Religion Moves to QAnon Beliefs

The Southern Baptist Church conference is over, and thousands of people elected the less extreme Rev. Ed Litton as president. In Slate, Molly Olmstead called the vote a move away from extremist support for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT). Before last week’s meeting, ultraconservatives had pushed DDT supporters to elect far-right Mike Stone and vote for their positions about critical race theory (against) and the church’s sexual abuse (ignore). Former Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary president Paige Patterson, accused of trying to intimidate and silence an alleged sexual assault victim, was a strong proponent of Stone.

Outgoing president J.D. Greear introduced the two-day conference by warning about the dangers of hypocrisy—even worse, he said, than the “curse of liberalism.” He cautioned against a convention mistreating and maligning “female abuse victims” and putting more energy into lambasting CRT than “lamenting the devastating consequences of years of racial bigotry and discrimination.” Two years ago, the SBC convention passed a resolution to use CRT and intersectionality if they were second to Scripture; in November, seminary presidents declared CRT “incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message. Prominent Black pastors left the SBC.  

Prepared for a fight, convention organizers combined many resolutions into one, apologizing for the SBC’s part in perpetuating systemic racism but rejecting “any theory or worldview that finds the ultimate identity of human beings in ethnicity or in any other group dynamic” as well as “any theory or worldview that sees the primary problem of humanity as anything other than sin against God and the ultimate solution as anything other than redemption found only in Christ.” The resolution easily passed, and conservatives failed with resolutions to specifically condemn CRT or stop funding institutions promoting CRT. A final vote also amended SBC rules to expel a member church for racism.

In the other issue, the SBC has been accused of ignoring claims by victims of sexual abuse and sheltering the abusers, swiftly clearing accused pastors without a complete investigation. Recently, a report alleged the SBC failed to look into allegations of a church staffer who moved on to abuse children at other churches. A popular Bible teacher, Beth Moore, left the SBC in March, citing sex abuse allegations. She had also broken SBC rules by speaking publicly to men and women as well as opposing DDT in the convention.

Russell Moore (no relation), who pushed for reform within the conference, criticized the SBC for its poor handling of abuse allegations and left the church’s leadership. The convention passed a resolution that “any person who has committed sexual abuse is permanently disqualified from holding the office of pastor.” 

Resolutions are non-binding opinions, and SBC conservatives elected their choice as vice-president. Yet some evangelicals may separate themelves from the secular focus that elected DDT.

Peter Wehner, who worked for three GOP administrations before DDT as speechwriter, wrote about a concern about evangelicals participating in the QAnon movement as 31 percent of them have. In an interview with The Atlantic, Tennessee’s former two-term GOP governor Bill Haslam said:

“I have heard enough pastors who are saying they cannot believe the growth of the QAnon theory in their churches. Their churches had become battlegrounds over things that they never thought they would be. It’s not so much the pastors preaching that from pulpits—although I’m certain there’s some of that—but more people in the congregation who have become convinced that theories are reflective of their Christian faith.”

Wehner wrote:

“Countless people who profess to be Christians are having their moral sensibilities shaped more by Tucker Carlson’s nightly monologues than by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

“Many of those who most loudly proclaim the ‘pre-eminence of Christ’ have turned him into a means to an end, a cruel, ugly and unforgiving end. And this, too, is not quite what Jesus had in mind.”

The SBC is not the only fundamentalist Christian religion being taken over by the QAnons, and pastors are leaving their churches because of parishioners’ radicalization. Even YouTube sermons are infusing dangerous conspiracy theories about rampant sex-trafficking and demon possession of Democrats. Consider Sen. Ted  Cruz’s (R-TX) speech to a recent fundamentalist conference about Democrats being “soulless” with “red eyes” and “no brain.” Many of the audience literally accepts his message. Christian fundamentalism continues to be ripe for takeover by White supremacists.

Last January, over 45 percent of Protestant pastors reported often hearing congregants repeating conspiracy theories about national news events. Sixty percent of White evangelical respondents believe President Joe Biden’s 2020 win was “not legitimate”—the highest of any religious group. Last February, more than 1,400 evangelical pastors and faith leaders published an open letter condemning “radicalized Christian nationalism” and the “rise of violent acts by radicalized extremists using the name of Christ,” according to the Washington Post. SBC youth pastor Jared Stacey, who left the church, said, “The church is going through the biggest information shift since the printing press.”

Since January 6, Derek Kubilus, senior pastor of Uniontown United Methodist Church (OH), has offered “healing for QAnon followers and family members from a Christian perspective” through his “Cross Over Q” podcast. He said he felt he had to do something after seeing “crosses being carried alongside QAnon banners and a noose.”

Also at Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority Conference where Cruz spoke, a group shouted “traitor” at former VP Mike Pence. The MAGA group claimed he had validated the presidency of Joe Biden by permitting the Electoral College to cast the votes of the people for the 2020 election.

The FBI sent Congressional members an unclassified threat assessment that QAnon may go from “digital soldiers” to “real world violence.” The “believers” already played a central role in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with over 20 of them arrested for their participation. The FBI had already classified QAnon as a domestic-terror threat in an internal memo, but DDT accepted their members, calling them “people who love our country” and “they like me very much, which I appreciate.” The recent FBI report comes after requests by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) for a full assessment on the QAnon threat.

Steven Benen wrote about QAnon:

“The basic idea behind the madness is that Donald Trump is secretly at war with nefarious forces of evil, including Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, the “deep state,” cannibals, and an underground ring of Satanic pedophiles who are operating a child sex trafficking ring that only adherents of the conspiracy theory are aware of.

“QAnon adherents were convinced that a reckoning was imminent, in which Trump would be re-elected and his enemies would be vanquished. When President Biden took office, some followers of the crackpot theory came to realize that their bonkers ideas were not coming to fruition.”

Because of DDT’s pressure, QAnon followers have not moved on with their lives but instead joined him in the master conspiracy theory that the election was “stolen” from him. The FBI fears that they “will begin to believe they can no longer ‘trust the plan’ referenced in QAnon posts,” leading them to extreme violence. Facts contributing to QAnon’s lasting effect, according to the FBI report, include COVID, posts on social media platforms, U.S. polarization, and support from public individuals. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is a QAnon strong advocate.

Fivethirtyeight.com, a political website reporting surveys, has a detailed explanation of why people fall for conspiracy theories such as the moon landing being a hoax and vaccines being dangerous. The article presents testing for different traits such as the jumping-to-conclusions bias with little evidence, a trait more likely held by conspiracy theories. No one trait of the article predicts belief in conspiracy theories, but several of them may indicate a pattern.

A 2018 study about whether a series of coin tosses is random or predetermined examined tendencies to see patterns even if there are none. Those who see predetermination also find them in random statements—as in QAnon conspiracy beliefs making connections between unrelated events and symbols as a marker of conspiracy theories—such as a cicada landing on Biden’s neck meaning the onslaught of “the storm.” Or the connection of the Ever Given, ship caught in the Suez Canal believe by QAnon to transport trafficked children, and a March madness tweet from Mike Pompeo, a warship transit, and a 2018 Q post. [Hint: these coin tosses are random, not predetermined.]

Environmental factors can influence cognitive traits. Conspiracy theories can make people feel safer, perhaps by having a specific political candidate win or keeping a job endangered by an understanding of climate change. The theories may make them part of their tribe, “in-group” instead of “out-group.” Belief can make a person feel superior or important. The sharing of conspiracy theories builds them, and social media has been instrumental in doing this, especially when people were staying at home and on the internet during the pandemic.

About half the population endorses at least one conspiracy theory. (I won’t tell you mine!). And all brains want to take shortcuts, make assumptions, and be irrational. The extremes create danger for our lives and for our democracy.

A fascinating look at conspiracy theories through the last six centuries, their relationship to social and political upheavals, and DDT’s history of conspiracy theories.

 

The Polarization of Religion

Until the last half century, Christian religions in the U.S. believed in the separation of church and state: they ran their religions and let government run the country. Until the 1970s, evangelical Christians focused on piety, but secular political activists began working with the rising generation of evangelical leaders such as James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham. Their desire for power led them to support a twice-married man whose children were alienated instead of an evangelical progressive president for their next leader. Since then, conservatives calling themselves the “Moral Majority” have lost the meaning of “moral” and shrinking enough that the “majority” is disappearing.

These are some recent examples of how conservatives care nothing about morality if they can control the government. Their disregard for the following the ethics of Christianity, however, may be losing membership for conservative Christianity.

People of Praise, the small offshoot of the Catholic Church, is under investigation for sexual misconduct. DDT’s Justice Amy Coney Barrett is a member. In December, a woman reported to the police about her high school physics teacher at the religion’s school sexually assaulting her in 2001 when she was 17. She reported the assault to the school dean five years later. The teacher remained for another five years, despite the dean believing the girl and telling another school official, until the teacher was hired to lead a Phoenix (AZ) charter school, Great Hearts Academies, that didn’t ask for his employment record. He returned to the Minneapolis area in another four year and became headmaster of another Christian school. Last month, the school, Chesterton Academy of the Twin Cities, announced the teacher was taking an indefinite leave of absence because of the sexual assault allegation. Other former members of the religion have reported assault and physical abuse. After Barrett was nominated for the Supreme Court, they formed a private Facebook group. With a membership of 1,700, the People of Praise can’t afford to lose any members.

