Breaking the Republican Lock on God

For years now the Republican Party has claimed to be the party of god and god-fearing Christians - even though its policies over the last 20 years are diametrically opposed to Christ's social gospel message: feed the hungry, cloth the naked, give shelter to the homeless, care for the sick. The GOP instead wants to throw the poor in the gutter and to hope that the sick will conveniently die despite constant disingenuous statements of "thoughts and prayers" when it is social programs that are what is really needed.  Swarming to the GOP banner have been the evangelical Christian and far right Catholic crowd seemingly motivated solely by anti-abortion fervor and anti-gay hatred and a willingness to close their eyes to the anti-gospel agenda of the Republican Party.  Best representing this false Christianity are Mike Pence and "mother" his bigoted wife and, of course, the loud professional Christian set that rarely focuses on the issues Christ talked about and instead amasses personal wealth and strives for political power. This hypocrisy and anti-Christian behavior is now being repeatedly called out by unlikely sources: a gay Christian and a black woman in the persons of Pete Buttigieg and Stacy Abrams.  I left the GOP years ago when I concluded that one could not be a decent, moral person and remain a supporter of the GOP.  That belief has only intensified with Trump in the White House.  Whether one calls them-self a Christian or not - I typically do not since evangelicals have so sullied the label -  if you believe in the social gospel message, you cannot support the today's GOP.  A column in the New York Times looks at this much needed call for decent people to challenge the GOP and strip it of its claim to be the party of god.  Here are highlights:

We know that slaveholders in the American South used Scripture to justify keeping their fellow humans in bondage. They could find no words from Christ on this, for there are no words from him. Just a line in the New Testament from mere mortals presuming to speak for him.

But perhaps it made those who tore apart families, who whipped insubordinates until they passed out, who sold children and cotton bales as similar commodities feel better to know that the monstrous crime of their daily enterprise could be a blessed act.

These days, no less an authority than Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said recently that God “wanted Donald Trump to become president.”  She offered no sourcing for this assertion, as is the case for vaporous claims that rise from the rot of the Trump presidency on a daily basis.

Mocking Sanders and the many Ned Flanders of the G.O.P. team is unlikely to make much of a dent. Nearly half of all Republicans believe God wanted Trump to win the election. To them, secular snark is a merit badge on the MAGA hat.

But there is a better way to sway the electorate of faith, as the rising Democratic stars Pete Buttigieg and Stacey Abrams have shown us. They apply something like a “What Would Jesus Do?” test to rouse religious conscience on the political battlefield.

Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., is a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, a Rhodes scholar, married to a junior high school teacher. He’s gay and, more surprising for a modern Democrat, he is an out Christian, as quick to quote St. Augustine as Abraham Lincoln.

Like Abrams and Senator Cory Booker, Mayor Pete says his faith made him a progressive. Scripture directs him to defend the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the societal castoffs.

But Buttigieg goes much further than mere Bible-citing. He’s taking it directly to Trump and to Vice President Mike Pence, who flashes his piety like a seven-carat diamond on his pinkie finger. It’s hard to look at the actions of President Trump, Buttigieg said, “and believe they are the actions of somebody who believes in God.”

The mayor calls Pence the “cheerleader of the porn star presidency,” and he wonders whether the vice president “stopped believing in Scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump.”

Buttigieg’s marriage to Chasten Glezman “moved me closer to God,” he said in a speech last Sunday. To the “Mike Pences of the world,” he said, “your quarrel is not with me — your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”

Abrams, who narrowly lost her race for governor of Georgia last year, also uses faith, part of a long African-American tradition, to marshal Christian principles against the repulsive acts of man. The daughter of two Methodist preachers, she said in one of her television ads, “My reading of the Bible says that Jesus Christ was a progressive.”

[W]hen a president is held up by his own spokeswoman as an extension of divine will, and that president is embraced by the evangelical community as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, it’s fine to use the source material to fight back.

The best Christian argument against Trump comes from Christ. The essence of Christianity is his exhortation that people treat the sick, the hungry, the poor, the imprisoned as they would treat him. “Whatever you did to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.”

No one can know what’s in Trump’s heart. But his policies are inhumane in the extreme. Cursed are the meek, for under Trump’s command, children have been put in cages, and the poor in red states are denied the health care that should be available to them under Obamacare.

Trump is all about self. His bigotry, his boasting, his lies, his pride, his scams of the vulnerable, his worship of materialism, his insults of the dead, his turning a blind eye to refugees, his bragging of adulterous behavior, his treatment of “the least” among us — all of this is antithetical to Christian philosophy.

Buttigieg is right to call him on this. He’s right to attack Pence’s hypocrisy. But the moral high ground is a fragile perch, best visited on rare occasions. He’s thrown down a needed challenge. Now let Trump and Pence try to prove him wrong.

In what many of the "godly folk" would find ironic, most of the LGBT people I know are far more Christian - meaning they support Christ's social gospel message - than the evangelical crowd.  The vast majority of us oppose Trump and the GOP and we support the very social safety net that the GOP seeks to destroy.   Calling oneself Christian and parking your ass in a pew each Sunday doesn't prove one is Christian.  Rather it is how one approaches supporting feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless, caring for the sick and caring for refugees. The Pences of the world utterly fail this test.

Why White Evangelical Christianity is in Big Trouble

Roy Moore's home church.

White evangelical Christians have become the mainstay of the Republican Party and the toxic Trump/Pence regime even as the GOP controlled Congress and Trump/Pence both engage in behavior and push policies that are the antithesis of the Gospel message and Christs teachings on the treatment of the poor, the sick, the homeless and the hungry.  As posts on this blog and numerous op-ed columns have noted, the consequence is the killing of the Christian brand as evangelicals give the faith reputation for hypocrisy, selfishness and a hatred of others.  As evangelicals cheered the GOP's passage of a bill that will lavish millions in tax cuts on the obscenely wealthy, including Der Trumpenführer, the failure of the GOP to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program, now leaves health care access for 9 million children in doubt.  A piece in the Washington Post sums the situation up as follows: 

Congress appears unlikely this week to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which has become a crucial element in broader negotiations over how to fund the government.

