How the Selfish Use Christianity as Their Cover Story

Paul Ryan at hate group FRC's "Values Voter Summit"

I write often about religion for a number of reasons, including but not limited to (i) it is the driving force that has made life hell for LGBT individuals for centuries, and (ii) it provides cover for some of the most hate filled and selfish individuals - and has done so for centuries.  In today's America, the most hypocritical are evangelical Christians  81% of whom voted for and continue to support, a thrice divorced, self-admitted serial sexual molester even as they throw a conniption fit over the broadcasting of a same sex kiss during the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. They share their hypocrisy with other regular churchgoers who feign piety while in the pews yet support Republican policies that seek to shred the social safety net and cut funding for children, the poor, the homeless and the hungry while they themselves clamor for additional tax breaks. And then, of course, there is the Catholic Church hierarchy that lives like princes even as they aided and abetted sexual predators so that their cushy positions would not be threatened by scandal.  A piece in The Raw Story looks at this reality:  Here are highlights: 

Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business will be happy to tell you that waiters always fight each other to avoid working Sunday lunch shift. Not because they want to sleep in, but because it’s a widespread belief that the post-church crowd is loud, demanding and unwilling to tip appropriately. In the food service industry, “Christian” is synonymous with “selfish.”

[W]aiters probably remember the bad Christian tippers more because the hypocrisy is so stunning. The image of a man piously preening about what a good Christian he is in church only to turn around and refuse the basic act of decency that is paying someone what you owe them perfectly symbolizes a lurking suspicion in American culture that the harder someone thumps the Bible, the more selfish and downright sadistic a person he is. And that perception—that showy piety generally goes hand in hand with very un-Christ-like behavior—is not an urban myth at all. On the contrary, it’s the daily reality of American culture and politics.

It’s absolutely disgusting how the politicians who make the biggest show of how much they love Jesus would be the first in line to bash him if he returned with a message of clothing the naked and feeding the poor. The Jesus of the Bible multiplied the loaves and fishes. His loudest followers these day gripe about feeding people, claiming it creates a “culture of dependency.” They may even comb through the Bible to take quotes out of context to justify their selfishness toward the poor, as Rep. Steven Fincher did when he claimed the Bible says, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” The fact that those jobs are unavailable didn’t give him a moment’s pause when suggesting this very un-Christ-like plan to his fellow Americans.

There are plenty of progressive Christians who genuinely try to live out Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself . . . . That said, statistics bear out the sense that people who are more invested in being perceived as pious also embrace the most selfish policies. Self-identified conservatives and Republicans claim go to church regularly at twice the rate of self-identified liberals. People who go to church more than once a week are far more conservative than the rest of the population.

The attempts to reconcile the correlation between displays of piety and support for selfish policies get complex on the right, with conservatives often arguing that hating your neighbor at the voting booth doesn’t count because church charities supposedly make up for it. (They don’t.) In reality, the relationship between Christian piety and support for selfish policies is fairly straightforward. It’s not that being Christian makes you conservative. It’s that being conservative makes being a loud and pious Christian extremely attractive.

Without Christianity, the underlying mean-spiritedness of conservative policies is simply easier to spot. . . . . Since Christians are “supposed” to be good people, people who really aren’t good are lining up to borrow that reputation to advance their agenda.

The fact that conservatism causes obnoxious Christian piety in American culture is most obvious when looking at some of the theological developments that have accrued since the philosophers of selfishness decided to use Christianity as their cover story. The “prosperity gospel” that has developed in recent years is a classic example.

The fact of the matter is that the purposes religion serves in America are shrinking in number. Our cultural identity is increasingly shaped by pop culture, not faith or ethnic identity. Our holidays are more about shopping and having a chance to catch up with far-flung family these days, not showing devotion to a deity. Spiritual needs are often addressed through modern means like psychotherapy and self-help. People build communities through hobbies and interests more than through faith communities bound by geography, ethnicity and family.

Increasingly, the only thing religion has left to justify itself is that it provides cover for people who want to have bigoted, selfish beliefs but want to believe they are good people anyway. As these social trends continue, we can expect the alignment between public piety and grotesquely selfish political beliefs to get worse, not better.

Meanwhile, the truly "good Christians" remain quiet and yield the field to the falsely pious and selfish.  It's little wonder that a growing number of the younger generations have walked away from religion entirely.

