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Showing posts with label Religious Right. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religious Right. Show all posts
Alternet ✏ Americans in past generations lived in a sea of religion inherited largely from the Middle East by way of Europe, with home grown refinements.

Valerie Tarico
Most still do. When Americans venture off the continent, one of the things many find fascinating is the religious beliefs they encounter. Some people worship flying monkeys, or magical big breasted dancers, or Prince Phillip.

From the outside, beliefs like these seem fantastical and unlikely. They played a key role in evoking such ethnocentric ideas as noblesse oblige and manifest destiny and white man’s burden. But if we could see our own culture from an outside vantage point, as if we were travelers, the world might look a little different. Even one of the Bible writers pointed out that self-examination is the first order of business. Why are you looking at the speck in your brother’s eye, he asked (to paraphrase), when you have a plank in your own?

So, how well do you know what your neighbors believe? How about the church to which your parents are quietly tithing away your inheritance? For that matter, how about the actual details of the creed to which you yourself give a nod?

Continue reading @ Alternet.

Test Your Knowledge Of Wild, Weird And Outright Wacky American Religious Beliefs

Right Wing Watch 👀 Dozens of Congress Members Participate in Anti-LGBTQ Prayer Service
Kyle Mantyla 
1-February-2023

Dozens of members of Congress joined an audience of religious-right activists and Christian nationalists at the Museum of the Bible this morning for a “National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance.”

Sponsored by various anti-LGBTQ religious-right groups such as the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Pacific Justice Institute, the prayer gathering was emceed by right-wing activists Jim Garlow of Well Versed, who is associated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. 

Both Garlow and Perkins were active promoters of former President Donald Trump’s stolen election lies, with Perkins and FRC actively working to overturn the election results via pressure on state legislators, members of Congress, and former Vice President Mike Pence.

The two-and-a-half-hour event consisted of a steady stream of penitents offering prayers on behalf of this nation covering everything from reproductive choice and marriage equality to foreign policy and the media.

The tenor of the prayer service was well encapsulated by Pastor Andrew Brunson, who became a right-wing celebrity after he was freed from detention in Turkey during the Trump administration.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

‘We Are Babylon’

Anthony McIntyre  ☠ Enoch Burke to many people is a religious crackpot. 

It is an aspersion easily earned for one who would choose as a title for his book, The Hedonism and Homosexuality of John Piper and Sam Allberry: The Truth of Scripture. It sounds so exciting, that I look forward to having it read to me after I am dead.

To others, usually on the religious right, Burke is a man of devout spiritual conviction. What cannot be hurled against him is the charge that he is all mouth and no trousers. He has faced down the judiciary and the rigours of imprisonment in pursuit of what he believes. While it is my own belief that what he believes is bonkers, his willingness to suffer for his religious opinion is admirable. What is not so worthy of admiration is that he doesn't think it is a religious opinion but a biblical inerrancy which he has the right to inflict on everybody else.

For the last three months he has been banged up in jail on foot of a contempt of court order. He endured that because of his refusal to obey a court instruction to stay away from the school where he had been a teacher up until his suspension and later imprisonment. He believes he has some God given right to turn up at the school while refusing to abide by its policies on how to address or refer to transgender students.

He was suspended on full pay because he publicly confronted the management of the school he taught in for allowing a gender-fluid pupil to be addressed as “they”.

This, he insisted, conflicted with his religious opinion. Throughout his battle with the school and courts, Burke has claimed he was suspended from his post as a teacher on the basis of his religious beliefs. The courts have rejected this, pointing out that he is free to his religious belief and implying that others are free from his religious belief.

Today he was reported to have begged the court to release him from prison so that he might spend the Christmas season at home with his family. While he did use the word 'beg' which might lead to the mistaken impression that he has recanted and repented, the real 'beg' lay in his begging to differ from the court on the propriety of its ruling. Burke continues to refuse to purge his contempt, leading the judge to rule that he had no option but to keep him in custody. This prompted an outbreak from his mother who admonished the judge:

There is a higher judge that you and your fellow judges will stand before and God almighty will put this matter straight.

As God almighty has no form for putting matters straight, and much form for putting nutters in straitjackets, the judge will face no moment of reckoning.

Burke's father also addressed the court:

He has an unblemished record as a teacher. He is in prison because he would not give up his Christian belief which I as a father brought him up to believe and which is consistent with the scriptures, the bible that is on your bench . . .

