Gay folks came out of the closet several years ago. These days, it’s “Christian” Nationalism that is emerging, “out and proud.” A number of “Christian” congregations (note quotation marks) have decided to ignore that “woke” stuff in the Sermon on the Mount–not to mention biblical admonitions about widows, orphans and strangers–and have chosen to refashion religion as political ideology.
I’ve previously written about the book published in 2023 by Tim Alberta, titled “The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory,” in which Alberta–himself a very devout Evangelical–shared his horrified observations of that transformation, and the thousands of Evangelical churches that have essentially jettisoned theology for the political ideology of the MAGA movement.
Here in my city of Indianapolis, just a couple of weeks ago, the Sure Foundation Baptist Church recently advocated for the death penalty for LGBTQ+ individuals. The pastor, Stephen Falco, suggested they should kill themselves. (He made these remarks during a “Men’s Preaching Night,” and his “sermon” was streamed online.)
Talking Points Memo recently reported on an Idaho church that has moved to Washington, D.C., where it “ministers” to MAGA movers and shakers like Pete Hegseth and assorted Republican operatives. Pastor Jared Longshore opened the initial service by declaring that “The option before you is quite plain. It is Christ or chaos, Christ or destruction.”
According to the reporter who wrote the piece, the church in D.C. is part of a growing, international network of churches that someone named Doug Wilson founded. It is called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).
I attended what the CREC called the “planting” of a D.C. church on Sunday after spending months growing increasingly fascinated with Wilson and his influence on the New Rightthat is ascendant in Trump’s Washington. America is full of people with big, apocalyptic visions and hardline views on how the country can redeem itself. But Wilson is a rare bird: along with the CREC, he’s built a small, theocratic empire in Moscow, Idaho, far away from D.C. And yet, through his own sermons, those of affiliated pastors like Longshore, and a publishing house, Christ Kirk (also known as Christ Church) has managed to bridge the geographic divide and gain a following among right-wingers across the country. It’s spawned what some call the “Moscow Mood” — a postmillennialist view that the Christian right should employ a new level of aggression in fighting to dominate the culture, and use the government to enact policies in accordance with its religious teachings…
Planting a church in the nation’s Capitol follows naturally from the organization’s vision: just as a member must incorporate their religious belief into every aspect of their personal life, so too must they fight for the group’s favored ideas in politics and culture: banning homosexuality, embracing more patriarchal family structures, ending abortion, and removing female soldiers from combat roles. In a phone interview after the sermon, Longshore told TPM that he wants a Christian government in the most direct sense: all government officials must “acknowledge that Christ is Lord and then actually listen to what he is telling them to do.” That would include the need to “execute the wrath of God against the wrongdoer,” he said.
Members of this church–like so many of those described by Alberta– are self-described “warriors” of the Christian right. They believe they are fighting a war against modern America. Those members see themselves, as the author of the report notes, as “underdogs, besieged on all sides by a secularism that’s violent and bent on destroying the remnants of a Christian America that they’re trying to revive.” That victimization mentality has persisted, even while the influence of the Christian right as grown. (The author lists the end of Roe, the hard-right, Christian SCOTUS majority, and rising church attendance among young men.) They believe they exist within what Longshore, in his sermon, described as “a lapsed nation, a fallen nation, a nation that was Christian to the core, nearly to a man when it was founded.” (Accurate history wasn’t his strong suit.)
In a conversation after the sermon, Longshore told TPM’s reporter that the problem he sees is the “emphasis on democracy.” Democracy, he said, leads to falsity: people start “trusting the mind of man to determine how things should go,” while “ultimately God is the one who has spoken.”
And of course, we know who speaks for God…
When I encounter “religious” people so devoid of anything remotely resembling loving-kindness or humility, I always think of that quote by Anne Lamott: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
A few people are willing to die to save others. We call them heroes. Far more are willing to kill to save themselves. We call that self defense. Then there are those who are willing to kill for their religion. We know them as terrorists. Unfortunately, any religion can spawn terrorism. The people we call Christian Nationalists should be called what they really are. Christian Terrorists.
The Lamott quote is on the money. I am trying to remember something Lincoln said about not hoping God was on our side, but that we were on God’s side.
It has always seemed to me that God doesn’t need Mr. Wilson to enact His wrath. Likewise, it’s not much of a religious faith, if you need the government to fill pews.
In the last two days, I heard a comment about this category of Christians that they were also the same who screamed against Sharia law being imported into America.
Thanks for your post, thanks for all of them. You are sanity in Indiana.
They invoke the name of Christ, they hijack the term Christian, i.e Christ’s followers, They have no idea of where to find any scripture to support their beliefs. Because their beliefs are not Christian.
