying about finances, and watching TV. AI large language models learn the same way humans do: by training. AI, of course, has a perfect memory of what it is trained from. Humans have limited memory to recall abilities, but it’s sufficient to motivate muscles that set thoughts into motion.
Vern and Laurie sum it up for me regarding our impact on evangelicals who believe that orange jesus is a gift from god. I mean, god saved him from multiple assassination plots and everything the liberal devils could throw at him. “Nobody can bring him down when cloaked in god’s protection!”
No, attempting to educate liberals is hard enough, let alone mess with Americans so far gone that they’re lost roaming in the desert and will be for a very long time. I’ve tried to enlighten the citizenry about the role of oligarchies in our country, including those controlling our community, and have been shunned. Years of propaganda and religion have conflated beliefs that god blesses billionaires. This belief afflicts both of the uni-party worshippers.
A big chunk of the democrats supported the Laken Riley immigrant bill floating around congress. The most grotesque asshole senator, John Fetterman (PA), whose wife was an undocumented immigrant, voted in favor of this outlandish bill to eviscerate the 14th Amendment. There is talk that even documented immigrants are in jeopardy of being detained indefinitely.
The most productive and profitable course of action to be taken would be to use what we know to manipulate MAGATs and christian nationalists’ ignorance with money-making schemes like the con artist preachers have been doing for years. I mean, five minutes with the followers of the evangelical faith makes my skin crawl. It’s why I carry a pistol when riding the back country roads in Indiana. My great-grandma from French Lick warned me about Southern Baptists when I was 18 years old. I’ve witnessed congregants of a local church turn out for a county executive meeting, and it scared the shit out of me. I texted one of the elected reps where these people came from, and he texted back they live in south Muncie.
Drop any belief or theory that you can communicate with these people. Let alone influence their beliefs. These are people with very closed minds. They’re not open to any material that doesn’t support their reality, which is well beyond sanity. From what I’ve read about and witnessed, many of this crowd are certifiably suffering from mental illness.
Let every person be in subjection to the superior authorities, for there is no authority except by God; the existing authorities stand placed in their relative positions by God. 2 Therefore, whoever opposes the authority has taken a stand against the arrangement of God; those who have taken a stand against it will bring judgment against themselves. 3 For those rulers are an object of fear, not to the good deed, but to the bad. Do you want to be free of fear of the authority? Keep doing good, and you will have praise from it; 4 for it is God’s minister to you for your good. But if you are doing what is bad, be in fear, for it is not without purpose that it bears the sword. It is God’s minister, an avenger to express wrath against the one practicing what is bad.
5 There is therefore compelling reason for you to be in subjection, not only on account of that wrath but also on account of your conscience. 6 That is why you are also paying taxes; for they are God’s public servants constantly serving this very purpose. 7 Render to all their dues: to the one who calls for the tax, the tax; to the one who calls for the tribute, the tribute; to the one who calls for fear, such fear; to the one who calls for honor, such honor.
8 Do not owe anything to anyone except to love one another; for whoever loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law.
(Romans 13: 1 – 8)
So obviously the idiot roiling against wearing masks, is going against his so-called Christian instructions. Respecting the superior authorities. If you look at the meanings of the words used in the Greek interlinear, it basically means, these officials are put in their relative positions, or allowed to be in those positions by God. Keeping order.
That’s why earlier in the Hebrew scriptures, Ecclesiastes 5:8, explain that those authorities or officials are being watched by one higher than them. And in other words, they will be judged on their actions by those higher in stature.
If he believes what he claims he believes, or she believes what she claims to believe, then complaining about regulations concerning public health, would fall into the category of being contrary to those authorities.
I assume the next White “Christian” Nationalist Evangelical rant will be that the tragic fires in Los Angeles are god’s punishment for a sinful, liberal, LGBTQ+ loving, godless movie-making, wealthy elites, while the truth is that it is aan enormous community of a mixture of regular folks pretty much just like anywhere else. The hypocrisy and utter stupidity of that movement is about as far away from the teachings of Christ as it could be.
Gil, if you watched TV yesterday, the right-wing excuses for the fires are:
Salmon, Indians, Immigrants, Liberals, Homeless people, God, Jews, etc.
There was no mention of Santa Ana winds coupled with arid conditions caused by climate change. Oh, and arsonists.
We’re adding daily to the body of human knowledge about how brains are wired. Of course, animals’ brains grow from DNA and are wired approximately the same way, including my Shih Tzu, Gracie, and I.
Let’s consider the world from her and my perspective.
She’s a late sleeper, and so is my wife. I suffer/benefit from an overactive brain, so I’m an early riser.