Richard Dawkins might feel that alone could be sufficient grounds for a child abuse prosecution. For me, it is one good reason for ensuring the vile book is removed from all arenas where the state engages with the citizenry. The Bible has no more place or relevance in a courtroom than Lord Of The Rings, each no more believable than the other. 

While I don't plan to visit Burke's book until after my death, Fintan O'Toole has waded through its sewage to bring back passages. The Irish Times columnist suggests that a reading of it reveals that Burke believes homosexuality is a curse worthy of disease and eternal punishment. What Hitler did to Lidice and Ležáky, Burke is fine with Yahweh having done likewise to Sodom and Gomorrah. Much of a muchness, genocidal dictators, whether they authored Mein Kampf or the Bible.
 
O'Toole, ridiculing Burke’s transformation into an icon of freedom of expression as frankly hilarious, depicts the imprisoned theocrat in odious light.

I have freedom of speech; you should shut up and obey. My opinion is God’s will; yours “ought not to be named”. I should be admitted everywhere; you should be shunned. Free expression is absolute – except for Daniel O’Donnell or Narnia, or anything else I declare anathema.

Enoch Burke does not stand for freedom of religion but for the freedom to impose religion. The idea that people should have as much freedom from religion as they should have to it is anathema to him.

All things considered, jail is probably secular society's best option for Burke. I would like to see him released from confinement for the Xmas period but only for the sake of the inmates who should be able to enjoy their ham and turkey sandwiches without sandwich board men in tow.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Biblical Burke

Right Wing Watch ✒ Artur Pawlowski, a Canadian pastor celebrated by American conservatives as a symbol of religious freedom for bucking that country’s public safety orders, joined far-right podcaster Ethan Ralph’s show last Wednesday, where he announced that he will run for political office in Alberta.

 Kristen Doerer |

“I have not made this public announcement, but I am going to run for political office as well here in the province of Alberta,” Pawlowski declared.

Ralph, host of the “Killstream” podcast, has granted a platform to extremists like white supremacist Lana Lokteff, failed neo-Nazi congressional candidate Patrick Little, and cult leader Gazi Kodzo, who recently was arrested after a dead body was found in his home. Ralph has also become friends with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and streams his podcast on Fuentes’ “anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-Black, antisemitic” platform, Cozy. The far-right podcaster has had his own run-ins with the law; he was convicted of assaulting a police officer in 2018 and of posting “revenge porn” of his then-18-year-old girlfriend earlier this year. According to court documents, Ralph has also violated the domestic violence restraining order she holds against him.

Nevertheless, Pawlowski has appeared on Ralph’s show “a ton,” according to Ralph.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

​​Canadian Pastor Artur Pawlowski Uses Far-Right Podcast To Announce Run For Office

Right Wing Watch ✒ Right-Wing Christians Must Indoctrinate Other People’s Children Into a Biblical Worldview, Says FRC’s George Barna.


While right-wing groups are mobilizing angry mobs to yell at school board members that parents have the right to control what their children are taught, evangelical pollster George Barna told religious-right activists at the Family Research Council’s “Pray Vote Stand” summit Thursday that it is their duty to try to indoctrinate other people’s children into a “biblical worldview.”

Barna, one of the first senior fellows at FRC’s recently established Center for Biblical Worldview, specializes in studying what he calls “SAGE Cons”—Spiritually Active Governance Engaged Conservative Christians. What is most striking about FRC and Barna’s “worldview” project is how few people—and how few conservative evangelicals—measure up to their right-wing “biblical worldview” standard.

When the Center for Biblical Worldview launched in May, FRC President Tony Perkins said that a biblical worldview:

is only achieved when a person believes that the Bible is true, authoritative, and then taught how it is applicable to every area of life, which enables them to live out those beliefs.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Evangelical Preying

Right Wing Watch ✒ Michele Bachmann Says God Told Her to Keep Critical Race Theory From Making Americans Forget 9/11.

 Kyle Mantyla
       10-Sep-2021

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Pat Robertson’s Regent University is hosting an event today featuring a variety of right-wing and religious-right activists and conspiracy theorists.

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann, who now serves as the dean of Regent’s Robertson School of Government, will lead the event, which will feature the likes of Jonathan Cahn, John Ashcroft, Frank Gaffney, John Eidsmoe, and more.

To promote the event, Bachmann appeared on a World Prayer Network call Wednesday evening, where she claimed that she had been called by God to convene the event because proponents of critical race theory are likely to ignore it “because America was the victim that day.”

“The Lord spoke to me about four months ago and said to do a conference on Sept. 11,” Bachmann said.