They need fanatical acolytes, and what better way to find fanatics, is in these Evangelical churches. It’s the same in Judaism, and it’s also the same in Islam. Those who have slid into fanaticism, and willing to ignore what they supposedly hold sacred. This has been talked about and predicted over the millennia.
I talked to an extremely well-known surgeon the other day, he’s from the Middle East, Lebanon! And he basically said the same exact thing. What they consider Christianity over there, is not really Christian. He also said that Islam is phony, because Muhammad never wrote the Quran, he was just a dupe. So all of the civil conflict between the Shia and the Sunni are just made up for some power grab. He mentioned Judaism which he said is loaded with hypocrisy and so much regalia, that has been ensconced in various iterations of the faith, that it has no resemblance to the Mosaic law.
He said you can’t have faith, without truth. And that a bird cannot soar without having two wings. Just like a man cannot soar to righteousness, without encompassing the entirety of the law, whether it be Jewish, or Muslim, for Christian!
None of these religions actually passes the truth test, Let alone faithfulness to the true laws.
There will be a time of reckoning, and it will not be pleasant for anyone. And the longer it takes the whiplash to take place, the more intense and fearful the conflict is going to become.
The complete ignoring of the beginnings of this insanity could have stopped everything in its tracks. And yet, humanity puts its faith and trust in those politicians who were fiddling as the entirety of civilization was on the verge of self-immolation!
I’m going to use the topic today to speak out on an issue that has eaten at me for a number of years; the ridiculing of all LGBTQ+ was a frequent issue on the Emmy winning sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond”. All too frequent insults and ridicule by Peter Boyle who played Raymond’s father and continued by other family members, specifically the insults and ridicules the writers, via “Frank”, were aimed at one of the small twin boys on the program. They were only toddlers when it began. It angered me every time it happened and a few years after the sitcom ended, but reruns still running, one of those boys at age 19 committed suicide after being bullied as being gay became more than he could live with. It doesn’t matter, was he or wasn’t he?, what matters is the writers made it a running “gag” on the program which ended in the tragic loss of the life of a talented young man who could no longer live with being the butt of sick jokes in his career and in his life.
Our government has latched onto this issue to destroy lives and careers of law abiding, hard working American citizens who just want to live their lives with those they love. Our government has chosen to put a convicted felon and known rapist, now in the middle of a global teenage girl sex trafficking issue, as their president whose “christian” duty is to deny them their rights and/or their lives as a political issue in what has become a billionaire, personally owned nation of homophobes, racists and antisemites.
As Sharon so aptly stated, “The people we call Christian Nationalists should be called what they really are. Christian Terrorists.The people we call Christian Nationalists should be called what they really are. Christian Terrorists.”
Samuel,
Absolutely, men have carved God’s for themselves out of wood, from the same exact piece of wood that they use to start their fires to cook their food. They somehow believe that this form of idolatry will hear their prayers and direct their steps.
“Wicked men and impostors will advance from bad to worse, misleading and being misled.” (2nd Timothy. 3:13)
John Sorg: There can’t be any truth in religion since there is NO proof whatsoever that a diety exists. It’s all man-made and, as we know all too well, humans are deeply flawed to the point of ignoring what allows them to survive. See RFK, Jr. for proof of this.
Humans have used religion to control others, aka, followers. Humans have abused those fantasized dieties for the sake of power, greed and humiliation/torture.
Why, then, do so many humans become radicalized by religion to the point of defying the tenets of their religion in the first place.
Religion keeps coming to the rescue of sanity, and with all the religious wars that are killing thousands every week, it seems to me that humans will make themselves extinct due to the radicalization of an imagined entity. What a delicious irony.
Extremism is a pandemic disease that visits our species frequently.
As a questioning child, I was led frequently to sing “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war,” and thought, What is that about? The answer I got was that it referred to the Crusades. OK.
Today, I will follow up on what the Crusades were about. The correct answer would be religious hate.
I might mention Bibi as an example.
If I pondered a little, I might move towards the big picture and conclude it is extremism.
Bingo.
As Vernon points out, it is all myth, what I have often called “fairy tales.” Humans create a god-thing to help explain what seems, otherwise, unexplainable. “Why did the volcano blow its top, and kill with lava flows? Oh, there must be a reason having to do with us,” our understandably anthropomorphic egos say. So, it follows, “It must be the god of the volcano…oh damn, let’s give him some virgins, that ought to calm him down.”
It may be that the fact that our brains are so nimble, “able to leap all buildings at a single bound,” and solve the riddle of DNA, for one thing, also allows us unfettered imaginations, in which one, two, or hundreds of gods, and unicorns, can exist, may well be our ironic downfall.
Patriarchy- including increasing numbers of younger men. Women have supported it in smaller numbers.
Christian Supremacy goes nicely with the Genocide in the Middle East.
Resistance requires Love not Hate, Calling in- Organizing Now! Christians see Jonathan Kuttab – Sabeel and others, Coalition Building among faiths and religious non-believers.