For the Smiths, who are Republicans, the congressional stalemate over the $15.6 billion program is bigger than a question how to pay. It is also a question of who — or what — to believe.

Over the course of the year, their faith in the GOP-led Congress has eroded. Their general disenchantment became more pronounced when lawmakers, including even their home-state senator, Orrin G. Hatch, an architect of the CHIP program, failed to secure the funding.

The tangible effects of that inaction reverberated from the Smiths’ home to doctors’ offices and statehouses across the country. Nine million children use CHIP to help lower their medical costs.

Federal funding for CHIP stopped flowing on Sept. 30. A report put out by the Kaiser Family Foundation published on Wednesday noted that states are running out of money faster than anticipated. Half will have no money for the program by January’s end if nothing is done.

Nearly 2 million children would lose insurance by the end of January, according to the Georgetown Health Policy Institute. 

Seemingly, aiding sick children is not a priority with evangelicals who place a higher priority on a license to discriminate against others than following Christ's dictates.  As an op-ed in the Washington Post notes, if Christianity is dying in America, it is thanks to white evangelicals.  Here are column highlights:

It’s that time of year again, when we hear about the profanity of “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and about Starbucks’ covert “war on Christmas,” run through their seasonal coffee cups. . . . . This year, however, it’s increasingly difficult not to notice that the main threat to Christianity in America comes from American Christians themselves.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard a case from a baker who argued his Christian convictions led him to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Last week, we witnessed the spectacle of white Christians in Alabama who convinced themselves either that the man they hoped to elect as their senator was not so creepy around young girls as to get himself banned from a mall (fact check: he was), or that the behavior that got him banned is actually biblical in character, and therefore okay (exegesis check: it isn’t). In the end, 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Moore.

When we’ve reached a place where good Christian folk think it’s a matter of major theological principle not to sell pastries to gay people but are willing to give pedophiles a pass, I think it’s safe to say that American Christianity today — white American Christianity in particular — is in a pretty sorry state.

We’re remarkably ignorant of the history and the current state of the world we inhabit, and no better with scientificknowledge either. We don’t believe the media, but we’ll believe the most incredible Twitter rumor or Facebook post, curated for us by Vladimir Putin. We are surprisingly ignorant about religion, not only other people’s, but even our own.

White evangelical Christians like guns, for example, and do not especially like immigrants. Compared to other demographics, we’re excited about the death penalty, indifferent to those who are impoverished or infirm, and blind to racial and gender inequalities. We claim to read the Bible and hear Jesus’ teachings, but we think poor people deserve what they (don’t) get, and the inmates of our prisons deserve, if anything, worse than the horrors they already receive. For believers in a religion whose Scriptures teach compassion, we’re a breathtakingly cruel bunch.

Indeed it’s hard to know who we do feel pity toward, except ourselves — for we believe that we are the real victims in today’s world. 

The tyranny of fear in white Christian life is especially visible among white evangelicals, who stand out in their opposition to pluralism in America. While all other religious groups, like Americans overall, oppose letting small business owners refuse to serve gay and lesbian people — by margins of roughly two to one — white evangelicals, by 56 percent to 39 percent, say shopkeepers should be allowed to so discriminate. 

Ironically, it may well be that it is Christians’ fears about losing control of the culture that have accelerated the rise of secularism itself. (This has been an open secret in the sociology of religion for almost two decades.) Consider the rise of the “Nones” in American public life — those adults, especially younger adults, who when asked about their religious affiliation, say “none.” For decades that number was very low, but then it began to increase rapidly in the 1980s. Why was that? It seems to be caused by the tight alliance of Christianity, especially conservative white Christianity, with conservative politics over the past several decades . . . . that alliance has repelled many younger people from religion out of a distaste at seeing religion so eagerly bend the knee to short-term political gain. That is to say, Christians’ response to a misperceived crisis have become, in fact, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 As the Christmas holiday approaches, I will celebrate being with family and friends.  One thing I will not be doing, however, is calling myself a Christian give what a hideous connotation that label has come to hold - thanks to evangelicals in particular. 

American 'Christianity' Has Failed

Despite my upbringing as a Roman Catholic which included daily mass, serving as an altar boy for ten years and raising to the 4th Degree in the Knights of Columbus, I now consider myself to be a "None."  Some ask why.  The answer is actually pretty simple.  Between the continued moral bankruptcy of the Catholic Church hierarchy and the continued aiding, abetting and protection of predator priests and the behavior of most likely a majority of those who call themselves "Christian" while supporting everything that is the antithesis of the Gospel message, I have come to see Christianity, especially American Christianity, as a toxic evil.  Yes, there are church soup kitchens and some charitable works, but those positives pale in comparison to the hate, fear, selfishness and hypocrisy that are now the hallmarks of Christianity.  The support of Donald Trump in the last election by 81% of evangelicals and reportedly a majority of Catholics underscores this reality.  Most of the truly decent and moral people that I know are not active churchgoers.  Most, like myself could be better described as Nones.  A piece in Sojourner looks at the failure and ugliness of American Christianity.  Read the whole piece.  Here are excerpts:

American Christians — particularly white evangelicals — continue to sing the words: “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders …” but fail to realize the shameful irony that they’re largely responsible for refusing shelter and opportunity to some of the world’s most helpless and oppressed people.  This represents a predominant theme of Westernized Christendom: proclaiming Christian rhetoric while actively — or passively — practicing the opposite in reality.