Will Young American Voters Learn From Young Britons?

During the 2016 presidential election - which had a pathetic overall voter turn out - many of America's young voters stayed home.  The consequences for the country have been catastrophic.  Something similar happened in the United Kingdom during the Brexit vote- young voters stayed home and older, racist and bigoted voters tipped the election in a way that shocked many young voters.  On Thursday, they got their revenge and voted against pro-Brexit politicians and deprived the Conservative Party a majority in Parliament.  One can only hope that young American voters will take a page from the vote in Britain and turn out in large numbers both in November, 2017, in Virginia and in November, 2018, and direct their wrath at Republicans.  Staying home from the polls is never an acceptable option and for the young, it merely allows all too often greedy, aging bigots to sway the election outcome.  There is a message too for Democrat candidates: they need to connect with young voters and make the case for policies that address their concerns.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this past week's vote in the UK. Here are excerpts:

LONDON — As Britain took stock on Friday of the stunning results of a snap election that wiped out the parliamentary majority of Prime Minister Theresa May and her governing Conservative Party, one narrative bubbled up to the surface: The youth had spoken.

The election results were fueled partly by a higher turnout rate among young British voters who had long been angry at the results of the referendum last year to leave the European Union, known as Brexit. That vote, overwhelmingly supported by older Britons, was seen by many younger people as a threat to their jobs, their ability to study abroad and their desire to travel freely across the bloc’s borders.

In other words, the vote by young Britons on Thursday had a whiff of payback.

“I was so angry about Brexit that I buried my head in a pillow and screamed,” said Louise Traynor, 24, a waitress in the southwestern district of Battersea in London, who had never voted before Thursday.

Shaking her head in frustration, Ms. Traynor said she had been angry at herself because she hadn’t bothered to vote the first time around. “I was stupid enough to think that the country had some sense,” she said.

The Brexit referendum, Ms. Traynor said, could lead to closed borders, which threatened to tear her long-term Spanish boyfriend away from her, and her away from the group of European friends she had made while working at a tapas restaurant.

On Friday morning, she said, much of the anxiety she had felt about her future was replaced with excitement when she realized that her vote for the opposition Labour Party had denied the prime minister a mandate.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour gained 31 seats, while Mrs. May’s party lost 12 seats and its overall majority — leaving a hung Parliament, one in which neither side has enough lawmakers for control. In a statement on Friday, Mrs. May grimly announced that she would form a minority government with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.

Ms. Traynor said that Mr. Corbyn’s campaign had “injected energy” into what otherwise seemed like a stale election that would bring more “doom.”

“Does Theresa May care that I’ve been on minimum wage for three years and I’m still paying my student debt?” she asked. “No, she doesn’t. All she cares about is Brexit and getting her deal.” Many young Britons felt compelled to vote after the Brexit decision, because of austerity budgets and what they saw as the establishment’s tendency to serve the interests of the rich. This year saw a spike in young people registering to vote — more than one million people under 25 applied. The turnout in constituencies with younger voters rose significantly, appearing to benefit Labour. The turnout for 18- to 24-year-olds was 66.4 percent, according to Sky News data. Other reports put it as high as 72 percent. In the 2015 general election, the rate for voters of the same age range was 43 percent, according to Ipsod, a marketing and opinion research company.

The payoff was evident in Battersea, where Labour seized the Conservative seat.

“Representatives from the Labour Party knocked on our doors and gathered us in groups, asking us about our problems and talking to us about solutions,” said Jessie Cox, a 21-year-old student. “They gave us a reason to vote.”

Jennifer Hudson, a senior lecturer in politics at University College London, said the effectiveness of Mr. Corbyn’s campaign could be seen in a picture of him with young supporters, cheek to cheek.

“I thought: ‘We will never see Theresa May like that with her supporters,’” Ms. Hudson said. “He has managed to create a human connection with his voters.”

“We may still be far from the final result that we wanted, but this feels like progress, and hopefully, it gives out a message to the pompous Tories that they can’t make bad decisions on our behalf,” said Luke Rossi, 25, a musician who had voted for the first time.

In Battersea Park, students ages 19 to 21 were debating possible political outcomes of the election aftermath. All said they hoped Mrs. May would be removed as leader of her party.