America has taken a turn. From all of our cultural gatekeepers—whether it is from the entertainment industry, academia, even corporate culture—America is now becoming an ‘anti’ view. It is not a pro-America view; it is an anti-America view.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

God In Direct Talks With Evangeliban

Right Wing Watch ✒ Dave Daubenmire Says ‘Dr. Fauci Is an Emissary of the Devil’ Sent to Destroy Christians.

 Kyle Mantyla  

Radical right-wing activist Dave Daubenmire spoke at a conference in his home state of Ohio last weekend, where he shared the stage with notorious anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Sherri Tenpenny.

Upon returning to his daily “Pass The Salt Live” webcast Monday morning, Daubenmire was fired up over vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions, which resulted in him having a screaming meltdown while accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of working for Satan in an effort to destroy Christians.

Daubenmire spent a good portion of his program discussing “The Book of Giants,” an apocryphal biblical book supposedly written by prophet Enoch that purports to explain why God had to destroy the Earth with Noah’s flood. According to the Book of Giants, angels in rebellion against God had mated with human women, creating a race of giants known as the Nephilim, who were so wicked that God had no choice but to destroy the world ... 

... “Dr. Fauci is an emissary of the devil, folks,” Daubenmire screamed.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

The Devil's Emissary

Right Wing Watch ✒ The Proud Boys are Using a Christian Crowdfunding Site to Raise Money for Legal Expenses.

Karim Zidan  

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection—a day that saw a mob of Donald Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election—several members of the far-right, neo-fascist hate group known as The Proud Boys were arrested in connection to the Capitol breach.

Faced with criminal charges such as conspiracy, engaging in physical violence, and destruction of government property, the group raised approximately $25,000 to date on GiveSendGo, a self-described “Christian crowdfunding site” that claims to “work together with the body of Christ to make a difference in the world.”

There are currently at least four active crowdfunding campaigns for Proud Boys members on GiveSendGo, including former InfoWars staffer and Proud Boys “organizer” Joe Biggs, Proud Boys Hawaii founder Nicholas Ochs, and Ethan Nordean, the self-described “ Sergeant of Arms” of the Seattle Chapter of the Proud Boys. All were arrested last month in connection to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“All Patriots are being dragged through the legal system rather than those who truly incited violence and destruction,” read Biggs’ fundraising page.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Christian And Proud Boy

Right Wing Watch ➨ Mark Taylor Says That to Oppose Trump Is to Oppose ‘God Himself.’

 Kyle Mantyla 

Radical QAnon conspiracy theorist and so-called “firefighter prophet” Mark Taylor appeared on the “Truth Unveiled” YouTube program Wednesday, where he declared that to oppose President Donald Trump is to oppose “God himself.”

“Whether you like Trump, dislike him, love him, or you don’t love him, he’s there and anointed and appointed by God, whether you like it or not,” Taylor said. 

God appoints kings, and he removes them. So, your fight is not with Donald Trump, your fight is with God himself, because this man is literally God’s handpicked chosen person.

Taylor asserted that Trump is a man whom “God has groomed from day one, born for such a time as this to come in here and straighten this mess out,” adding that those who oppose him have a “pharisaical spirit” just like those who put Jesus to death.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Christian Crackpot ➖ God Groomed Trump

Right Wing Watch ➨ Trump’s ‘Prophets’ Say Ginsburg’s Death Just First ‘Blast’ of God’s Wrath, Suggest Biden or Pelosi Could Be Next.

A group of dominionist “prophets” declared Tuesday evening that the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last Friday was just the beginning of the divine vengeance they say is about to be poured out on those who resist God’s plan to use President Donald Trump and his Supreme Court appointments to do away with legal abortion in the United States.

Frank Amedia, a former Trump campaign adviser and founder of the Trump-supporting “prophetic” network POTUS Shield, hosted nightly online events over the past week as part of seven days of prayer and fasting about the election and Supreme Court. Over the weekend, they celebrated Ginsburg’s death as the fulfillment of Amedia’s prophecy that God would give Trump three Supreme Court justices in his first term.

As he did over the weekend, Amedia suggested Tuesday that God took Ginsburg out and that her death was just the beginning. He said God would make three more major moves to make his power known before the election. “Sometimes it’s good for someone to check out,” Amedia said. “They need to go.”

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Ginsburg’s Death Just First ‘Blast’ of God’s Wrath

Right Wing Watch @ ’50 Day Fight’ Project Calls for Spiritual War Against Satan and His Demons to Reelect Trump.

