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Showing posts with label christian sharia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christian sharia. Show all posts
THE ACLU'S Inauguration Day Advocacy Guide is here. Do not be confused, it is not just for January 20th, 2025, but is a primer for the next 4 years. Click the link, bookmark the guide and if you can join the ACLU. I have been a sustaining member of the ACLU for many years, I donate $10.00 a month, not a lot but it is what I can afford. And I participate in their campaigns on different issues to protect, maintain and strengthen our civil rights, our civil liberties, our Constitution and our democratic Republic. The threat to our nation is real and serious and must not be ignored or go unchallenged.
The ACLU's Inauguration Day Advocacy Guide is here
Craig, in just three days, President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated – starting the second term of a presidency that will have immense implications for the future of our democracy.
This year, Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day fall on the same day. This is an opportunity to remember that the right to protest is a cornerstone of our democracy – an essential form of resistance against injustice and oppression.
We've put together a guide to help ACLU supporters get involved in the fight for our fundamental rights and to ensure everyone can participate in our democracy – with everything from background on what's at stake to ways you can make an impact for the issues you care most about.
Jentezen Franklin (right) at the 2024 Republican National ConventionMother Jones illustration; Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty; Kiera Butler/Mother Jones
ACTUALLY there is not anything wrong with wanting America to be a Christian nation. There is no reason to legislate Christianity, there is no need for Christian sharia. All that is needed is for people who want America to be a Christian nation is for them to live the Christian life Jesus Christ tells us to live in the New Testament. Live the Beatitudes, live the compassion, care, empathy and forgiveness Christ himself lives. Yes there are rules we are to do our best to live by too, rules that Christ teaches himself that do not include acceptance of and promoting / commiting hate, prejudice, racism, misogyny, greed, violence, lying, cheating, deception just to name a few. I honestly believe people living a Christian life would create a Christian nation. This from Mother Jones .....
On the final day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, I arrived at the Pfister Hotel ballroom 10 minutes before the God and Country Prayer Breakfast was supposed to start. I arrived a bit early just in case I encountered any trouble, since a few hours before the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the influential Christian political group that was hosting the breakfast, had denied my request for a press credential. While I didn’t have any trouble walking into the event, once I arrived, an organizer informed me that the hundreds of seats in the cavernous main breakfast room were already taken. She ushered me and a handful of others into an extremely air-conditioned overflow room, where, over chilly bacon and scrambled eggs, we watched a live stream of the proceedings on a big screen. My tablemate was an older gentleman who boasted that he had once hosted a Trump fundraiser at his “car club” and raised $2 million. We commiserated about being relegated to this outpost.
In the end, the surroundings hardly mattered as everyone could listen to stories of personal miracles that God had performed in the lives of one speaker after another. Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, had asked Jesus to help him with a bout of insomnia the night before his prime-time RNC speech—and it worked! House Speaker Mike Johnson’s sons had been saved from a near-drowning experience by a passing paraglider who had been sent by God. Trump’s former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson once performed a complex and risky surgery and was sure he had lost the patient—but the next morning, that patient was sitting up in bed and telling jokes.
But the speeches weren’t all personal testimony. Many were peppered with the language of Christian nationalism and the shadowy charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. In personal testimonies chock full of miracles and Bible verses, speakers assured the crowd that God was guiding their presidential candidate, and would help them accomplish their political goals—especially a complete end to abortion.
The first speaker of the morning was Paula White, who served as a spiritual adviser during Trump’s first term. White, who warned followers in 2020 that “Christians that don’t support President Trump will have to answer to God,” is closely associated with the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic evangelical Christian movement led by a loose network of self-appointed prophets and apostles. Many claim that God speaks directly to them, often in dreams, and believe that Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States. Though their beliefs in the more mystical and supernatural realms of Christianity are unconventional, adherents have made recent inroads into conservative politics, including, as I reported recently, the Supreme Court. In Saturday’s assassination attempt, White said, “We witnessed a miracle.” Her speech included a prayer that God’s “supernatural power” would protect Trump in the months and years to come.