“She’s an embarrassment to the country,” said Fiona Barry, 20, a student at Queen Mary University in London. “England deserves so much better than that.”

Trump, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell and  and Paul Ryan are all an embarrassment to America. Even more so than the Tories, Republicans have nothing to offer to young Americans given the GOP's sole desire being to give enormous tax cuts to the wealth while slashing benefits and the social safety net that aids everyone else.  I hope young voters wake up to this reality and get out and vote in their own interest.  It's a virtual guaranty that aging whites - and evangelical Christians - do not give a damn about the long term future of the country or economic opportunity for all. 

The Growing Reactionary Trend Can No Longer Be Ignored

In a very lengthy piece in New York Magazine Andrew Sullivan looks head on at the growing forces of reaction that are asserting themselves not only in America but also in Europe and other parts of the world.  His message is that this trend must be resisted because of the threat it poses to humanity and democracy in particular.  One must never forget that a major factor in the fall of the Roman Empire was Christianity - as well as military over extension which America is seemingly replicating - and we see signs of this battle against modernity and knowledge most markedly among the conservative Christians (and their Muslim counterparts embodied by the Taliban and ISIS).  As a piece in the Washington Post, right wing Republicans and self-styled leaders of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians - Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and hate group leader Brian Brown are but examples - are increasingly enamored with Vladimir Putin and Russia's autocratic government.  And then, of course, we have Der Trumpenführer himself who may have colluded with Putin to win the 2016 presidential election.  None of this bodes well for humankind or America in the long run. Rejecting science and knowledge while embracing racism, xenophobia and authoritarian rule cannot end well for most people.  Here are highlights from Sullivan's piece:

Look around you. Donald Trump is now president of the United States, having won on a campaign that trashed liberal democracy itself, and is now presiding over an administration staffed, in part, with adherents of a political philosophy largely alien to mainstream American politics. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has driven his country from postcommunist capitalism to a new and popular czardom, empowered by nationalism and blessed by a resurgent Orthodox Church. Britain, where the idea of free trade was born, is withdrawing from the largest free market on the planet because of fears that national identity and sovereignty are under threat. In France, a reconstructed neofascist, Marine Le Pen, has just won a place in the final round of the presidential election. In the Netherlands, the anti-immigrant right became the second-most-popular vote-getter — a new high-water mark for illiberalism in that once famously liberal country. Austria narrowly avoided installing a neo-reactionary president in last year’s two elections. Japan is led by a government attempting to rehabilitate its imperial, nationalist past. Poland is now run by an illiberal Catholic government that is dismembering key liberal institutions. Turkey has morphed from a resolutely secular state to one run by an Islamic strongman, whose powers were just ominously increased by a referendum. Israel has shifted from secular socialism to a raw ethno-nationalism.

We are living in an era of populism and demagoguery. And yes, there’s racism and xenophobia mixed into it. But what we are also seeing, it seems to me, is the manifest return of a distinctive political and intellectual tendency with deep roots: reactionism.

Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It’s far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were. It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt. If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up. If conservatives tend to resist too radical a change, reactionaries want a revolution. Though it took some time to reveal itself, today’s Republican Party — from Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution to today’s Age of Trump — is not a conservative party. It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power.

The reactionary impulse is, of course, not new in human history. . . . Its darkest American incarnation took place after Reconstruction, as a backlash to the Civil War victory of the North; a full century later, following the success of the civil-rights movement, it bubbled up among the white voters of Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.”

What are this generation’s reactionaries reacting to? They’re reacting, as they have always done, to modernity. But their current reaction is proportional to the bewildering pace of change in the world today. They are responding, at some deep, visceral level, to the sense that they are no longer in control of their own lives. They see the relentless tides of globalization, free trade, multiculturalism, and mass immigration eroding their sense of national identity.

This notion of a national culture, rooted in, if not defined by, a common ethnicity, is even more powerful in European nations, which is why Brexit is so closely allied to Trumpism. In the case of Britain, the question of race is framed within a euphemism used by the British government itself: a “visible minority” versus an “invisible one.” “Since 2001, Britain’s ‘visible minority’ population has nearly doubled, from 8 percent to 14 percent today,” Benjamin Schwarz, the national editor of The American Conservative, noted last year. “It is projected to rise to about 38 percent by mid-century.” Is Britain changing so fast that it could lose any meaningful continuity with its history and culture? That is the question now occupying the British neo-reactionaries. Prime Minister Theresa May has not said many memorable things in office, except this: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.”