By Peter Montgomery 

President Donald Trump’s religious-right supporters are carrying out an array of efforts to promote his reelection, some using prayer and spiritual warfare as organizing vehicles. One of the latest is calling for a “Fifty Day Fight” between Sept. 14 and Election Day to defeat “the enemy” and ask God for “a second miracle” to put Trump back in the White House. The group held an online organizing meeting on Wednesday.

The project was launched by Daniel Bernard, president of a Tampa, Florida-based ministry called Somebody Cares Tampa Bay. Its partners and sponsors include anti-LGBTQ activist and POTUS Shield member Harry Jackson, far-right Christian broadcaster and failed politician E.W. Jackson, and Jason Yates, who heads My Faith Votes, a religious-right GOTV operation.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Demons ➖ Miracles ➖ Trump

Right Wing Watch @ Religious-Right QAnon Candidate Angela Stanton-King Unleashes Bigoted Attack on Kamala Harris.

By Peter Montgomery  

Angela Stanton-King, who ran unopposed to become the Republican candidate in Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, responded to the announcement that Sen. Kamala Harris will be Joe Biden’s running mate with a series of snide and bigoted tweets.

Stanton-King is seeking the House seat previously held by the late Rep. John Lewis and has claimed, “God sent me.” Stanton-King is a zealous supporter of President Donald Trump, who recently retweeted two of Stanton-King’s posts.

Stanton-King took a swipe at Harris’s husband, family and heritage, an example of the kind of “she’s not really Black” birtherism​ that has been directed at Harris by some of her critics. (Harris is the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica.)

Continue Reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Just Somebody Else God Sent

Right Wing Watch @ Trump Tells Conservative Catholics That Democrats Want to Shut Churches Down and Keep Them From Opening.

By Peter Montgomery 

In an interview with conservative Catholic television network EWTN Tuesday, President Donald Trump charged that Democrats “want to put the churches out of business” and “never want them open.” Trump’s charges were an explicit example of his campaign adopting religious-right rhetoric portraying liberals and Democrats as enemies of faith and freedom.

“You have some states, I think they never want them open,” Trump said.

They don’t want churches open. Look, the Democrats, frankly, if you look at the radical left, Democrats, which are the radical left now, they’ve gone radical left. Whether you’re talking about life or whether you’re talking about almost anything, they’re not liking it. They’re not liking it.

The interview showcased Trump’s meandering style and obsession with promoting his own greatness.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Trump's Religious Right Wing Rhetoric


Valerie Tarico interviews Katherine Stewart in a bid to understand  What the Religious Freedom Crowd Really Wants.

Christian nationalism invents a mythical history where America’s founders were all essentially Bible-thumpers intent on establishing a so-called Christian nation.

Investigative journalist Katherine Stewart didn’t think about fundamentalist Christianity much until Evangelicals targeted her daughter’s public elementary school as their mission field in 2009. Through after-school “Good News” clubs and summer camps, Child Evangelism Fellowship works to convert children as young as five to a sin-and-salvation version of Christianity. Stewart was surprised to learn that there were thousands of such clubs operating in public elementary schools nationwide, and she began to dig deeper. What she discovered in the process resulted in her book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.


Katherine Stewart

Stewart’s latest book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, took her once again into the heart of fundamentalist Christianity, this time the political version that some call dominionism and others call Christian nationalism. Stewart has spent years crossing the country, attending events that wrap radical right politicking in the language of righteous, regressive dogma. In this interview she offers a glimpse of what she saw.

Tarico: What is Christian nationalism?

Stewart: Christian nationalism involves the claim that the foundation of legitimate government in the U.S. is bound up with a reactionary understanding of a particular religion. So it is an anti-democratic political ideology, as well as a device for mobilizing people and concentrating political power.

America’s Christian nationalism shares features with forms of religious nationalism around the world, where leaders bind themselves to religious conservatives to solidify a more authoritarian form of power. Consider Russia, Hungary, Iran, and Turkey, to name just a few.

Religious nationalist movements of this sort always appeal to a mythical history where true believers once reigned. Christian nationalism invents a mythical history where America’s founders were all essentially Bible-thumpers intent on establishing a so-called Christian nation.

Tarico: How does the culture war play into this?

