Fundamentalist "Christians" and Muslims: United in Anti-Gay Hatred

Pink News is reporting that the Islamic executioner responsible for having numerous men suspected of being gay thrown from rooftops of tall buildings has been captured by Iraqi security forces.  These horrific murders were motivated by ISIS' selective reading of the Koran which is not consistent with Islam during its golden age.  Back here in America, Right Wing Watch ("RWW") is reporting on the efforts of self-style fundamentalist Christian "leaders" to “re-horrify society about the sin of homosexuality."  Like their Islamic extremists counterparts, this effort is based on a selective reading of the Bible which transforms the Bible into a message of hatred.  Indeed, the only difference between the two groups is the degree of violence - at least so far - the "Christians" are willing to use against gay individuals.  As is the norm with these "Christians" mentioned by RWW, neither Linda Harvey nor Peter LaBarbera - both of who I have had email debates with in the past - have any legitimate credentials to qualify them as experts on sexuality, mental health or medical issues.  Both merely set up "ministries" that allow them to shrill for money while disseminating hatred.   Here are highlights from the Pink News piece:

Security forces in Iraq have captured a ISIS executioner who was notorious for homophobic murders.  Thousands of LGBT people have been displaced in Iraq and Syria, as the terrorist group known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) continues to actively target and execute gay men. 

The terrorist group has taunted the West with a string of  ‘death to gays’ execution videos, showing men accused of homosexuality being thrown off buildings and pelted with stones.

One of the ISIS executioners who most aggressively targeted gay people was captured this week.  Abu Omer, a senior jihadi executioner known as ‘White Beard’, had ruled the city of Mosul with an iron fist until the city was retaken by security forces last year.  . . . . according to The Times, he was arrested on January 1 after officials were tipped off about his hiding place in the city.

Among the vicious attacks: ISIL has tied nooses around these men’s necks and dragged them behind trucks, burned them alive, thrown them off buildings and stoned them to death.

The report states: “ISIL has unleashed a reign of terror against civilians and vulnerable minorities living in areas it has seized, including barbarous violence against LGBTQ people.  “ISIL’s extreme ideology is interpreted by its followers to require the death penalty for those who engage in sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage, including same-sex sexual relations.”

Turning to the Right Wing Watch article, note how these parasitic American Taliban members repeat the lie that gays are sexual predators (most are, in fact, heterosexual men):

On a recent episode of her “Mission America” radio show, Linda Harvey interviewed fellow anti-LGBTQ activist Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality about the importance of working to “re-horrify” society about the sin of homosexuality.

The two lamented that homosexuality is now widely accepted in America, with Harvey voicing her alarm that it is even welcomed in public schools where “predators” are allowed to use LGBTQ clubs to target children for recruitment.

“So many of these groups are predators,” she said. “I believe that the homosexual clubs in schools are just red flags for predators. I think that they exist there as an audience to continue to fast track kids into the lifestyle, network with adults—I mean, who knows what goes on there.”

“How do we re-horrify people about the sin of homosexuality?” she wondered. “People are becoming so comfortable with this, even people on our side. We need to re-horrify them.” 

From my past interactions with both Harvey and LaBarbera, in my opinion, they are mentally unbalanced and might benefit from a mental health intervention. 

The Death of Christianity in the America

I have often made the argument that if Christianity dies in America it will be because of the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who are literally killing the Christian brand with many, but especially the younger generations.  They have made Christianity a message of hate and hypocrisy and their long success in conning the public into believing that they are nice and decent people seems to be coming to an end.  I was very surprised to see this argument made in a column in of all places Baptist News Global.  Here are highlights from the column which is spot on: 

Christianity has died in the hands of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism ceased being a religious faith tradition following Jesus’ teachings concerning justice for the betterment of humanity when it made a Faustian bargain for the sake of political influence. The beauty of the gospel message — of love, of peace and of fraternity — has been murdered by the ambitions of Trumpish flimflammers who have sold their souls for expediency. No greater proof is needed of the death of Christianity than the rush to defend a child molester in order to maintain a majority in the U.S. Senate.

Evangelicals have constructed an exclusive interpretation which fuses and confuses white supremacy with salvation. Only those from the dominant culture, along with their supposed inferiors who with colonized minds embrace assimilation, can be saved. But their salvation damns Jesus.

To save Jesus from those claiming to be his heirs, we must wrench him from the hands of those who use him as a façade from which to hide their phobias — their fear of blacks, their fear of the undocumented, their fear of Muslims, their fear of everything queer.

Evangelicalism has ceased to be a faith perspective rooted on Jesus the Christ and has become a political movement whose beliefs repudiate all Jesus advocated. A message of hate permeates their pronouncements, evident in sulphurous proclamations like the Nashville Statement, which elevates centuries of sexual dysfunctionalities since the days of Augustine by imposing them upon Holy Writ. They condemn as sin those who express love outside the evangelical anti-body straight jacket.