Things didn’t start going wrong in the 1960s or under the Progressives. Yarvin believes that the Western mind became corrupted during the Enlightenment itself. The very idea of democracy, allied with reason and constitutionalism, is bunk: “Washington has failed. The Constitution has failed. Democracy has failed.” His golden era: the age of monarchs.

And is it any wonder that reactionaries are gaining strength? Within the space of 50 years, America has gone from segregation to dizzying multiculturalism; from traditional family structures to widespread divorce, cohabitation, and sexual liberty; from a few respected sources of information to an endless stream of peer-to-peer media; from careers in one company for life to an ever-accelerating need to retrain and regroup; from a patriarchy to (incomplete) gender equality; from homosexuality as a sin to homophobia as a taboo; from Christianity being the common culture to a secularism no society has ever sustained before ours.

This, of course, is not to defend the neo-reactionary response. Their veiled racism is disturbing, and their pessimism a solipsistic pathology. . . . how can you seriously regard our political system and culture as worse than ever before in history? How self-centered do you have to be to dismiss the unprecedented freedom for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals? Or the increased security for the elderly and unemployed, and the greater access to health care by the poor and now the working poor? Compare the air we breathe today with that of the 1950s. Contrast the religious tolerance we take for granted today with the enmities of the past. Compare the racial integration of today, incomplete as it may be, with Jim Crow. Observe the historically low levels of crime compared with the recent past — and the absence of any world wars since 1945.

Reaction can be clarifying if it helps us better understand the huge challenges we now face. But reaction by itself cannot help us manage the world we live in today — which is the only place that matters. You start with where you are, not where you were or where you want to be. There are no utopias in the future or Gardens of Eden in our past. There is just now — in all its incoherent, groaning, volatile messiness. Our job, like everyone before us, is to keep our nerve and make the best of it.

Sullivan diagnoses the ultimate root of reactionary politics and society: being self-centered.  This applies to whites how oppose racial equality.  They want to forever maintain their white privilege at the expense of racial minorities.  The Christofascists similarly ultimately seek to hang on to their age old habit of persecuting and harming those who hold to different beliefs or threaten to make them think about the myth and legend basis for the house of cards religious beliefs. They perhaps more than anyone save perhaps Islamic extremists are at war with modernity and The Enlightenment's values.  In their rush to restore a supposedly mythical, wonderful era, they utterly overlook the horrors that era wrought on so many.  Self-centered doesn't adequately describe the selfishness and - if one still believes - un-Christian conduct.

The Self-Centeredness of Christofascists

I often state that the most selfish and self-centered people you will ever meet are the Christofascists who whine incessantly about their piety and godliness even as they hate nearly everyone around them and seek to trample on the rights and sensibilities of others.  It is ALWAYS about them and blocking anything, no matter how trivial, that might suggest that there are views and beliefs other than there on.  In the aftermath of the Orlando massacre of LGBT Americans, the Hillsborough County government building flew a rainbow flag as a sign of respect for the victims and their families.  True to form, that simple gesture resulted in spittle fleck rants and claims that the mere presence of the flag created a "hostile work environment" in the minds of at least one self-absorbed Christofascist.  It truly is difficult to comprehend how disgusting and reprehensible these people are.  Yet some politicians still rush to kiss there asses and prostitute themselves to them.  The Tampa Bay Times has coverage of this outrageous story.  Here are highlights:

TAMPA -- A pride flag waving outside the Hillsborough County center was meant to be a sign of respect and remembrance for the victims of the shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando.

But just a day after it was raised, Commissioner Stacy White said it may be offending Christian employees and questioned whether it should be taken down.

In an email sent to the the county human relations director Peggy Rowe on Thursday, White said he received an anonymous complaint from a county employee that the presence of the flag was “nearly unbearable” for her to pass on her way to work and created a "hostile work environment."

Calling the rainbow flag a “divisive, politically-charged symbol,” White asked Rowe if it could become an HR problem for the county. If it does, then White said he wanted a special meeting of the county commission to consider removing it.