Because while the gospels instruct followers of Christ to help the poor, oppressed, maligned, mistreated, sick, and those most in need of help, Christians in America have largely supported measures that have rejected refugees, refused aid to immigrants, cut social services to the poor, diminished help for the sick, fueled xenophobia, reinforced misogyny, ignored racism, stoked hatred, reinforced corruption, and largely increased inequality, prejudice, and fear.

If Christians refuse to help and actually use their political advocacy and opinions to further hurt refugees, immigrants, women, foreigners, minorities, the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted, the sick, the LGBTQ community — and aren’t abiding by the golden rule of loving their neighbors as themselves, then who exactly are Christians supposedly loving?

What benefit are Christians providing their communities, and what good are they contributing to the world around them? Because in America, it appears that the sole purpose of Christianity is to selfishly protect people’s own self-interests instead of sacrificially serving others.

The election of President Donald Trump has proven that numerous Christians are more worried about power, influence, and control than the gospel messages of humility, generosity, ministering to others, and love. . . . . it should be sobering for Christians to realize that that many who claim to follow the Prince of Peace, the Healer, the Light of the World, supported policies that are bringing darkness and pain to so many people.

These presidential orders, which will refuse help to many of the world’s most vulnerable individuals, are what many Christians voted for. . . . . love, joy, peace, happiness, and self-control are notably absent from the current administration. . . . The gospel of Jesus has been traded in for a narrative of fear. 

[W]hile there might be political, economic, financial, and safety reasons for implementing policies that harm people and refuse them help, there are certainly no gospel reasons.

The Far Right's War on Christmas

It is Christmas Eve - not that it feels like it with today's 80 degree weather - and in the lead up to today and Christmas Day tomorrow we have heard much bloviating (and money begs) from the "godly folk" about liberals' and "secular humanists"war against Christmas.  These same folks will fill the pews either night or in the morning, consumed with self-congratulatory false piety while bearing hatred toward others.  Most will never have a thought about "peace on earth and good will to men" unless they coincidentally sing the phrase in a Christmas carol.  Meanwhile, many of us will opt to not join crowds in packed churches, yet we may likely give far more thought to the spirit of Christmas than the "godly folk" who seemingly are best defined by who they hate - which is virtually everyone who differs from they themselves in any way.  The parable of the Good Samaritan is a lost concept on them.  Two columns in today's Washington Post look at the members of the far right Christian crowd and their sycophants in the Republican Party who have done the most to make a mockery of Christmas and the Gospel message.  Here are excerpts from the first:

They were refugees, fleeing for their lives from one Middle Eastern country to the next. As Matthew tells the tale, Joseph, fearing that the government had marked his newborn son for death, gathered up his wife and child and stole away by night across the Judean border into Egypt. And just in time . . . . a king named Herod, who’d heard some kid would one day become a rival king — proceeded to slaughter every remaining child in Bethlehem under the age of 2. 

[I]t’s clear that the authors of the New Testament intended to recount (for the believers) or compose (for the nons) a story that echoed the Old Testament’s concern for strangers, foreigners and refugees (“The stranger among you shall be as one born among you,” says Leviticus, “and you shall love him as yourself”), that foreshadowed Jesus’ teachings to care for castaways and the least among us. . . 

Who’s really waging a war against Christmas in 2015? Secular multiculturalists who, stealthily and nefariously, have somehow rendered Starbucks’s coffee cups a tad less festive? Or the self-proclaimed culture warriors on behalf of traditional values, who demand we leave refugees — even small children, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has made pitilessly clear — at the mercy of the latter-day Herods? Who condemn entire religions? Who fear and loathe strangers?

It’s been a banner year for fear and loathing, xenophobia and racism. What has made the year genuinely ominous is the emergence of fictions presented (often, but hardly exclusively, by Donald Trump) as facts that legitimize a sense of both grievance and hatred . . . 

Fed by talk radio, Fox News and paranoid websites, millions of our compatriots dwell in a parallel universe of alternative realities. My colleague Dana Milbank has noted that the fashion among conservatives is to dismiss hard facts that clash with their alternative realities as “politically correct.” 

Such right-wing fictions have always hovered on the fringes of the body politic, but what has enabled them to go more mainstream is the sense of displacement — from their previous position as a majority race, a thriving class, a dominant religion — that is now widespread among the white working class Trumpites and the evangelical Christians flocking to Ted Cruz’s banner. The mission of right-wing media and pols has been to exaggerate some of that displacement (the threat to white America), play down other parts of it (the evisceration of blue-collar living standards by corporate America) and lay the blame for it all on minorities, foreigners, liberals, feminists, gays — you know the list.  

Enmities, and most certainly not love, have become the core of the right’s appeal and message this year, not just in the United States but also across Europe. . . . They are most surely at odds with the spirit of Christmas. Walls on the border, religious tests for admission, despising the poor — good thing Joseph and Mary didn’t have to encounter our modern-day defenders of the right as they scrambled from one country to another, desperate to save their son’s life.

The second column picks up this theme.  Here are highlights:

This will not be the first or the last Christmas when the world mocks the day’s promise and when religion finds itself a source of violence, hatred and, among many not inclined toward either, a dangerous mutual incomprehension.

Killing in the name of God is not a new thing in history, and nothing does more to discredit faith.

[A]s Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi in Britain , argues in his remarkable book “Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence,” believers must face the painful facts.  “Too often in the history of religion,” Sacks writes, “people have killed in the name of the God of life, waged war in the name of the God of peace, hated in the name of the God of love and practiced cruelty in the name of the God of compassion.” 

[R]eligion “is at its best when it relies on the strength of argument and example. It is at its worst when it seeks to impose truth by force.” And the strength of example must mean that those who preach religious peace and toleration should practice them. This is why the rank prejudice being shown against Muslims, usually for political reasons, is so destructive . . . .

