is Trumpism helping or harming the position of Christianity in America?

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Larry]

15 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

Looking forward to the Internet's response to "Biblical Sexuality Month". 

[China]

7 minutes ago, Larry said:

Looking forward to the Internet's response to "Biblical Sexuality Month". 

 

The 6 Raunchiest, Most Depraved Sex Acts (From the Bible)

[China]

Tennessee Pastors Call Out ReAwaken America Tour for Peddling "Unholy" Theology

 

Southern Christian Coalition says event featuring General Michael Flynn and Wilson County Pastor Greg Locke promotes "Christian Nationalism"

 

A group of Tennessee pastors affiliated with the Southern Christian Coalition is calling out a national religious tour called "ReAwaken America" as the event travels to Nashville. Speakers at the event include retired General Michael Flynn, who resigned from the Trump Administration under federal investigation, and Wilson County shock pastor Greg Locke.

 

The Southern Christian Coalition claims the event promotes "unholy" theology, including the exceptionalist agenda known as Christian Nationalism.

 

A national group known as Faithful America joined with the Southern Christian Coalition to condemn the tour's stop in Tennessee.

 

“The goal of Christian nationalism is to seize power, political power, at any cost, no matter who you have to hurt along the way,” said the Rev. Nathan Empsall, executive director of Faithful America, explaining his organization’s motivation for connecting with local partners across the country to respond to the tour. “No matter how many rights you have to take away from other groups, no matter how many elections you may have to try and overturn despite the will of the voters. The ReAwaken America tour is a dangerous and immoral political circus that abuses Jesus’s name and teachings. Christian nationalism isn’t just a threat to our communities, it threatens our very democracy. This scourge is counter to the Christian belief to love our neighbor, and to live nonviolently.”

 

Local pastors warned that the ReAwaken America tour carries the risk of inciting violence.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Archibald: Time to call BS on the ‘Bible Belt’

 

I had this Bible Belt thing all wrong.

 

I used to think it was just a swath of Southern land where churches outnumbered liquor stores, where people read that Book and sought, in public or on their better days, at least, to live like the protagonist of its last chapters.

 

But no. Turns out the Bible Belt is a real thing.

 

It’s a strap pious folks wear around their waists. Until they whip it off to flog others in the name of their God.

 

Don’t mistake this for a column about religion. That’s not what it is. I don’t care who or what or if you worship. I may have been brought up immersed in the ideals of the Christian church, but I was also washed in that grand American notion that religious freedom means what you believe is none of my beeswax. And vice versa.

 

So I’m not interested in what you believe, Alabama. I’m just starting to believe that you don’t really believe it as much as you talk about it.

 

I mean, pretty much any reputable religion abhors the kind of stuff Alabama does on a routine basis.

 

Buddhists deplore the notion of suffering, and say no one is beyond redemption. Hindus warn that if you hurt each other or the planet herself you’ll face your own karmic comeuppance. The Qu’ran condemns shameful deeds and injustice, and unequal treatment handed out on the basis of wealth or status.

 

And Christians and Jews have much to agree on. A Proverb tells them to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

 

In the New Testament – the part of the Bible thumped by most Alabamians – you could throw a dart and hit a problematic line, if such a thing were not heretical.

 

“Remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison,” it says in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”

 

Shoot. Jesus himself laid out in parable the things that were important to his brand of salvation, the things on which one might be judged. The hungry, the sick, the stranger, the imprisoned.

 

“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” He said.

 

And Alabama said “Amen.” And then it said mercy is overrated, strangers are strange and the hungry are really just lazy.

 

Click on the link for more

[Cooked Crack]

 

[LadySkinsFan]

Trumpism is harming America, no matter how religious or non religious one is. Overthrowing our government is the sole purpose.

[Larry]

We really need an "I'm shocked" reaction emoji. For @Cooked Crack 's post. 