Gracie eats one meal a day in the late afternoon, so she isn’t motivated by hunger until then. But after she finally wakes up, she eventually has to pee, so she stares at me, begs, and goes to the door. This motivates me to take her for a leash-less neighborhood walk during which she does her business in select places, and that inspires me to pick up after her.
Soon enough (depending on weather) she leads me to a neighbors house front porch and a push their doorbell (it’s hard for her to reach that high) and when he or she answers, Gracie does her highly rewarded trick and treat routine after which we’re done for the day so we return to home across the cul-de-sac.
Several deeply held religious beliefs are necessary to expose oneself to become MAGA. Christianity from the pulpit or TV. News from Fox. Rants by MTV (Musk, Trump, Vance. Corporatism from going to work.
These can affect both Human and Artificial Intelligence.
Humans learn by going to work, worrying about finances, and watching TV. AI large language models learn the same way humans do: by training in the symbols of English. AI, of course, has a perfect memory of what it is trained from. Humans have limited memory to recall abilities, but it’s sufficient to motivate muscles that set thoughts into motion.
We all live in our heads pursuing opportunities and avoiding or dealing with threats.
I don’t get it either and that’s why Tim Alberta’s book is on my nightstand to read next. I used to worship with many of these people and simply don’t understand how they could have strayed from the teachings of Jesus. There’s another Micah who offers more clear direction – the Old Testament profit. Micah 6:8 (NIV):
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly[a] with your God.
Justice, mercy and humility are surely missing from the MAGA movement, which is the antithesis of everything Jesus teaches.
Vernon says it for me, too. I am too often reminded of the imbecility of insistently ignorant, stupid fellow humans as it is, and reading the book would probably only cause nightmares, but thanks for the suggestion.
Our brains are wired to make connections between events and possible causes, but the wiring has been compromised by fairy tale stories and the rejection of the value of empirical evidence to support conclusions. I won’t even call them Luddites, but their version of evidence is “Hey, if it feels good that’s evidence enough.”
This week at President Carter’s funeral we watched Donny Boy appearing to be very much alone staring at the floor. The eulogies for the President consistently spoke to his character, integrity and outcomes of his time in office as Govenor, President and his life after official public service.
Today, Judge Merchan will deliver another enduring ‘eulogy’ that will become President-Elect Trump’s legacy. Oh! Donny Boy. So you selected JD because he can write to wax eloquently your eulogy?
First of all, read everything and anything Tim Alberta publishes. He is second only to Ron Brownstein. Secondly, his book was the best politics book of 2024.
Look at it this way. In 2,000 years of privilege, privilege becomes the expectation somewhere along the line. It’s possible for anyone who is a member of the privileged group to find it difficult to accept that they are indeed privileged and to give credence to the thought that others deserve to have that privilege as well.
Affirmative Action was designed to reduce the privilege and make the playing fields more even. Since the privileged don’t see themselves as “different” they don’t understand why any of these DEI rules aren’t discrimination against them. All of those jobs that have been handed to them on a silver platter were earned fair and square. Let me give you just one example. When Charlie Koch announced that his son was taking a high ranking position in Koch Industries he said that he was even more proud of the fact that the boy had worked to earn it! I’ll be the first to admit it must be difficult to have a father like Charlie, who would cheat his own brother out of a full share of the inheritance, but really, earned it?
I thank God that not all white men have succumbed to that view. The men who comment here are proof of that.
No. I have more than enough proof already. Not wasting my time, money or energy on non-Christian idiocy.
The more of these people who reject vaccinations for the Covid virus (and any other contagious disease), the better. Natural Selection will winnow them out.
I don’t know how surprising it all is, given the biblical history of pharisees and sadducees and their behavior as detailed in their religion’s basic holy book. I mean… I know none of them read their holy book, but it’s pretty fun the way they behave EXACTLY like the people who hated Jesus and were the specific villains of the bible. Trump is their Barabbas and they want him free.
Tim Albert’s book is an excellent commentary on the faulty pathway of evangelical leadership.
One correction: Alberta’s father was not a Southern Baptist pastor…he was a pastor of an Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
I agree with Dirk, linking back to New Testament scripture “Trump is their Barabbas and they want him free”. In that scripture they were a rowdy crowd that rejected the teachings of Christ and took up the mission of the corrupt Pharisees that smeared Jesus.
The purpose of our stories may be to help put reality into perspective and learn from cautionary tales from the past. Maga Christians to me are the angry, aggressive crowd, who have a scale of worthiness hierarchy of which they manage. They have trouble accepting the equality ideas of democracy. Their self-righteous surety and judgmental attitude feed the cohesiveness and momentum of their movement. It’s a bandwagon that a lot of Americans want to stay off of and keep at bay.