[T]here is an important lesson in the Christmas story that, God willing, will be heard from many pulpits. “As we mull over the debate about refugees, let us remember the doors that were closed in the face of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem,” O’Malley said. “We must ask our leaders to be vigilant and protect our citizens, but at the same time we cannot turn our back on so many innocent people who are hungry, homeless, and without a country.”

Eboo Patel, an American whose argument in his book “Acts of Faith” parallels the lessons from Rabbi Sacks and Cardinal O’Malley.  “To see the other side, to defend another people, not despite your tradition but because of it, is the heart of pluralism,” Patel writes. “We have to save each other. It’s the only way to save ourselves.” 

As noted, the husband and I will not be attending church services to mark Christmas.  But I like to believe that our support of various charities and our efforts to see justice and equality meted out equally to all is in keeping with the essence of the Gospel message.  To celebrate Christmas and Easter while patting one's self on the back even as the larger Gospel message is utterly ignored is the height of hypocrisy.  Indeed, it is akin to the behavior of the Pharisees who Christ reportedly roundly condemned.  Yet we see this hypocrisy and hatred towards others displayed daily by right wing "family values" organizations and Republicans prostituting themselves to the Christofascist. 

 

Bernie Sanders Takes on the Modern Day Pharisees at Liberty University

I make no secret of the fact that I view the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia as a foul blight on Virginia.    Liberty University and its affiliated entities make the Pharisees of the New Testament look like veritable good Samaritans and charity workers. For the most part the University and its faculty and student body flock to gay-hating, religious extremist who hate just about everyone but themselves and the support almost every reverse Robin Hood element of the GOP agenda.  They, like many of the "godly folk" are perhaps the strongest argument for disclaiming any affiliation with Christianity.  Thus, it was the height of audacity for Bernie Sanders to address the Liberty student body at a convocation earlier this week.  Surprisingly, at least some of the student body and faculty recognized their betrayal of the Gospel message when faced with Sanders' honest and compelling call out to the modern day Pharisee crowd.  Daily Kos looks at the reaction of one evangelical's reaction to Sanders' address.  Here are highlights:

An Evangelical pastoral counselor and Liberty University graduate posted a short sermon about Bernie Sanders' speech at Liberty University to reddit yesterday:

He was convicting the Christian leaders and the religious leaders in that university, and calling us out for being complicit in the abandonment of those who suffer, the least of these, and siding with the powerful and rich, the masters of this world.  And he was convicting us and calling us out, and we scorned him, and we stared him down; and, with sour faces, we thought, "Who is this wacko, and why do all these people seem to follow him, seem to like him – this wild-haired Jew, crying out from the wilderness of the political left, in his hoarse voice?"

When I heard Bernie speaking in that way, when I saw that guy on stage at Liberty University, I saw John the Baptist...crying out to the religious leaders, the Pharisees of his day, calling them corrupt and complicit with those who have all the power and all the money and all the wealth, and abandoning the people that God loves, that God cares about...

As I heard Bernie Sanders crying out to the religious leaders at Liberty University, in his hoarse voice, with his wild hair – this Jew – and he proclaimed justice over us, he called us to account, for being complicit with those who are wealthy and those who are powerful, and for abandoning the poor, the least of these, who Jesus said he had come to bring good news to. And in that moment something occurred to me.

I listened to Bernie Sanders as he said he wanted to welcome the immigrants and give them dignity, as he said he wanted to care for the sick children and mothers and fathers who do not have health care, as he said he wanted to decrease the amount of human beings who are corralled like cattle in the prisons, as he said he wanted to do justice for those who have nothing and live homeless. And I remembered the words of Jesus who warned his disciples that there will be judgement, and on that day he will look to his friends, and he will say "Blessed are you for you cared for me, for I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you cared for me, I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was in prison and you came to visit me, I was homeless and you gave me shelter." And his disciples said, "When did we do any of those things for you?" And he said, "If you have done it for the least of these, you have done it for me."

Those words echoed in my heart as I listened to that crazy, hoarse-voiced, wild-haired Jew standing in front of the religious leaders of the Evangelical Movement, calling us to account, as a Jew once did before, telling us that he intends to care for the least of these, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to care for the sick, to set the prisoners free.

I wouldn't be much of a Christian if I didn't stand on the side of gospel for the poor, because, the last time I checked, that's where my master Jesus stood, and I'll stand with Him. And,  for now, that means I stand with Bernie Sanders.

 This evangelical pastor is much more eloquent than me when it comes to focusing on the manner in which the far right Christian extremists and the parasite like professional Christian set have betrayed the Gospel message and instead focused on hate, racism, homophobia and made a mockery of what the Gospels say a Christian should be.  If Christ existed - and I do have my doubts - and if the Gospels accurately portray his message, he would be horrified to see what the "godly folk" and hate merchants like Mike Huckabee, Mat Staver, Maggie Gallagher, and a host of others have done in his name.  Kudos to Sanders!

Trump-ward, Christian Soldiers?

One of the hallmarks of conservative Christians in America today is their utter hypocrisy.  The claim that the Bible - which includes the New Testament Gospels - is the inerrant word of God, yet on almost every issue, they back policies that are diametrically opposed to the social gospel found in the New Testament Gospels.  They oppose health care for all, want to see government benefits for the poor and unfortunate slashed, they support a political party that seeks to create a new Gilded Age, they embrace racism, and now, they support a thrice married, loud mouthed bigot for the presidency.  And yet they wonder why the Millennials are fleeing religion in droves.  They should take a good look in the mirror.  A column in the New York Times  looks at  the "godly folk's" support for Donald Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Let me get this straight. If I want the admiration and blessings of the most flamboyant, judgmental Christians in America, I should marry three times, do a queasy-making amount of sexual boasting, verbally degrade women, talk trash about pretty much everyone else while I’m at it, encourage gamblers to hemorrhage their savings in casinos bearing my name and crow incessantly about how much money I’ve amassed?