The Southern Baptist Church, with the largest denomination among Protestants, is suffering the same polarization as political groups—arguments about racism, requirements for political loyalty, etc. As in the government, conservatives fear the groups has gone too far to the left from the Bible’s strict authority as well as concern with racism and gender issues. They want to take over complete power at the upcoming week’s meeting of 16,000 Southern Baptist pastors and leaders in Nashville (TN). They expressed other concerns such as suitability of women giving sermons, treatment of sexual abuse, and the dangers of “critical race theory” allowing history and other information about racism.

The fight using leaked letters and whistle-blower recorders has continued for weeks. Relative moderates such as Russell Moore and (no relation) Beth Moore (no relation to Russell) have left, and conservatives rejoiced at their absences. The conservative campaign of “take the ship” is using T-shirts with the slogan and car flags with a pirate image. Southern Baptists are back to their “roots,” splitting from the Northern members in 1845 because of the SBC’s support for slavery. In the 1990s, the church tried diversification, and the current president, J.D. Greear, encouraged the church’s membership to assert “Black lives matter” in the past year. Ordaining women as staff pastors may have driven conservatives over the edge.

Conservatives urge their leadership to attend next week’s meeting and elect a conservative president. His election may drive off more members because conservatives can try to block any mention of CRT and ignore sexual abuse within the church. Two years ago, the Southern Baptists promised to address sexual abuse within its congregations, but nothing has changed. The conservatives’ choice for president has been accused of blocking attempts to root out abusers and stop “bullying and intimidation” toward sexual abuse survivors.

In a closed meeting, one of the conservatives said that their need to “preserve their base” overrides working against sexual abuse. The church’s “base” has shrunk for 13 straight years, down to 14.5 million in two years by 287,000 members, partly caused by conservatives worshipping the cult of DDT.  

This month, Pope Francis expanded rules in the Catholic Church against sexual abuse to criminalize sexual abuse of adults by priests and laypeople with power in the church. The Catholic Church has had difficulty adjudicating child abuse, but the sexual abuse against adults can be even harder. In the past, Church law considered sexual relationships between priests and consenting adults sinful but not criminal. Priests were rarely removed from their position.

Although the pope’s new rule appears to be positive, at least a dozen priests accused of abuse have been sent back to their parishes or to new positions within the Church, some of them after the Vatican overturned recommendations from local dioceses. Chicago priest Michael Pfleuger was reinstated after multiple accusations of sexual abuse. One of his accusers called it “a cover-up because of his popularity” and described Pfleuger’s abuse. Investigating boards claimed they found no evidence although they didn’t talk to the priests’ victims.

Texas has a new church, the “Rod of Iron Ministries,” for those who want to worship guns, preferably AR-15s. It plans to provide sanctuary for “patriots” from the war they believe will come from the “deep state.” The leader of the “Sanctuary Church,” is Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, son of Sun Myung who founded the Unification Church. Their followers were nicknamed the “Moonies.” The younger Moon said the new church’s name comes from the Book of Revelation stating Jesus used a “rod of iron” to protect himself and others, which Moon took to mean the AR-15. Co-founder of the church is Moon’s brother, Kook-jin “Justin” Moon, the CEO of nearby gun manufacturing company Kahr Arms.

Former Moonies are horrified with the new church, saying “these people are just getting crazier and crazier… I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”  [Visual – Moon]  Follower Nicholas Skulstad was arrested last month for allegedly ramming his car repeatedly into a New York Department of Transport vehicle in Westchester, New York, smashing its window, and attacking officers at the scene. He screamed, “I’m Jesus Christ! You are going to die today! Are you ready to die?” His car contained a “List-to-Kill” of current and former public officials and other figures. Earlier he told people the COVID vaccine was the “mark of the beast” and talked about the coming “purge” to eradicate everyone who “commits evil, like pedophiles.”

Echoing Deposed Donald Trump (DDT), Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been voted out of power, in his case after a 12-year rule. The event took two years and four elections, but the center joined the left in Parliament for a 60 to 59 vote. Unlike the U.S., violence has not yet erupted, but members of the ultra-Orthodox parties loudly heckled the new administration. Netanyahu promised to overturn the election, like DDT, and his loss of the office leaves him open to legal problems after being indicted for bribery and corruption.

While in office, DDT tried to restructure the Middle East under the control of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), DDT’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Netanyahu. The triad would overrule a 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel that would force Jordan out of overseer of Jerusalem’s Christian and Muslim holy sites. Kushner deliberately ignored history to overlook religion of the past by creating an economic alliance. The plan has currently failed: DDT and Netanyahu are both gone, MBS is out of favor with the white House, and Jordan has regained power, visiting the White House this summer.  

Christian-nationalists believe that God’s will should control the U.S. and anyone not Christian in the “right” way or won’t conform to their agenda is illegitimate. Thus overthrowing an election is justifiable. Less than a year ago, 68 percent of white evangelicals believed that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were divinely inspired; the figure increased to 74 percent within six months. Another 68 percent believe that the January 6 insurrection was caused by Black Lives Matter and Antifa. According to a recent study, 27 percent of white evangelicals, more than any other religious group, believe QAnon beliefs are “mostly true.” And 67 percent of evangelicals think DDT’s loss was “not at all fair.”

Polling on QAnon believers from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core:

By party: 23 percent of Republicans, 12 percent of independents, and 7 percent of Democrats support QAnon conspiracy theories.

Overall: 14 percent of Americans believe in QAnon, 46 percent reject it outright, and 40 percent are doubters but don’t rule it all out.

Specific questions increased the percentage to 15 or 20 percent:  A group of Satan-worshipping pedophile and child sex traffickers control the U.S. media, government, and financial worlds;  if a storm will soon sweep away the elites and restore the rightful leaders (20 percent); and true American patriots may have to resort to violence” to save America.

“Things have gotten so off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” according to 28 percent of Republicans.   

Cicadas return every 17 years, flying around and sometimes landing on people. When one landed on President Joe Biden’s neck as he was leaving for the G7 summit, QAnon went crazier. The cicada was a secret sign about big things to happen.

Child (nymph) + underground + 17 = pedophiles operating an underground sex-trafficking ring because Q is the 17^th letter of the alphabet.

It’s Sunday, and here is religion in the United States.  

Sunday: Religious Numbers Drop, Court Gives Christianity Preference

On Sunday, fewer people than ever are going to a church, synagogue, mosque, or other religious gathering. Pew Research reports that the share of religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. has been growing across all demographic groups. The “nones”—those who self-identify as atheists, agnostics, or religion as “nothing in particular”—have become 23 percent of the population, almost 50 percent up from 2007 when 16 percent of people were “nones.” At the same time, the number of “Christians” have dropped from 78 percent to 71 percent.

More Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996) self-identify as “nones,” and the median age of unaffiliated adults is currently 36, down from 38 in 2007 and younger than the 46 years of media age of adults in the U.S. More in the older generations, however, are also becoming unaffiliated: 17 percent of Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are now unaffiliated, compared to 14 percent in 2007.

Of people raised as Christian or another faith, 18 percent now have no religious affiliation, compared to the roughly half of the 9 percent of U.S. adults raised without any affiliation now who identify with a religion, mostly Christianity. More men than women are “nones,” but education, race and ethnicity, and income make no difference. Nearly two-thirds of the seven percent of atheists and agnostics are men who are more educated and more White than the general population.

Two years ago, then-VP Mike Pence announced the nation’s religiosity “has remained remarkably consistent.” Yet a Gallup poll reinforced the Pew Research in its finding that only 47 percent belonged to a congregation in 2020, down from 70 percent in 2000. The percentage of people who think religion is important dropped to 48 percent with the number of people regularly attending worship services even lower.

While the general population becomes less religious, the Supreme Court, because of appointments by Deposed Dictator Trump (DDT) and confirmations by GOP senators, gives preference to Christians. Late Friday night, April 9, 2021, in a “shadow docket,” justices made a 5-4 decision in a case not on the docket and had no oral argument. The Tansom v. Newsom ruling determined that religious groups can gather in homes although other groups are still banned from this practice.

With no signature, the ruling changed the constitutional view of “religious liberty that now permits religious exemptions to situations not discriminating against religion. The court’s new rule, “most favored nation” permits any secular exemption to a law permitting a claim for a religious exemption. The decision stated required permission to gather for Bible study just as they would to get haircuts, food, or pedicures. Any time a government grants any exemption to a law for any reason, it has to grant the same exemption to religion—which in the U.S. typically means Christianity.