Christianity at a profit is an abomination before all that is Holy. From their gilded pedestals erected in white centers of wealth and power, they gaslight all to believe they are the ones being persecuted because of their faith.

Evangelicalism’s embrace of a new age of ignorance, blames homosexuality for Harvey’s rage rather than considering the scientific consequences climate change has on the number of increasing storms of greater and greater ferocity. To ignore the damage caused to God’s creation so the few can profit in raping Mother Earth causes celebrations in the fiery pits of Gehenna.

Evangelicalism forsakes holding a sexual predator, an adulterer, a liar and a racist accountable, instead serving as a shield against those who question POTUS’ immorality because of some warped reincarnation of Cyrus. Laying holy hands upon the incarnation of the very vices Jesus condemned to advance a political agenda — instead of rebuking and chastising in loving prayer — has prostituted the gospel in exchange for the victory of a Supreme Court pick.

Evangelicalism either remained silent or actually supported Charlottesville goose steppers because they protect their white privilege with the doublespeak of preserving heritage, leading them to equate opponents of fascist movements with the purveyors of hatred.

You might wonder if my condemnation is too harsh. It is not, for the Spirit of the Lord has convicted me to shout from the mountaintop how God’s precious children are being devoured by the hatred and bigotry of those who have positioned themselves as the voice of God in America.

Like many women and men of good will who still struggle to believe, but not in the evangelical political agenda, I too no longer want or wish to be associated with an ideology responsible for tearing humanity apart. But if you, dear reader, still cling to a hate-mongering ideology, may I humbly suggest you get saved.

Wow!  And, yes, the author is correct.

Why Are So Many White Nationalists ‘Virulently Anti-LGBT’?

The title of this post ask a question that has perhaps more than one answer, but I have one of my own. A piece at NBC News  ties the high correlation between white supremacists and anti-LGBT animus to the rise of the alt-right which combines racist views with Neo-Nazism.  While there is truth to that analysis, I believe that it leaves out one important factor: Virtually every one of the leading anti-gay "family values" organizations that pretend to embrace Christian values either traces back to or continues to have strong ties to the white supremacy movement.  Tony Perkins, head of Family Research Council, has very strong, documented ties to white supremacy groups.  Here in Virginia, The Family Foundation, a virulently anti-gay organization, traces back to the racist Massive Resistance movement.  Similarly, the anti-gay Southern Baptist Convention arose because of the denomination's desire to continue slavery.  This combination of a religious based bigotry against gays - whose very existence challenge fundamentalist Christian (and Muslim) beliefs on sexuality - and opposition to social change and perceived loss of white privilege results in a wide array of hatred towards those who are different. As the NBC News piece points out both the Nazi movement in Germany in the late 1920's and early 1930's and today's alt-right in America boil down to the same thing: a violent reaction to social change and a more progressive society based on a mythical past that in reality never existed.  Here are highlights from the NBC News piece:

Hundreds of white nationalists lined the streets of Charlottesville, Va., last Saturday to protest the removal of a Confederate monument. Some waved Confederate and Nazi flags, others brandished shields. They shouted racist and anti-Semitic slurs with chants of “They will not replace us.”

At one point, they chanted in unison: “F--k you, fa---ts!”

What these white, mostly male, presumably heterosexual protesters have in common is a belief in a “white ethno-state,” according to Southern Poverty Law Center Research Analyst Keegan Hankes. He referred to the so-called “alt-right” or far-right movement as a “grab bag of right-wing ideologies.”

“They believe that white people are being systematically replaced and that inheritance to their homeland is being taken away from them,” Hankes told NBC News.

Since the 2016 election, which advocates say emboldened many right-wing extremists, there has been a reported rise in anti-LGBTQ violence that is disproportionately affecting people of color.

While not all white nationalists are homophobic, Hankes said the majority of right-wing extremists are “virulently anti-LGBT” and share an anxiety and fixation on white birth rates, which are just barely keeping pace with racial minorities. He said some extremists may blame the disparity on the legalization of same-sex marriage.

“There’s this belief that basically white people are being replaced faster than they can reproduce,” Hankes said.

Former white supremacist Angela King, 42, was a propagandist for various neo-Nazi groups in the early 1990s. She admitted to creating propaganda aimed at promoting higher birth rates among white women.

“I did women-centric propaganda-type things,” King said. “I would write articles for some of the racist magazines or papers about things like white women shouldn’t get abortions, but women who aren’t white should.”

The neo-Nazis and skin heads King ran with believed gays were sick. She said they didn’t hesitate to ridicule LGBTQ people and abuse them in the streets.   “It was always a joke, that ‘at least they can’t breed,’” recalled King.

The years King spent in prison forced her to reflect on her hateful views, which she said she learned from her parents at an early age.  . . . A co-founder of the nonprofit Life After Hate, King now works to counter and reform people with extremist views. In recent years, she has nervously watched the far right grow into a more unified front.

