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You already knew the Bible can be used to justify anything, but here’s an example you don’t see every day: A pastor announced this week that he had two wives because the idea that you should be limited to just one is “unbiblical.”

Israel Ford, the founder/pastor/prophet of LifeWorks Church in Wickliffe, Ohio, said during a service that Pastor Lydia Ford wasn’t the only woman in his life. In fact, for the past three years, he had also been married to Shakayla Talley (Ford), and they were finally ready to go public about their arrangement.

I would like to introduce to the world, my second wife, Shakayla Ford!!!

As a nation we have been taught that a man should have one wife only. This is unbiblical. I encourage you to watch today’s sermon in its entirety (uploaded later this week). I understand that this is an unpopular truth that we have gotten away from and many Pastors will not preach. I have no plans to choose pleasing man over what God has revealed. People may not accept this and choose to disconnect, and that is ok! This life will be over soon and we can all laugh about it in Heaven.

Until then, God bless.

Very convenient to ascribe his desire to be with multiple women to the Bible. There was no mention of the verses that say a church leader should be “faithful to his wife,” singular. There was no mention of how this could all get very complicated very quickly. (TWO wives? In THIS economy?!) There was no mention of how Shakayla was a young adult when she first came into contact with the couple and seemed to go from a “spiritual daughter” to a “spiritual wife.”

Nevertheless, the audience applauded for the Holy Trinity.

(Ironically, in the video, there are TV screens behind them that read “Kingdom Marriage” and the image shows one man and one woman.)

In that video clip, Wife Lydia explains that they are all in a “polygynous” marriage (where a man has more than one wife) before introducing the congregation to someone they’re already familiar with: Her “sister in marriage,” Wife Shakayla.

“Cat’s out the bag. Elephant’s in the room,” she joked.

“I have not been slighted not one bit, and I have gained so much. I mean, I have gained so much, and I’ve learned so much from pastor. I mean, he’s poured so much into me, into our family, and we are a family. We don’t walk around like individuals fighting, beefing, but it is a family dynamic in the image of what God wants to put in the Earth,” [Wife Shakayla] insisted.

Shakayla added that there were already members of the congregation who knew about this arrangement. But she urged everyone else to be considerate because their church practiced openness and tolerance in the name of Jesus.

“There’s been people who’ve been kicked out of churches because they live this life and they don’t have anywhere to worship, they don’t have anywhere to be vulnerable, they don’t have anywhere to go and pray and talk to God because people will shun them … but God’s word is real. God’s word is true, we are a strong family,” Shakayla Ford said.

To be clear, she is, at most, a symbolic wife. Ohio law limits legal marriage to one person. They could always call this an open marriage or polyamory, but they’re trying to justify what they’re doing to a Christian audience—and pretend this isn’t merely sexual—by claiming it’s biblical.

In a follow-up interview, the threesome made clear the women are straight; they just love Israel so damn much. Israel also argued that more people should follow his lead, and that the Catholic Church is a perfect example of what happens when you don’t.

… There’s so many people who are living a polygamous life, but they’re just doing it the wrong way. And they’re doing it behind closed doors. Or they’re just watching porn. Or they’re going to… they’re doing it as a coward! And they don’t want to do it, like, you know, honorable.

And so I just know, I needed to step out because there’s so many men of God who… they’re making so many big mistakes because of, like, you said before, I believe that the the priests, you know, in the Catholic church, a lot of that stuff happened because they’re not allowed… to have a wife… And so they do other stuff, you know, to… satisfy it.

And so, I believe that when pastors and other men of God, when they know that this can be done—you can still serve the Lord, you can still love the Lord, speak in tongues, pray, do all of that—and then… you still can be holy. And I know people think, “Oh, it’s an abomination.”

It’s like, “Please show me one scripture where it says that.”

And so I thought I had to come out, and I had to share, because when the Lord tells me something, I move on what He says.

Apparently, the only way to avoid sexually abusing little children is to get yourself multiple wives to satisfy your urges. Who knew.

(And not surprisingly, commenters online pointed to multiple Bible verses condemning polygamy.)

But this story has gotten even more twisted than the headlines would suggest. That’s because even if this triad is comfortable going public about their arrangement, there are a number of family members who have concerns.

That includes the daughter of Lydia (Wife #1), who posted about how her mother became a different person—for the worse—after meeting Israel years ago. Kourtney Jones also alleged that, when she was 12, Israel “started to show sexual interest in me.”

It got worse. She was only 15, she said, “the first time he attempted to rape me… The abuse continued until I was 17.” Her mother didn’t believe her when she finally confessed what happened years later—in fact, she blamed her own daughter for coming on to him—and they haven’t spoken in six years.

The triad has not yet publicly commented on those allegations.

Nor did they mention the fact that, in 2018, Israel Ford struck his stepdaughter with a belt and was later charged with endangering children and committing domestic violence. Those convictions were upheld by a federal appeals court in 2020. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail, though it’s unclear how much time he actually served.

I don’t personally care about how these people live their lives when it comes to their marriage(s). But let’s not pretend it’s biblical. These people did what religious leaders always do when they want to do something the Bible clearly rejects: They just claimed there was religious justification for it. It’s the same reason prosperity gospel preachers can say God wants them to be rich. It’s the same reason white evangelical pastors use when they urge people to vote for wildly corrupt Republican candidates. They don't care about the Bible. They just want to use the Bible to defend things that are utterly indefensible.

When you say God Wants This, anyone who objects can be automatically discredited as a heretic.

But sometimes, people like Israel Ford can go too far. What they want everyone to accept is so far beyond the pale, even devout believers realize this is just a convenient twisting of Scripture. And maybe that’s what it takes to get them to realize the whole institution is a sham.

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A public school bus driver who gave out Christian goodie bags to children on her route, then got fired because of it, has thankfully lost her lawsuit against the district.

In August of 2024, Sarah Robinson began driving for the Mattawan Consolidated School District near Kalamazoo, Michigan. By Halloween, she was handing out candy to children. She did it again before Christmas.

As she described it, she promoted Jesus…

… in as innocuous a manner as possible by leaving separate piles of candy at the exit to the bus and children were given a choice whether to choose a bag that contained a short holiday message or a bag that did not contain a short holiday message and students were not coerced into participating or choosing in any way.

The “holiday message” bags specifically included the ridiculous (and debunked) story about how candy canes are shaped like the letter “J” because of Jesus. She also included pro-Christian messaging in those bags. She said her immediate supervisor told her it was okay as long as participation was optional.

But after a Jewish mother soon complained that her child came home with a bag of Christian messages, the school district told Robinson to put a stop to this immediately.

So she went around them.

When Easter drew near, she had her daughter and her daughter’s friend hand out the bags instead. (See?! Not her involvement at all!)

At that point, the administrators told Robinson she had a choice: resign or be fired. She asked if she could keep her job if she stopped, but she had already lost everyone’s trust; the superintendent told her she “could not be trusted not to speak about Jesus again.” They fired her in April of 2025—and they reported her for “misconduct” to the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency. (That was later reversed.)

Robinson pushed back against her firing with some incredibly pathetic responses.

She said the district never gave her “written notice” of any problems, that an investigation into what she did was unfair, that no one interviewed any witnesses, etc. At no point, however, did she deny pushing Jesus on children. What she did didn’t seem to be in doubt. The district simply said it was wrong, and when she kept doing it anyway, they got rid of her.

She said that when the district announced she had been “terminated effective immediately,” it caused her “reputational damage.” Though that was also the simplest and vaguest way of explaining what happened.

She also defended her ability to proselytize by saying the bus was stopped when she gave kids candy, suggesting she was off the clock, making it legal. By doing that, she argued, she was no different from Joe Kennedy, the high school football coach who demanded the right to pray at midfield after games so everyone could watch; the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

In response, the district asked the court to toss out this case, and they came with receipts including a termination letter that said her supervisor told her “not to engage in the distribution of religious materials,” contrary to the story she had told. They noted that she was warned not to do this twice, yet she continued.

A federal judge has now agreed with the district’s request and tossed out Robinson’s case entirely.

The ruling undercuts everything she said.

U.S. District Court Judge Jane M. Beckering (a Biden appointee) said in her decision “a public-school bus driver does not transform into a private citizen simply because she stopped the bus for children to exit.” Even when the bus is stopped, she wrote, “this phase of its operation—the loading and unloading of children—implicates significant job duties.” In other words, you're not suddenly a private citizen when you're at a red light or you are letting the kids out at school.

That’s why the judge said she’s nothing like Joe Kennedy:

Unlike Coach Kennedy, whose prayer was offered during a time when employees were free to attend to their personal lives, Plaintiff was still on the job when she distributed her religious candy. As indicated, she continued to owe a duty of care related to the safe and proper operation of the bus and ensuring students would safely board and disembark. Her role as a District employee and state actor did not end merely because the school bus was stationary.

Robinson, the judge explained, also intended to give candy to a captive audience: the kids on her bus. Even Kennedy never said he wanted kids to surround him during his prayers. So she was breaking all kinds of laws.

Beyond the merits of the case, Beckering also said Robinson failed to attach exhibits to her motion, failed to name anyone who violated her constitutional rights, failed to make an actual claim against the district, etc. Rookie mistakes, left and right. (Robinson said she was representing herself but had a lawyer help draft her complaint.)