White wasn’t the only speaker at the breakfast associated with the New Apostolic Reformation. There was also another former Trump spiritual adviser Jentezen Franklin, head pastor of the Free Church in Gainesville, Georgia, who has written a popular book about diet and spirituality, Fasting: Opening the door to a deeper, more intimate, more powerful relationship with God. At the breakfast, Franklin told a story from the Old Testament, in which Moses took blood from a ram and put some on Aaron’s right ear, right thumb, and right big toe. In doing so, Aaron would be able to listen, act, and walk in faith.
God had done exactly the same thing with Trump, Franklin said, at the assassination attempt last Saturday. After taking a bullet in the ear, Trump reached up with his hand and got blood on his thumb. Then, before he was ushered to safety, he asked for his shoes—an echo, in Franklin’s mind, of the bloody toe in the Bible. God, Franklin said, had told Trump, “‘I’m going to step into your shoes. I’m going to get in and work with your hands.'” He added, “I really believe that God has given Trump new ears.” He led the audience in a prayer asking. “Can we pray for the president to have new ears? I want him to have spiritual Mickey Mouse ears.” Then he could hear “if God would move him in the right direction to defend this nation.”
What exactly was that right direction? Some of the speakers hinted that it might have to do with a particularly important goal for many conservative Christians: ending abortion. As my colleague Abby Vesoulis wrote, the topic of reproductive rights has been a third rail so far at the Republican National Convention—and that’s because the cause of ending abortion, while it’s important to many of the party’s Christian conservatives, is also deeply unpopular among voters and with Trump himself. Which is the likely reason abortion language isn’t part of the official party platform. Abortion is also an issue on which former President Trump and his running mate disagree: While Trump has said that he supports a woman’s right to choose, Vance doesn’t believe abortion should be performed under any circumstances.
Unsurprisingly, Vance didn’t mention any disagreement with Trump on this subject during his convention speech on Wednesday evening, nor did he say the word “abortion” at the prayer breakfast. But after telling the story of how he rejected the “arrogance” of atheism and returned to Christianity in 2019, he pivoted to subtly assuring the crowd that he was working on abortion. “There have been a lot of rumblings in the past few weeks that the Republican Party is not going to be open to social conservatives,” he said. “And really from the bottom of my heart, I will say that social conservatives have a seat at this table, and they always will.” He added, “We have to advance the ball one yard before we advance the ball 10 yards before we advance the ball 50 yards.”
“From the bottom of my heart, I will say that social conservatives have a seat at this table, and they always will.”
Michael Whatley, the co–chair of the Republican National Committee, was not so subtle. “I am proud to be the most pro-life chair in the history of the Republican party,” he said. “I am here to tell you today that as long as I am the chair of the Republican National Committee, this party is going to be a pro-life, pro-family, pro-faith party.”
Toward the end of the program, Kari Lake, the frontrunner in Arizona’s Republican primary for the US Senate, described a moment during the pandemic that changed her life. She was reading the Bible and realized that “the news I was reading was a lie.” Lake, who had been working as a TV news anchor, began to question her whole career. Seeking guidance on whether to quit her job, she opened her Bible and without looking, put her finger down on a passage that read, “If you bring nothing into this world, it is for certain that you take nothing out.” For Lake, God was speaking directly to her, saying, “‘Don’t worry about that big paycheck, I’ve got you covered. I’ve got a bigger plan for you.’”
“Just because culture pushed him out, he’s not a smaller God, he’s still the Almighty God that saved the president,” she continued. “I’m looking forward to being Christian soldiers with you as we go into this next four years.”
After breakfast, outside the hotel, some of those Christian soldiers used words like “wonderful” and “humbling” to describe the morning’s program. Christina, an attendee who traveled from Dallas to the convention after having been invited by one of her state’s delegates, said she found Vance’s speech at the breakfast especially meaningful. “It brings me back to my own life,” she said. “It’s a comforting feeling.” I asked her what role she thought faith should play in government. “I think it should come back,” she said.