King said the merger between the so-called "alt-right," whose followers she said tend to eschew Nazi iconography for a cleaner, media-friendly image, and what she called the “violent far right” she once belonged to, is unprecedented.

Backlash against marginalized communities doesn’t surprise University of Southern California Professor Chris Freeman, whose work primarily focuses on 20th century gay and lesbian studies. With the election of President Barak Obama, American’s first black president, and the legalization of same-sex marriage, the rise of far-right groups is consistent with historical trends, he said.

“Germany was very progressive on issues around sexuality at the turn of the 20th century,” Freeman said. In the years after the first World War, during the Weimar Republic, Berlin was a queer bohemia, he explained. The city was home to the Institute for Sexual Science, a famed sexology institute headed by Jewish physician Magnus Hirschfeld.

While anti-Semitism was at the heart of Nazi ideology, some of the frenzy that led to its uprising can be attributed to far-right hostility toward the sexual liberation of the 1920s, Freeman explained. As the country grew increasingly progressive, he said, more and more Nazis were elected.

“There was a push that was pretty likely to be successful in Germany in the 1920s and early '30s to repeal anti-gay laws,” Freeman added, "and then that all went belly-up when the Nazis took over.”

“So in terms of thinking about the politics of the far right, it’s reactionary politics, and it’s based in fear and hatred,” Freeman added.

The professor sees parallels between the rise of Nazism in Germany and the far right in the United states.  “People who believe in this idealized past that does not exist are panicked because [of] the visibility of queer people in the movement for our acceptance and the potential meltdown of the gender binary,” Freeman explained.

What’s different, he said, is that the world now has a history of what Nazism is and what it led to, which it didn’t have 75 years ago. “We don’t have the ability to pretend like it’s not happening,” Freeman said. 

And where is anti-LGBT hatred learned?  In homes and in church pews of fundamentalist and evangelical churches which also have long held racist views.  Unfortunately, many in the media continue to give undeserved deference to fundamentalist religion and have refrained from connecting the dots between the alt-right and Neo-Nazis and fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity in America. One good column on the issue is at the Dallas Morning News.  Here are excerpts:

Her words joined a similar outpouring from professed Bible-believing, God-fearing Jesus folk, punctuated by lots of venom, familiar FoxNews cut-and-paste criticisms of Islam, and lots of references to making America great. They too rushed to join the pseudo-Fascists in disputing the idea that a child in Syria was as important as their children, seemingly oblivious to the red flag that such agreement should raise.

This is a symptom of the heart sickness American evangelicals have inherited, one revealed in a growing Christian nationalism as well as a highly selective pro-life position, where apparently life isn't just more valuable inside the womb than outside of it, but inside America than outside of it as well.

This is especially true if the child looks like them, is likely to worship and believe and vote like them, if it will replicate them.

Amy's response and the responses of many white Christians to my Tweet were telling. They imagine that my capacity for compassion is so minuscule that it can only accommodate my own children. They assume that love for one must come at the expense of another. They reflect a fearful religion that instills in them fear that they are perpetually in danger. They reveal a faith rooted in superiority and self-preservation; one that breeds hostility to those it sees as outsiders.

Jesus was a homeless, dark-skinned immigrant who modeled sacrificial love and who welcomed to his table both beggar and soldier, both priest and prostitute, both Jew and Samaritan. It's almost impossible to simultaneously emulate this Jesus and champion exclusion, superiority or even protection, for that matter.

You cannot be both "For God so loved the world" and America First.  You cannot preach the gospel while despising refugees and foreigners and immigrants.  You can't claim that all lives matter while protecting only your own kind. 

You can't pledge complete allegiance to both Jesus and America simultaneously. At some point one will have to yield to the other, and when your religious position on foreigners begins to align with a malevolent Fascist extremist, it may be time to reconsider your interpretation of the gospel. It may be time to see if you've made God in your own caucasian image.

Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are Killing Christianity

In many posts on this blog I am very hard on evangelical Christians and fundamentalist Christians for a simple reason: they are increasingly the antithesis of Christ's message.  They cherry pick bible passages to condemn others, parade about feigning piety as they wear pretend religiosity on their sleeves.  Meanwhile, they are blind to the reality that they are the Pharisees condemned in the bible ten fold.  Their hypocrisy knows few limits and they are best defined by hatred of others and contempt for the religious freedom of others (e.g., John Adams, the GOP candidate for attorney general of Virginia thinks his religious beliefs should be binding on everyone).  People are watching their behavior, especially Millennials and, based on what they see, they are walking away from organized religion and rightfully so when atheists and agnostics act in far more moral ways then the self-anointed "godly folk."  There is a reason one third of Millennials claim no religious affiliation.  In a word, because of "Christians."  I came across a column that summarizes many of my thoughts on this issue. Here are excerpts:

Growing-up in the Church, I was taught that the worst thing one could be was a non-believer; that nothing was as tragic as a doomed soul that condemned itself by rejecting God. The religion of my childhood drew a sharp, clear line between the saved and the damned. All that mattered was making sure someone found themselves on the better side of this line—and the Atheists and Humanists didn’t have a shot.