These conservative justices have gone far beyond the belief of Justice Antonin Scalia, formerly the most conservative judge of the modern era, when he said this type of ruling should be done “sparingly, and only in the most critical and exigent circumstances,” where “the legal rights at issue are indisputably clear.” The new ruling doesn’t fit these criteria because the high court gave a different meaning to the scope and applicability of the free exercise clause. With no explanation for the court’s decision, five justices are trying to bind lower courts to their personal opinion. The current Supreme Court has used its emergency injunctions seven times, all of them in COVID-19 cases. Before last November, the court had not done so for five years.

DDT used emergency relief from the high court 41 times, winning 28 of those appeals. In contrast, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama together went to the court for this relief only eight times in 16 years. Almost all DDT’s cases requested “stays” pending appeals against a lower court ruling, but the current support for a Christian group froze a government policy losing in the lower courts pending appeal. Scalia pointed out that an injunction “grants judicial intervention that has been withheld by lower courts,” unlike a stay, a short-term delay of a proceeding.

This injunction overrides the lower courts instead of the justices’ position from the past of “a court of review, not first view” as an “appellate tribunal.” The action reverses the function of the Supreme Court and exceeds the justices’ statutory authority to issue such relief—for the seventh time since October. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, the majority relied only on “separate opinions and unreasoned orders” to make a new constitutional rule. Conservative justices “using procedural tools meant to help them control their docket to make significant substantive changes in the law, in defiance not only of their own standards for such relief, but of fundamental principles of judicial decision making,” wrote legal expert Stephen I. Vladeck.

Since the new term began last October, the court has used shadow dockets at least 20 times to make secret rulings with no arguments and no identification of how each justice ruled. The new justices, in control of making law over legislatures and lower courts, remove transparency from the process of law.

The recent ruling agrees with an earlier decision that religion should allow people to infect others with COVID-19 by opening church services in California while other public activities are closed. Last December, SCOTUS also put religion over public health by siding with religious groups in Colorado and New Jersey. At that time, the U.S. had almost 400,000 deaths from COVID-19 and 16.5 million infections.

Over five years ago, Jerry Falwell Jr, then president of Liberty University, endorsed DDT for president which gave him the evangelical vote in 2016. The past few years have not been good for Falwell. After a series of failed to gain traction, the photo of him and his wife’s pregnant assistant in an inappropriate pose on a boat was the tipping point. He lost his leadership position at the university but claimed a resurrection comeback on Good Friday with his belief the “community still embraces him.” Denied a contracted $10.5 million severance package, Falwell, worth over $100 million, told the media the dispute was resolved.

Good Friday passed, and Liberty is now suing Falwell for over $40 million in damages, alleging breach of contract and fiduciary duty. The lawsuit states Falwell withheld “scandalous and potentially damaging information from Liberty’s board of trustees, while negotiating a generous new contract for himself in 2019 under false pretenses,” according to journalist Ruth Graham. Some of the scandal included an on-going three-some among himself, his wife, and a former pool boy. (More details about Falwell’s scandals.) 

Employees have been ordered to not communicate with either Falwell or his wife Becki Falwell other than any concerns about their daughter, a student. The university also wants Falwell to return its electronic equipment with confidential information. Their oldest son, Trey Falwell was also forced from his vice-presidency at Liberty, while Jerry Falwell Jr’s brother Jonathan Falwell has taken a bigger role at the school.

Also gone from Liberty University is the name for its political “think tank,” Falkirk Center, named after Falwell and DDT’s former pet, Charlie Kirk. Over 400 Liberty students and recent graduates signed a petition to close down the group because the Center “is trying to undo Liberty’s mission.” They rejected the idea they are “people who were educated to become champions for Trump and Western Civilization in the ‘cultural battlefield.’” They also object to the “fellows” using the Center as a “gateway for … people who claim Christ’s name because it is convenient for their personal or political gain.” The Falkirk Center sank $50,000 into political ads for DDT and other GOP candidates before the election.

The Center did not renew Charlie Kirk as a fellow, and he plans to start his own group called Turning Point Faith. Falkirk is now Standing for Freedom Center but kept its political philosophy and some of its questionable “fellows,” such as conservative commentator Eric Metaxas who punched an unarmed anti-DDT protester in the back of his head last year and continues to spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud.  

Liberty’s direction is shown by two new fellows, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, both wannabe presidential candidates—Huckabee in the past and Pompeo in 2024. Pompeo, claiming he wants “religious freedom, created many federal groups promoting evangelical Christianity around the world including one educating officials that the Bible mandates them to support back right-wing social, economic, environmental, and criminal justice policies. When in Congress, Pompeo worked with anti-Muslim activists to promote Christian nationalism. Pope Francis denied an audience with Pompeo because of his use of “religious freedom” for political gain.

Pompeo’s background as Secretary of State illustrates his lack of ethics. The Inspector General reported Pompeo violated government federal ethics rules in using the agency’s resources by asking its employees to carry out personal tasks over 100 times, as did Pompeo’s wife, Susan. Pompeo said they were just things friends did for friends—like working all weekend “to envelope, address, and mail personal Christmas cards for the Pompeos” with no compensation.

Just a few reasons that the number of religiously unaffiliated grows every year.

 

No Masks Called ‘Love and Compassion’

On May 22, Oregon’s Union County, population 27,000, had only six COVID-19 infections when Island City’s Lighthouse Pentecostal Church decided to permit large gatherings. Within days, the number of cases in the county skyrocketed, now 349 cases with two-thirds connected to the church. On one day alone, the county’s infections comprised 47 percent of the day’s statistics for all of Oregon, a state with over four million people. For months, churches have sued to open, and Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) pandered to his evangelical base by opening churches as “essential workplaces.”

Infection and deaths from church events are common in the U.S.  A Texas pastor told congregants to hug each other, infecting 50 people. A Florida teenage girl died after her church’s youth party. Thus far, three members of Graystone Baptist Church in Ronceverte (WV) have died; 51 infections are connected to attending its mask-optional services.

In early May, a Southern Christian wrote her relative, my friend, who gave me permission to reprint it:

“This is my belief—choosing to not wear a mask and not hunker down shows great compassion.  It shows great love.

“I deeply care about people and I try to be compassionate about their struggles.  Everyone has a story.  Everyone has a reason for what they choose to do.  It is out of my love for others and my concern for continued health that I do not wear a mask (nor gloves) and I do not hunker down.  Now, I am not a doctor; I am not a government official.  I am just a healthy person who loves science, loves to live healthy, and chooses to educate myself regularly on how to best care for myself and my family. And, this is what I firmly believe – Healthy people must be exposed to this virus for the sake of those who cannot be exposed.  This allows the general public to build an immunity to it so that the transmission spread slows.  This is the natural course that takes place with a virus among people groups. 

“But good news, friends!!!  Our bodies were designed in a very special way.  When working efficiently and completely, our immune response starts within the airways.  In breathing.  Many believe that blocking the airways with a mask will filter the pathogens around them.  Sometimes, certain masks can be useful – but for limited amounts of time.  Inhalation of fresh oxygenated air and deep exhalation is part of our immune response in the human body.  I cannot exhale out toxins/pathogens as efficiently if my airways are partially blocked.  Our filtering mucous membranes in conjunction with deep cleansing breaths is the body’s first response!  Therefore, I have not worn a mask and will not wear a mask.

“Then there is the idea of Social distancing and hunkering down at home in a Lysol-sanitary environment.  During a short time out of concern for overloading the hospitals—that is a valid thought, but certainly not the answer for extended periods of time.  One real important reason is that the human body NEEDS to be exposed to many strains of bacteria and viruses on a regular basis in small amounts to keep the gut flora functioning in a healthy way and at peak efficiency.  True Health begins in the gut.  Our gut health is vital in fighting off pathogens.  A great resource in cooking gut-healthy dishes is Sally Fallon’s book – Nourishing Traditions.  It is full of the science behind foods and much more than a cookbook.  More great info about gut health can be found on the Weston Price Foundation webpage.

“Another reason hunkering down isn’t a good solution, is that there is GREAT importance in our mental and emotional and spiritual health.  The body is NOT just physical.  We were designed to thrive in community with one another.  We desire and need touch, conversations, smiles, hugs, warmth of friendship, interaction, and for Christians—assembly for worship.  So, make decisions that build the entire health of your household.  And think about the BIG picture.  Think about next week’s mental & emotional health being impacted by the decisions you make today.  Therefore, I will not hunker down.

“Then there is the whole vaccine issue.  I do not believe a vaccine given to the public for this virus is the answer.  This is a huge debate in our nation.  My belief is that through the vaccine that I’m sure will eventually be offered to the public, we will see quicker mutations within the virus that will later cause us to continuously need more strains of the mutated virus in the vaccine for this super-bug later.  Many people also have valid concerns about the effects of vaccines and how some of the ingredients in them are too toxic for their body to handle, compromising their body’s natural ability to fight off viruses and infections.  There are a growing number of people around the world who have seen negative effects of vaccines in themselves, their children, or others they love and cannot and will not take a vaccine.  There are many videos and books out there to educated yourselves in this area.  A great resource to check out would be “The Truth About Vaccines”.  So for the same reason I do not take a flu vaccine -ever, and I also will not take a covid vaccine.