Seems to work for Donald Trump.

Polls show him to be the preferred candidate among not just all Republican voters but also the party’s vocal evangelical subset.  He’s more beloved than Mike Huckabee, a former evangelical pastor, or Ted Cruz, an evangelical pastor’s son, or Scott Walker, who said during the recent Republican debate: “It’s only by the blood of Jesus Christ that I’ve been redeemed.”

The holy rollers are smiling upon the high roller. And they’re proving, yet again, how selective and incoherent the religiosity of many in the party’s God squad is.  Usually the disconnect involves stern moralizing, especially on matters sexual, by showily devout public figures who are then exposed as adulterers or (gasp!) closet homosexuals.  

What’s different and fascinating about the Trump worship is that he doesn’t even try that hard for a righteous facade — for Potemkin piety. Sure, he speaks of enthusiastic churchgoing, and he’s careful to curse Planned Parenthood and to insist that matrimony be reserved for heterosexuals as demonstrably inept at it as he is.

But beyond that? He just about runs the table on the seven deadly sins. He personifies greed, embodies pride, radiates lust. Wrath is covered by his anti-immigrant, anti-“losers” rants, and if we interpret gluttony to include big buildings and not just Big Macs, he’s a glutton through and through. 

I’m grasping at straws, because there’s no sense in the fact that many of the people who most frequently espouse the Christian spirit then proceed to vilify immigrants, demonize minorities and line up behind a candidate who’s a one-man master class in such misanthropy.

As for Trump, I must not be watching the same campaign that his evangelical fans are, because I don’t see someone interested in serving God. I see someone interested in being God.

The Next Culture War

I generally disagree with much of what David Brooks, conservative columnist for the New York Times has to say on most issues and I am well aware that he has signed on to speak before ultra-far right groups and has claimed ignorance when confronted with their homophobia and other nasty beliefs and agendas.  Once in a while he does get it right and in a column in the New York Times today, he gives good advice to the Christofascists on how they ought to move forward in the aftermath of last week's historic gay marriage ruling.  Will the leaders of "family values" a/k/a anti-gay hate groups, and right wing pastors heed his advice?  Most likely not, because their is more money to be raised by playing on the wholly unjustified persecution complex of their followers.  groups.  The net result will ultimately be an acceleration of Christianity's death spiral in America.  Here are column highlights:

Christianity is in decline in the United States. The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is dropping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.

Christianity’s gravest setbacks are in the realm of values. American culture is shifting away from orthodox Christian positions on homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, out-of-wedlock childbearing, divorce and a range of other social issues. More and more Christians feel estranged from mainstream culture. They fear they will soon be treated as social pariahs, the moral equivalent of segregationists because of their adherence to scriptural teaching on gay marriage. They fear their colleges will be decertified, their religious institutions will lose their tax-exempt status, their religious liberty will come under greater assault.

The Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision landed like some sort of culminating body blow onto this beleaguered climate.
Most Christian commentary has opted for another strategy: fight on. Several contributors to a symposium in the journal First Things about the court’s Obergefell decision last week called the ruling the Roe v. Wade of marriage. It must be resisted and resisted again.

These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution. Most of the conservative commentators I’ve read over the past few days are resolved to keep fighting that war.

I would just ask them to consider a change in course. Consider putting aside, in the current climate, the culture war oriented around the sexual revolution.

Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.

The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

This culture war is more Albert Schweitzer and Dorothy Day than Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham; more Salvation Army than Moral Majority. It’s doing purposefully in public what social conservatives already do in private.

Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.

[T]he sexual revolution will not be undone anytime soon. The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable. Social conservatives are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace.

Besides their bizarre  obsession with sex, the Christofascists will not follow this proposed course for another reason: many of the neighborhoods and people in need of the efforts Brooks proposes are black and minorities, and in the last analysis, many Christofascists are also racists.  They won't help those really in need.  Instead they will squander money on more lavish churches and salaries for their foul leaders to who actually livin out the Gospel social justice message is anathema.. 

You Cannot Be a Republican and a True Christian

As I have noted numerous times before, the reverse Robin Hood policies of today's Republican Party and that party's willingness to throw the poor, the sick, the homeless and the less fortunate literally in the gutter is the antithesis of the message of Christ in terms of his directives as to what one should do with one's wealth.  Yet despite the polar opposites between the GOP's social agenda and the Gospel message of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless, who is it that flocks to the GOP standard?  The "godly Christians" who wear their religiosity on their sleeves and seem most defined by their hatred of others - i.e., gays, blacks, Hispanics, non-Christians, in short anyone who doesn't look and believe just as they do.  The hypocrisy and the damage being done to the Christian brand, if you will, is staggering.  Like the author, Anne Rice, I do not want to be called a "Christian" because the connotation is becoming so foul and negative thanks to this self-anointed folks.  A piece in Alternet makes the case that if one is a true Christian and follower of the Gospel message, it is impossible to be a Republican.  Here are excerpts:

No one in American life today proclaims their allegiance to Christ more conspicuously than those who have rejected most of what Christ actually taught: Republicans. The modern Republican Party’s hell-bent embodiment of nearly everything Christ warned against has become so serious that we have to call it out. You cannot be a Republican and a Christian.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. There was a time, maybe even as recently as the early 1990s, when to support the Republican Party was not altogether evil. And further back, of course, things were even more different.  Republicans used to be: moderate, business-minded civic boosters and unapologetic patriots who were the linchpins and bulwarks of small towns across the Midwest, the enthusiastic backers of projects for the civic good . . . persons of compassionate conscience, inveterate doers of good deeds.