In light of this supposed truth, the heart of the faith (I was told), was to live in a way that reflected the character and love of Jesus so vividly, so beautifully, that others were compelled to follow after him; that a Christian’s living testimony might be the catalyst for someone’s conversion. The Bible called it “making disciples” and it was the heart of our tradition. As the venerable hymn declared, we Jesus people were to be known—by our love.

What a difference a couple of decades make.

Just ask around. People outside the Church will tell you: love is no longer our calling card. It is now condemnation, bigotry, judgment and hypocrisy. In fact, the Christianity prevalent in so much of America right now isn’t just failing to draw others to Christ, it is actively repelling them from him. By operating in a way that is in full opposition to the life and ministry of Jesus—it is understandably producing people fully opposed to the faith that bears his name.

In record numbers, the American Church is consistently and surely making Atheists—or at the very least it is making former Christians; people who no longer consider organized religion an option because the Jesus they recognize is absent. With its sky-is-falling hand-wringing, its political bed-making, and its constant venom toward diversity, it is giving people no alternative but to conclude, that based on the evidence of people professing to be Godly—that God is of little use. In fact, this God may be toxic.

And that’s the irony of it all; that the very Evangelicals who’ve spent that last 50 years in this country demonizing those who reject Jesus—are the single most compelling reason for them to do so. They are giving people who suspect that all Christians are self-righteous, hateful hypocrites, all the evidence they need. The Church is confirming the outside world’s most dire suspicions about itself.

People are steering clear in droves, choosing to find meaning and community and something that resembles love outside its gatherings.

With every persecution of the LGBTQ community, with every unprovoked attack on Muslims, with every planet-wrecking decision, with every regressive civil rights move—the flight from Christianity continues.

And one day soon, these same religious folks will look around, lamenting the empty buildings and the irrelevance of the Church and a world that has no use for it, and they’ll wonder how this happened. . . . . the reason the Church soon will be teetering on the verge of extinction and irrelevance, will be because those entrusted to perpetuate the love of Jesus in the world, lost the plot so horribly, and gave the world no other option but to look elsewhere for goodness and purpose and truth.

Sadly, the non-toxic Christian denomination have yielded the field to the haters and for better or worse, the haters now define Christianity.  

Christians Claiming “Religious Persecution” Are Actually Just “Selfish”

A column in the Dallas Morning News calls out Christofascist claiming that they are being persecuted and demanding "religious freedom" laws that would exempt them from public accommodation laws and non-discrimination laws and ordinance.  Surprisingly, the author is a Baptist pastor - it goes without saying that his church is NOT part of the Southern Baptist Convention.  And his message to Christofascists?  That they are selfish and guilty of behavior that is the antithesis of the Christian conduct.    From my experience, the author is 100% on target.  No one is more selfish and self-centered than the fundamentalist/evangelical Christian crowd.  If you want to see true Christian charity and behavior, the last place to look for it is in the churches of such modern day Pharisees.  Kudos to Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas for rejecting the selfishness that now defines "conservative Christians."  Here are op-ed highlights:

Imagine this scenario: An evangelical Christian couple is planning their wedding and wants a cake for their reception from the best bakery in town. So they visit the Jewish baker to make arrangements but are greeted with bad news: "Sorry, we don't bake cakes for Christian weddings." Can you imagine the outcry in the Christian community?

Or how about this: You are involved in a horrific automobile accident near a small town and rushed by ambulance to the nearest hospital. You are taken to an emergency room to be treated by a doctor who first takes down vital demographic information, only to conclude: "I'm sorry. I'm a Muslim and my faith will not allow me to do the procedure you need to live. You'll have to wait until we can transport you to a larger hospital with other doctors." Again, can you imagine the outcry in the Christian community?

Or one more: Your best friend at work recommends a manicurist she loves, so you make an appointment. Upon arrival, you are made to feel unwelcome because everyone else there is lesbian, but you're not. The clear but unspoken message is that straight Christian women who don't condone same-sex relationships are not welcome here. How would you talk about that at your weekly Bible study group?

All these things happen in America today, but usually with the roles reversed or with different categories of people involved. Hearing these tales with a twist shines a light on how wrong they are. Things look different when you're the minority instead of the majority. Or at least, things should look different.

In most every contemporary instance of calls for additional legislation or presidential executive orders or city ordinances to address religious liberty concerns, Christians — and particularly the evangelical Christians from whence I have come — are presented as the aggrieved parties who desire additional protections to freely express their religious convictions. Seldom, however, does anyone stop to consider how it would feel for the shoe to be on the other foot. How might evangelical Christians see ourselves on the other side of the story, not as the persecuted but as potential persecutors? Would that make a difference in what we demand for ourselves?