Ultimately, the judge dismissed this case with prejudice, meaning she can’t refile it even if she ever gets her shit together.

Robinson wasn’t fired because she’s a Christian. She was fired because she thought her faith gave her permission to ignore the rules. She ignored warnings, she never thought about the non-Christian parents of the students she drove, she never thought about anyone but herself—to the point that she drafted her own daughter to do her dirty work. Calling her religious coercion efforts “optional” doesn’t erase what she was trying to do.

As any school staffer can tell you, the job doesn’t end when the bell rings or the bus stops. The district had every right to use that fact against her, especially when they gave her every opportunity to save her job. Turns out she wanted to convert kids more than do her job.

That right there is Christian privilege. She felt her message was harmless and even generous. You have to wonder what the public response would have been if a non-Christian bus driver tried pulling the same stunt. The bottom line is that public schools serve children of many faiths and none. It’s not everyone’s job to accommodate one Christian employee’s personal beliefs when she tries to impose them on others.

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It’s not often you hear a positive story involving a “religious accommodation,” but this is one of them.

Normally, we hear stories of Christians refusing to work on certain days, get vaccinated, or use someone’s pronouns. Those wishes are often granted because religion, these days, is basically a catch-all term that lets you get away with anything. Title VII prohibits religious discrimination, and this administration and its judges have gone against companies who deny such requests.

An atheist is now using that power in a way I’ve never seen before.

According to the American Humanist Association, David Durman, a research administrator at the University of Kentucky, requested an exemption from using AI at work. It’s not that he ever has to use it, but as tools like ChatGPT become more pervasive, he’s worried that it may become an expectation. So he asked for the exemption this past August before those problems arose. And because that request wasn’t going to change his own output or prevent anyone else from using AI tools, the university said yes.

He explained his reasoning to the AHA:

“As a Humanist, promoting the wellbeing and flourishing of humanity is paramount to how I live my life, and I believe that our capacity to think and reason for ourselves is worth protecting,” said David Durman. “When it comes to AI technology — particularly generative AI and LLMs, it’s clear to me that the existence and use of these technologies run contrary to human wellbeing. AI is interfering with people’s ability to earn a living, the environmental costs spell disaster for humanity and our planet, and its supplanting and theft of human creativity threaten elements of our culture like art and literature that make society flourish. I sought out workplace accommodations because using AI violates my deeply held Humanist beliefs which demand I take personal responsibility for the morality of my actions. I cannot, in good conscience, partake in the use and proliferation of this technology.”

While this sounds like a unique situation, it’s not the first time this has happened. In fact, Durman told Religion News Service that he was inspired by someone else who did the same thing:

His accommodation request was inspired in part by Erin Maus, a Unitarian Universalist software engineer who made headlines after receiving an exemption from her employer because of her religious concerns about AI.

After hearing about Maus’ case, Durman reached out to the American Humanist Association for help in requesting an accommodation of his own.

AHA staff attorney Alexandria Huiskens helped him draft a letter, and there didn’t seem to be any pushback from the university. They granted his request a month later after a meeting with Durman and Huiskens. The school agreed that he wouldn’t be forced to use AI as long as he got his work done—though he would still have to work with colleagues who may use it. So while this is a story about a religious accommodation, it’s also one about making sure AI isn’t thrust upon us against our will.

In a way, the AHA’s Communications Director Court Beyer told me, this case resembles the sort of conscientious objections seen in wartime.

I suspect we’ll hear this kind of anti-AI excuse a lot more in the future. After all, it’s not far-fetched for a religious person to say God created their brains to be used, and AI interferes with that. RNS notes the Catholic Church has made that exact argument: “Pope Leo warned that AI could weaken democracy and human dignity.”

Yet here’s a secular case against AI. The AHA even cited its own Humanist Manifesto from 2003—which mentions the importance of freedom of conscience—and how it signed onto the Luxembourg Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Human Values.

There may be critics out there who wonder how big of a deal this really is. Legally speaking, there’s no real controversy. But philosophically, it’s huge. A lot of employers are treating AI as inevitable and efficient—even harmless. At what cost, though? For people who thrive on using their creativity, AI represents a real threat. That’s before we even consider the privacy and energy use concerns. If people can do their jobs without AI, forcing them to use it isn’t progress but that seems to be where we’re heading. Better to make this argument now than wait for the problem to fester.

It’s also worth mentioning that Durman is helping define Humanism. Contrary to the way so many conservative Christians describe it, it’s not just a lack of belief. It’s a commitment to human well-being and self conscience. You don’t need a Catholic encyclical to make a case against AI. You can also do it using a secular belief that our minds, our work, and our ability to reason are worth protecting.

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An essay in Christianity Today argues that Christian Nationalism isn’t really a big deal and that the “concept has been characterized in increasingly extreme terms.” But the “three myths” highlighted in the piece don’t actually rebut anything we’ve come to understand about a growing threat in the country.

Let’s get some numbers under our belts first.

According to a Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year, 61% of Americans believe teachers should be allowed to lead religious exercises in public school classrooms. That number jumps to 87% when we just look at white evangelical Christians. (While the question doesn’t specify the nature of the prayers, in practice, it would almost certainly be tailored to Christians, referring to a monotheistic higher power.)

Now, it’s worth mentioning that only 8% of people want to force kids to participate, but it’s still a huge percentage of people who support teacher-led (inevitably Christian) prayers.

It doesn’t stop there. 57% of Americans say they favor public school coaches leading their teams in prayer while 50% support posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Those numbers are 89% and 83%, respectively, for white evangelicals.

We’ve seen plenty of coach-led prayers in the past and they’re always Christian-centric. And the Ten Commandments bills we’ve seen passed in a few states require the King James Version translation.

I would assume, even in those cases, that most people don’t think students should be forced to participate in the huddles or interact with the posters, but the problem is the implied idea that Christianity is a force for good, not to mention the possible coercion and peer pressure placed on non-Christian students to worship with everyone else.

That’s also why we shouldn’t be misled by numbers that show only 10% of Americans have a favorable view of Christian Nationalism, especially when 59% had no opinion or hadn’t heard of the term, and only 17% say the government should declare Christianity the nation’s official religion. It sounds like relatively few Americans want Christianity to be our national religion in writing. But there’s far more support for implied Christianity. Which is why another 43% of Americans say they want to see Christian “moral values” promoted.

That leads to an interesting question: Why are the numbers so high when they involve examples of Christian Nationalism in action but relatively low for the generic concept itself?

In my opinion, the answer is obvious: A lot of Americans want to see Christianity imposed on the country in an unofficial way. And the people steering those conversations are the ones who are conservative Christians.

That’s part of the threat. That’s what we’re fighting against. We’re not fighting over the Sermon on the Mount. We’re fighting over Leviticus. We’re not talking about private faith. We’re talking about the ability of the government to elevate one religious tradition—and its preferred morality—over all the others.

When we talk about Christian Nationalism, there’s an academic definition we can use, but casually, it’s the idea that our nation was founded on Christianity and should therefore treat that religion (and only that religion) as a default option. That means shoving conservative Christian beliefs upon everyone in the country, whether or not the religion is cited as the reason.

A lot of white evangelicals may not use the term “Christian Nationalist” to describe themselves, but they sure as hell love seeing it in action—just look at laws targeting LGBTQ people (especially transgender people) and reproductive rights.

To put it another way, the fact that relatively few Americans say they favor “Christian Nationalism” only tells us about the label’s unpopularity; when you ask them about specific situations, the numbers rise.

With that in mind, consider this article in Christianity Today by Jesse Smith, a sociologist of religion and assistant professor at Ohio State University. (An alternative link can be found here.)

His argument is that Christian Nationalism has become a catch-all term for all things conservative and doesn’t even represent what those people want. He wants us to stop using the term as an unfair bogeyman for conservative ideas people like me just don’t like.

To make his point, he argues that “much of what we know about Christian nationalism comes from survey data.” (Which is apparently bad because those are pesky facts.) The problem with surveys, he says, is that they’ll ask people about Christian Nationalism without defining their terms… and the result is a skewed idea of how many people support it.

In the typical approach to studying this topic, public opinion researchers distribute surveys in which respondents are asked how much they agree or disagree with a variety of statements argued to reflect Christian nationalism. These statements are things like “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation.”

Based on their responses, survey participants are often assigned a Christian nationalism score, which is then tested for correlations with survey responses about other topics such as white identitarianism or political violence. It is from these survey response patterns in these surveys that we hear claims to the effect that between one-third and one-half of Americans support Christian nationalism in a radical, alarming, and even dangerous sense.

That’s because it’s radical and alarming.

Smith says that’s not really the case, though, because people may not understand what they’re agreeing to. If they say they want a “Christian nation,” it could mean a country where the majority of people are Christian (relatively harmless!) to a nation that forces Christianity upon people (dangerous!). Without knowing that, these surveys don’t tell you much.

… When people taking surveys check a box indicating they agree with a statement, we don’t know what that agreement means—and it might mean different things for different people. When someone encounters the term Christian nation in a survey, for instance, he or she might be thinking about anything from a majority-Christian country to a formal theocratic establishment, and researchers have no sure way to tell the difference.

If that were true, then yes, it would be a problem that we’re citing these sources.