“So, how does choosing to not wear a mask and not wear gloves and not hunker down show great compassion and great love?  Because those of us choosing to let our bodies be exposed gradually, and continuing to work and travel and shop and live in a pretty normal way—are building immunity for “those who cannot” and are keeping the economy going for “those who cannot.” 

“One day “those who cannot” will leave their homes… what will they find?  Will they find that from hunkering down, most of the population has weaker immune systems unable to handle ANY virus much less the current one, therefore overloaded hospitals?  Will they find that from everyone hunkering down, no one has built immunity?  Will they find that instead of viewing the person across from them at the store as a person, they view them as a hazard—a germ—a thing to avoid?  Will they find a ruined economy where we are all now dependent on government handouts for food and bills and healthcare?  Will they find a super-bug from vaccine intervention, more dangerous than before?  Will they find forced vaccines and forced testing and forced decisions made by our government?  Will they find a nation no longer free to make their own decisions for their health or their children’s health?

“My final thoughts.  First, DO NOT FEAR.  As a Christian, God tells me do not fear.  None of what is happening is a surprise to Him.  But our actions in the midst of crisis determines so much about our future.  God is not the author of fear.  Fear causes division, irrational thinking, malice, suspicion, and selfish behavior.  None of that will make you healthier.  Please do your own research – homework – prayer – thinking.  Do not let a doctor, a government official, a co-worker, or a friend on Facebook (like me) determine what is best for you and your family.  This is the perfect time to be thinking about your family’s health. Is your body breathing, consuming, and drinking things that promote good health?  Do homework on what builds the immune system, the respiratory system, and the other systems in your body.  But more important than anything else… we need to be asking ourselves what does our spiritual health look like?  I’ll always remember the analogy that Francis Chan used with a rope.  One small RED DOT on the rope showed our LIFE in comparison with the very very long and unending rope which represented all of ETERNITY.  Our Dot affects our Eternity.  This life is but a vapor.  James 4:13-15 reads, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make a profit.” You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.”   And, Psalm 144:4 says, “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.”

“I know my story is not your story.  My little red dot looks different than yours.  But the next time you see someone out at the store who is not wearing a mask or gloves on, shopping for nonessential items with their 6 unmasked children in tow behind them, just remember that they may be doing you a great service in their actions. They may also be doing it out of love and compassion for you and everyone else in the community.

“In my little red dot… in my vapor of a life, I will show love and compassion and courage.  And, I will do this by not wearing a mask and by not hunkering down.”

Even with attempts to stop COVID-19 infections and deaths, the United States has racked up the largest number in the world. The virus infection of 3,158,932 in the U.S. is over one-fourth of the world’s cases, as is the U.S. number of deaths—134,862. The number of new cases in the U.S. hit 61,848 in the last 24 hours—three times as many as when the person wrote the “love and compassion” piece. Two months ago when the above commentary was written, the U.S. had 1,376,638 infections and 80,787 deaths. The person is hosting a family reunion; masks and social distancing are unnecessary.

Washington’s Birthday 2020

Until Richard Nixon was elected president, people celebrated two holidays in February—Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on the 12^th and George Washington’s birthday on the 22^nd. Although Washington’s birthday was designated a federal holiday in 1855, it subsumed Lincoln’s birthday when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved Washington’s Birthday to the third Monday of February in 1971. For the past few decades, many people have nicknamed this date “Presidents Day,” sometimes putting the apostrophe before or after the last “s.” Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) puts it before the “s,” perhaps because he wants President’s Day to refer only to himself.  Thirteen states don’t celebrate either Washington’s Birthday or Presidents Day as a state holiday, and some Southern states refuse to celebrate any part of Abraham Lincoln.

George Washington, in his 1796 farewell address after two terms in office, was most concerned for the safety of the U.S. Constitution and the unity of government after the rise of factions from political parties. He wrote:

“The Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. All obstructions to the execution of the laws …. are destructive of this fundamental principle.”

In contrast to Washington’s noble image of a new country is DDT’s impression as described by history, documentarian, and filmmaker Ken Burns whose 30+ productions covered two centuries of U.S. achievements. In a 2016 interview, Burns’ prescience came from a discussion of his then new project Defying the Nazis as he explained his reason for public opposition to DDT:  

“I have never in my professional life ever spoken out in this way. I certainly have my own opinions and have a yard sign at elections and make sure I vote. But I spoke out because he represents the greatest threat to American democracy since the Second World War. He is so fundamentally un-American, and not only because he is unqualified, but because he is mentally unsuited. He represents a kind of strong man, narcissistic thing that represents the potential death of the Republic. All of my films are about the United States and all of them are about trying to understand how it works and how it doesn’t work, and I just felt compelled to speak out.”

About DDT’s appeal to his base, Burns said:

“He has tapped a dark unconscious, in which it is easier to vilify the other than to see what you share in common. It’s easier to be afraid than to welcome change. It’s always been there. We had a civil war, you know. We killed 750,000 of ourselves over this issue. He’s appealing to that in the most venal and vulgar ways.”

In his interview, Burns talked about DDT’s full-page ads demanding the death penalty to five young people, the “Central Park Five,” later exonerated for a horrible crime. DDT never backed down on his calls for the death penalty even after the guilty person was found. Asked if DDT is a fascist, Burns said:

“Absolutely. When you talk about having extra-judicial, threatening rivals with jail. You can call it fascistic or you can call it dictatorial. You can call it monomaniacal or imperial. Whatever you want to say, this is not the way that our country works.”

These comments were made over three years ago before DDT was elected as U.S. president.

Three years later, writer for the National Catholic Reporter Michael Sean Winters wrote about DDT’s “seven deadly sins”—greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, envy, wrath, and pride:

“What we see with President Donald Trump and his cast of sycophants and co-conspirators . . . is a rare thing: All seven deadly sins on display at once.”

Winters wrote about how the “deadly sins” spur DDT’s actions:

His unsatiated greed for money and fame during most of his life extends to greed for power.

His lust for women came out before the election in the tape about how he could grab women “by the pussy,” a tape that 63 million voters ignored and enjoyed. By now, his lust for 23 women has been widely politicized, but his base ignores or rejects the possibility that he committed these actions.

Gluttony, obvious that he can never get enough money or power or women, reveals his drive for satisfying only his own needs with no concern for the country that he was elected to lead.  

Sloth is evident in his refusal to read briefing papers and his constant golfing, even during disasters affected the United States. He has no knowledge of history or the ramifications of his actions.

Envy, largely directed at his predecessor, is he cause behind almost every decision DDT makes—eliminating items for budgets, dropping out of treaties, destroying the environment, taking health care from people—anything to erase President Obama’s legacy no matter how much damage it does to the country.

Fury pours out at all his campaign rallies and throughout his tweets; inside sources report his wrath within the White House. Recently, he used the National Prayer Breakfast to rail at people who didn’t show him absolute loyalty. His anger at former opponent Hillary Clinton is still on full display at the rallies, and he always calls for chants of “lock her up.”

Pride for DDT “is the pride of the con man,” according to Winters. “He is proud of his ability to make people think he is a man of abilities when he really is a man of few gifts beyond those we associate with showmanship.” In 2016, David Brooks wrote about DDT:

“[His] vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.”

DDT has managed to consistently break all the Ten Commandments:

1. “I am the Lord thy God who has brought you out of the land of Egypt.” DDT has said that only he can save the people of the U.S.
2.  “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Evangelical Christians, who have been able to swallow everything else that DDT throws at them, have complained about his taking God’s name in vain.
3. “Thou shalt have no other gods beside Me. You shall not make for yourself any graven image.” DDT has declared himself the “lord” and puts his name on everything possible.
4.  “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.” DDT uses his Sabbath for election campaigning.
5.  “Honor thy father and mother.” Even at his father’s funeral, DDT could not resist making the event all about himself.
6.  “Thou shalt not kill.” DDT has vastly increased the “collateral damage” from bombings in the Middle East and is indifferent to murdered civilians. He refuses to take any action in mass shootings, and his unadulterated support for Israel is killing thousands of Palestinians.
7.  “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Breaking this commandment has been one of DDT’s favorite activities. A prime example is that he pled the Fifth for 97 times during his divorce from Ivana Trump to avoid incriminating himself about his public extramarital affair with Marla Maples who he then married before divorcing. 
8. “Thou shalt not steal.” DDT has stiffed workers by not paying their wages, taken others’ pensions by declaring bankruptcies, and generally cheated everyone possible. He also stole from his own charitable foundation.
9. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” DDT fits the old joke: How can we tell that he is lying? He opens his mouth. A few months ago, he was past 16,000 lies since his inauguration.
10. “Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s house, nor his wife, his man-servant, his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.” In addition to the neighbors’ possessions, DDT covets attention, love, glory, power and victory. 

More examples here. 

DDT fits the description of the conservative Christian anti-Christ, the one who opposes Christ while substituting himself in Christ’s place. Pure evil, DDT is a polarizer, hatemonger, and fearmonger with no understanding of or respect for the nation’s political values and traditions. The one value he seeks in those around him, loyalty, means that he wants only their agreement, not advice.