One idea is to think about how the First Amendment in particular is a double-edged sword: What we expect of others, we must be willing to do ourselves.

And that, in case you've forgotten, is a decidedly Jewish and Christian idea. It was Jesus who said, quoting the Torah: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Of course, Jesus isn't the only one to have taught the Golden Rule; this idea of reciprocity permeates many cultures and teachings. But Christians, of all people, should understand the concept.

Contemporary calls for religious freedom legislation or presidential executive orders or city ordinances mostly run afoul of the First Amendment because they forget the Golden Rule. Most often, these are attempts to prevent me from having to do something for you that I don't want to do while still demanding that you be required to do that same thing for me. There's another simple word for this: Selfishness.

There has arisen among us a line of reasoning that elevates the free exercise clause of the First Amendment above the establishment clause. The establishment clause says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Which means the government may not prefer one religion over another. Adherents of all religions must be treated equally. And the free exercise clause adds that government may not make any law "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. Not just the free exercise of my religion, but the free exercise of all religions.

My "sincerely held religious belief" should not allow me to discriminate against others on the basis of things they cannot change. No workaround to the First Amendment and existing law is needed to solve this "problem," because it should not be a problem if we follow the Golden Rule.

To make exceptions to our cherished religious liberty based on one person's "sincerely held religious beliefs" is the equivalent of making exceptions to the Golden Rule based on the idea that the rule should only benefit me.

Religious liberty as expressed in the First Amendment is a golden rule that works just fine and has for 225 years. No further clarification is needed. What is needed is greater living out of the Golden Rule.

Why “Christian” Has Become Synonymous with Hate and Hypocrisy

As I have lamented many times, there are many "good Christians" in America, but sadly, they are very much like the "good Germans" of 1930's Germany.  While they do not support the hatred of others and lies that are now the hallmarks of fundamentalist Christians and evangelical Christians that increasingly define to base of the Republican Party, they sit silently most of the time and allow their foul co-religionists by default to define the entire faith.  Silence and lack of confrontation ultimately equate to complicity whether these "good Christians" like it or not.  Indeed, the foulness of the "conservative" Christians and the spinelessness of the "liberal" Christians leave me with no desire to be labeled by the term Christian whatsoever.  When I hear that someone is a "devout Christian" nowadays, my reflex reaction is to assume that they are not a nice and decent person and prefer to have nothing to do with them given the hate. hypocrisy and lies that dominate the "Christians" most often depicted in the news media.  An op-ed column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon and, in my view, remains to positive towards those who need to be shunned by decent people.  Here are column highlights:

Here it is nearly Easter, and for the first time in my life I don’t want anyone to know I’m a believer. To many, “Christian” has become synonymous with angry white voters in red hats, personally responsible for handcuffing all those undocumented mothers and wrenching them out of their sobbing children’s arms.

[A]s with a lot of people, including secular liberals, the way Christians behave as human beings can be completely at odds with the way they vote. Decades ago, when I was still a teenager in Alabama, I heard my grandmother refer to some new neighbors as the Tallyho Boys. Turns out a gay couple had bought or inherited a farm just down the road from her. The good ladies of that rural community welcomed the couple with poundcakes and homemade jelly, but would they have voted for a political candidate who supported marriage equality? Not a chance.

Tribal bonds have always been a challenge for our species. What’s new is how baldly the 2016 election exposed the collision between basic Christian values and Republican Party loyalty. By any conceivable definition, the sitting president of the United States is the utter antithesis of Christian values — a misogynist who disdains refugees, persecutes immigrants, condones torture and is energetically working to dismantle the safety net that protects our most vulnerable neighbors. Watching Christians put him in the White House has completely broken my heart.

Belonging to a community, feeling at home in the liturgy, carrying on a long family tradition — all these intangibles made it easy enough, before the election, to ignore much of what the church gets wrong and concentrate on what it gets right: supporting open immigration, welcoming refugees, opposing capital punishment, housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and the aged and the lonely. Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” All the rest is window dressing.

But this is the part of Christ’s message that most conservative Christians ignore when they step into the voting booth. In part that’s because abortion has become the ultimate border wall for Southern believers. I can’t count the number of Christians I know who are one-plank voters: They’d put Vladimir Putin in the White House if he promised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Republicans now have what they’ve long wanted: the chance to turn this into a Christian nation. But what’s being planned in Washington will hit my fellow Southerners harder than almost anyone else. Where are the immigrants? Mostly in the South. Which states execute more prisoners? The Southern states. Which region has the highest poverty rates? The South. Where are you most likely to drink poisoned water? Right here in the South. Where is affordable health care hardest to find? You guessed it. My people are among the least prepared to survive a Trump presidency, but the “Christian” president they elected is about to demonstrate exactly what betrayal really looks like — and for a lot more than 30 pieces of silver.