The speakers at the convention appeared to be committed to doing just that—even if they weren’t talking about it during the main convention program. Whatley, the Republican National Committee co-chair, said that during a meeting about the official platform that took place the previous week, “We put together a very strong pro-life platform that we moved on to the convention.” Then, he said, “I kicked all the staff out, and I kicked all the guests out, and I closed the doors. And I told everybody we are going to have an absolutely amazing convention.”
ANYONE unsure of the threat of Christian Nationalism, anyone not sure of what it would do to our democratic Republic only needs to look at the brutality of the theocratic governments of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the U.A.E., Qatar, Oman, Iran and Kuwait just to name a few. These Christian Nationalist seek not only to protect and increase the wealth of the 1% but to impose a "Christian sharia" on the nation. They are so blinded by their own self-righteousness they don't realize so many of them and their families would not survive judgement by "Christian sharia" rule. This from Sojourners.....
If the first debate for the 2024 Republican primary is any indication, we’re headed toward a combative and chaotic presidential race. The first debate, held last night in Milwaukee, was most notable for who didn’t attend, namely former President Donald Trump, who, despite facing four separate criminal indictments, is the leading Republican candidate by a margin of nearly 40 points. His refusal to debate his opponents does a disservice to Republican voters and the country, all of whom deserve to hear Trump defend his previous actions and 2024 campaign platform, which includes several dangerously authoritarian proposals such as making it easier to fire career civil servants or deploying the National Guard to fight street crime.
But my main interest in watching the first Republican primary debate was to get a sense of whether Republican candidates would challenge the growing anti-democratic forces within their party. For example, will Republican candidates continue to defend Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results? And will they continue to embrace the “us-versus-them,” fear and grievance-based politics that propelled Trump to power? I was also on the lookout for indicators of candidates’ support for white Christian nationalism, a set of ideas enjoying an alarming resurgence (and super-charging the anti-democratic forces) that pose a grave threat to both our democracy and the witness of the church.
The term “Christian nationalism” gets used in different ways, but some experts define it as “a constellation of beliefs — that the founding of the United States was ‘divinely inspired’ or that God is invested in the success of the U.S. — that manifest in political goals.” In politics (and some churches), these ideas are part of a coordinated strategy to ensure white Christians maintain their ongoing dominance in all sectors of U.S. society. When I think about examples of Christian nationalism, I think of the subtle ways some people imply that one must be Christian to be a “true” American, or argue that the growing presence of non-white people and non-Christians pose a threat to “traditional” values, or stoke fear by saying that Christianity is under attack.
But Christian nationalism exists on a spectrum — and we need to resist it in all its forms. Extreme and overt manifestations of Christian nationalism include those who displayed Christian symbols and prayed during the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Subtler and perhaps more insidious forms of Christian nationalism include people who say things like, “America has always been and should remain a Christian nation.” We also must be careful not to use “Christian nationalism” as a catchall term for anyone we disagree with, including social or political conservatives; while we may strongly disagree with those who want to make abortion illegal or support cuts to social welfare programs, we should not assume that someone who holds those beliefs automatically believes Christianity deserves a more prominent place in U.S. politics.
While there are some extreme politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who proudly claim the label, it’s unlikely the top Republican presidential candidates will explicitly embrace Christian nationalism by that name. Instead, voters in the 2024 election will need to be on the lookout for how candidates’ behavior and rhetoric aligns with Christian nationalist ideals and anti-democratic beliefs. Or as Jesus put it: “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16).
Here are some questions I’ll be asking throughout the upcoming election to evaluate whether any candidates seeking public office are advancing Christian nationalism and anti-democratic views:
1. Does the candidate perpetuate the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump?
In other words, do they seek to undermine trust in our electoral process and thwart free and fair elections? The correlation between Christian nationalist beliefs and the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump has been documented in both surveys and reporting. Recent surveys have also shown 40 percent of people who adhere to Christian nationalist beliefs agree with the statement that “patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” compared to just 16 percent of all Americans. And though the 2020 elections are long over, the threat of election interference is not: Among the 2024 field of candidates, TheWashington Post has documented that only seven of the 12 candidates they contacted would commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. Fortunately, in the first Republican debate, every candidate except for Vivek Ramaswamey agreed that former Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing when he exercised his constitutional duty to certify the 2020 election results. On the other hand, it was deeply disconcerting that all of the candidates (except former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie) expressed that they would still support Trump if he won the nomination and was convicted of a crime in a court of law.