But I’m not looking at surveys with ambiguous phrasing. I’m looking at surveys that say exactly what people would do: Do you want the Ten Commandments in classrooms? Do you want teachers leading students in prayer? etc. Smith either downplays those surveys or doesn’t know they exist.

In any case, he decided to conduct his own survey in which he asked about Christian Nationalism in general, then got more granular. He and his colleague surveyed 558 Christians recruited through CloudResearch, an AI-powered platform. 209 respondents said they agree with the statement, “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation.” But there were plenty of disagreements among that group about what that would entail.

Again, this is not surprising. We already knew this. But from his survey, Smith identifies “three myths” he wants to debunk.

Myth 1: Christian nationalism is a radical ideology

We know Christian Nationalism is radical. But Smith says he found more nuance:

First, different respondents emphasized different things, with some focusing on public Christianity (such as religious displays or holidays), others on moral regulations (like banning abortion), and some simply appealing to the country’s Christian heritage without suggesting any policies at all. Many of our respondents tended to treat the idea of a “Christian nation” more as a loose narrative than a coherent ideology.

Second, the policies offered in our responses are mostly the same ones that were favored by the Christian right 40 years ago. They’re not novel. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re right, but a set of positions that has remained stable for decades cannot easily be construed as a new and radical threat.

He’s already lost me. A government-sponsored Nativity scene, anti-abortion legislation, and whitewashing American history to pretend it had some “Christian heritage” are all part of the same horrible narrative. It suggests Christianity is or should be the default religion of the country. That’s the problem. The people who “simply [appeal] to the country’s Christian heritage” are likely to support school board members who want to change the history curriculum to teach David Barton-esque bullshit. This is not innocuous.

Smith makes it sound like a Nativity scene outside City Hall is no big deal. But it is. Same with laws that give churches the ability to override public health measures in the name of Jesus.

Also, there’s a huge difference between the Christian Right of 40 years ago and now: The “radical” ideas they had in the 1980s usually placed them in the minority. They now have an entire political party that caters to their whims and who can make their faith-based fantasies come true. That’s the danger. There are no longer any checks to their power among Republicans. It’s not even the beliefs themselves we’re worried about so much as the fact that their beliefs now have sway over the federal government—and we’re all worse off as a result. I wouldn’t care as much about a pastor calling for Christian invocations at city council meetings if they didn’t have the power to make that happen. But they do. And it gets so much worse than symbolic celebrations of Christ.

Myth 2: Christian nationalism means support for religious coercion or theocracy

Smith makes it sound like the threat of Christian Nationalism is synonymous with fears of a theocracy. Calm down, he tells us. Supporters of Christian Nationalism don’t want to see a theocracy. They don’t want to force you to believe what they believe.

They just want their beliefs enacted into law.

Most of the 209 respondents did support some sort of soft establishment of religion, like having prayer in public schools or Christian symbols in public places: a Nativity in the town square at Christmas or the Ten Commandments on the courthouse wall. In many cases, respondents simply affirmed the policies and practices that already exist, though others advocated for more robust government endorsement of Christianity. It’s fair to say most “Christian nation” supporters don’t favor full government neutrality on religion or intentional public pluralism.

At the same time, we found very little support for anything like religious coercion or restriction by the government. Of 209 respondents, only 14 expressed any explicitly coercive or exclusionary sentiment toward non-Christians. These were outnumbered by 35 respondents who directly affirmed religious liberty, noncoercion, constitutional protections, or the separation of church and state.

This is a five-alarm fire and Smith doesn’t even realize it.

He uses the phrase “soft establishment” as if that’s not a big deal even when it is. I’m not worried that Doug Wilson or his allies like Pete Hegseth want me imprisoned because I don’t share their Christian faith. I’m worried that they absolutely want to see their beliefs shoved in everyone’s faces. (Recall the recent kerfuffle in which a right-wing seminary leader suggested punishments for blasphemy in his ideal Christian utopia, an idea he later recanted. Even that guy said acceptance of the myth that we’re a “Christian Nation” would be a prerequisite for potential public office holders.)

Prayer in public schools isn’t generic either; it’s inevitably Christian. And just because people want to see separation of church and state doesn’t mean they don’t want their church influencing what our government does.

Smith has no clue what the problem actually is.

Myth 3: When people say “Christian nation,” they really mean “white Christian nation”

This may be the dumbest one of them all.

Smith says it’s unfair to use “white Christian nationalism” as an identifier because the supporters of Christian Nationalism in his survey aren’t pushing for overt racism.

Out of the 209 respondents, only 12 made any substantive mention of race at all. Of these, 9 expressed support for racial equality, and only 3 indicated any form of white grievance. For the most part, race simply does not show up as an important factor in what our respondents told us.

First of all, racists don’t have to wear a hood to be racist. Even if they didn’t cite white grievance, they could still oppose affirmative action and DEI-based policies. They could still pretend that the Trump administration isn’t being racist when it decides who to hire or promote under the guise of “merit.” Not all forms of racism show up in a survey.

But more importantly, we say “white Christian Nationalism” because that’s the group that overwhelmingly wants these forms of Christian intrusion in our lives. They’re the ones with the political power to make that happen. Black Christians aren’t the problem. Latino evangelicals aren’t the problem. Catholics in general are not the problem. It’s white evangelicals, roughly 80% of whom voted for Trump in each of the last three elections, larger than any other religious demographic.

When we oppose Christian Nationalism, we’re fighting against the form of faith-based policy-making that that group specifically tends to support. It’s not because they’re racist (even though a whole bunch of them are racist) but because we’re trying to be as specific as possible when discussing where the problem stems from.

Elsewhere in his piece, Smith argues that Christian Nationalist discourse has been popularized in part because “there is a group of politicians, theologians, and right-wing influencers who really do advocate for radical ideologies” (emphasis his), but he doesn’t go the next step. He doesn’t say the concern is that is that those beliefs, no matter how radical, are now taken seriously by people in the highest levels of government. And they have the votes—and a rubber-stamping administration—to enact their wish list.

He concludes:

… our research suggests that the Christian nationalism discourse does not capture what millions of Americans who are branded with the label actually want or believe. There are very real conflicts over the appropriate role of Christianity in public life and over religious influences on social policy, and our data reflects this. But such conflicts are nothing new and should fall well within the boundaries of legitimate disagreement in a liberal democracy.

These are not differences of opinion. There are not harmless debates. We’re talking about faith-based exemptions from vaccines, a Supreme Court that has allowed abortion to be banned across the country, state lawmakers who want to impose their brand of Christianity upon students (along with the coercion and peer pressure that comes with it), and an elevation of mythology over fact.

These are genuine threats to those of us who want to live in this country.

In some cases, these are genuine threats to those of us who want to live, period.

Smith wants us to treat these conflicts as ordinary disagreements. But when government elevates one tradition’s holy book in public schools, gives official platforms to religious exercises, or uses religious doctrine to restrict people’s rights, it’s already chosen a side. Christian Nationalism doesn’t need majority support for a theocracy to be concerning. We’re already seeing it in action.

The policies might sound modest on their own, but they’re steadily teaching people whose faith counts—and whose rights are negotiable. Call that whatever you want. The consequences are real.

In a liberal democracy, you can have a debate of ideas. There’s no debate to be had with people fully convinced God is on their side and everyone else is the enemy.

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Katy Cornell is the Republican running for a seat in Washington’s 26th Legislative District. She’s a pastor, as well as the wife of a pastor, which she highlights on her campaign website, but a casual observer would never know from her “Key Issues” page what her positions are on culture war issues. She doesn’t mention them.

She doesn’t talk about Donald Trump or abortion or LGBTQ rights. She doesn’t even mention that her district include the town of Bremerton, which is where an egomaniacal Christian football coach Joe Kennedy demanded the right to hold attention-seeking prayers at midfield after games; the Supreme Court ruled in his favor years ago.

But as she says, she’s running as a “common-sense Republican focused on solving problems, not creating more division.”

I will work to represent all people in our district while protecting constitutional freedoms including freedom of speech, religious liberty, and individual rights. I believe Washington residents are tired of division and want leaders who can bring people together to solve problems and move our state forward.

What’s bizarre, though, is that despite years delivering sermons at SOZO Church (which she began with her husband), none of them can be found on the church’s YouTube page.

Her husband explained back in July, during an appearance on a podcast, that he personally took down “several thousand videos” so that they couldn’t be used against his wife. Tom Cornell said people were clipping excerpts from those sermons to “make it sound like you're just crazy.”

… I’m gonna be very honest. I took down several thousand videos because, what was happening was, my wife is running for House Rep.

She’s running to be, um, to be elected to be the… for the House of Representatives for Washington State. And they were just taking videos and then chopping ‘em up to make it sound like you’re just crazy.

So, so I said, I’m going to be the worst, um, I’m the biggest barrier to you getting elected, because they could just chop—I have thousands of hours of teaching, and they’re just taking it, making you, you just, they don’t care. They don’t… they don’t care if it’s true. They just want people to look crazy. So they were cutting it and making it sound like you’re saying stuff you’re not saying.

And so I said just take it all down.

So… um… so that… that’s why I don’t have a ton, uh, on there anymore.

At no point did Cornell explain what people were taking out of context. He didn’t explain what “they” were pretending she said, compared to what she was actually saying.

And who were these people posting all the clips?!