Even today, there are probably some Republicans who still fit that description. The problem is that they are for all practical purposes invisible in American public life, and if their party found out about them, they would be hounded out of it. If they dared to compete in the lunatic talent show of Republican primary politics, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

The reason that you cannot be a Republican and a Christian is that today’s Republican Party doesn’t appear to stand for anything but what Christ strenuously rejected, like organized violence, self-righteous division, and greed.

It’s not hard to tell the difference between who is and isn’t really a Christian, and Republicans, you’re not.

• In Christ, we’re talking about someone who said turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39) and that all those who take the sword will perish with the sword (Matthew 26:52).

• We’re talking about someone who warned “judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1) and urged people not to look for a mote in someone else’s eye while they have a beam stuck in their own (Matthew 7:3).

• We’re talking about someone who said, “woe unto you that are rich!” (Luke 6:24) and, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:25) Did Jesus ever have anything good to say about people who hoard wealth?

It’s ironic that they have sometimes been referred to as “values voters,” since their values are so devoid of value, at least from the Christian point of view. Their main interest in Christianity seems to be an expectation of being rewarded in the afterlife despite bad behavior while alive.

The impossibility of squaring what Christ actually taught with the words and deeds of today’s Republican so-called Christians is what makes this all fair game. These people are hypocrites. These people conveniently ignore most of what Christ actually said.. . . . many of them, given a chance, would re-crucify Christ if he came back today and taught the still-radical ideas he apparently advocated.

You can’t have it both ways. You have to choose, because, today, you cannot be both a Republican and a Christian.

As I said, if being a "Christian" means being like the Christofascist of the GOP base, please do NOT call a Christian.

Christians More Supportive of Torture

I've noted before how conservative Christians in America seem to have an agenda that is 180 degrees the opposite of the Gospel message. Besides seeking to amass their own riches rather than care for the poor and the hungry, seeking to deprive the least fortunate of health care coverage, a new study shows that they also support the use of torture more than non-religious Americans.  It would seem that it's time for them to drop the Christian label and perhaps "Kochists" or "Kochians" or some other  name that clearly shows the degree to which their agenda is the antithesis of the supposed message of Christ.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the support of torture among the "godly folks.'  Here are highlights:

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that Americans, by a 59-31% margin, believe that CIA “treatment of suspected terrorists” in detention was justified.

[T]he gap between torture supporters and opponents widens between voters who are Christian and those who are not religious. Just 39% of white evangelicals believe the CIA’s treatment of detainees amounted to torture, with 53% of white non-evangelical Protestants and 45% of white Catholics agreeing with that statement. Among the non-religious, though, 72% said the treatment amounted to torture.

Sixty nine percent of white evangelicals believe the CIA treatment was justified, compared to just 20% who said it was not. (Those numbers, incidentally, roughly mirror the breakdown of Republican versus Democratic voters among white evangelicals.) A full three-quarters (75%) of white non-evangelical Protestants outnumber the 22% of their brethren in saying CIA treatment was justified. White Catholics believe the treatment was justified by a 66-23% margin.

But a majority of non-religious adults, 53%, believe the CIA actions were not justified, with 41% of the non-religious saying the treatment was justified.

[I]n all three of these Christian groups believed the torture “produced important information that could not have been obtained any other way,” even though the Senate report debunked that claim.

[I]t’s a striking look at the way religion (or lack thereof) informs people’s views on legal and moral questions.

The take away?  If you are seeking kindness and mercy, don't look to conservative Christians for it.  Hypocrisy in huge doses, yes, mercy and decency, no.  

An Evangelical Changes His Mind On Gays

As noted briefly before, there are some major chasms developing within the Evangelical Christian circles as some see the hand writing on the wall:  Homophobia and anti-gay animus will be among the factors that lead to the long term death of Christianity in America. Naturally, the justification for those changing their positions are not stated so directly.  But those outside of self-loath closet case circles and the most ignorant elements of the Christofascist base do seem to know that they are on the wrong side of history - just as their fore bearers were on the wrong side of the issue of slavery and later segregation.  Andrew Sullivan looks at David Gushee, one of the most prominent evangelical theologians to jump the anti-gay jihad ship.  Here are highlights:

We’ve featured the work of Matthew Vines many times before, and want to highlight a speech given at a conference recently held by his organization, The Reformation Project. A keynote speaker, David Gushee, one of the foremost evangelical ethicists in the United States, used the occasion to announce his support for the full-inclusion of LGBT Christians in the Church. The above video of Gushee’s remarks is longer than we usually post, but it’s worth watching in full. (You can read a transcript of his remarks here.) For a sense of why this matters, Jonathan Merritt sketches Gushee’s place in the evangelical world:

It is difficult to overstate the potential impact of Gushee’s defection. His Christian ethics textbook, “Kingdom Ethics,” co-authored with the late Glen Stassen, is widely respected and was named a 2004 Christianity Today book of the year. He serves as theologian-in-residence for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a coalition of 15 theological schools, 150 ministries, and 1,800 Baptist churches nationwide.

While other pro-LGBT Christian activists — including Justin Lee of the Gay Christian Network and Matthew Vines, author of “God and the Gay Christian” — have been dismissed in some circles as wet-behind-the-ears youngsters without formal theological training, Gushee, 52, is a scholar with impeccable credentials. He can add intellectual heft to what has largely been a youth-led movement, and is not someone who can be easily dismissed.

Gushee summarizes his approach to the issue this way:

Since the 1960s, when the gay rights movement began in America, Christians and their leaders have struggled to figure out how to respond to the growing tolerance of same-sex relationships. Most in Christianity have responded by offering endless debates over how to interpret that handful of biblical passages. Books erupted. Congregations fought. Denominations split.