Stewart: It is a mistake to think that the culture war is driving the politics, that this is just a grass-roots expression of social discontent. So-called culture war issues have been cultivated and exploited for securing a certain kind of political power. The best illustration of that is in the politics of abortion. We’ve bought this narrative that Christian nationalism arose as a kind of unified reaction to the horror of one Supreme Court decision in 1973. In reality, abortion was consciously selected and cultivated as a political issue quite a few years after the Supreme Court decision.

Tarico: What is the organizational structure of the movement?

Stewart: Political movements are complex, and this one is more complex than most. It took me some time to navigate the dense ecosystem of for-profit and non-profit groups including right-wing policy groups, legal advocacy organizations, data initiatives, and media and networking groups. The leadership cadre consists of a number of often personally interconnected activists and politicians. The movement derives much of its power and direction from an informal club of funders, some belonging to extended hyper-wealthy families.

Tarico: The Right is always talking about so-called “religious liberty.” What do they mean by that?

Stewart: True religious liberty is the freedom of thought, conscience, and worship. It includes the freedom to worship any god or sacred idea or none. It also includes the freedom from compulsory support of or participation in religion.

The Religious Right distorts this idea in two ways. First, they cast “religious freedom” as permission to discriminate against others whose characteristics offend their so-called sincerely held religious belief. This clearly privileges one variety of religion over others. If your commitment to equal treatment under the law is based on your sincerely held convictions or beliefs, there is no “liberty” in this type of religious liberty for you.

Second, the calls for religious freedom that characterize much of the activism today are aimed at substantially increasing the flow of public money in their direction. Religious organizations already obtain public money through subsidies, tax deductions, grants, vouchers and other subsidies. But they want to increase that flow. Eight federal agencies have proposed changes in how they work with religious organizations. They propose to allow religious organizations to receive federal funds without complying with antidiscrimination law. When the taxpayer funding is delivered through “indirect aid,” the organizations may proselytize or require participation in religious services.

Once you start funding religion with public money, it becomes that much more political because it becomes dependent on public money. The end game is effectively an established church. It is antidemocratic, anti-pluralistic, anti-religious freedom, and anti-American.

Tarico: As an outsider, what do you see as most legitimate in their concerns?

Stewart: The rank and file articulate a lot of legitimate concerns. Emphasizing the importance of families to our society, the integrity of political leaders, and the role of personal responsibility are all respectable ideas.

Unfortunately leaders of the movement have utterly blown their credibility on all of those fronts. With respect to families, they have sided with economic reactionaries to undermine the supports that families need in order to be successful. They have waged war on many of the social and health tools that families need in order to thrive, most visibly family planning On the integrity of personal leadership, there is nothing to say. All you have to do is point to Trump to understand that this is the definition of hypocrisy.

On the matter of individual responsibility, that is fine when you are talking about things over which individuals have control. But there are many problems we can only solve together as a society, such as global pandemics, environmental issues, and challenges in health care. And here, I think, religious nationalists have betrayed what might have been their strongest suit. Christianity, as most people understand it, has something to do with loving our neighbors. But leaders of the movement have thrown in their lot with economic reactionaries who tell us we don’t owe anybody anything.

Tarico: Hasn’t Christianity always had a political dimension? What’s different now?

Stewart: The conventional wisdom holds that the differences between America’s two parties, now as before, amount to differences over questions of domestic and foreign policy, and that politics is just the art of give-and-take between the two collections of interests and perspectives they represent. The difference today is that one party is now beholden to a movement that does not appear to have much respect the two-party system or even representative democracy itself.

Tarico: Martin Luther King Jr. used religion for political purposes.

Stewart: I think that we can distinguish between the substance of a movement dedicated to civil rights and equality, and a movement dedicated to a racist and nationalist supremacy. But we also can’t assume that every movement that uses religion in politics uses it in the same way. It is true that MLK Jr. relied heavily on church organizations to spread his messages, and on religious references to give them authority. But we should acknowledge that he made use of the churches in part because the people he sought to represent in particular, people of color, were radically underrepresented and in fact shut out of every other structure in American society and politics.

I think every school child knows that he mainly appealed to religion to reinforce a belief in universal values that could be used to hold society to account, to hold power to account, and unify all people regardless of belief or race. The same simply cannot be said of the Christian nationalists, who use religious messages to impose hierarchies of value on various categories of people and claim special benefits for members of their group.

Tarico: You got a lot of pushback on a piece you wrote for the New York Times titled, “The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science is Hampering our Coronavirus Response.” Why did this piece in particular elicit such a strong reaction?