As someone who’s very familiar with online clippers who post those kinds of excerpts, they’re almost never taken out of context. No one’s putting words in the mouths of these pastors. It turns out that just sharing a 1- or 2-minute clip from certain sermons can be damning because Christian pastors have a habit of saying batshit crazy and wildly offensive things.

But I guess we’ll never know the context since those videos were taken down.

Just one problem.

It turns out some thoughtful people downloaded many of those sermons before Tom Cornell could take them down, anticipating exactly this kind of response.

Perhaps the most damning clip was a two-minute excerpt posted on March 5 by “SometimesPDF” from a sermon in which Katy talked about why you need to disown your secular friends because they will lead you into “witchcraft” and “drugs” and “contaminate” you.

Another clip showed Katy defending Trump against accusations of white supremacy when he assumed the guilt of the Central Park Five and called for them to be executed. (The accused men were later exonerated.)

In late June, another Bluesky account called “Christian Nationalism is for Losers” began sharing even more clips from SOZO sermons because there were rumblings about how those sermons were being taken down.

They posted excerpts from Tom talking about how Christians need “dominion” over the Earth and that separation of church and state was a “lie” our society has bought into. They pointed out that Katy was called an “apostle” but that title was removed from her online presence after her campaign launched.

She was rabidly anti-trans.

She wants women to be submissive to their husbands.

She and her husband said Islam and Buddhism were fake religions that committed “witchcraft” because they didn’t communicate with God through Jesus. (Katy nodded along as her husband said these things.)

There was also a clip of Katy saying people in mental institutions needed Jesus to be healed.

In July, the clips picked up steam. Here’s Katy saying, of same-sex couples, “The enemy has worked so hard to destroy marriage.”

There were sermons in which Katy said she got rid of Netflix and stopped playing Pokemon and wouldn’t let her family enjoy Halloween because it was leading them all away from Jesus. (That was a five-minute clip. Hardly out of context.)

In another sermon, Katy said that victims of sexual abuse needed to forgive their rapists (along with themselves and God).

She also nodded along when her husband explained that “most cancer” is rooted in “unforgiveness and bitterness,” spurred on by Satan.

And naturally, she delivered a sermon on abortion in which she implied everyone who’s ever had one regrets it—”Nobody feels good about it.” That included victims of rape.

In a story published by the Seattle Times, Katy says none of this matters because she’s “not running to be anyone’s pastor,” adding that she would represent everyone regardless of their beliefs.

But her sermons and campaign suggest otherwise. Hell, the campaign paid for Joe Kennedy, of all people, to attend a campaign event. She knows damn well who she wants supporting her. It’s not the people who support church/state separation.

She’s all in on Christian Nationalism. And the fear is not that a Christian would get elected; that happens all the time. The fear is that she’ll try to legislate her beliefs. Does anyone really think she’ll protect reproductive rights? LGBTQ rights? How will she steer money to evidence-based addiction recovery programs when she’s made it clear she thinks Jesus is the Cure?

There’s another issue that the Times doesn’t explore in depth, but it’s still relevant: The Cornells are supporters of the New Apostolic Reformation. Advocates for the NAR believe in the Seven Mountain Mandate, which says Christians like them should seize control of education, government, business, etc. And it seems that the Cornells would rather avoid any mention of that than admit Katy’s run for office is a way to push legislation that promotes their religious views.

Cornell denied online accusations that she is a Christian nationalist, saying she doesn’t believe that the government “should establish or enforce Christianity or any other religion.”

“I believe in limited government, individual liberty and protecting everyone’s constitutional rights,” she said.

There’s a way to reconcile that denial with her beliefs, though. She can easily and truthfully say she doesn’t want “Christianity” pushed by the government while still pushing for legislation based on her faith that imperils women’s rights and trans rights. (Katy told the Times she does indeed oppose abortion rights.)

That’s what Christian Nationalists do in damn near every place they get elected. Katy is just savvier about hiding her true intentions. Not enough, clearly, but she’s trying.

Her opponent in this race, Renee Hernandez Greenfield, downplayed the revelations—perhaps because she still needs plenty of Christian support to win the race—but she noted how problematic this all was:

Hernandez Greenfield told The Times she found both the videos and the decision to delete them “troublesome” and “concerning.” She said that given some of the videos Cornell has left online, it is “hard to imagine how bad the things she’s deleting are.”

“Our community is diverse and expansive, and the legislator is responsible for being sure we’re connecting with all communities,” she said.

For what it’s worth, there were more Democrats than Republicans who voted in the top-two non-partisan primary, which suggests Hernandez Greenfield is in a good place heading into the end of the voting period. But no one should take anything for granted. Katy Cornell is hoping her carefully crafted image—devoid of mentions of her actual beliefs—can make her seem like a sensible candidate even though she’s repeatedly embraced all matters of Christian extremism.

I also want to highlight one other thing. The person behind the Bluesky account said they began looking into the sermons back in January.

As they worked to save videos of the sermons, they noticed videos began to disappear if they had Cornell’s name attached to them, prompting the page owner to save them.

I spoke to the person behind the account yesterday. What they told me is even better than that.

As Tom began removing videos from YouTube, he must have forgotten that his church also posts sermons on the less-popular Vimeo, and he forgot to take the videos down from that site. That’s how the person was still able to download the sermons that were being taken down on YouTube.

“I’m good at the internet,” they told me.

The Vimeo videos have since been removed.

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The Catholic Church has upheld the excommunication of a former deacon who committed the crime of… having a son who was sexually abused by another Catholic priest and then walking away from his diocese in response.

It’s a tragic story that’s been developing for years.

In 2012, Scott Peyton was officially ordained as a Catholic deacon—A priest of sorts but one who can get married—in the diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly until 2018, when one of his colleagues, Father Michael Guidry, confessed that he had sexually abused Peyton’s son, who was an altar boy.

When the boy reported the abuse three years later [in 2018], Guidry initially told St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives that he could not recall the fondling. But moments before taking a lie detector test, he admitted rubbing the boy’s genitals.

The molestation continued until the boy stood up to stop it, Guidry wrote in a statement to law enforcement. It had started after they shared “a few drinks,” he wrote, adding that he had recently “replenished” his supply of the boy’s favorite liquor.

Guidry later blamed the boy for the abuse—saying that he requested it. He said he gave the boy alcohol, but only to teach him to drink responsibly. In a legal filing made later, he even blamed the boy’s parents for letting him be alone with Guidry.

In any case, he was subsequently arrested. He pleaded guilty to the crime and received a seven-year prison sentence.

In case you’re curious what kind of church would employ someone like that, St. Peter’s Church in Morrow threw Guidry a going away luncheon before he went to prison. (They eventually apologized for that, as if it was a careless error.)

Guidry was removed from the ministry, but he was still technically a priest. One article noted that he was retired but “continues to receive a pension and health insurance through the diocese.”

A civil lawsuit filed by the Peytons against the diocese of Lafayette was eventually settled for $350,000. The diocese issued a public apology to the family.

Peyton continued to work as a deacon, albeit in a different location. But in December of 2023, long after this whole disturbing saga began, Scott Peyton decided he could no longer serve as deacon in an institution this corrupt. So he quit, saying that his resignation was “a conscientious objection to the way the church has handled cases of sexual abuse.” He was still a committed Christian, he said but this was the only way he could think of to register his frustration.

“Over the past few years, the Catholic Church has been confronted with a series of distressing revelations regarding sexual abuse scandals involving members of the clergy. The magnitude of these revelations has deeply shaken my faith and trust in the institution to which I have dedicated a significant portion of my life,” he wrote in a Dec. 4 email to the bishop and obtained by The Pillar.

“The pain and suffering endured by the victims, our family, and most importantly our son, coupled with what appears to be a systemic failure in addressing and preventing such heinous acts, have left me disillusioned and unable to reconcile my commitment to the Church with my conscience.”

The next month, Peyton’s family joined a different congregation—Trinity Anglican Church. He publicly announced that decision in March of 2024:

And with that, the Catholic Church announced that Peyton would be excommunicated—unable to receive sacraments and therefore doomed to Hell—because he had walked away from the Church.

As it stands under Catholic canon law, child rape and molestation are not ennumerated as excommunicable offenses, as noted by the Pillar, which covers the church’s institutional issues. Abandoning the church, on the other hand, is.

…

“I am aware that your family has suffered a trauma but the answer does not lie in leaving the Most Holy Eucharist,” [bishop J Douglas] Deshotel wrote in his excommunication decree. “We are not Catholics because the church on Earth is perfect but because the Lord has entrusted us to a mystery greater than ourselves, which He has established as the means to our salvation.

“The censures of the church are intended to be medicinal, perhaps as much for those who impose them as for those who are subject to them. It is with this objective that I mournfully must declare them.”

…

“That’s … a fancy way of the bishop … telling me to go to hell,” Peyton said of his excommunication.

If that was supposed to threaten him to return to the Catholic Church, it didn’t work. Peyton didn’t come crawling back. He actually joined a different (non-denominational) church. Still, he challenged the decision with the Catholic Church’s version of an HR department.

That decision, unfortunately, has now been upheld.

“This act of joining a separated faith community by its very nature is an act of refusal of submission to the Roman pontiff and a refusal of communion with the members of the church subject to him,” the [Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith] said in documents shared with the Guardian by canon attorney Dawn Eden Goldstein, who represented Peyton pro bono in his appeal against his excommunication.