For me, the answer to this debate has become simple: There is a sexual-minority population of about 5 percent of the human family that has received contempt and discrimination for centuries. In Christendom, the sexual ethics based in those biblical passages metastasized into a hardened attitude against sexual- and gender-identity minorities, bristling with bullying and violence. This contempt is in the name of God, the most powerful kind there is in the world. I now believe that the traditional interpretation of the most cited passages is questionable and that all that parsing of Greek verbs has distracted attention from the primary moral obligation taught by Jesus — to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially our most vulnerable neighbors. I also now believe that while any progress toward more humane treatment of LGBT people is good progress, we need to reconsider the entire body of biblical interpretation and tradition related to this issue.

Put simply, it finally became clear to me that I must side with those who were being treated with contempt, just as I hope I would have sided with Jews in the Nazi era and with African Americans during the civil rights years.

 Ouch!  Albert Mohler, Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, Maggie Gallagher and other purveyors of anti-gay hatred must be  experiencing spittle fleck convulsions over Gushee's statements.

Catholic Archbishops - Lifestyles of the Rich and Pious

Archbishop Timothy "porky Pig" Dolan who lives in a $30 million mansion

The hypocrisy that plagues the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is so pervasive that it is difficult to know where to start, although the Church's official position that gays are "inherently disordered" even as prelates protect predator priests and engage in obstruction of justice is always one starting point.  Another is the dichotomy between the Gospel message of selling one's goods and giving to the poor and the opulent lifestyles of America's Roman Catholic archbishops who in addition to often looking like they've never missed a single meal, live in the splendor of oligarchs.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the hypocrisy of these nasty men.  Here are excerpts:

CNN’s Belief Blog has a great rundown of the lavish homes of American archbishops who haven’t gotten the memo from Pope Francis about a “church which is poor and for the poor.” CNN reports that “10 of the 34 active archbishops in the United States live in buildings worth more than $1 million.” The median home value in the U.S. is $174,200.

Not surprisingly, that list includes some of the nation’s most outspoken conservative bishops—and allies of the Republican Party—who seem to take the whole “prince of the church” thing more literally than some of their fellow prelates. Here’s a rundown:

• New York Cardinal Timothy “Capitalism is King but you can get your birth control at 7-11” Dolan lives in a 15,000-square foot neo-Gothic mansion on Madison Avenue appraised at $30 million.

• Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who warned a few years back that the local gay pride parade might “morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan,” lives in a “one of a kind,” 19-chimneyed mansion in the heart of Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood conservatively valued at $14.3 million. And he is waited on by three nuns who live in a nearby coach house—very Downton Abbey.

• Seattle Archbishop James Sartain, who is currently in charge of making sure that the naughty nuns of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious don’t spend too much time worrying about social justice issues, lives alone in a charming three-story brick Victorian home valued at $3.84 million.

• Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, head of the bishop’s Committee on Religious Liberty—the epicenter of the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage and the contraception mandate—and the man supposedly behind the investigation of the LCWR, lives in a 11,5000-square foot historic mansion that dates back to the first Catholic bishop of the United States.

• And last but certainly not least, Newark Archbishop John Myers, who has come under fire for the diocese’s failure to supervise a known predator priest and has been an outspoken opponent of John Kerry and other pro-choice Catholics, is adding a $500,000, 3,000-square foot wing to his $800,000, 4,500-square foot weekend/retirement home nestled on 8.2 wooded aces in New Jersey’s tony Hunterdon Country.  He needed the extra space for “an indoor exercise pool”—the house already has a large outdoor pool—“a hot tub, three fireplaces and a library.”

If you really want to vomit, especially since dioceses are closing schools and churches for lack of funds, read the entire CNN piece here.   Once again I find myself wondering why anyone moral and decent listens to a word these men have to say.  Like the Christofascists in general, they are today's modern day Pharisees. 

Conservative Versus Liberal Values

Click image to enlarge

A friend posted the image set out above on Facebook which, to my mind lays out the difference in the values of today's "godly" conservatives and the liberals they detest so much.  The chart isn't perfect by any means but it goes to highlight the differences between the selfishness, fear and hate that are now the defining characteristics of conservatism in America.  It is important to remember that conservatism wasn't always like this.  When did it begin to radically change?  When the Christofascists rose to power within the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general.  These "godly Christians" are the antithesis of the Gospel message and true Christians.  They are a scourge on society.

GOP Congressman Says It's 'Immoral' To Extend Jobless Benefits

Once again we are seeing the hypocrisy of Republicans who wear their feigned religiosity on their sleeves even as they trash the Gospel message by slashing programs benefiting the poor and unfortunate and working to deprive millions of access to health care.  Now, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) - pictured above - has alleged that extending long term jobless benefits is "immoral."  If there is anything immoral, it is the GOP's agenda to make most Americans modern day serfs while the wealthy reap more and more wealth and privilege.  Supporting this agenda all the way, of course, are the "godly Christian" crowd of the far right. Talking Points Memo looks at Sessions' batshitery.  Here are highlights:

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) on Tuesday railed against efforts by Democrats to extend long-term unemployment benefits, which expired at the end of 2013.

"I believe it is immoral for this country to have as a policy extending long-term unemployments [benefits] to people rather than us working on creation of jobs," he said on the House floor, as quoted by the Huffington Post. "A job is the most important attribute, I believe, in a free enterprise system."

Sessions said President Obama spends too much time speaking about the longterm unemployed and to little time facilitating legislation that would help create jobs.

"Too much time we have been hung up on, instead of the creation of jobs, we talk about the symptoms that are related to unemployment, and long-term unemployment," he said. "In this case, the president of the United States thoughtfully articulates the need for us to make sure we help people, but I believe he errs on the side of not pushing jobs bills."

Benefits for those who have been unemployed for six months or more expired on Dec. 28, 2013, leaving 1.3 million unemployed Americans without critical assistance.