This Vanity Fair piece by Marie Brenner from 1990 shows that DDT hasn’t changed in 30 years.

After DDT’s weekend vacation at Mar-a-Lago, President Obama managed to drive him into another rage with this tweet on Washington’s Birthday:

“Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.”

Unfortunately for DDT, his bragging falls short—again. His “greatest economy ever” is only sixth out of the last ten presidential terms—and it’s headed downhill.

Happy “President’s Day!”

Christmas by DDT, GOP

The purpose of Christmas, December 25, is to commemorate the birth of Christ—although he was likely born in spring. (December doesn’t have any lambs.) Those who celebrate the birth of Jesus glorify a refugee family of color fleeing fear of persecution as described in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew about the “flight into Egypt” from Bethlehem (Mt 2:12-15) to escape the infant’s slaughter by King Herod.  Later Jesus said that welcoming the stranger means welcoming Jesus (Matt. 25), a religious superseding of any laws designed to hinder, prevent, or outlaw care and compassion for refugees and migrants. He also told people to feed the hungry, sell possessions, and give the money to the poor while treating people with the love, generosity, and kindness that he modeled.

Oliver Willis with Media Matters tweeted:

“If only we had a seasonally appropriate story about middle eastern people seeking refuge being turned away by the heartless.”

[Check out Jesus and refugees on the internet to see conservatives blowing up at the very mention of this connection!]

On Christmas Day 2019, some people celebrate the refugee family, others the day’s culture of exchanging gifts and eating large meals. Yet millions of people in the United States lack the privileges of secure housing, food, and employment. Those who are safe might think of the disadvantages and misery caused by GOP lawmakers for almost two decades.

 

GOP policies have two major characteristics: give to the rich and take from anyone else because they are considered sub-human.

Adam Serwer’s 2018 essay “The Cruelty Is the Point,” published in The Atlantic, uses photographs of lynchings to illustrate shared pleasure from other people’s suffering. White men surrounding the hanging people enjoyed what they saw, just as lawmakers are pleased with their own cruelty from punitive laws toward those they view as “others.” People who don’t receive aid often resent those on programs such as food stamps, accusing them of being lazy and weak. The U.S. saves only $1.1 billion a year with the new rules taking food stamps from hungry people compared to the $1.3542 trillion expenditure for the military. has a minimal cost, compared to the wealth accruing to the top percentage of people in the U.S. from the tax cuts.

The first year that the tax cut for the wealthy and big business went into effect, businesses spent over $1 trillion in stock buybacks and dividend payment, more than one-hundred times the savings from making people go hungry. The explosive budget deficit from these tax cuts makes GOP lawmakers complicit with Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) to take even more from the poor with the excuse of balancing the budget.

On the southern border, the federal government tear gasses refugees and drives them back to Mexico to be raped and killed. Before the courts prevented family separation, the government separated families with no records of how to reunite them and put children in cages where they might be sexually assaulted. These are refugees like Jesus and his parents.

Because the conservatives on the Supreme Court made the Medicaid expansion from the Affordable Care Act optional for states, they can reject the provision that gave 90 percent of the expansion funding to states from the federal government. ACA funding allows states to reduce aid to hospitals for uncompensated costs and raises state tax revenues from a boosted economy. Yet 14 GOP-controlled states, several of them the poorest in the nation, turned down the neutral or even net positive expansion. Some of these states want to limit Medicaid even more with stringent work requirements, another action costing states money. The goal isn’t to make money; it’s to punish people by making their lives worse.

GOP lawmakers want to take Medicaid from everyone and cause others to lose health care—at least 20 million people by eliminating the ACA. People who lose health care can lose their work because of poor health and then their homes from bankruptcies through unreasonable expenses, causing less tax revenue. Without the ACA, older people will pay far more for prescriptions and health care premiums. Part of the ACA is to eliminate fraud and corruption in Medicare and Medicaid–$4 billion in its first year of 2011—but GOP lawmakers want continued corruption to benefit their big business donors.

DDT’s open hatred makes cruelty more acceptable. He doesn’t like Puerto Rico so his followers accept his refusal to send them aid appropriated by Congress. He wants the money sent instead to Texas and Florida, states that added to his electoral college total. DDT wants to support Russia, who interferes in U.S. elections on the part of Republicans so he threatens Ukraine by withholding military aid that would help Ukraine fight Russia. His followers echo DDT’s lying excuse of fighting “corruption” while accepting the massive corruption that DDT has brought to the federal government.  

DDT accepts indiscriminate killing and violence, whether in the U.S. or foreign countries. He refused to criticize Saudi Arabia for torturing and dismembering a U.S. resident and journalist and pardoned war criminals to use on his campaign trail. In his speeches and tweets, he encourages violence against his opposition, pretending surprise when his supporters carry out the violence and killing.

In its incessant worship of mammon, a greedy search for gain, DDT’s government kills people by eliminating regulations for greedy big businesses. Developed by the Nazis as a nerve gas, the pesticide chlorpyrifos causes brain damage in children, Parkinson’s disease, and forms of cancer.  Yet the EPA allows the chemical on fruits and vegetables, a chemical also dangerous for farmworkers and rural communities. Judges ordered a ban on chlorpyrifos in 2018, but chemical companies have EPA permission to keep making it—and money—as long as the case is in the courts. Actions from other agencies in favor of big business are equally destructive for humanity.

DDT not only rejects any thought of fighting climate change but also ridicules children who want to save the world for their future. He and his followers have been particularly vicious about the protests of Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old leader who ignores the GOP lawmakers’ push to give to the rich at any cost to everyone else.

Well-known for ridiculing disabled people, DDT mocks them at his rallies, and his sycophants follow suit. Highly religious Sarah Huckabee Sanders, hoping to be Arkansas’ governor, made fun of Joe Biden when he tried to explain the suffering of people who stutter. A GOP proposed rule change would take disability benefits from hundreds of thousands of people through further complicating Social Security eligibility payments. Ronald Reagan’s similar benefit cut took earned benefits from 200,000 people; he reversed the attack after public outcry protesting human suffering and death. The addition of a fourth disability category affecting 4.4 million recipients, many of them children and people 50-65 with poor health and no income, requires reviews every two years although health issues worsen with age.  

Throughout his almost three years, DDT has turned on LGBTQ people, literally making them sick. A meta-analysis of 300 scientific studies in the U.S. shows overwhelming evidence that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity damages the health of LGBTQ people. Mental health problems include depression, anxiety, suicide, and PTSD while physical problems include substance use, heart disease, and high blood pressure. In states implementing “license to discriminate” laws, “the proportion of sexual minority adults reporting mental distress increased by 10.1 percentage points.” These effects are “compounded” for LGBTQ people of color, queer youth, and transgender people. Again, poor health takes from tax revenue and adds to costs for care. Poor health from discrimination will also affect immigrants, people of color, the poor, and everyone else suffering from discrimination.

Laughter at cruelty is rampant among DDT’s followers—his mocking Puerto Rican accents after thousands were killed by Hurricane Maria, women talking about sexual abuse, calls to “lock her up,” ridicule of opponents’ Christian faith—there seems to be no low bar for DDT’s abuse of humanity and his supporters admiration of his cruelty. Cruelty is the new norm for DDT’s supporters.

People who defend DDT worship him because “he tells it like it is.” On Christmas Day 2019, this is “like it is.” It’s Christmas Day: Jesus was an immigrant refugee and person of color who wouldn’t like the way that Republicans are running the United States. As DDT’s acting chief of staff would say, “Get over it.” And maybe try to do better.

In Charles Dickens’ “The Christmas Carol,” Ebenezer Scrooge had an epiphany after visits from the ghost of his former business partner and three spirits—Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come. On Christmas 2019, we can only hope for a similar epiphany in 2020.

 

‘Anti-Semitism’ Ban Doesn’t Protect Jewish People

At a White House Hanukkah reception, Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) signed an executive order explicitly naming Jews as a protected class under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and cracking down on anti-Semitism by denying federal funds to any group exhibiting his definition of anti-Semitism. Title VI lists non-discrimination only for race, color, and national origin which means that Jewish people are protected as “national origin” and not religion.

The order punishes any First Amendment free speech criticism of Israel, blocks the BDS movement—Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions—which attempts to “end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians” by boycotting Israel for its illegal activities in the West Bank and Gaza, and eliminates any support for Palestinians. Curriculum that did not completely support Israel would also be banned under this order.

A hue and cry declaimed that DDT didn’t declare Judaism a “nationality,” that he just put it under “race” and “nationality.” That explanation seems to have the same meaning as “nationality”—it even uses the same word. The order raises questions such as whether Ivanka Trump, a Jewish convert, now has a new “race” or “nationality.” Most of the Jews in the U.S. describe their identity as cultural or religious—or perhaps heritage—while they are Americans. Being separate from Americans can deny them the nation’s rights. If the government determines a definition of nationality for Jewishness, this different category leaves them open to more discrimination.  