“It is for this reason that … excommunication is incurred by the very carrying out of the act itself,” the DDF added.

In a joint statement on Sunday, Goldstein said Peyton intends to appeal the DDF’s verdict.

He added in a statement that he wasn’t surprised:

“Apparently, according to Bishop Deshotel, finding a faith community where my family can worship without reliving the trauma endured is a greater scandal to the Diocese of Lafayette than the sexual abuse of a child. I find that deeply troubling.”

Even if canon law—the rule book for the Catholic Church—says this is the proper punishment for what Peyton did, it’s utterly heartless given everything his family endured. The Catholics who are defending it are more interested in the letter of the law than the spirit of the law, and even their defenses come with caveats: We didn’t want to do this, but we have to because that’s what the rule book says!

The bottom line here is that a deacon’s son was the victim of sexual abuse by another priest, yet the Catholic Church is punishing the former while rewarding the latter. (Guidry, still behind bars, has said he still ministers to other inmates because he considers himself to be a priest. It’s not like the Church disagrees.)

It’s a complete inversion of morality… and perfectly in line with what we’ve come to expect from an institution that never seems to do enough to punish abuse.

Church leaders are more concerned about a deacon’s departure than a priest’s abuse. They want perfect loyalty to the institution even as they have no respect for the people running the church.

That’s as much a part of this story as the people involved. Just as we’ve seen with the Cornell 7, sexual abuse scandals aren’t just about the crimes but about the way the institution chooses to respond. Who do they punish? How do they punish them?

If the Church wants people to believe it’s learned anything from decades of abuse scandals, it can’t keep treating the people who walk away as the greater threat.

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In Queensland, Australia, a formal public hearing is taking place to determine if government officials could have done more to prevent the needless death of a little girl who died because of her parents’ religious beliefs.

The inquest, as it’s called, examines the death of Elizabeth Struhs. On January 7, 2022, the eight-year-old Elizabeth was found dead in her home. She had type 1 diabetes and needed daily insulin shots… but the people closest to her, including her own parents, refused to give her that medication.

Instead, they all prayed for her to get better. (It never crossed their mind that they could just attribute the discovery of insulin meds to God.)

For six days, members of the group chose “faith-healing” over proven medicine, believing that’s what God truly wanted, and the little girl eventually paid the price for their religious negligence.

Even more damning? It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to her.

In 2019, her parents also withheld insulin from her. Elizabeth fell into a coma and had to be taken to a hospital. When she was admitted, she weighed only 29 pounds. She spent a month recovering.

Jason Richard Struhs and Kerrie Elizabeth Struhs were eventually sentenced to six months and 18 months in prison, respectively, for that incident. Jason, who expressed remorse, served no actual time behind bars. Kerrie was released after only five months but remained on parole.

A few weeks after Kerrie returned home, Elizabeth was dead.

In 2025, all 14 adult members of their extremist Christian sect were found guilty of manslaughter and later sentenced to anywhere from 7 to 14 years in prison.

And now, the Queensland coroner, Ainslie Kirkegaard, has opened a probe into the situation to determine if any of the government workers who had contact with the family over the years could have done more to prevent Elizabeth’s death.

It’s not a trial; it’s more of an information-gathering process for the future. The inquest began a week ago and will continue for another week; over 30 witnesses are scheduled to testify and all of them will maintain their anonymity throughout the process.

What we’ve learned so far is that the people with the power to step in never did in part because they didn’t want to trample on anyone’s religious rights. For example, one witness noted that were reported concerns about Kerrie Struhs in 2013 that said she was involved with a “controlling” religion “based on the Bible,” which led to her children being isolated. That led the witness to fill out a “Child Concerns Report”… but the fact that the kids weren’t being harmed meant it wasn’t elevated to a more serious “Child Safety Notification,” which would have alerted her superiors. Even in hindsight, though, that witness noted, “I would still conclude this was a Child Concerns Report.”

But after the 2019 incident, other witnesses said they were ready to elevate the issue. They were unfortunately stymied by investigators who said there was no reason to step in because they felt Jason, the father, would provide his daughter with adequate medical treatment. After all, he promised to inject Elizabeth with insulin even if his wife wouldn’t. That ended in 2021 when he joined the extremist Christian group that his wife was already part of.

We’ve also learned this week that doctors were concerned enough about the mother that they recommended she be forced to take a mental health assessment… but that, too, was overruled by officers involved in child safety. They said Jason would be able to take care of everything even if the mother couldn’t.

It was a pattern with those officials:

… the court heard from a police officer who had attended the meeting. He told the court he’d served as a child safety liaison for 10 years.

“I learned early on … you couldn’t change child safety’s mind once they had made their decision,” the officer told the court.

“I was never going to change their mind regardless of what I said.”

The officer said the attitude was not confined to a single child safety officer.

You can’t blame them for prioritizing family reunification, but they had a blind spot, it seems, when it came to the family’s religion.

We’ve also learned that correctional officers tasked with figuring out if Kerrie was a threat to Elizabeth after 2019 had no clue about the details of that case, so they concluded that she wasn’t a serious risk to anyone.

A senior correctional services officer told the court Kerrie should have been flagged for the “serious offenders unit” due to causing “serious child harm”.

That would have led to additional oversight over her case, the officer said.

…

The parole intake officer conducted an “immediate risk assessment” of Kerrie at the meeting.

The court was shown the file, which include the question: “Has the offender described any issues that may pose an immediate risk to themselves, others or impact on their immediate management?”

The officer marked this “no”.

Apparently, the lack of access to older information was due to an administrative error.

Still, what we’ve learned so far is that people who had the power to step in and save Elizabeth didn’t do it or couldn’t do it. That’s due to both bureaucratic bullshit and because they didn’t realize how much of a problem her faith was. They didn’t know Jason was just as brainwashed as the mother. They didn’t think parents would let their kid die because of their faith.

You have to wonder if they would have taken more drastic measures if religion wasn’t involved.

Instead, the desire to send Elizabeth back home overrode all the red flags officials saw. Even when doctors said the mother was not safe, the system found a way to keep Elizabeth with her parents, not realizing that was essentially a death sentence.

One possible outcome in all of this, I hope, is that the people who oversees medical staff realize they should listen to their doctors a hell of a lot more than people under the influence of extremist faiths that reject medical intervention.

A lot of the details in Elizabeth’s story are remarkably similar to a different faith-healing cult from Oregon: the Followers of Christ Church. Its members killed several of their children over the past two decades, by neglecting their treatable diseases, leading the Oregon legislature to eventually remove faith-healing as an exemption to homicide charges. A recent ProPublica report found that many of those deaths were preventable.

The simple fact is that children shouldn’t be sentenced to death because their parents are brainwashed by Jesus.

“Faith-healing” is nothing more than a myth promoted by certain kinds of Christians. It’s one thing if people pray to heal themselves—which would be useless but legal. But when they deprive a baby or child of medical treatment because of their own delusions, and their ignorance leads to the child’s death, they deserve to be branded as killers. And medical professionals should be allowed to intervene on behalf of the child when they discover those beliefs.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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Paul ⁠⁠Mackenzie, a Kenyan cult leader who told members they would meet Jesus after starving themselves to death, was found guilty of murdering 191 people.

190 of his victims were kids.

When the story first broke in 2023, the headlines were horrific. 90 bodies were found in shallow graves, with the death toll getting higher with each passing day.

The victims were all members of the Good News International Church, led by Paul Mackenzie Nthenge. Police began looking into the graves after receiving a tip that the bodies were buried in the eastern part of the country.

Mackenzie was arrested by police on April 14, 2023, shouting “Praise Jesus” as he was escorted away. The televangelist began his church in 2003 and soon became a lightning rod for controversy, mostly because he had a habit of urging members to dissociate from the rest of the world. He told members to quit school, leave their jobs, stop eating “worldly food,” refuse medical treatment, and destroy their government documents (like IDs and birth certificates). They were also told not to speak with people outside the cult if they had any intention of getting to Heaven.

What made the whole tragedy even sadder is how Mackenzie could have been stopped earlier given that everyone seemed to know this guy was trouble. Earlier that year, he was arraigned in court after allegedly telling parents to starve and suffocate two children; he was then released on a $74 (USD) bond. He had also been arrested in 2019 on separate charges involving the death of children, but once again, he paid the bond and was set free. In 2017, he was arrested over his anti-education preaching, though that case didn’t go anywhere.

The mass killings seemed to be a logical extension of his preaching, and one quotation from a local politician was deeply haunting. It also explains why children were nearly all of the victims:

“The month of March was set aside for all the children to die. The month of April was set aside for the women to die. May was for the men to die,” said [representative to the county assembly Samson Zia] Kahindi, based on the questioning of a surviving cult member.

The children went first. The cult leaders insisted they’d go later. Typical.

Mackenzie claimed he shut the church down in 2019, as if that should have absolved him of any connection to the fatalities. There were unverified reports that some members of the group attempted to escape, only to be killed. (This was based on the fact that at least one body recovered from a grave appeared to be otherwise healthy and not emaciated.)

We didn’t know at the time what Mackenzie may have said to convince all those people to take their own lives as a precondition to meeting Jesus. That said, my fear was that a lot of people would treat this story like something that happens over there. Kenya has long fostered religious cults, yes, however there’s nothing strange about a religious leader convincing people to harm themselves in the name of Jesus.

