The church in St Paul where protestors interrupted a service last week because one of their pastors is acting director of the local ICE office is playing the persecution card (quelle suprise!) but it turns out one of their OTHER pastors also teaches that empathy is sinful, particularly if it comes from women, where it becomes “toxic compassion”:
Salon has this dialed correctly, they SHOULD be shamed.
The NRA and the GOA have both come out pushing back for a full investigation into the Alex Pretti killing in MN…as if Pam Bondi’s DOJ actually grasps that concept…
NRA and other US gun activists push back at Trump officials over Minneapolis shooting - BBC
I loved the quote from Ice Barbie, “They responded according to their training, and took action to defend the officer’s life and those of the public around him. And, I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.”
Two questions come to mind.
1.) What training?
2.) Where the fuck were you on January 6th, 2021.
3). So then put Kyle Rittenhouse in jail already.
One reason this plays so well is that their Christian Nationalist base has been taught to NEVER EVER discomfit or “disrespect” authority, which, even when it is “imperfect” is constituted and ordained by God Himself. They pearl clutch at the notion of being “confrontational” by speaking truth to power because if you do that with ol’ Jehovha, he’ll smite you.
Unless you do it at Jehovah’s alleged direction, such as to heckle godless homosexuals or atheists [sigh]. But at least that’s consistent in that they’ll only heckle those who are without power. Because the corrolary to “all authorities are God-given” is that “all non-authorities are God-rejected”. Which is just another form of “might makes right”.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire
This evangelical pastor kind of captures my sense of urgency about what we are in for from Christo-fascism if we allow it. I was never a pastor, but I was on the inside enough to know he’s right about how toxic and vile they have become and how fully they have dropped the evangel and replaced it with bigotry, cruelty, fear and hate.
Personally I think this guy should exit the evangelical world altogether but he probably represents a “moderate evangelical” POV. The kind of evangelical that would bristle at being called a fundamentalist, not realizing that the seeds of fundamentalism spring from the essentially authoritarian mindset of evangelicalism. Still – he’s not wrong about the danger.
I agree with him in substance.
In execution, holy wars tend to be failures in the long term. Short term gains and massive destruction are the probable outcome. See Crusades for historical citation…
Why not ask a Christian Nationalist if they understand why God tore the temple curtain in half, from heaven down to Earth?
I’d bet good money that most of them don’t even know about this, despite it being in three gospels.
And if they do know of it, they don’t understand why God did it.
And if they do understand why God did it, they don’t understand what it means for Christianity.
And in the unlikely event that they do understand all of the above, then they won’t agree with it.
Because Christian Nationalism isn’t Biblical Christianity.
It’s Old Testament Judaism masquerading as Christianity.
Or just see whats happening in Iran, Israel and Yemen…
I think it manages to cherry-pick even from that.
Fortunately OT Judaism <> modern Judaism, at least not the dominant Reform Judaism. I know a conservative Jew who is nevertheless politically left-leaning on everything but the Palestinian issue.
Even ultra-orthodox Jews aren’t out to destroy the “goyim” and establish a theocracy. In fact they are surprisingly respectful in most cases from what I’ve seen. Perhaps less a product of their ideology than of their extreme minority status and need to survive, IDK.
At any rate every Jew I have heard talk about Christian fundamentalists considers them utterly clueless cosplayers when it comes to Judaism. They’ve invented a mashup of surface Christianity and ancient Judaism that bears little relationship to how Jews understand their faith.
Don’t they already have a theocracy?
Not exactly. On paper, Israel is a democratic state with no official religion. It doesn’t have a religious head of state and laws are passed through a parliament.
Jewish influence is certainly prevalent and a force to be pandered to…but I would argue no worse that the United States and Christianity.
A case could be made for theist nationalism, though.
When the property/citizenship laws are determined by your religion, it is a theocracy imo.
It does however officially describe itself as a democratic AND Jewish state.
The government of Israel is secular and democratic. Zionism was even originally a secular movement, though it has devolved into something dominated by militant religious conservatives. Not unlike the US really where the religious right has embraced various wedge issues and claimed them as God’s opinion on those topics. They beat the drum for religious values but don’t actually embrace them. The religious are just useful fools to the power elites.
In any case the only non-Jews the secular state of Israel wants to eradicate are the Palistinians and other Arabs that threaten, or that they feel threaten, Israel’s “right to exist” as they like to put it. And a lot of that emphasis has to do with their leader at the moment being as much of a fascist as ours.
Fundamentalist Christians would consider Israel to be a theocracy when the Jewish temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem and the temple sacrifice system is re-instituted. Technically they would also need a king rather than a president, one endorsed by the priesthood.
Then why can’t a Jew and a Muslim couple get legally married there?
The state recognizes whatever the celebrant’s faith community recognizes, as legitimate marriage. So it will recognize a marriage officiated by, say, a Muslim or Christian cleric. The problem isn’t that interfaith marriages are illegal but that the Rabiniate in-country refuses to solemnize a Jewish marriage if both partners aren’t Jewish (or at least Jewish converts). For this reason many interfaith couples marry in a Jewish community outside of Israel, and then the state of Israel will recognize that marriage.
Sounds like… a theocracy.
They don’t claim god runs the country through his chosen king.
They just follow the old Ottoman system of marriage rules. The British didn’t bother to change that when they were in charge, and the system persists to this day.
Yeah, sounds like a theocracy.
It is a place where members of certain religions have additional formal legal rights. That isn’t a democracy in my book; it is kind of the opposite. Sure Christians get away with a lot where I live, but their advantages are not written into the laws.