Several Jewish organizations raised objections to DDT’s order. Alissa Wise, an activist rabbi with Jewish Voice for Peace, said:

“Trump has never cared about stopping antisemitism — this executive order is about silencing Palestinians and the people who speak up with them.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, said:

“We feel it is misguided and harmful for the White House to unilaterally declare a broad range of nonviolent campus criticism of Israel to be anti-Semitic, especially at a time when the prime driver of anti-Semitism in this country is the xenophobic, white nationalist far-right.”

In its petition to reject DDT’s executive order, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights states:

“Though touted as a means of protecting Jews and of supporting Israel, this planned Executive Order only threatens First Amendment rights, which include the right to criticize the actions of any country on earth, while confirming a centuries-old antisemitic trope — that the primary loyalty of Jews is not to the state in which they live. This supposition has resulted in horrific discrimination against Jews in countless countries. Take a stand against it today.”

Emily Mayer, political director of IfNotNow, wrote:

 “Trump’s executive order is not about keeping Jews safe. After a week in which he spewed classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money, this is just more anti-Semitism. The order’s move to define Judaism as a ‘nationality’ promotes the classically bigoted idea that American Jews are not American. This order is a dangerous move to silence the free speech of human rights advocates and, in particular, Palestinian and Muslim college students.”

Last weekend, DDT used anti-Jewish negative stereotypes of the wealthy Jew in real estate when he said to the Israeli American Council:

“A lot of you are in the real estate business… You’re brutal killers, not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice. You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not gonna vote for the wealth tax.”

DDT continues his pattern of protecting anti-Semitic white supremacists, as he did after their racist protests in Charlotte (VA). Despite the nationalist protesters’ cries of “Jews will not replace us,” DDT continues to insist that they were “fine people on both sides.” 

The executive order is reminiscent of the 1870 Crémieux Decree that the French government enacted in Algeria with the white supremacist goal of giving Algerian Jews the rights and protection of French citizenship while leaving Muslim and Amazigh Algerians second-class citizens. Jewish Algerians lost their privileges when Nazis took over Europe and set up the Vichy regime in France.

By creating citizenship for Algerian Jews, the French government deflected Algerians’ anger of the violence of colonization onto this minority group. Separating the two oppressed groups, Jews and Muslims, meant that they could not successfully opposed the French colonial power. The rise of anti-Semitism drove Jews out of Algeria to France and the anti-colonial movement. By 1940, Muslims fought colonization in Algeria, and Jews faced genocide in France.

France suffers from both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, the direction that the United States is taking. White supremacist governments, including the United States, isolate religious and ethnic groups to pit them against each other to block solidarity. DDT separates Jews and Muslims to make them more ineffective in the fight against white supremacy. He strengthens his division of minority groups by ordering that Palestinian liberation work and fighting anti-Semitism are in opposition.

George W. Bush and President Obama used Title VI to oppose discrimination against people of different religions, not specifically Jewish, and did not declare them a nationality. Instead, discrimination against Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, etc. was covered by Title VI if the discrimination is based on “the group’s actual or perceived ancestry or ethnic characteristics” or “actual or perceived citizenship or residency in a country whose residents share a dominant religion or a distinct religious identity.”

DDT uses a pattern of stating that Jewish people in the United States aren’t really “Americans.” Speaking to Jewish groups, he calls Israel “your country” and Benjamin Netanyahu “your prime minister.” He uses perspectives about Israel, PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and himself to define the Jewish community as “loyal” or “disloyal.” Prominent Jewish people, for example, Alexander Vindman who testified during the impeachment inquiry, suffer from questions about their patriotism and their loyalty to “America.” DDT’s executive order expands on the difference, insinuating that “Jewish” is separated from “America” and putting that idea into law. This follows DDT’s position that “Mexican Americans” aren’t really Americans.

The new executive order lumps together all anti-Israel conduct without considering whether it is anti-Jewish. The First Amendment protects anti-Semitic speech—at least until DDT was inaugurated. Although it may be repugnant, the term “I hate Jews” is as protected as “I hate carnivores.” The order bans free speech by requiring all government agencies consider the nonbinding International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism in enforcing anti-discrimination law. The criteria, developed for data-collection, are so vague and imprecise that a Palestinian rights group on campus could lose funding for a school.

To ban all criticism against Israel is to stop criticism of a country.  Israel is a political entity, and DDT’s order bans any criticism of an entire country and its government. Criticism of illegal West Bank settlements is a political discussion, not “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group,” a definition of anti-Semitism. Debates about Israeli policy is not necessarily anti-Jewish.

DDT’s goal with his executive order is to stop any criticism of Israel by calling it “anti-Semitic.” Israel is a political entity, and his order bans any criticism of a country and government. Criticism of illegal West Bank settlements is a political discussion, not “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group,” the definition of anti-Semitism. Debates about Israeli policy are not anti-Semitism.

Technically, DDT’s executive order against “anti-Semitism” should oppose discrimination against a wide range of communities. Although claims have been made that “anti-Semitism” is exclusively for Jewish people, the term Semite covers people in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta—all racially connected by the Semitic language. Therefore, bans against anti-Semitism should stop discrimination against Muslims, Palestinians, etc. DDT’s “anti-Semitism” order is actually anti-Zionism. Both left and right Zionists want the state of Israel, but DDT’s ideology, the rightwing Zionists, combine religion and politics while opposing peace with Palestinians in order to take over all their land. The Zionists want privileges for Jews over Arabs, Palestinians, and Christians.

As a person, DDT is pro-Zionist, trying to protect the state of Israel to keep the evangelical Christians happy, but he demonstrates anti-Jewish behavior which encourages his prejudiced base to behave violently toward Jewish people in their desire to rid the U.S. of Jewish people. Anti-Jewish episodes in the U.S. increased 60 percent in the first year after DDT’s inauguration and continued into a record number of attacks, for example the killing of four people at a Jersey City kosher supermarket this past week.  

Anti-Muslim evangelical Christian leader Robert Jeffress spoke at the Hanukkah event where DDT signed his order. Jeffress maintains that “you can’t be saved being a Jew” and called Mormonism “a heresy from the pit of hell.” According to anti-Jewish Jeffress, Hell is “filled with good religious people who have rejected the truth of Christ.” DDT supports Jeffress because “I like people that talk well about me.”

DDT is not a friend of the Jewish people in the United States.

Pompeo, Barr Hide behind Religion

With the United States becoming a theocracy, two of the major leaders are self-proclaimed dedicated Christians while they lie and cheat to destroy democracy.

State Department Secretary Mike Pompeo, once a hater of Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), said in 2016 that DDT would be “an authoritarian President who ignored our Constitution.” Now Pompeo himself violates the constitution while he enables DDT to do the same. He also opposed DDT’s “America First” in the world because of his belief in U.S. power to guarantee world stability. The instant that DDT was elected, Pompeo worked to get an appointment, first as CIA director and later State Department Secretary after DDT fired Rex Tillerson.

Like other DDT’s appointees, Pompeo lied under oath for his confirmation, an impeachable crime. Under oath, he signed a questionnaire that he had not been involved in any financial or business transactions within an entity controlled by a foreign government. A year later, he talked about running a small business making machine parts connected with the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. When president of Sentry International, the oil-services firm manufacturing parts throughout China and sold in the U.S., he expanded the company to ten plans in China anda joint venture of the Chinese national oil firm Sinopec. He did that before he swore he hadn’t received any compensation from foreign government financial or business transactions. The State Department covered for Pompeo by stating that he wouldn’t have any idea about overseas interests in the companies that he ran.

As Pompeo made his name in Kansas, his business affairs were based on lies: he claimed that very little financial involvement in his struggling aviation company came from the Koch brothers who lived in Wichita. The Kochs’ venture-capital fund had almost 20 percent of the company, and the brothers not only participated in its management but also helped Pompeo avoid environmental cleanup required for the company that his firm took over in 1999. Pompeo’s firm continued to pollute, with high levels of their toxic chemical in residential wells that were “a threat to human health.” Although Pompeo described the firm as “small,” investors put $90 million into it before he was forced out because of mismanagement and moved on to his Chinese business.

As a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, former Rep. Pompeo (R-KS) protected the Koch brothers in exchange for large donations to his campaign. Moving to the Intelligence Committee, Pompeo promoted conspiracy theories about the deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. citizens at Benghazi (Libya) in 2012 and used the tragedy against Hillary Clinton throughout the next four years, highlighting fake speculation about Hillary Clinton’s deletion of 30,000 emails from a private server after he became Secretary of State.

An evangelical Christian, Pompeo wants to move all Jews to Israel and convert them to Christianity in preparation for the End Times. He also supports DDT no matter that DDT says. A former official called Pompeo “among the most sycophantic and obsequious people around Trump,” and a former American ambassador told Susan Glasser, “He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.” Pompeo is a symbol of how the GOP moved from great distaste for DDT to his enabler.

Pompeo carries out his religious prejudices through the State Department, including orders to not fly the gay pride flag, his new human rights committee that opposes human rights, the incorporation of “natural” rights which means no LGBTQ justice, and his refusal to recognize the climate crisis. He also ignores human-rights abuses throughout the world, smiling with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince soon after the Saudi leader’s gruesome killing of U.S. columnist and resident Jamal Khashoggi. 