I know for a fact that “religion” can really mess with people’s heads and some people can become addicted. When people are going through a crisis, they are often looking for answers, and sometimes they might turn to a religion for comfort just like they could turn to cigarettes, alcohol, illegal drugs, stealing, or sexual relationships. And when people know you have an addiction to something that can put them in a position to exploit or take advantage of you. To help myself, I often remind myself that my relationship with god is a private one. I don’t need other people to inject themselves into my “discussions” with god and tell me what he thinks or what I should do etc.
So I guess what I’m trying to say…. is that a lot of people in America right now might be feeling their life is in a state of “Crisis” and are seeking comfort. There has to be something comforting they are finding in Christian Nationalism, Evangelicism,Trump ,and Elon Musk etc.
What it is I don’t know because none of it appeals to me. My guess is that they see Trump as a successful businessman? As they have stated themselves… and that they want to be rich and “powerful” like Elon Musk?
Prediction: Trump’s mouth continues to have the potential to hoist him with his own petard.
So, Alberta didn’t see this within his own chosen religion? Now, I will fully admit that I have a problem with modern day Evangelical’s and put Southern Baptists in that basket, for at least 25 years. Shoot! My grandpa was a minister with the UCC, he started with the German Evangelical reform church which eventually merged with several others under the UCC banner. Many asked my grandfather if he was upset because his daughter (my mother) was marrying a Catholic and he said ‘no’. He just didn’t want her to marry a Southern Baptist because he thought they were crazy, and this was back in 1966.
They are responsible for Trump–I do not see Trump bringing forth our current situation; he is the result of the Evangelicals/Non-denomination/Southern Baptists hate for the ‘others’. The Joel Olsteen’s; Joyce Mayer’s, Hillsong Worship, they all feel that they are better than the rest of us and that they are the path to righteousness which they determine what that is—they are Christian Nationalists, and they have been gaining their power for decades.
That is why it was huge when Jimmy Carter left the Southern Baptist’s denomination back in the early 2000’s. He saw what they were becoming, and it wasn’t good.
The human brain starts out as an amorphous jumble of neurons. Over 9 months it develops the neural circuitry to operate the “involuntary” body functions (the heart beating, etc.). Once we are born, the development of the “voluntary” neural circuits begins and all of those circuits are wired by repetition; i.e. things like walking, eating, etc. The least visible of these is that of “thinking,” which depends on the “facts” that get imprinted on the brain (do you see the danger of “alternative facts?”). Does anybody remember the case of Pavlov’s dogs?
Pavlov’s theory is the entire basis of athletic training, and of the “Big Lie” in politics. Repeat the stimulus often enough and it becomes an imprinted response in the brain. The fallacy of our society is in allowing the unlimited dissemination of “alternative facts” to the general population and expecting to get “real fact” based results when people are asked to make consequential decisions; like elections of their leaders.
Vernon, once again, as I often do, I agree with every word in your comment today.
SICK & SAD. solution? anti All POLITICAL parties.
Worry there are so few places to get nonpartisan information.
I was a member of that evangelical movement of the mid-70s. A former drug addict turned Baptist preacher by the age of 23 came to our high school. He was born again! He was saved by Jesus and look at him now! He’s not losing his teeth, wearing dirty clothes or have matted hair from passing out somewhere. He was beautiful! Handsome too. I watched the spectacle and joined just to see what happens in those groups.
Pedos galore, fake praise god sessions, speaking in tongues, the biting gossip toward one another…and these were the adults! A few months of that and I never returned. Those people used religion as their social network long before Facebook. They judged you by your appearance, your “class” or caste, and if your family had money.
The phoniest people I’ve ever met. Not all of them. There was always one or two that were sincere good people actually living like Jesus asked us to.
Maga folks are the phony ones. The cultists. Their rules or the highway. Bigots all. Not afraid to pull a gun on you. Lives in Fear, constantly. The ones that carry ar15s in to a coffee shop or grocery store. Loose cannons actually. Don’t trust them, ever. Stay far away from those people.
Steve Bannon basically admitted that part of their strategy was to “Flood the media with sh*t”. So basically, all of those “alternative facts” or falsehoods have been finding their way into media. An example of how this works is quotes. Some person finds a quote that they like and posts it without checking the context into what was said or who said it. Therefore, you get all this “sh*t” across the internet where people copy the quote with the wrong context and the wrong author.
Not only is that a problem but the use of Artificial Intelligence is now going to fool everyday people as well. How the makers of Ai didn’t understand that would be a problem is beyond my understanding. The lack of concern astounds me. Speaking of weird stuff, why aren’t we hearing more about the UFO’s, Drones, flying over New Jersey? What the hell happened with all of that? Are they even real? Honestly, there is so much “strange” stuff going on I can’t keep up with all the garbage.
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