Trumpism’s most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the US president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it. Then, after nationwide protests against his rule, he posted on social media an AI video of himself wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet labeled “King Trump”, which proceeded to bomb American cities and Americans with a graphically vivid load of human poop.
As disorienting as it is to watch the president try to upend the old idea of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into a figure of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in the Gospel; we went from “the meek shall inherit the Earth” to “the meek shall die of cholera.” This has happened more slowly, over decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
What particularly hurts is the fact that at no point did we manage to fight back, not effectively anyway. Without intending to, we surrendered control of the idea of Jesus. It is a story that may provide some insights into how to fight the attack on democracy.
Well then,let’s get rid of both
Restart the US as a new atheist state where people can behave like grown ups
Exactly! Fuck if this hasn’t been one of the biggest reasons I have been so obnoxious this time around. I’m triggered as fuck all the time, but not just because I’m a Libshit.
My family moved from a city to a very rural area when I was a kid, and I grew up attending very conservative (and extremely hypocritical) southern Baptist and “non-denominational” evangelical Churches and schools in the deep south during the 90s and early aughts.
I got way too comfortable thinking I had left all that shit behind me. Then suddenly one day it just showed up on my doorstep like it was back to finish the job.
This is why I always warn people when they say they’ll just leave the country. Be prepared to start settling into a new chapter of your life all zen and breathing a sigh of relief, only for it to find you wherever you go. That is just the ugly truth of friendly fascism/Christian Nationalism.
I had no idea of the amount of corruption and shadowy money behind this movement when I was growing up. I didn’t even know that it was part of a broader movement. I just learned in the past year that before Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell teamed up to create the “moral majority” in the 70s, most southern Baptists didn’t consider abortion an important political topic, and that the southern Baptist church is on record as actually leaning more towards pro choice before then! Da fuq!?
My mind was blown because that is completely counter to the entire reality I experienced growing up in the southern Baptist church. There were definitely people in the church who were old enough to remember the church before the moral majority, but it’s like they drank the Kool aid or had their memories completely wiped clean.
That’s just fascism, especially when you start mixing it in with religion. It’s like a zombie apocalypse. You can’t just run away, and assume you escaped. You have to cut it off, and cauterize the wound or it will just keep spreading.
Sounds like someone doesn’t know their own Messiah. “I didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword.”
That’s Matthew 10:34-36
34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.
The “sword” is a metaphor for the sharp, divisive nature of Jesus’s message. It separates those who accept his teachings from those who reject them. Family division: The quote directly follows with examples of this division, such as a son against his father and a daughter against her mother. This is because a person’s commitment to Jesus could conflict with family loyalty and traditional beliefs. Spiritual conflict: The quote highlights that the true spiritual battle is not a physical one. It represents the internal and external conflict that arises when people make a profound choice to follow a new faith that may be at odds with their former way of life and family traditions.
Essentially it means that the message of Jesus is going to be a hard pill to swallow for many people, and it definitely is.
The book of Matthew also contains what Jesus himself indicates is the most important message in the Bible. If you take away nothing else from the old or new testaments, remember Matthew 22:36-40
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
The second is like unto it: You can’t complete the first commandment without following the other.
If you truly love your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, you recognize him as the creator of all things. That means he created you and he created everyone and everything else on earth. To show your love and respect for his creation you must love yourself with everything that you are because you recognize you are one of his creations, and you must do the same for your neighbor and recognize that they are also his creation.
For some reason, placing those two laws above all others, seems to be one of the most divisive parts of Christianity for many Christians.
I remember (about 20 yrs ago) struggling with my faith in the church, ie: why there were so many rules to follow. I figured that if Jesus had simplified most rules – to make believing easier – why was the church complicating things?
That’s when I stumbled upon Matthew 22: 36-40 … and suddenly it all made sense.
Not long after I left the church because I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy.
I eventually Speaking of hypocrisy and the church, you might like Matthew 23. I actually just came across it tonight. Its kinda funny that anger at the weaponization of Christianity on a national scale is what actually got me reading the bible again for the first time in decades, and wondering how much the pieces of my faith I didn’t even realize I had held onto this whole time might have ended up shaping me into who I am.
Matthew 23 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
I much prefer Matthew 10:23.
Most of Matthew is full of pearls. Like 23:23
A Warning Against Hypocrisy 23 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
Fuck yeah, Jesus! Call out those oligarch POSs
5 “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries[a] wide and the tassels on their garments long; 6 they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; 7 they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.
8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