Looking like a future presidential candidate, Pompeo hosts GOP strategists such as Karl Rove and wealthy donors like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Pompeo’s second wife, Susan, orchestrates these dinners and makes a name for herself in the media along with her husband by using government resources and treating Pompeo’s security detail as servants—“UberEats with guns.” (Pompeo married his first wife in 1986 and soon divorced her.)

Pompeo is being investigated for his use of his Secret Service team to run household errands: picking up Chinese takeout food, retrieving the family dog from the groomer, and taking an adult son to the family home from Union Station. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, a federal employee “shall not encourage, direct, coerce, or request a subordinate to use official time to perform activities other than those required in the performance of official duties or authorized in accordance with law or regulation.”

Susan Pompeo may also be investigated for her personal security detail with no need. Employees were also ordered to omit all information about Susan in official emails, violating the mandated recordkeeping laws. On trips with her husband, Susan also requires a State Department staffer and chairs meetings on trip logistics at the State Department although she is not an employee. Her separate meetings require control officers, motor pool assets, security, and time even during the shutdown when furloughed employees were called to an embassy for her services.

Last March, Pompeo redefined the mission of the State Department as serving DDT—not the Constitution. An early draft was a loyalty oath, possibly aimed at leakers. A former senior official said, “I ended up feeling like we were in 1984.” Pompeo emphasizes that his sole goal is to execute DDT’s commands. Instead of generals, DDT has a captain who follows his orders.

Another of DDT’s servants is his AG Bill Barr, who doesn’t understand that his position is to support the people of the United States, not the person elected as president. Like Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, he fails to understand that his “client” is the institution, not the person in the White House.

Barr gained his fame soon after his confirmation with the release of the Robert Mueller investigation by trying to hide most of it and lying about the rest of it. In running the DOJ as DDT’s personal law firm, Barr has:

• Redacted the Muller report that may have damaging information about DDT such as lies about his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks.
• Stated that there is insufficient information “to establish that the president committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”  
• Tried to hide the Ukrainian whistleblower report in violation of the law.
• Been cited by DDT as a person who can find dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden.
• Ordered the DOJ to block New York prosecutors using state law to demand DDT’s tax returns.
• Fought human rights in the Supreme Court.
• Talked to Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox network, presumably about negative information about DDT on Fox.
• Traveled around the world, alienating world leaders by trying to dig up dirt about the investigations into the FBI and Mueller in their probing into the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 
• Hid a 2018 federal report about white supremacists being responsible for all race-based domestic terrorism events in that year.

Despite past illegal acts, Barr had been looked upon as a “respectable” political figure, even by Democrats. Now, however, Barr has become DDT’s Dick Cheney—or, as bad, his Roy Cohn. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) demonstrated her disappointment in Barr when she told him:

“The American people know that you are no different from Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office.”

Former FBI James Comey, a Republican fired by DDT in his search to find more compliant people, wrote an op-ed for the NYT, explaining his reason for such subservience.

“Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from.”

Comey explained the process:

1. They become complicit in DDT’s lying because they stay silent.
2. They display “personal fealty” in public because everyone is watching and DDT demands it.
3. They idly stand by as DDT attacks the “institutions and values you hold dear” with the excuse that they are protecting the institutions under attack.

Comey wrote that the silent ones must then become part of DDT’s team with more compromises; they end up perjuring themselves on DDT’s behalf. And they use religion as the justification as Barr did when he accused “secularists” and “progressives” of deliberately and systematically destroying democracy. Comey concludes, “And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.” The question is whether any of DDT’s “loyalists” can escape; Pompeo and Barr are likely destined to join VP Mike Pence as DDT’s scapegoats for the rising corruption charges against the man who sits in the Oval Office.  

Evangelicals Killing Christianity in U.S

Christian evangelicals were largely responsible for electing Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) in 2016, but their politics are driving people away from organized religion, according to a recent analysis in fivethirtyeight.com. Michele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity, said:

“Politics can drive whether you identify with a faith, how strongly you identify with that faith, and how religious you are. And some people on the left are falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.”

In the early 1990s, less than ten percent of people in the U.S. lacked a formal religious affiliation, with liberals having about the same percentage as the general public. Twenty-five years later, almost 25 percent have no affiliation with a religion, and 40 percent of liberals are part of that group. The share of conservatives and moderates with no religion is also rising. By now, most people’s ideology matches their religious identity. The more liberal the person, the less likely to belong to a faith, and vice versa. 

Many religiously unaffiliated still believe in God, but the percentage of liberals who never attend religious services has tripled. Those in the U.S. who say that God exists fell from 53 percent in 1991 to 36 percent in 2018.

In the past, politics weren’t connected to loss of faith; reasons were a church scandal or the feeling that a religion’s hierarchies or rules were antiquated, restrictive, or irrelevant. Searches into the connection between politics and faith were carefully done because the view that politics can shape religious beliefs can be offensive. Two sociologists, Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, did look beyond conventional demographic and generational shifts to find reasons for changes of falling religious affiliation in the mid-1990s, particularly among liberals. Published in 2002, their results offer the theory that some left-leaning people walked away from religion because of the Christian right’s extensive participation in politics, especially when the white evangelical Protestants became controlling in focusing the GOP platform on sexual morality such as opposition to marriage equality and abortion. 

Exploring that theory, prominent political researchers discovered that people leaving a religious affiliation kept their political identities instead of a growing secular attitude moving them toward the left. One study showed that just reading a news story about a Republican who spoke in a church might cause Democrats to claim they were nonreligious in “an allergic reaction to the mixture of Republican politics and religion,” according to David Campbell, a co-author of the study and political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. The numbers began to increase, and liberals are unlikely to return.

Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that the percentage of liberals who believe that churches and religious organizations positively contribute to society dropped from 49 percent in 2010 to only 33 percent. Only 11 percent of very liberal people say that being Christian is important to what it means to be American, compared to 69 percent of people who identify as very conservative. Liberals are unlikely to return to organized religion as long as conservatives push their fundamentalist religious beliefs into politics.

Surveys also show that secular liberals are more likely than moderates or conservatives to have spouses who aren’t religious. These couples don’t create a structured religion for their children, and the youngest liberals who have always lived in a political Christian right world are the most secular. The fundamentalist Christian power in politics undermines trust in both religion and Christian power in government, making politics more and more divisive.

Evangelical Christian hypocrisy is a strong reason for turning away from religion, and an eight-month investigation into DDT’s supporter Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University, reveals him a poster boy for the conservative religion’s double standard that can lead people to leave religious affiliation. University officials described Falwell’s abuse of school’s funds, for example his gift of $1.8 million to Miami poolboy, Giancarlo Granda, for an LGBTQ-friendly Miami Beach hotel. Falwell also sold university property to his young handsome personal trainer Benjamin Crosswhite, providing him the money to buy the property which the university rented back from him. Colleagues have described more deals.

Under Falwell’s direction, the school made big loans to his friends not in the university’s financial interests. Prototype Tourism LLC, a tourism company founded by Josh Oppenheimer, got $200,000 but had trouble paying back the loan. Family friend Robert Moon, who founded Construction Management Associates, Inc., got $750,000 before the university awarded him $130 million in construction contracts at the school with no other bids and sold him university property. In 2012, Falwell turned management of several university properties over to the company that his son, Trey Falwell, formed and that listed its address as that of Jerry Falwell’s and his wife’s home.

A senior university official said:

“We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

Other accusations include photographs of Falwell and his son Trey at the WALL nightclub in Miami Beach while they were drinking alcohol and dancing. Falwell’s university punishes students for drinking alcohol and co-ed dancing. Falwell hired “IT guy” John Gauger to reduce the pictures’ prominence in Google searches. Claims include sending and texting racy photos of his wife to male subordinates and “accidentally” emailing a picture of his wife in a French maid outfit to multiple people. Falwell was overheard hiring DDT’s former fixer Michael Cohen to fix blackmail for the photographs, possibly by his pool boy, in a recording of Cohen with Tom Arnold.  

Falwell makes colleagues uncomfortably by incessantly talking about his sex life at work. He called one of his students “emotionally imbalanced and physically retarded” and described the campus police chief “a half-wit and easy to manipulate.” About his former associate athletics director, Falwell wrote, “Only get Kevin involved in something if you want it not to work.”

Liberty officials fear retribution from Falwell and his wife. One school employee said:

“It’s a dictatorship. Nobody craps at the university without Jerry’s approval.”

A high-ranking university official, one of the over two dozen officials who spoke out, said:

“We’re talking about the difference between right and wrong. Not even ‘being a Christian,’ but being a good person, versus people who manipulate the system.”

While not denying the content of the embarrassing emails, Falwell claims that his embarrassing emails were stolen from Liberty University in a “criminal conspiracy” that makes him the target of an “attempted coup.” The FBI doesn’t comment, but cybercrime expert Nick Ackerman called Falwell’s claim “totally insane.”