I have never felt lonelier than I feel in Donald Trump’s America.

But I also believe in resurrection. Every day brings word of a new Trump-inflicted human-rights calamity, and every day a resistance is growing that I would not have imagined possible, a coalition of people on the left and the right who have never before seen themselves as allies. In working together, I hope we’ll end up with something that looks a lot like a Christian nation — not in doctrine but in practice, caring for the least among us and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

I hope the author's hope is realized.  If it is, it will not be due to anything done by the "conservative" Christians who put this train wreck inn motion by placing hatred of others, racism, and misogyny ahead of the Gospel message.  The myth that Christians are good people or a net good for society needs to be recognized as a lie. The sooner, the better. 

Conservative Christians Opposed to Trump Face Backlash

As I have noted many times, I view fundamentalist religion of all stripes, including conservative Christianity, is a pestilence on mankind.  Be it fundamentalist Islam or fundamentalist Christianity, the main motivation is hatred and condemnation of others combined with a desire to force their beliefs on all others.  Indeed, in the case of fundamentalist Christians, their beliefs are increasingly diametrically opposed to the Gospel message and their hypocrisy is off the charts.  Gays, feminists,  and "liberals" have long been targets of the hatred of the "godly folk," but now with the rise of Der Trumpenführer, even other evangelicals are facing a backlash if they criticize and/or oppose the policies of the new American Reich.  A piece in The Atlantic documents that backlash and nastiness some conservative Christians are facing for not supporting what might be described as an alt-right version of Christianity.  Here are article excerpts:

Earlier this month, Jonathan Martin jotted off a sad tweet. “I’ve lost count of the number of people who say they’ve had ministry jobs threatened/been fired for speaking out in some way in this season,” the Christian author and speaker wrote. Confirmation rolled in: one story from a church planter in California, another from a former worship leader in Indiana. These are “not people who would historically self-identify as progressives, at all,” Martin told me later. They’re “people who see themselves as being very faithful evangelicals.”

Donald Trump has divided conservative Christian communities. Most white Christians support Trump, or at least voted for him. Some who have spoken out against his presidency or his policies, though, have encountered backlash. For a small group of people working in Christian ministry, music, and nonprofit advocacy, the consequences have been tangible: They’ve faced pressure from their employers, seen funds withdrawn from their mission work, or lost performing gigs because of their political beliefs.

Many of these stories suggest a generational divide in the church. Young Christians who describe themselves as theological conservatives don’t necessarily identify as political conservatives, although some who do are also horrified by Trump. The issues they’re passionate about—whether it’s racial reconciliation or refugee care—might not match the priorities of their elders. . . . . For Millennials used to speaking their minds on social media, institutional rules curtailing their freedom—whether they’re standard policies or not—might be jarring.

Joy Beth Smith joined Focus on the Family in May 2016 as the editor of Boundless.org, a website for single people in the church. The 28-year-old is fairly media savvy: By the time she started at Focus, she was shopping a book proposal and had bylines at magazines like Christianity Today. When her blog posts for Boundless started getting picked up—including a piece republished by The Washington Post in June—her bosses were thrilled, she told me recently.

But Smith was also pushing the Boundless audience. . . .  When Omar Mateen murdered dozens of people at Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando, she wrote a tribute post, which caused a “bit of a stir” among readers, she said: “I don’t know how you can get stirred up over lives that were lost, but people were. That’s kind of the conservative space we existed in and were working against at times.”

In October, Smith wrote a piece for The Washington Post about her experience with sexual assault, criticizing Trump for his derogatory comments toward women and Christian leaders for not speaking out. And that’s when she started getting serious internal pushback. . . . she had written the piece under her own byline, not as a representative of Focus. Batura told her to remove her affiliation with Boundless from her personal social-media accounts, and at the end of the day, she was given notice of an official conduct warning.

At the beginning of November, Focus circulated a “spokesperson” policy, according to Smith. It stated that public-facing representatives of the organization were not allowed to comment on candidates for political office, and could only speak on political issues with Focus’s authorization. Smith was asked to take down more posts . . .

On November 18, Smith’s bosses told her they didn’t think she could be a good spokesperson for Focus on the Family, according to Smith. She was given two options: She could resign, get a severance, promise not to take legal action, and sign a non-disparagement agreement. Or, she could choose to be fired. She chose firing.

Dingle, 34, writes and speaks about welcoming disabled people into the church. She has a background in special education, and several of her six young kids have special needs: One is in a wheelchair, another is autistic, and another is HIV-positive. She started working with Key Ministry, a Christian disability-advocacy organization, in 2014, speaking at conferences and writing blog posts for the organization.

Even though Dingle and her husband attended a Southern Baptist church at the time, she had always held some politically liberal positions, she said. But she didn’t feel like that would be a problem at Key.