President William Ruto said at the time that Mackenzie “pretends and postures as a pastor when in fact he is a terrible criminal.” But the truth is he can be both. What he did wasn’t “un-Christian.” It was just unorthodox.

And now Mackenzie and more than two dozen of his associates have been found guilty of those 191 deaths. (Approximately 429 bodies were found in the Shakahola Forest, but the cult leaders were only said to be responsible for those 191 deaths. Other charges may follow in the future.)

Their sentencing will take place on November 6. The cult leaders all face life in prison.

Mackenzie, who was convicted along with 28 associates, insisted that he did not force the victims to starve, but that was dismissed by the court in Mombasa, where the verdict was announced on Monday.

The defendants had pleaded not guilty and denied charges in other cases, including terrorism, radicalisation, and stopping children from attaining an education.

Regarding that last bit, the judge said that some of the victims “died from suffocation, neck compression or head injuries, rather than starvation alone.” Mackenzie’s lawyers argued the cult leaders never forced anyone to starve and that the deaths were all voluntary. Somehow, that wasn’t a very convincing argument, especially given what the court heard about the victims:

One of his co-accused said Mackenzie had told his followers that anyone who “resisted the directive to fast must be forced to go to heaven through kicks and blows”.

Burials inside the forest where the cult was based were called “weddings”. Those who died “were celebrated as having wedded with Jesus”, the judge said.

One witness stated that a pregnant woman had been barred from nursing her new-born baby, who died 12 days later. “She was instructed to fast to death and follow her children,” the witness said.

You can see the full court hearing here (all seven hours of it). A media summary of the verdict can be read here.

If anyone ever asks why you don’t respect religion, there’s your answer. These cult leaders convinced parents to watch their own children starve to death because they believed it would grant them direct access to Jesus.

The idea that a religious leader could convince followers to put their own lives in danger, using faith as the brainwashing weapon, isn’t limited to cults or foreign countries. It happens in our backyard, too. It happened with David Koresh. It happened with Jim Jones. It’s not limited to one religion. It’s not limited to well-defined cults (which mix poisonous substances with food or drink rather than starvation). It may even be more pernicious in certain situations because some behaviors—like vaccine denial—put other people in harm’s way.

And that’s before we even get into the Christian Nationalists attempting to legislate their archaic beliefs in order to cause maximum damage.

Thankfully, in this case, religious freedom wasn’t considered an excuse for this kind of irreversible damage. But what Mackenzie did isn’t a stretch from what countless religious leaders do all the time. Using God as leverage to convince gullible followers to make terrible decisions is, unfortunately, all too familiar.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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At a time when tradwives rack up millions of followers and right-wing extremist pastors gain traction with calls to repeal the 19th Amendment (which gave women the right to vote) and enact “household” voting, it’s important to recognize these aren’t new ideas. They’ve long been pushed in conservative Christian circles.

In recent years, however, there’s been pushback from many of the same voices who inspired that movement. They’ve realized the error of their ways and they want to do what they can to make amends—or at least warn people not to listen to anyone who advocates for the very things they used to advocate for. In 2018, for example, Joshua Harris, the one-time unofficial Christian spokesperson for abstinence, courtship, and waiting until marriage to do everything as a result of his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, apologized for the harm he caused and renounced his own book.

In 2005, Anna Sofia Botkin and Elizabeth Botkin wrote a book called So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God. They began writing the book when they were 15- and 17-years-old in order to offer “practical, biblical solutions for the young woman who wants to do so much more than just ‘survive’ in a savagely feministic, anti-Christian culture.” In 2007, they produced a documentary called Return of the Daughters that featured several girls who were doing the very things they espoused in their book.

More bluntly, they promoted the “stay-at-home-daughter movement.”

They said that serving their fathers—and eventually their husbands—was the “only good option for a serious Christian girl.” That meant not going to college and not pursuing outside careers—that’s what “God-hating Marxists” wanted you to do. Instead, you should learn household skills, help out with the ministry, get ready for marriage, or work as a nanny (though that could be low paid or unpaid).

It’s the sort of Purity Culture bullshit that was always laughable and ridiculous—but which still influenced countless young evangelical girls. Many of the ones who came to realize how bad this advice was didn’t come to that realization until much later in life.

But here’s the twist.

The Botkin Sisters want to apologize.

Not with some quick tweet or short video. I meant they want to apologize.

That includes an insanely long open letter dissecting the 15 biggest problems they now have with their own childhood advice—and a two-hour-long video from Elizabeth Botkin Thompson saying it out loud:

We are deeply sorry, for all of the book’s wrong teachings and for any ways they hurt you. We ask your forgiveness for any ways our teaching contributed to decisions you regret, opportunities you can’t recover, or abuse you couldn’t escape. We grieve with you over all that our influence may have cost you.

The sisters also made a shorter 15-minute video offering more personal contrition for those who don’t have the time or patience to read their apologia in depth:

Part of the reason they say they’re doing this now, they explain, is because their book and movie still have an impact on young women’s lives, so they feel a responsibility to recant what they used to promote. “We have come to the very painful conclusion that we believed and taught some very destructive things when it came to stay-at-home daughterhood,” says Anna Sofia.

To be clear, they’re still very much Christian. Just not those kind of Christians.

The sisters say that what they pushed for was a “hideous contortion of God’s ethics.” They’re sorry they “depicted God as only giving his daughters a few options.” And as to the girls who were stuck in abusive homes or situations were they were taken advantage of (spiritually, emotionally, etc), they say this:

God does not actually side with tyrannical parents who provoke their children to wrath.

He doesn’t actually side with parents or elders who neglect or enrich themselves on the people in their care.

God does not in his word actually optimize for keeping the vulnerable in terrible situations.

The paper they published is a fascinating read. The bulk of it focuses on their acknowledgment that telling girls to live at home until marriage and that every alternative (“worldliness, feminism, and selfishness”) is unacceptable isn’t a fair dichotomy. In some cases, they admit, that advice traps girls in “non-ideal situations.”

They say they were wrong to center a girl’s relationship with her father as the most important thing in life. (“A central focus on pleasing a man is not what God wants the single woman’s season to be about.”)

They say serving a man, including her father, could prevent girls from living own their own calling from God.

They say their advice really shouldn’t have applied to older single women—who, if they read the book, were told to keep serving their fathers indefinitely.

They say using marriage as the ultimate goal, and girls only doing things that prepared them for marriage, deprived them of countless opportunities. (“In trying to elevate something we saw the feminist movement undercutting (marriage and motherhood), we accidentally devalued the powerful ways God regularly uses women outside of marriage or motherhood.”)

They admit it was wrong to treat “college” as a “universally bad experience and a choice no serious Christian woman could seriously make.”

Throughout all of this, they cite passages from their own book (as bad advice) and Bible passages (as good advice). Again, they’re still Bible-believing Christians, so that’s not a surprise, but they now say they reinterpret Scripture a lot differently.

What’s fascinating is how much they’ve evolved.

If you go to the Internet Archive and look at their website as recently as last year, it’s clear they hadn’t updated it since 2018 and relics of their fundie beliefs are right there in the open. A lot has changed in a decade and those old posts have been scrubbed from the site.

The Statement of Faith, however, is still there, unedited. They say in their open letter that “there is an actual science to interpreting and applying” the Bible, which is… concerning. After all, who’s to say that their current interpretation is any better than their previous one, if they’re still trying to shove their understanding into an ancient book that be be interpreted any way you want?

In an essay for Slate, author Sarah Stankorb writes that the Botkin Sisters’ mea culpa, along with those from other longtime proponents of patriarchal thinking, mark “a sign that gender-based authoritarianism is unsustainable, even among the biggest advocates for women’s submission.”

She goes into how their book was a product of Vision Forum, a Christian ministry that had a lot of sway among fundamentalist families, and actively pushed by their own father:

Vision Forum sold a DVD of a speech by Geoffrey Botkin, Elizabeth and Anna Sofia’s father. In it, he described how when Anna Sofia was born, he placed a hand on her tummy and prayed for the eggs the Lord had placed inside her—seeing the infant as the generational mother of tens of millions. He said Elizabeth could remember him talking to her about marriage when she was in her high chair. Botkin had a 200-year plan for his family detailed on “an Excel spreadsheet with all of his children’s names on it, and all of the projects that he planned out for them,” notes Elena Trueba, a writer working on a book about the stay-at-home-daughter movement. “One of those projects was a book for his two daughters to write.”

Yiiiikes. There’s even more about Vision Forum and the Botkins in this video from Fundie Fridays:

Stankorb also notes that while the apologies are appreciated, Elizabeth Botkin is still working for a different ministry:

Among the written apology’s plentiful Bible citations are references to Phillip Kayser, who runs Biblical Blueprints, where Elizabeth and her husband now work, raising the specter of at least one of the Botkin sisters having traded out an old authority figure for a new one.

All that said, it’s hard to fault victims of the movement even when they’re active participants in it. Especially when they were literally children when they wrote the book that made them famous. All you can ask for, at this point, is that they recognize the harm they caused and do what they can to steer people away from their own past teachings. That’s what they seem to be doing now.