[Captain Wiggles]

The right is canceling kids now? Cancel cultures bad tho. 🤪

[Bang]

~Yup

[China]

‘There Is a Real Sense That the Apocalypse Is Coming’

 

hen Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — many of them carrying Christian symbols like crucifixes, statues of the Virgin Mary and even life-sized portraits of Jesus Christ — a terrible thought occurred to Bradley Onishi: “Could I have been there?”

 

For much of his young adult life, Onishi had been steeped in the very same mixture of religiosity and radical far-right politics that was on display at the Capitol. After growing up in a secular household in Orange County, California, Onishi joined an evangelical megachurch at age 14. During high school, he led prayer meetings during lunch break and handed out anti-abortion pamphlets to his classmates. By the time he was 20, he had married his high school sweetheart, taken a job as a full-time youth minister and made plans to enter the seminary.

 

“I wasn’t just a member of a church. I was a leader, and somebody who gave everything that I had to faith and to my community,” Onishi says today.

 

In college, though, as Onishi began to learn more about the history of American evangelicalism, he discovered that the theology he had embraced as a teenager wasn’t merely a reflection of eternal biblical truths. It was also the product of a particular style of conservative Christian politics. Eventually, he came to view evangelicalism as inextricably intertwined with American nationalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and xenophobia. Eleven years after joining the church, he left his faith behind to pursue a career as a writer and academic.

 

Now, two years after Jan. 6 rioters carried the cross to the Capitol, Onishi — a faculty member at the University of San Francisco and the co-host of the popular podcast Straight White American Jesus — is bringing his background in the evangelical movement to bear on the rise of white Christian nationalism.

 

Premised on the belief that America is a white Christian nation whose laws and culture should reflect its biblical heritage, Christian nationalism has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent months thanks to endorsements from prominent Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and failed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. But what’s been missing from the broader conversation about the movement, Onishi argues in his new book, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — and What Comes Next, is a nuanced sense of how contemporary strains of white Christian nationalism relate to earlier iterations of conservative Christian politics.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LD0506]

On 1/24/2023 at 12:50 PM, LadySkinsFan said:

Trumpism is harming America, no matter how religious or non religious one is. Overthrowing our government is the sole purpose.

 

I hear ya but all the venom they generate will poison them even as it makes the rest sick.

 

Think chemo 

[LD0506]

[PleaseBlitz]

On 10/12/2022 at 7:25 PM, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/02/03/he-gets-us-organizers-hope-spend-1-billion-promote-jesus-will-anyone-care/

 

‘He Gets Us’ organizers hope to spend $1 billion to promote Jesus. Will anyone care?

 

Quote

For the past 10 months, the “He Gets Us” ads have shown up on billboards, YouTube channels and television screens — most recently during NFL playoff games — across the country, all spreading the message that Jesus understands the human condition.

 

The campaign is a project of the Servant Foundation, an Overland Park, Kan., nonprofit that does business as the Signatry, but the donors backing the campaign have until recently remained anonymous — in early 2022, organizers only told Religion News Service that funding came from “like-minded families who desire to see the Jesus of the Bible represented in today’s culture with the same relevance and impact He had 2000 years ago.”

 

But in November, David Green, the billionaire co-founder of Hobby Lobby, told talk-show host Glenn Beck that his family was helping fund the ads. Green, who was on the program to discuss his new book on leadership, told Beck that his family and other families would be helping fund an effort to spread the word about Jesus.

 

“You’re going to see it at the Super Bowl — ‘He Gets Us,’” said Green. “We are wanting to say — we being a lot of people — that he gets us. He understands us. He loves who we hate. I think we have to let the public know and create a movement.”

 

 

[China]

 

[Bang]

Ooga Booga.

 

Ooga booga booga booga. 

~God

[China]

29 minutes ago, Bang said:

Ooga Booga.

 

Ooga booga booga booga. 

~God

 

 

[balki1867]

On 1/21/2023 at 12:02 AM, Larry said:

Looking forward to the Internet's response to "Biblical Sexuality Month". 