Stewart: Movement leaders cast it as an attack on Christians. Not true. My concern is not with religion but with a political movement that cloaks itself in religious rhetoric. But this is how they build their base, one lie at a time. This is the way nationalist movements always work. There is a “we” under threat, and there is an insidious internal enemy that is responsible for all of “our” woes. They must be silenced or eliminated if the “real Americans” are to triumph.

Think about what people on significantly larger stages have to endure. Is Anthony Fauci really part of the “deep state”? Even asking the question is a way of entering this world of the absurd. And yet, this is how a base is built, through paranoia and fear.

Tarico: Obviously, there are a bunch of Americans who would prefer not to live in The Handmaid’s Tale. What should we do?

Stewart: The movement is political and so the answer is political too. The right has invested in all the tools of modern campaign infrastructure – data, media, and messaging. They understand the necessity of unity in winning elections and above all the value of the vote. These tools are available to those who oppose the politics of division and conquest that the movement represents. Religious nationalists are using the tools of democratic political culture to end democracy. I continue to believe those same resources can be used to restore it.

Valerie Tarico
Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.  

She writes about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society.

What the Religious Freedom Crowd Really Wants

From Al Jazeera ➤ An insight into the history and present of Christian nationalism, the movement behind Donald Trump's religious support.

 
For 40 years now, the religious right has been a fixture in American politics and for all that time it has befuddled observers who continually misunderstand it, beginning with its support for Ronald Reagan, a divorced Hollywood actor, against Jimmy Carter. Reagan was the first US president to describe himself as a "born-again Christian".

But Reagan - whose wife consulted an astrologer for guidance as first lady - was a virtual saint compared to Donald Trump, the most recent presidential beneficiary of their enthusiastic support, and someone that 81 percent of self-described white evangelical protestants rewarded with their votes.

The secret to making sense of them is simply stated in the title of Katherine Stewart's new book: The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. It draws on more than a decade of first-hand experience and front-line reporting that began when her daughter's public elementary school was targeted to house a fundamentalist Bible club.

"The purpose of the club was to convince children as young as five that they would burn for an eternity if they failed to conform to a strict interpretation of the Christian faith," she recalls.

Continue reading @ Al Jazeera.

The Power Worshippers ➤ A Look Inside The American Religious Right

Via DNYUZ the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,  Katherine Stewart, outlines how the religious right hampers efforts to tackle Covid-19.  . 

Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.

At least since the 19th century, when the proslavery theologian Robert Lewis Dabney attacked the physical sciences as “theories of unbelief,” hostility to science has characterized the more extreme forms of religious nationalism in the United States. Today, the hard core of climate deniers is concentrated among people who identify as religiously conservative Republicans. And some leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, like those allied with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has denounced environmental science as a “Cult of the Green Dragon,” cast environmentalism as an alternative — and false — theology.

This denial of science and critical thinking among religious ultraconservatives now haunts the American response to the coronavirus crisis. On March 15, Guillermo Maldonado, who calls himself an “apostle” and hosted Mr. Trump earlier this year at a campaign event at his Miami megachurch, urged his congregants to show up for worship services in person. “Do you believe God would bring his people to his house to be contagious with the virus? Of course not,” he said.

Continue reading @ DNYUZ. 

Religious Right’s Hostility To Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response

From Progressive Secular Humanist ➤ Deplorable: Fox News guest Rebecca Friedrichs argues that public schools should not give children “free healthcare,” “free food,” and “free emotional support” because “that’s communism.” 
By Michael Stone
In a despicable display of callous cruelty, Rebecca Friedrichs, a former teacher and conservative Christian activist who makes a living smearing public schools and teacher’s unions, made an appearance on the November 8 edition of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight to complain about public school’s feeding and caring for children.

Complaining about the supposed evils of teachers’ unions, the sick and twisted woman argued that public schools should not give children “free healthcare,” “free food,” and “free emotional support,” because that’s communism.”

... In addition to trying to prevent children from eating, and receiving health care, Friedrichs is also a “pro-life”( i.e. forced-birth, anti-abortion, anti-woman) conservative Christian activist.
Continue reading @ Progressive Secular Humanist.

Children Don’t Deserve ‘Free Food’ Because ‘That’s Communism’

Via Right Wing Watch ➤ right-wing pastor Curt Landry says that Christians cannot let Satan defeat Trump in November and install a "far left socialist communist" who will carry out "another Holocaust." 


Curt Landry Says Satan Wants to Defeat Trump and Carry Out 'Another Holocaust' from Right Wing Watch on Vimeo.

Demented Christian Claims Satan Is Planning Another Holocaust

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