A commenter on Reddit put it well:

… In the end, I can’t blame two teenagers for what they wrote. I can and still do blame their dad for supporting their message, Doug Phillips and the Vision Forum for giving it a platform, and my parents for buying in to it. I have to remember that these people didn’t come to their conclusions in a void. Some life experiences they had made them feel like this was the answer. They didn’t have my experience. That’s not an excuse, but it can help me forgive them for causing harm when they intended the opposite.

This is what the Botkin Sisters appear to have finally figured out: There was never a nice way to spread their old beliefs without falling into harmful generalizations and sexist language. It was always a binary decision: be a woman of God or be a godless feminist. At some point over the past decade, they figured out that’s not the case at all. (How long might it be before they realize the problem stems from religion itself, not just one particular interpretation of it?)

That’s why this apology matters. The girls who were told to put their own ambitions aside and submit to the men around them have become women who realize that was harmful, restrictive, and un-biblical advice. They know they wrongly treated women’s freedom as rebellion, even when obedience may have kept them trapped in bad situations.

Let’s not forget this didn’t just happen in a vacuum. Their father shaped the message. Vision Forum gave it a platform. Churches promoted the book and film. They all taught girls to cram their hopes and dreams into a man’s plans for them, and they all bear responsibility for harming the people who took their advice seriously.

The Botkins’ youth and naïveté might explain how they became poster children for this movement, but maybe the bigger takeaway is that growing up in an environment like this doesn’t mean you will stay this way forever. The Botkins refuse to pretend that good intentions should absolve them of the consequences for what they did.

Their apology won’t give anyone back the education, independence, or years they lost. But it can tell them: You were right to question this. The system that blamed you was wrong. We need more apologies like this—and more from the pastors, parents, ministries, and influencers who continue acting like these ideas are worth following.

Turns out even a 200-year plan can be derailed by women who have the audacity to think for themselves.

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Imagine serving your time in prison and being released on parole, only to be told that your freedom depends on you regularly attending a religious gathering.

That was the case in Colorado, where certain parolees were required to attend meetings for Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous as a condition of their release.

It’s not that those groups are “Christian,” per se, but both use the infamous “Twelve Steps” program, and several steps reference giving yourself over to a “higher power,” even if that’s not defined. Meetings may also involve reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the Serenity Prayer. While all of that works for many people who have gone through the programs, not everyone is eager to consider a metaphorical “higher power.” In recent decades, secular alternatives have sprung up for that exact reason.

The problem is that government officials don’t always take those alternatives seriously.

Federal courts have said religious requirements (like twelve-step programs) for parole are unconstitutional but many states still have them in place. As American Atheists notes, one concern from parolees is that any kind of pushback on their part could be seen as disobedience—and a ticket back to prison. They shouldn’t need a lawyer to find a secular alternative to those programs.

But after advocacy from American Atheists and their Colorado Secular Advocacy Team, the Colorado Department of Corrections has agreed that parolees who struggle with alcohol or drug issues will not be required to join those religious groups. Alternatives will be provided for them.

Effective immediately, the Department of Corrections will end the twelve-step mandate, with the parole board instead referring parolees to “peer support networks,” which include secular programs such as SMART Recovery and LifeRing, instead of requiring AA, NA, or any other twelve-step program.

In addition, the Department will improve access, transparency, and disclosure for parolees who are required to participate in sober housing programs as a condition of release. Under the changes, all applications for providers must disclose any faith-based requirements and any parolee whose sober housing program conflicts with religious or nonreligious beliefs will be informed of alternative placement options and referred to them. And to address access gaps, parolees who want to attend a secular peer support program but do not have a group nearby will have a telehealth option available instead.

It’s such a simple fix and yet it’s a long time coming. Incredibly, this didn’t even require legislation forcing them to make the changes. The CDOC did it on their own, after lobbying from people who care about the issue. It’s the culmination of years of work that brought together advocates, non-profits, and government officials.

“We believe no one should be forced into a religious twelve-step program. And today, I’m proud that the state of Colorado agrees,” said Sheryl Kallivrousis, co-chair of the Colorado Secular Advocacy Team. “The Secular Advocacy Team, backed by American Atheists and with the help of Rep. Lori Goldstein (D–District 29), brought the Department of Corrections to the table, and we got this done.”

“This didn’t happen overnight. Our team spent several years building relationships with Legislators and key stakeholders. This is how organizing works, and it’s how we protect people with the least power to say no. Parole is checked off our list, but we’re not done. Probation is next. I hope Colorado is the model for organizers in every state,” added Kallivrousis.

When I spoke to Victoria Anderson, American Atheists’ State Policy Specialist, she stressed the importance of coalition building when explaining how they were able to make this happen. This wasn’t just atheists pushing for the change; they also had support from groups like the Colorado Alternative Defense Counsel and Interfaith Alliance of Colorado.

The next step is to make this happen in other states. In 2022, for example, there was a bipartisan push in New York to make sure drug court participants were informed by a judge about their right to choose a non-religious form of rehabilitation. But Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed it, claiming it would be a burden on judges. In other words, even in blue states, this will require more pressure and lobbying.

There hasn’t been any paperwork or revised policies released by the Colorado Department of Corrections just yet, but American Atheists said the CDOC agreed in principle to the changes and will begin implementing them immediately. It’s a huge step in the right direction.

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The Salem Witch Museum tells me they will offer complementary tickets to all seniors visiting as part of a planned class trip next summer after a Batavia City Schools board member, who also works as a pastor, voted against the trip because he didn’t want kids going to a “Satanic” venue.

I first reported on this issue a few weeks ago.

Seniors at Batavia High School in New York had asked the school board to approve a class trip to Boston next summer, and it should have been a formality. The students would fundraise to lower costs. And their draft itinerary, which included the famous Duck Tour, a dinner cruise, and a stop at the Salem Witch Museum, looked fantastic.

But during the board meeting, Dan Schmidt, who serves as lead pastor at the Batavia Assembly of God Church, couldn’t get past the idea of students visiting a “witch museum.”

He said Christians wouldn’t want to go and that they would feel excluded if their friends went—even though 1) this was a draft itinerary subject to change, and 2) the museum doesn’t encourage witchcraft. It chronicles the infamous “witch trials” from the 1600s and highlights the problem with “witch hunts” in general. It’s educational! The museum teaches us what can happen when people look for outcasts to blame for everything that goes wrong, leading to mass hysteria, false accusations, and needless violence.

Despite everyone else trying to explain that to him, Schmidt held firm during the board meeting, refusing to listen to voices of reason.

He later admitted to a reporter, “I can't really say that I know the history of it.” Nevertheless, he added, “I think Jesus would frown on this” and that he just didn’t think visiting the museum was “the healthiest choice for our students.”

He was the lone vote against approving the trip.

But the good news was that the other board members weren’t as ignorant and approved the trip, so there were no other obstacles in the students’ way.

Deanna King, a mother of one of the students helping organize the trip, began a fundraiser after that board meeting. (She also made a fantastic video highlighting the absurdity of Schmidt’s comments.) The money was initially just going to cover the cost of museum tickets—but she raised enough that she could even help lower the cost of the entire trip in general. That alone is incredible.

Over the past few days, though, myself, Deanna, and administrators at the museum have been in contact to see if there’s anything more we can to to help these students out, and I’m thrilled to announce that the Salem Witch Museum will offer free tickets to all the Batavia seniors who visit during their class trip.

Rachel Christ-Doane, the museum’s Director of Education, told me they’ve never seen this particular type of backlash where an entire group was discouraged from visiting. But when museum administrators saw this story gaining traction, they knew immediately that they wanted to give the students free tickets. “It was a no-brainer,” she told me.

They got overwhelmed with work—for some reason, the museum gets swamped before Halloween—but as soon as they could, they reached out, and it didn’t take long for both groups to hammer out the details.

It’s not just a publicity stunt either; As Christ-Doane reiterated, this is an educational museum. If students want to spend their time learning about this particular aspect of American history, the museum wants to welcome them with open arms.

It’s worth mentioning that the museum will be closed early next year for renovations, so when they reopen, and when those students visit, there will be new and improved exhibits for them to experience. It’ll be unforgettable.

Since the museum tickets will be free, that also means the full amount Deanna has raised can go toward lowering the cost of the trip for students who may not be able to afford it—or covering the full cost for a handful of kids. She told me in a statement that this blew up in the best possible way:

What started with one school board member’s comments has turned into something much bigger. There’s also a little irony in Salem, of all places, responding to fear and misinformation with education, generosity and kindness.

These seniors now have the chance to make memories and learn the history for themselves, which is exactly what education is supposed to be about.

She’s right, of course. The trip is meant to be both fun and educational—a last hurrah for the students before they go their separate ways—and thankfully, they can now focus on planning the best possible trip and not worry about what one ignorant board member has to say about any of this.

Dan Schmidt did not respond to my request for comment.

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The Florida Department of Education, in an attempt to update science standards for public school students that were last revised in 2008, have issued a draft proposal that all but eliminates mentions of evolution and climate change. The standards allude to the ideas behind them, but they don’t connect the dots to show where the evidence leads.

For now, these standards are just a proposal. The public can read them now and the State Board of Education will likely vote on a final version in December.

But the current version is all a far cry from 2008, when evolution was explicitly described as “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology” and “supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence.” (That only occurred after a lengthy battle during which Creationists argued their mythology should be taught alongside evolution.)