Sessions conveniently ignores the reality that he and members of the GOP controlled House of Representatives have blocked every effort by Obama and the Democrats to pass a meaningful jobs bill.  The man is despicable.  More of his bigotry and shady ties can be found here (scroll down)

Pope Francis’ Economic Ideas Rattle the GOP

As noted before, the far right - most of whom falsely claim to worship Christian values - and their minions in the Republican Party are REALLY unhappy with Pope Francis and his views of economic views pertaining to economic opportunity, wealthy inequities and vulture capitalism.  Rush Limbaugh, the veritable pope of the GOP has attacked Pope Francis as a communist and subversive.  The reality, of course, is that Francis is adhering to the true message of Christ in his remarks, so ultimately the far right and the GOP are attacking Christ and his message.  Their hypocrisy is complete and shameless.  Politico looks at the GOP's displeasure with Francis for calling out rapacious capitalism, the economic agenda favored by the GOP.  Here are highlights:

He draws crowds like a rock star, was named “Person of the Year” by Time as well as a gay rights magazine, and drew the ire of Rush Limbaugh for his criticism of “trickle-down” economics. Pope Francis has dramatically shifted the message and tone of the Vatican in the last nine months, and he’s forcing Republicans in Washington to reassess their relationship with the Catholic church.

For years, Catholic leaders’ staunch and very public opposition to abortion, gay marriage and the contraception-related provisions of Obamacare made them natural allies for the GOP. But Francis has scrambled the equation by de-emphasizing hot-button social issues, warning against unchecked capitalism and pushing a populist message at odds with the core of the anti-spending, anti-big government Republican Party.
 
Last month, Francis blasted “trickle-down” economics as an “opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, [that] expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.” He also criticized the “idolatry of money” and unbridled capitalism as “a new tyranny.”

Conservative radio host Limbaugh slammed the comments as “pure Marxism” and other commentators on the right also vehemently disagreed with the pope’s message. One derided Francis as the “Catholic Church’s Obama.”

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who grew up attending Catholic school and graduated from the University of Notre Dame’s law school, told POLITICO that he disagreed with the pope’s economic message. He considers the phrase “trickle-down” to be a “pejorative” term, “like some liberal speechwriter stuck it in.”

His inclusive outlook may have played a role in his decision to remove Cardinal Raymond Burke from the Congregation for Bishops, an influential Vatican organization. Burke, an outspoken conservative, in 2004 signaled he would deny communion to John Kerry, a Catholic running for president at the time, because of his support for abortion rights.

For Democrats, Francis has been a gift. Just as the liberal base and President Barack Obama have begun talking more about income inequality, along comes the pope to boost their cause.  “I love this pope,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “Jesus focused so much on helping the poor and the downtrodden and the least among us. And I think his refocusing on that, to me, has been a breath of fresh air.”

Former Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania said Francis is a “game-changer” for “social justice Democrats.” He sees opportunities for the pope’s message to play out during budget battles and fights over unemployment benefits and other social programs.

Gillis said he doesn’t expect Francis to encourage bishops to weigh in as vocally as they have in the past on sensitive social issues, though he noted they will still likely speak out.  For some lawmakers, the pope’s influence has gone beyond policy and politics and into the personal. McCaskill, for instance, said some of her children are now considering going back to the church.

 

Until there is substantive change in Catholic Church doctrine, I for one will not be rushing back to Catholicism.  That said, I do think it wonderful that Francis' statements on the poor and unrestrained capitalism are highlighting the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP.  

The GOP's War on the Poorest Americans

It's Christmas Day and once again I am struck by the rank hypocrisy of conservatives and their flunkies in the Republican Party who blather about honoring Christian principles and repeat the myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation" even as they espouse policies that are the antithesis of the Gospel message.  Indeed, they make the Pharisees of the Bible look like upstanding, kindly folks in comparison.  It is little wonder that 1/3 of the generations under age 30 - the so-called "Nones" - have walked away from institutional religion.  Simply put, these "godly Christians" are horrible, heartless, selfish people.  Why would anyone decent want to subscribe to their claimed beliefs which they disregard daily.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the GOP's war on the poor - a war that the Christofascists support.  Here are excerpts:

This is a harsh season for Americans struggling to afford food. Last month, the long lines at food pantries across the country grew longer with the expiration of the boost to food stamp benefit levels included in the 2009 economic stimulus plan. Those lines are apt to grow even longer thanks to the refusal of House Republicans to renew extended unemployment benefits as part of the recent budget deal. 

And if that isn’t sufficient pain for the neediest, Congress is getting ready to make another big cut to nutrition aid when it returns in early January. 

Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat of Michigan and the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Representative Frank Lucas, a Republican of Oklahoma who leads the House Agriculture Committee, are close to a deal on a farm bill that is said to include an increase in crop insurance subsidies for farmers and a more than $8 billion cut in food stamp benefits for the poor over the next 10 years. 

That cut, about double the one contained in the Senate version of the farm bill, is more modest than the devastating $40 billion reduction in the farm bill passed by House Republicans that would have denied benefits to about 3.8 million people in 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Still, the compromise deal, driven by the Republican obsession with cutting the food stamps program, will leave many Americans worse off than before. 

The deal being finalized would not kick people off the rolls, but it would end a practice used in some 16 states to boost food stamp benefits. That change would reduce benefits for 850,000 of the nation’s poorest households, according the Congressional Budget Office, with the cut falling particularly hard on seniors, disabled people and working-poor families with children. 

The households affected currently receive higher food stamp benefits (on average around $90 a month) under a practice known as “heat-and-eat,” which is intended to prevent poor families from having to choose between heating fuel and food.

Some Democratic lawmakers and antihunger advocates say the $8 billion cut being contemplated in the compromise deal is necessary to get the food stamps program reauthorized by both the Senate and House and that keeping the cuts to that level would be a political defeat for right-wing Republicans, who sought to do much more damage. That may be true, but it’s not much consolation for people lining up at food pantries because their inadequate monthly food stamps allotment has run out.