2. Does the candidate stoke fear through “us-versus-them” rhetoric or by demonizing anyone deemed “other”?
Two recent studies show that Christian nationalism is highly correlated with racism, white supremacy, homophobia, patriarchy, and Islamophobia. While we certainly cannot say that a person who makes racist comments or expresses support for an Islamophobic policy is automatically a Christian nationalist, we can think of this connection as one of several things of which we should be wary. For example, hard line stances on immigration taken by most of the declared GOP candidates indicate that, at the very, these candidates are trying to exploit the degree to which many conservative voters fear the United States’ growing racial and religious diversity. During the first debate, Ramaswamy described migrants entering the country as “the invasion across our southern border”— language that dehumanizes migrants, evokes threat and warfare, and echoes similar language many candidates have used throughout their campaigns. We also need to be vigilant for candidates using any coded language, often called dog whistles, that signal to audiences that white Americans are the “true” or “real Americans” and others are therefore suspect and less patriotic or less truly American.
3. Does the candidate proclaim a revisionist history account of the U.S. being “a Christian nation”?
Our nation was founded around the First Amendment’s commitment to no established religion and the free exercise of religion, but last fall, some candidates for Congress and governor got a lot of attention for more overt and aggressive statements about America’s founding as a Christian nation. In the coming elections, we should watch for these blatant examples as well as softer statements that carry this connotation.
4. Does the candidate talk about America’s “chosenness” and greatness without acknowledging the way our nation has continually fallen short of its founding principles?
For example, in the first debate, South Carolina’s Sen. Tim Scott, who is Black, kept talking about his life story of overcoming adversity to underline American greatness and the American dream, saying that if he could succeed in the U.S., anyone can. Yet Scott failed to mention any of the systemic injustices deeply rooted in history that continue to disadvantage and harm Black and brown Americans.
5. Does the candidate only talk about faith or “biblical values” when it comes to hostility to LGBTQ+ rights and opposing abortion?
This misguided and overly narrow agenda says very little about so many other issues of grave moral consequence — from climate change to poverty to racialized policing and immigration, and more. For example, during the first debate, Pence repeatedly invoked his faith as he called for a national 15-week ban on abortion, ignoring that many people of his same faith do not share his moral position on abortion. Nor did Pence invoke his faith to call for a more urgent response to domestic or global poverty.
6. Does the candidate demonize racial justice commitments or dismiss them as being “woke”?
Christian nationalism is often tied to an ethno-nationalist identity, which in the U.S., means being white. Many candidates who claim to be “anti-woke” are simply refusing to imagine an America in which the promise of “liberty and justice for all” is truly extended to people of every racial group. Many of these people also deny that there is any need to seek repair or systemic change to correct past and current wrongs. At last night’s debate, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis bragged about his record of banning Critical Race Theory (never mind that the theory isn’t something taught in primary or secondary schools to begin with) and what he called “gender ideology,” in schools. These are clear signals that he objects to a true accounting of American history that recognizes the role racism and sexism have always played. This myth that the the U.S. is an “innocent nation” is prevalent among Christian nationalists.
In Matthew 5, Jesus is clear that the way to discern whether Christian language is true or false is to look to the outcomes: the fruit. The questions above can help us recognize — and resist — the manifestations, or fruit, of Christian nationalism at the federal, state, and local level. The point of recognizing this unsavory fruit isn’t to then demonize the people who bear it; the point of recognizing this toxic ideology is to neutralize it and keep it from spreading. In the voting booth, this means rejecting candidates who embrace these ideas; in our churches, it means being resourceful and more courageous in finding ways to disciple Christians away from this heresy.
Editor’s note: This piece was corrected on Aug. 28, 2023 to reflect that Chris Christie said he would not support Donald Trump as Republican candidate if Trump were convicted of a felony.