As the 2016 election unfolded, political talk became more contentious, especially because Key was trying to develop relationships with conservative organizations like Focus on the Family and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Meanwhile, Dingle was developing her own voice. On her personal blog, she often talked about racism and her support for Black Lives Matter. In July, she wrote about why she was pro-life and voting for Hillary Clinton. It was a post “I expected no one to read,” she said, but it got picked up and circulated widely by Slate and Daily Kos.As the summer drew to a close, though, it became clear that her political writing was a problem. In September, Grcevich “offered an ultimatum,” Dingle said: “I could be more quiet politically and continue with Key Ministry, or if I continued to speak out on issues, I would be a liability.” So she resigned.

Dingle didn’t walk away with such cordial feelings. “It seems like there is this silencing of evangelical women if we don’t stick with approved talking points,” she told me. She felt pressured to leave and believed she would eventually be fired if she didn’t.

What’s significant about these women’s stories is that they appear to fit a broader pattern. Some conservative Christian communities seem to have become allergic to political disagreement of any kind, especially when their members speak out about Trump or Republican policies.

Audrey Assad is a 33-year-old Catholic musician who regularly performs at theologically conservative churches and events run by conservative denominations. Last year, she performed at Onething, an annual gathering of 20,000 young adults in the charismatic Christian world. In recent months, she’s been outspoken on Twitter, advocating for refugees, highlighting police brutality, and criticizing Trump. . . . . She’s gotten a lot of pushback, particularly from other Christian leaders. They’re “incensed that I would have the opinions that I do and demand that I reconsider them and post more about my kids,” she said.

In some conservative Christian communities, there is space for disagreement on issues like racism, refugees, and elections as long as people agree on the fundamentals, including same-sex marriage and abortion. But in many other places, this does not seem to be the case—it’s Republican politics all the way down. Those who disagree may have to choose whether to log off of Twitter and stay quiet, or start looking for a new job.

From following fundamentalist "Family values" organizations for over two decades, I am not the least surprised at what is happening.  Most of these groups are nothing short of mean and vicious toward those who do not follow their "party line" which is in lock step with GOP policies and denigrates anyone who isn't a white, heterosexual conservative "Christians."  The irony, of course, is that nearly 1/3 of Millennials have walked away from organized religion because of the hate and hypocrisy that are increasingly the norm of Christianity in America.  What's happening as described in the article will only accelerate the exodus - which will in the long run be a good thing. 

Why Are Religious People (Generally) Less Intelligent?

A piece in the Intellectualist looks at a topic that I have touched on previously over the years: the general negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity.  One prior post for instance looked at education levels of different denominations and showed highest education levels among Episcopalians and Evangelical Lutherans - the liberal denominations always attacked by fundamentalist Christofascists - and descending downward toward Pentecostals and other fundamentalist sects.  With the election of Donald Trump supposedly being a triumph for low education whites (at least according to the spin of some in the pundit class and Trump sycophants) and 81% of evangelical Christians having voted for Trump, it is worth considering whether what we just witnessed instead was a triumph of ignorance and the low IQ portion of society setting the nation on a course for disaster.  I don't deny that I hold religion in general in low regard because it opposes science, knowledge and logic and too often provides an excuse to avoid thinking and making one's own reason based decisions.  Given the negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity one has to ask why politicians give such deference to to the religious.  Are they merely playing to the least intelligent and most easily duped?  Here are article excerpts:

1) A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity.

2) The study indicates that it is uncommon to meet someone who is both highly intelligent and is also (sincerely) highly religious.

3) This study doesn’t mean that there are not some highly religious people among intelligent people (law of large numbers). This is a probabilistic model.

4) Yes, there are very famous scientists who were also devout Christians, however, if you notice, this combination tends to decrease when the time period shifts to the 19th century and becomes even less common in the 20th century. Atheism (or similar) was a serious crime against the State until fairly recently (It still is in many countries).  

5. Not being religious, doesn’t imply being an atheist.

Psychology Today:

The key question of the study is why are religious people generally less intelligent? And the authors of the study did not shy away from the answer, offering three compelling explanations:

(1) Intelligent people are generally more analytical and data-driven; formal religions are the antithesis: they are empirically fluffy and their claims are often in direct contradiction with scientific evidence, unless they are interpreted metaphorically – but maybe intelligent people are not that keen on metaphor. Another way of putting it is that people with a high IQ are more likely to have faith in science, which isn’t religion’s best friends (yes, yes, I do know about Einstein’s quotes).

(2) Intelligent people are less likely to conform, and, in most societies, religiosity is closer to the norm than atheism is. Although this interpretation is based on extrapolation, it still makes sense: first, smarter people tend to be less gullible; second, in most societies religious people outnumber atheists and agnostics – though global levels of religiosity have been declining, and there is substantial cultural variability in religiosity levels.

