Check out this New Republican interview between a Never Trumper and one of these new Evangelical pastors.
It’s not really…….readable, Matt Labash -the never Trumper, makes some well-thought out points but all the “pastor” does is hurl vitriol and insults. It’s still informative in its own way, though, in that it exhibits the futility of dealing with these people.
Certainly in the late 18th century, many of the restrictions on those not professing the state religion were still in place in many parts of Europe. Which makes “dominionism” seem odd in the American context, at least for those of us outsiders with only a superficial knowledge.
I’d gloss what I said above about Europe - some countries have a “church tax” where the state collects church membership dues, but they seem to be voluntary. Perhaps there’s some inertia principle that makes it harder to opt out of this though, and similarly it wouldn’t surprise me if your Italian students found bureaucracy assuming everyone was Catholic by default (it’s a running joke in England that people who don’t really think or care about religion at all are just put down as CofE because it’s just easier - but it doesn’t bind them to any particular observance or activity).
Your mention of Russian Orthodoxy: Russia is one place where the Church and state are closely intertwined, to the point almost that Putin’s reinvented the old Tsarist formula: “Nation, Orthodoxy, Autocracy”.
You’ll love this one:
I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
Or this:
And:
You don’t need to be ‘straight’ to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.
I’m not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination, but I gotta give Goldwater credit for at least being consistent with his conservative/libertarian beliefs.
Perhaps and the Bible does mention such things, including those who portray only good stuff IIRC. Also that even the elect may be deceived during the end times and that’s what we seem to have here. The saddest/funniest/ and most telling part was the golden statue of Trump the conservatives put up to ‘worship’, right out of the Bible of things that take one away from God and His promises.
Ann, I suspect that this has a lot to do with the Christian principle of “standing alone is good / martyrdom is good / faith is rewarded.”
When you have people who have been taught all their lives that faith is rewarded and praises examples of people like Daniel and his friends who stubbornly stood for the truth even in the face of direct death, that unfortunately leads to a cancerous off-shoot: namely, people who will stubbornly and fiercely stand for what’s wrong, in the belief that it’s right. Such people are well nigh impossible to budge, because once they’re convinced they’re a martyr for God or good, they must persist to the end.
Thank You! Very interesting page…
I rather like John Dean’s version, he said Goldwater wanted the good Christians to kick Falwell in the “nuts” but the reporters cleaned up the language- a very little bit. And apparently that was over the appointment of Sandra Day O’Conner to the Supreme Court which Falwell opposed.
I understand Goldwater had a gay nephew or grandson (possibly both?). But at any rate, for being such a conservative icon- he sure had lots of progressive ideas! Equal rights for gays, female justices, gays in the military, and possibly others. He surely did not seem to be someone to sugar coat anything. I was surprised to hear recently (within the last few years) David Eisenhower say that his grandfather (and my favorite modern President) didn’t think Goldwater was up to the job of POTUS. I was shocked and dismayed, I always felt that Goldwater was a considerable step above Nixon in every way and Ike chose him for his VP. But it seems he didn’t care for Nixon either; I loved his comment when asked about Nixon’s contributions to his administration. He said: “If you give me a week I might be able to think of one.”
That is why the Gospel of John 7:24 is so important. Believers must judge correctly before making a life or death stand. I wish these fire breathing, hyper macho Christians would read the account of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane every night before bed. He did not resist arrest, even after praying and hoping to escape it so fervently he almost bled. When Peter was rash, he healed his enemy. He peacefully went along and even encouraged Judas to do what he came to do.
If believers behaved like that I would support them, I would vote for them, I would defend and champion their cause and emulate them even though I just cannot share their faith. Christianity would do well, in my not so humble opinion, to leave secular politics alone and focus on the character and morals of their namesake!
One last thing then I HAVE to do some work. Jesus forgave and socialized with whores and tax collectors and did acts of service for those outside of his ethnic group. The only ones he condemned were the religious right and government officials. The only time he was angry or violent (that was recorded) was when merchants tried to profit from the religious belief of sincere people and he threw those merchants out of the temple on their sorry asses. If modern believers had a better idea who Jesus was supposed to have been . . . to frustrated to continue!!!
In a sense, it had too many.