Is that where you run away from town because gay people want to have sex with you, then hide in a cave, get drunk and have sex with both of your daughters, getting them pregnant, only hours after watching your wife get turned into a pillar of salt?

[China]

 

 

[Captain Wiggles]

Dude checked himself into a hospital to get some help battling depression. Why let that stop assholes from labeling him crazy tho. This is the type that cries about how mass shootings are a mental health crisis taboot. They offer no funding for treatment to help only ridicule. 

 

Love that he starts the video out by name calling n saying he's not glad Fetterman is in the hospital. Class act Christian all the way. 😒

[TradeTheBeal!]

I would imagine that bouts of depression while recovering from a serious stroke are quite common.  The first 5-6 months after my aortic near miss, I was a very sad boy.  The nature of one’s mortality and impermanence can be a lot to deal with.

Edited February 19, 2023 by TradeTheBeal!

[Captain Wiggles]

According to the lame stream media piece I seen the other night one third of stroke survivors suffer from depression. 

 

Apparently the Christian thing to do is to spread lies n ridicule tho. 🤷‍♂️

[GhostofSparta]

1 hour ago, Captain Wiggles said:

Apparently the Christian thing to do is to spread lies n ridicule tho. 🤷‍♂️

According to the church I grew up in, depression is fake. It's just one of those Devil tricks, and you can just read your Bible and pray the sadness away. Of course that never works, and only the people that are just temporarily sad (illness, death of someone close, job issues, etc.) with no actual underlying depression claim it works for them so there's that survivorship bias going on. So I am, sadly, not at all surprise that certain sects of Christianity will use depression to publicly attack those they don't like with talks of Satan or demons or whatever.

[TradeTheBeal!]

[China]

Here's a test bed so you can see what it would be like to live under Christian Nationalist rule:

 

What It Looks Like When the Far Right Takes Control of Local Government

 

The agenda for the Ottawa County governing board’s most recent meeting here last week listed, among other issues, a roof repair and resurfacing contract, a budget calendar that needed setting and, from IT, a request to hire one more employee.

 

They were terrestrial concerns. But over the course of a meeting that ran more than four hours, public speaker after speaker in three-minute increments were debating something else entirely, something far more spiritual — to what extent their government should, or should not, pursue Judeo-Christian values.

 

As snow dusted the streets outside the county building in this conservative, deeply religious swath of western Michigan, lots of people spoke in favor. They warned of the “tyranny” of mask mandates, the “sexualization of our children” and the “unhinged caterwauling fascists” of the left. One woman thanked the commissioners “for trying to bring our freedom back,” while a man read to them from Isaiah: “Be not dismayed, for I am your God … I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

 

It’s been going like this in Ottawa County since last month, after an upstart band of far-right Republicans unseated seven more traditionalist Republican incumbents, seizing a majority on the 11-member board. The hardliners, members of a group called “Ottawa Impact,” had signed a “Contract with Ottawa” promising to “respect the values and faith of the people of Ottawa County” and to “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and future generations.” They’d pledged to “recognize our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage and celebrate America as an exceptional nation blessed by God.” At candidate forums inside a Baptist church not far from the county offices here, they’d talked about their faith.

 

Roger Bergman, the sole incumbent Republican commissioner the group failed to oust, had attended one of those forums last year, and as he sat in the audience, he grew concerned. But even Bergman, who at 76 has decades in local politics, wasn’t sure what it would all mean when it came time for a new, far-right majority to actually govern.

 

That is, until they took office last month, and havoc broke out.

 

In their first meeting, the new board members adopted a series of measures that changed things in Ottawa County. They fired the county administrator and replaced him with John Gibbs, a former Trump administration official, Christian missionary, failed congressional candidate and election denier who once suggested women should not have the right to vote. They ran out their corporate counsel. They closed the county’s office of diversity, equity and inclusion. They picked for their new public health officer — pending state approval — a safety manager at an HVAC service company who, during the Covid pandemic, suggested ivermectin and neti-pots instead of social distancing and masks. And they rewrote the county motto.

 

Click on the link for the full article