Commissioners voted 5-1 on Wednesday to hang the flag for the rest of June, which is Pride Month, after 49 people were killed at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando on Sunday. The shooter, Omar Mateen, reportedly targeted the bar because it is a well-known LGBT hangout. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

White, a Republican who represents east Hillsborough County, was not present for the meeting. The flag was raised immediately after Wednesday’s meeting.

In addition to raising the pride flag, the commission voted to recognize June as LGBT pride month every year and hold a candlelight vigil each year on June 12 to remember the victims of the Orlando shooting.

While I don't advocate violence, it's hard to think that the Pulse shooter killed the wrong people. White and the cowardly anonymous employee personify the foul nature of the "godly folk" and their political whores in the GOP.  

The Limits of "Religious Liberty"

As a number of posts on this blog have explored, there are real limits to the "religious liberty" granted under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  And those limits are increasingly being ignored by the Christofascists who are showing themselves more and more to be self-centered people who care nothing about the rights of others.  It is ALL about them and it is ALL about trying to force their hate and fear based religious beliefs on all of society, in part because they are terrified at the prospect of having to think for themselves and reevaluate childish beliefs that they were indoctrinated with.  A column in the New York Times looks at the ongoing phenomenon of false claims of threats to religious liberty.  It also looks at the parallels with Jim Crow era claims and also the possible long term damage done to religious freedom as contemplated by the Constitution as push back to the Christofascists grows.  Here are excerpts:

Following the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, religious objections to serving gay couples are mounting in more states. Invoking religious liberty in this way presents ‘‘special concerns’’ by prolonging social conflict, according to a recent article by two law professors, Reva B. Siegel of Yale and Douglas NeJaime of the University of California, Irvine. They point to the aftermath of Roe v. Wade: After the Supreme Court ruling legalized abortion throughout the country, Congress and state legislatures ensured that a doctor, nurse or other health care professional could refuse to participate in providing an abortion as a matter of conscience. Over the decades, these ‘‘conscience clauses’’ expanded in some states to include counseling, referral and pharmaceutical services, allowing people who fill prescriptions, for example, to exert a form of social control in the name of their own religious freedom.

All of this is making longtime proponents of religious liberty nervous. Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia, has helped write state religious freedom bills and supported the ones that foundered in Indiana and Arkansas. But in an article last year, he issued a warning to evangelical leaders. ‘‘It is a risky step to interfere with the most intimate details of other people’s lives while loudly claiming liberty for yourself,’’ Laycock wrote. ‘‘If you stand in the way of a revolution and lose, there will be consequences.’’

Refusing to serve customers has an ugly history. A half-century ago, the civil rights movement held lunch-counter sit-ins to protest Jim Crow. No one succeeded then in claiming a God-given right to refuse to serve black customers. Throughout the South, businesses open to the public became open to all. Today, in the name of religious liberty, there is robust Southern opposition to same-sex marriage. But supporters say the analogy to the exclusions of Jim Crow is inapt, because racial segregation was never central to Christian teaching the way traditional marriage has been. They also correctly point out that strong national laws protect against discrimination on the basis of race, but not against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In many states, in the South and elsewhere, a business or a landlord doesn’t need a special faith-based reason for turning away a gay client or tenant. They’re simply free to do so.

Given the speed with which public support for same-sex marriage is growing, gay people may win other rights against discrimination. But what about private religious schools and social-service organizations? ‘‘Hard questions’’ will arise, Chief Justice John Roberts predicted in his dissent from the same-sex marriage ruling, when, ‘‘for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex couples.’’

In the Senate and the House of Representatives, dozens of Republicans quickly signed on to a bill that would protect the tax-exempt status of a religious organization in such a situation and prevent any government action against a business that refused to serve a gay couple. On both sides of this fight, tolerance no longer seems to be the word of the day. ‘‘The religious resisters say, ‘It doesn’t matter if you can have the wedding you want, because you shouldn’t be getting married anyway,’ ’’ Laycock said over the phone last week.

Already Americans are leaving religion in droves.  As Christofascists increasingly become outliers - a trend I hope accelerates -  these selfish cretins may be unwittingly setting the stage for future further restrictions on their ability to mistreat and discriminate against others.