Falwell is also a prime example of a politically powerful evangelical Christian who’s in the religion business to make money. He slammed David Platt, an evangelical Virginia pastor who apologized for welcoming DDT to his church by saying:  

 “I only want to lead us with God’s Word in a way that transcends political party and position, heals the hurts of racial division and injustice, and honors every man and woman made in the image of God.”

Falwell said that “pastors like [David Platt] need to grow a pair.” He responded to critics by bragging about how much money he made for Liberty University. A former university official called Falwell’s “washing his hands of any responsibility for spiritual life at the university—that was frankly a pretty Trumpian line of commentary.”

John Stoehr, political scientist and journalist, describes white evangelical Christians as sadists for the pleasure they derive from human suffering who they consider as “others.” People of color and members of the LGBTQ community deserve pain, humiliation, and physical abuse because of “divine justice.” Stoehr writes:

“[Sadists] are cruel because being cruel to people deserving cruelty feels good.”

For example, Christian leader Mark Taylor claimed that “patriots” will drag dead high-profile Democratic politicians through the streets if DDT doesn’t mass-arrest them by January.  White evangelicals don’t recognize political legitimacy in “others” because they don’t see them as equal. According to the evangelical Christian “moral compass,” “others” are to be used or abused, cheated and defeated because they aren’t equal.

Led by DDT, most U.S. evangelicals ignore the climate crisis destroying the planet for their descendants. World leaders including UK’s Boris Johnson, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and India’s Narendra Modi are coming to New York City for the UN climate action summit on September 23, but DDT won’t be present. Instead, he booked a room at the UN headquarters to give a speech about religious freedom, hoping to distract from the 60 speeches giving concrete plans to slow the climate crisis around the world. While over 4 million children and adults marched in 163 countries to save the planet, DDT praised Australia for digging coal.

Hypocrisy, Christian control, sadism, and DDT—these are reasons to leave organized religion.

Oppose Fundamentalist Christian Opposition to Democracy

Much has been said about the connection between mass shooting and white supremacy, but people are more cautious in discussing its connection to Christianity. Activist Sandy Rios, activist for extreme conservative Christianity, claims that criticism of white supremacy is an attack on Christianity. In her radio program, she defended the Nazis for murder of white people because they selected those who didn’t qualify for the superhuman race. She added:

“When the left is talking about white supremacism, they’re talking about the roots of this country. They’re talking about Christianity. They’re talking about hard work, about capitalism and free-market values. They’re talking about everything that has made America what it is. That’s what they mean.”

The Southern Baptist Convention was founded on with the ideology that black slavery and white supremacy are the basis of the Christian faith. The white supremacist Ku Klux Klan has always been a Christian organization. Christians allowed Nazi Germany to take control and murder people because most German Christians supported the Third Reich even in the face of mounting evidence of its evil. Throughout Europe, millions of Christians still support fascist regimes just as early Christian sects were loyal to authoritarian leaders.

Centuries ago, Rome misinterpreted the Gospels to remove blame for Jesus’ crucifixion from Romans and move it to the Jews. Throughout time, the myth that Jews killed Jesus accelerated into Catholic genocide of Jews during the Holocaust. A racist, anti-democracy culture came from people who grew up in strict, pious households disparaging tolerance and free speech. Nazis despised feminism, homosexuality, and abortion while following a patriarchal lifestyle with discipline and conformity. Their elections reflected their belief that an authoritarian strongman would “make Germany great again”; religious Germans repeatedly voted for anti-democracy candidates. As Christians supported Hitler and his policies, he became stronger, and the minority weaker. Not even Hitler’s mandatory sterilizations of minorities and the mentally ill lost his Catholic leaders.

Michael Gerson writes about how Christians find their worship of Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) in opposition to Jesus’ spiritual education. For example, only 25 percent of white evangelical Christians accept the responsibility to help refugees, compared to 65 percent of those not affiliated with a religion. The majority of conservative Christians promote cruelty, corruption, and hypocrisy, not the people who consider themselves non-Christians. Gerson proposes that these Christians take their talking points from Fox, talk radio, and DDT with a blasphemous worship of political idols. They side with white supremacists, making them difficult to identify as Christians.  

Christian TV host Leigh Valentine claims migrant children in DDT’s concentration camps are “God-haters,” “unclean,” “debased,” and “criminals.”

DDT-supporting West Virginia state senator Paul Hardesty reported that at least three of his constituents called to complain about DDT’s profanity—“using the Lord’s name in vain”—at a recent rally in Greenville (NC). Although many of DDT’s listeners focused on the “send her back” chanting, others were disturbed by his frequent use of “g—damn” and other profanities. Hardesty hasn’t heard back from DDT after he wrote him to “reflect on your comments and never utter those words again.” Hardesty said:

“I think this president needs to be president to all of the people and realize that kids look up to him and adults look up to him. Carrying that type of language from behind the presidential seal is offensive.”

Two pro-DDT pastors expressed dismay about his use of “bullsh—” at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in March. He bragged about going “off-script” and then littered the remainder of his speech with cursing in front of an audience with young people. Yet some evangelicals support DDT despite his multiple divorces, infidelities, and inability to discuss religion. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. says that DDT’s language is not a deal-breaker despite its front-and-center appearance in his campaign and since his inauguration. Evangelicals who turn against DDT think racism and cruelty are no problem, but his language is offensive. All sin—sexual assault, adultery, rape, murder, corruption, lying, etc.—is forgivable except swearing.

In the 16^th century, one Catholic priest, Diego de Landa, destroyed the Mayan language and culture through the forced adoption of the Intolerance Meme that declares worshipping gods other than the primary one is a sin but justifies murder, slavery, forced conversion, racism, destruction of other religions, etc. Furious because the Mayans incorporated the Catholic god into their religion, Lana started the inquisition that tortured and killed Mayans throughout the Yucatan region. By 1720, not one person alive understood the meaning of the Mayan hieroglyphs. Landa was punished by house arrest in Spain, but only for an inquisition without authorization, and then promoted to Bishop of Yucatan in Central America.

DDT is not unique among presidential candidates in his swearing: Joe Biden makes slips, and Beto O’Rourke and Tulsi Gabbard use profanity. But they haven’t been elected to the highest office in the country, and they don’t count on the religious right for votes. In 2016, 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for DDT, and 61 percent of the voting bloc approve of the country’s direction—22 percent higher than the general population in the conservative Rasmussen poll.

According to Melissa Mohr, author of a book on swearing, DDT’s swearing was initially acceptable because his blunt statements gave him a sense of authenticity and came from “a deep well of real feeling.” On the other hand, the use of profanity for shock value, according to one of the pastors, “does raise questions about the president’s respect for people of faith.”

Recent developments show Christian collectively pushing the theocratic “dominionist” ideology in government through unconstitutional state-mandated “religious liberty” policies: 

Six weeks ago, federal prosecutors decided to retry humanitarian aid volunteer Scott Warren for aiding migrants on the southern border after his first trial ended in a hung jury. Following the words of Jesus, Warren gave food, water, clothing, and shelter to people on the Arizona desert, a belief that can put him in prison.

The VA announced new “religious liberty” policies against religious minorities by putting bibles in the public POW/MIA “missing man” displays. As justification, it cited the Supreme Court decision that allowed a cross to represent 49 men from Prince George County (MD) who died in World War I.

Frederick Clarkson reported to the House about Minnesota state legislators threatening to cut the entire budget for the Minnesota Historical Society if they didn’t drop all education and changes that don’t support the Christian nationalist concentration on only their “Judeo-Christian heritage.” Their insistence came from Project Blitz that prepares a package of Christian-only bills at the state level that promote discrimination. The lectures about the myth of the U.S. founded as a “Christian nation” were privately funded, but Project Blitz still wanted to block them.

The dominance of Israel over U.S. legislators has returned with DDT’s attacks on Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), both Muslims. Tlaib also has Palestinian heritage. Christian fundamentalists support Israel, hate Palestinians, and believe that Jews are going to hell if they don’t become fundamentalist Christians. Evangelicals need to eradicate the Palestinians so that Jews can gather on their land and must convert before the beginning of the great millennium, the golden age when Christ reigns on earth. In addition, Christian nationalists want the U.S. to be a white Christian nation. Therefore, the Christian fundamentalist position on Israel is selfishly religious and racist—not political.

Evangelical worship for DDT gives a bad name to all Christians—and all religious people. When Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) told Fox and Friends that the shooting was a warning from God, Matthew Martin-Ellis wrote a piece for the Christian publication The Relevant describing Patrick’s comment as “logically indefensible.”

A group of at least 17 church leaders, united under the name Christians Against Christian Nationalism, is opposing the Christian nationalists’ attacks on other faiths and attempts to make the U.S. a fundamentalist theocracy. The coalition asserts:

“Whether we worship at a church, mosque, synagogue or temple, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution.

“Christian nationalism … provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation.

“Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the state and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian.”

These leaders warn about the threat to both Christian faith and democracy if church and state don’t remain separate. They reject the idea that being a “good American” requires being Christian and argue against the privilege of Christianity by the State.