(3) Intelligence and religiosity are “functionally equivalent”, which means that they fulfill the same psychological role. Although this intriguing argument contradicts points 1 and 2, it deserves serious consideration. Humans will always crave meaning.

Religion – like science and logical reasoning – provides them with a comprehensive framework or system to make meaningful interpretations of the world.

At times, religion and science are in conflict; but they can also act in concert, complementing each other to answer non-falsifiable and falsifiable questions, respectively. The authors conclude that some people satisfy their desire to find meaning via religion, whereas others do so via logical, analytical, or scientific reasoning – and IQ predicts whether you are in the former or latter group.

It is noteworthy that these three explanations assume that IQ influences religiosity rather than vice-versa, which seems plausible: IQ levels remain very stable after childhood, whereas religiosity levels keep fluctuating – childhood IQ predicts adult IQ, but childhood religiosity is a very poor predictor of adult religiosity.

 I am sure some will find all of this insulting or "elitist," but the next time you are forced to someone expounding on their religiosity, know that you are likely listening to either a dullard or someone - i.e., a "scamvangelist" - preying on the less intelligent.  Either way, it is not a positive phenomenon. 

Why We Need A Third Reconstruction in America

I am not sure what the symbolism might be, but I woke up during the night after having a dream where I and other family members were resistance fighters in Vichy France. The dream was disturbing and frustrating too since many in the dream were unconvinced of the evil being opposed. With waking and the coming of morning, a lesser but no less dangerous evil exists that must be opposed: the racism and right wing religious fanaticism that throughout America's history has typically walked hand in hand with racism and white supremacy.  If post election exit polls and other surveys are to be believed, a last gasp of angry white voters upset about the loss of white privilege Christian reactionaries who continue to seek to force their beliefs on all citizens propelled Donald Trump to electoral victory (along perhaps with electronic vote hacking in three swing states).  The take away from this circumstance is that the vast majority of registered voters - nearly 75% - who did not vote for Trump must oppose his agenda and push for what one writer at BillMoyers.com has called a third Reconstruction in America.  Here are article highlights:

The reactionary wave that swept across America with the election of Donald Trump is not an anomaly in our history. It is an all-too-familiar pattern in the long struggle for American reconstruction.

The story of our struggle for freedom is not linear: Every advance toward a more perfect union has been met with a backlash of resistance.

When African-Americans became full citizens of the United States during Reconstruction, a violent backlash arose in the Redemption movement that included both the violence of the Klan and the voter suppression of Southern Democrats. The same kind of backlash followed the legislative victories of the civil rights movement — what many historians call a “Second Reconstruction.” Richard Nixon’s “law and order” campaign of 1968 was an intentional effort to appeal to racial hate and fear without using overtly racist language. His adviser, Kevin Phillips, called it the “Southern Strategy.”

Donald Trump’s unanticipated victory could not have been possible without the election of Barack Obama as America’s first African-American president. Trump entered national politics by waging a crusade against the possibility of Obama’s citizenship. It proved to be the perfect way to touch the psychic wound of so many Americans who have not faced our legacy of racism. Anyone familiar with the Mississippi Plan of 1876 or the Southern Strategy of 1968 can be surprised only by the ease with which Trump adapted them for the 21^st century.

Trump’s attacks on immigrants, Muslims and the LGBTQ community were political ploys based on the fundamental racial fear at the heart of the American experience. When he told white Americans that he was their last chance to make America great again, he was touching a wound passed down since the lost cause religion of the 19^th century.

If we are willing to see ourselves as we are and have been, we will also see our potential for prophetic resistance, even in times like these. For we are also the heirs of great dissenters who’ve stood for right even when they were a minority of one. When the Jim Crow laws of the solid South were upheld by the US Supreme Court in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, only one justice — John Harlan of Kentucky — dissented. But his dissenting opinion laid the legal groundwork upon which Thurgood Marshall built his case over half a century later in Brown v. Board of Education.

When Woodrow Wilson showed Birth of a Nation at the White House a century ago, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells and the interracial NAACP challenged the most powerful man in America to face his racism. 

Less than a majority of Americans elected a mortal, not a god, when they cast their ballots for Donald Trump. . . . Across lines of division, we can continue to build the moral coalition that is already a majority in this country. We can and must face the race and class question together and not as separate issues.

Yes, we have some difficult days ahead. . . . Our work continues: we must work together for a Third Reconstruction in America.

Many Republican "friends" vehemently deny the racism that motivated their votes.  Not coincidentally, many of them still cling to a near fundamentalist form of Christianity that, if one looks at America's history, has always been in lock step with white supremacy.  Lest we forget, the Southern Baptists came into being over the issue of slavery and religious arguments that blacks were inferior and not equal to whites.  Why do we pretend that much of this toxicity no longer exists throughout that denomination and so many of the other Christian fundamentalist sects?   #NotMyPresident