VT, you have a good point, which could become sharper by ending it; no evidence exists either way.
Faith is about dreaming of better. Some have faith in their god. OK.
Others have faith in evidence to support their beliefs, and I am one of them.
There is room for everyone under the umbrella; evidence moves us towards certainty, but faith is a necessary aspect of life.
Peace.
My roommate and I were discussing her beliefs. She is an African American, who is evangelical. Unlike the white Christians, she doesn’t buy the right wing’s emphasis on making everyone follow a strict Biblical law. She does, however be!I’ve that only those few sho truly follow Jesus make it to heaven.
She is rightly upset that white Christian nationalism seems to have hijacked Jesus.. We both feel that the churches need to be more out spoken about what’s happening in our country today. Sharon said it first and I agree wholeheartedly. They are indeed White. Christian Terrorists.
If one believes that only those who follow a strict Biblical law will go to heaven, how easy then to believe that you do not have to respect the existence of those who do not believe? Ah, the basis of intolerance and hate.
“Give orders to those who are rich in the present system of things not to be high-minded, and to rest their hope, not on uncertain riches, but on God, who furnishes us all things richly for our enjoyment; to work at good, to be rich in fine works, to be liberal, ready to share, safely treasuring up for themselves a fine foundation for the future, in order that they may get a firm hold on the real life.” (1st Timothy 6:17-19)
It sounds kind of woke doesn’t it?
When it comes to religion I usually have too many questions that cannot be answered or explained. In fact, my own struggle to understand religion has led me to be hospitalized twice in a stress center or mental ward. During those horrible times in my life I found other people in the ward struggling with religion themselves. One lady prayed obsessively over her and my own food. Another lady was reading intensely into her Bible. One young man wandered around the ward with a cross around his neck and his hair styled like Jesus in a hospital gown. Luckily my visits to these places with these people made me realize that religion can make people ill and I have no desire to be ill. Either that or their illness made them latch on to religion in a potentially unhealthy way.
I will say that the longer I live the more I believe that its people/human beings who cause suffering not god or gods. What you believe in your mind,body,and soul to be true or untrue is very powerful
I imagine the “manosphere” and “incels” would be drawn to these churches. They may even be actively recruited by them. As a person who thinks all humans deserve the same rights and consideration, it makes me physically ill to contemplate.
The proponents of Christianity want a Taliban in the US and they seem to be getting pretty close. I’m a devout atheist and I never bought in to the myth of god; I prefer to try to make choices and decisions on facts, not on what a mythical figure might think of me. Regarding the floods in Texas, I ask is that god’s will? Should we accept her judgement and do nothing to prevent a repeat? Won’t god allegedly protect those that believe even without emergency preparedness? Is the American Taliban talking about the fate of the flood victims as god’s wrath? The lesson is you take a human with a functioning brain and expect them to believe that any tragedy that could have been prevented with planning was god’s will and not human error or failure.
If there were a god, wouldn’t he/she be punishing almost everyone in the Trump and Netanyahu administrations for their treatment of their fellow humans? The argument that we need more religion just continues to undermine itself – at least is does to this observer.
The vitriol, us-them thinking and scary prayers about violent ends have been click-bait since well before the invention of the mouse. Congregations are built on the backs of people these predators choose to gang up on—we all know there’s virtually nothing in the Bible which supports ostracism and hatred. As Americans—and especially as Hoosiers—all of us need be mindful of what the next generation needs to strengthen our God-given rights. Those who have never been in the battle need to suit up. Those of us who thought our rights settled need to vent our disgust and prepare for the worst. It is here; the public square has become a space in which violence for “the cause” is expected.
Fight back when you can, however you can. When the scapegoating gets this severe, we must be vigilant & smart. And never take safety for granted. Learning to handle our minority status comes with the territory; be sure you and those around you know how to defend yourselves. Survival matters! This will pass.
The vitriol, us-them thinking and scary prayers about violent ends have been click-bait since well before the invention of the mouse. Congregations are built on the backs of people these predators choose to gang up on—we all know there’s virtually nothing in the Bible which supports ostracism and hatred. As Americans—and especially as Hoosiers—all of us need be mindful of what the next generation needs to strengthen our God-given rights. Those who have never been in the battle need to make think about suiting up; and ye call has been made. Those of us who thought our rights settled need to vent our disgust and prepare for the worst. It is here; the public square has become a space in which violence for “the cause” is expected.
Fight back when you can, however you can. When the scapegoating gets this severe, we must be vigilant & smart. And never take safety for granted. Learning to handle our minority status comes with the territory; be sure you and those around you know how to defend yourselves. Survival matters! The quest for End Tines will pass but not without victims
Please make this correction: Those who have never been in the battle need to think about suiting up