In the four pre-Super Tuesday contests in 2016 - IA & NV caucuses, NH and SC primaries - Donald Trump won 32.7% of the popular vote support. Or, to put it another way, not-Trump won 67.3% of the popular vote.
However, his 3 plurality wins, along with a close second in IA, gave him 82 out of 133 delegates.
But even with all of that momentum, he only got 34.4% of the popular vote on Super Tuesday. The Republican Party was not convinced by him at that point. However, his plurality popular vote wins translated to a solid advantage in delegate count.
Even as late as mid-April, he wasn’t winning majorities. From mid-April on, as other candidates did drop out and perception grew that Trump was the eventual primary winner (and the party needed to unify behind him) he did start winning majorities in primaries, mostly in those states he was going to lose in November anyway (plus PA, sigh.)
So I think if the Republican party had single “central casting” politician to oppose Trump in the 2016 primaries, he gets beaten. But because there were too many of them, and since Trump was sui generis in that field, and the delegate allocation rules allowed plurality winners to dominate the delegate count, Trump won.
It’s instructive to notice that Trump liked (in retrospect) to make the large field of contenders into something imposing that he had to overcome, when in practice they were so busy taking each other out (and going easy on Trump so as to inherit his voters when he eventually dropped out - look how well that worked for them) that they cleared the field for him. I mean, for example, Trump tried belittling Marco Rubio plenty in the debates, but it was Chris Christie who landed the punch that knocked Rubio out of being able to portray himself as a serious candidate.
I’ll give you White and Jeffress, but it took a while for Trump to get the rest of the religious right on his side.
That’s from mid-June, 2016. After he had formed his outreach board to evangelicals, made the appropriate noises about abortion and judges, and brought on Mike Pence as his running mate, the religious right got on board. Having an opponent who had been demonized by that same religious right for a quarter of a century helped.
At that point, it was pretty much all transactional. But after the narcissist was beamed into homes around the nation 24/7, and evangelicals had made his cause and their cause the same, it really turned into a cult of personality, and has remained so ever since.
Thanks, Ann.
Labash writes “But what eats at me isn’t the liar that he often proves to be, but the liars he makes of so many others.”
Wow. I wish I could summarize things as well as this.
And then, of course, Metaxas ignores the point altogether.
ETA: BTW, Metaxas isn’t a pastor. He writes and hosts a radio show.
About 15 years ago on LJ I got mad at a Canadian friend who thought the US was an oppressive theocracy. I told him he was a clueless idiot. I had freedom of expression, experienced no adverse influence from religion because I eschewed it, and could read and experience anything I wanted.
OK, maybe I was wrong.
I’ve only encountered that belief in some extreme sects. Most people I know—and all of the people I’m talking about—consider Catholics to be Christians, albeit a different denomination that is wrong about some things.
I think that’s generally true.
I’ve also noticed that, even among those (most) Protestants who don’t believe that Catholics are not Christians, there’s some lingering idea that, while Catholics are indeed Christians, some Catholic beliefs are not particularly Christian.
I don’t get too deeply into conversations about Catholic beliefs about Mary, or saints, or transubstantiation, with my very liberal and broad-minded Christian (United Church of Canada) in-laws, for example. They think of that stuff the way Catholics (and most mainstream Protestants) think of LDS beliefs.
Agreed, some in the R base acknowledge the “Christian” label for Catholics but consider them idol worshipping pagans. My Oklahoma relatives once assured me that no Catholic would ever be president. I haven’t checked lately but they have probably modified that to - no Catholic should ever be president.
Did they somehow forget about JFK?
No, that’s why I assume they have altered their view,
Wow, that would have been more than 60 years ago. I’m guessing you were pretty young at the time.
How handy. An advert pops up in this thread for a book on the Ten Commandments. Just in case.
I’ve got a real doozie of an ad in this thread:
“Woke” Christians Terrified
Everyone Who Believes in God Should Watch This. It Will Blow Your Mind.
Not clicking, mind not so easily blown, also not impressed by 18th Century Capitalization Like Every Sentence Is a Title.
In 1960 I was 28 years old, a married Korean war vet with 4 children. Yes, I was young then.
Thank you for your service.
damn. I’m almost 50 and feeling old.