The new version still includes mentions of natural selection, inherited variation, and populations changing over time. But students are not guaranteed to learn that evolution unifies all those concepts.

In middle school, for example, students will be taught about natural selection and the fossil evidence for change over time… without being told this is all evidence for evolution. In high school, the word “evolution” is omitted entirely. It’s a huge loss of clarity. Students shouldn’t have to connect these dots on their own—or hope they have a teacher who can do that for then. It should be a state requirement. For now, students are given individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without being told they should assemble to form a clear picture.

Bertha Vazquez, a longtime middle school science teacher and the director of the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science, put it simply:

The biggest thing I noticed is that all the underlying science is still there, but the scientific vocabulary that organizes that science has disappeared.

The situation isn just as dire for climate change. Both that phrase and “global warming” are nowhere to be found in these proposed standards. Students might learn about greenhouse gases, fossil fuels, and how humans influence Earth’s ecosystems. But the standards never connect the dots to their logical conclusion: Climate change is real, it’s happening, and human activity contributes to it.

That would be bad enough on its own. It’s even worse when it’s happening in Florida, a state that’s already dealing with climate-related disasters. Students deserve to understand how all the evidence fits together.

That’s not exactly a new battle in the state, though. As the Orlando Sentinel notes, in 2024, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis banned the use of the phrase “climate change” in state laws. As if closing your eyes to reality might make it all go away.

A few months later, the education department told some science textbook publishers that they must remove the term from their books if they wanted to sell to Florida public schools.

Columnist Pat Beall asked a more pressing question: If not in school, when would Florida students ever learn about climate change?

Let’s not spring the news on the kids until they are older and able to handle it. Let’s wait until they are grown, living in a beachfront home without insurance (because Florida). Let’s put it off until they are watching a beautiful full moon lighting up the Cat 6 heading for landfall on their new sofa.

Let it be a surprise.

Or it could be another kind of surprise at Thanksgiving dinner, when Uncle Joe lets slip why humans don’t have feathers, or when the SAT scores arrive and the kids finally find out that even though Florida told them they were getting all the stuff, they were only getting a slice of the stuff, and they, not Florida, will pay the price for not enough stuff.

This isn’t a battle over terminology. If the state standards don’t explicitly tell teachers which topics they need to cover, that makes it much easier for lazy teachers, lower-performing districts, and well-intentioned-but-ignorant teachers to skip those areas altogether. Or at least minimize them.

Those aren’t the only problem with the proposed standards. Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, said the standards were “a mile wide and an inch deep” with close to 1,000 benchmarks—many of which were focused on definitions or isolated facts, not a coherent framework.

Branch also points out that the proposed standards aren’t even based on the National Research Council's 2012 A Framework for K-12 Science Education, a set of guidelines that most states use.

It doesn’t help that the people who wrote the proposed standards have an agenda that’s hardly a secret.

“Science begins in wonder, not in ideology. The classical tradition taught that nature is intelligible because it is ordered—that the book of creation can be read by reason,” said Commissioner Henry Mack. “Florida’s new science standards will form students who observe carefully, reason rigorously, and treat the natural world as something given to be known, not invented.”

“Ideology.” “Intelligible.” “Book of creation.”

These are standards written by Christians who, unable to find a way to inject their religion into the state standards, are trying to downplay science instead.

Elsewhere, the press release notes that the state is not interested in pursuing “trendy themes,” denounces science based in “speculation, advocacy, and political fashion,” and highlights a focus on “the dignity of life.” All of those are right-wing concepts that have been used to dismiss evolution and climate change.

Mack pretended to deny all of this on X/Twitter, where he insisted he was “not smuggling a Sunday-school lesson into Biology”… before proceeding to dismiss areas of science that he deems “a prop for adult ideology” that’s advanced by “leftist zealots.”

This is what you get when you appoint someone who graduated with degrees in “philosophy and theology from the Catholic University of America” to a position that has sway over public education.

One Christian parent who attended a feedback meeting on the new standards didn’t get the memo that he wasn’t supposed to promote religion, accidentally giving away the game:

Chris Vercelli, a parent in Sarasota County who regularly attends government meetings to preach Christianity, suggested at Wednesday’s meeting that he read the commissioner’s statement as an endorsement of his views and said he was in “full support” of the new standards.

It was “refreshing” to hear the state was “entertaining the idea of teaching creation and intelligent design in schools,” he said, referring to the argument that an “intelligent cause” better explains living things than evolution by natural selection.

“The way that evolution is taught really is like a bait and switch … that means that everything originated from primordial soup, and there is no God. That’s just ridiculous. That is like total non-science,” Vercelli said.

He understands what Republicans are doing. But Republicans are pretending they don’t understand what Republicans are doing.

It’s also why the people who understand science education the best are warning the public against these standards:

“It’s disappointing to see Florida politicize something that shouldn’t be political or remotely controversial. No science standards can be complete without evolution,” said David Griffith, national research director for the Fordham Institute, which reviews states academic standards.

If these standards are adopted, there’s another consequence beyond just raising a generation of students who don’t fully understand science. It puts Florida students at a disadvantage when applying to college. Admissions officers who see applications from students who graduated from a Florida public school may rightly wonder if those students have the science background they need to succeed in higher education. It could make it harder for those seniors to gain admission.

Like I said, though, these standards are not final. For the rest of the month, Florida is accepting public comment online. But the entire process is cumbersome for good reason: Republicans want to make it as hard as possible for the public to weigh in, allowing them to say later that there was minimal opposition to the standards. Commenters are expected to work through each section of the standards individually and reach the final “Submit” button for their comments to count. At first, the Sentinel points out, they posted “each standard on a separate page, requiring clicking through hundreds of pages to view all the standards.” They eventually combined those into three documents. But reviewing them still requires readers to click through “hundreds of pages.”

Vasquz explained:

In each section, there are about 100 standards, sometimes over 150. If you want to comment on standard #54 in a given section, for example, you have to start at standard #1, click one-by-one to #54, choose “modify” and comment, and then click one-by-one all the way to the last standard to submit your comments, and there are always more than 100 standards in each section.

It’s ridiculous for a reason.

Maybe the upcoming elections will have an impact here. Floridians seem to be getting sick of the way Republicans have screwed them over, but whether it’ll be enough for candidates like David Jolly and Angie Nixon to win their races for governor and senator, respectively, remains to be seen. If enough voters don’t give a damn about their own children’s education, then Republicans may hold on to power. If people are fed up, then a seismic change could impact if the State Board of Education goes through with these changes.

Still, the message here is damning: Florida’s leaders can deny that they’re promoting Creationism all they want. Their proposed standards still give cover to Creationist arguments regarding evolution and obscure the impact of human activity on climate change.

That said, anyone can comment on the standards.

When they do, they should make clear that “evolution” must be restored to the standards whenever we’re talking about biological change across generations. And that topics like greenhouse gases and human activity on the environment should be connected to “climate change.” (Vasquez has created a really helpful guide for anyone who wants to know exactly what to write in that space.)

The goal is to make sure these draft standards are revised before the December vote.

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Another high school musical has been canceled because 1) Texas and 2) Conservatives.

This time, it happened at South Grand Prairie High School, located between Dallas and Fort Worth. The plan was to stage a production of Little Shop of Horrors, the classic musical about a nerdy florist, Seymour, who encounters a blood-thirsty plant, all while trying to win the heart of his beloved co-worker Audrey. The show is famous enough that it’s practically a staple of high school theater.

The thing about high school musicals, though, is that you usually have more girls participating than boys, and some male parts have notes that may be tough for maturing boys to reach. For that reason, it’s not unusual to see a male part played by a girl. (When I was in high school, a girl played the lead role in our production of Oliver!)

That’s what happened at South Grand Prairie.

The role of Seymour went to 17-year-old senior Ana Mota, who had previously played other male roles like Pinocchio and Jack in Into the Woods without a problem.

A week into rehearsals, though, she was told she could no longer play the part. Not because she had done anything wrong, but because this was Texas, and the casting was going to get the school in trouble.

Howard Sherman, a longtime theater writer, explained on his site Downstage Center that Ana would be re-cast as Audrey (sharing the role with another student) while the male understudy for Seymour would now play that part in all performances. And there was a clear reason this was happening:

The reasoning given to the students for the change was that it was necessary to comply with the regulations of Texas law Senate Bill 12, best known for its anti-drag provisions. The district was concerned that a male role being played by a female student would run afoul of the law’s strictures.

As Sherman noted, that law has already been struck down twice at the federal level. It’s not in effect. A girl playing the lead male role in a musical is arguably not “drag” either. It’s just a girl playing a male role. As many argued when the law was being considered, Texas Republicans would have criminalized Shakespeare, whose plays are performed with plenty of “gender-bending,” as well as Peter Pan (where the lead is routinely played by a woman). But the fear that lawmakers will go after a school district for something as petty as this is apparently scary enough that district officials didn’t want to test them.

Ana and her mother rightly objected to this re-casting—not because she was upset to lose the lead, but because the district was forcing it to satisfy a law that wasn’t even in effect. So they met with district officials last week. Ana was then given an ultimatum: Accept the new role or the entire show would be canceled.

The district was specifically concerned that “the show placed Seymour and Audrey in a romantic relationship, and that ran afoul of the struck-down law’s language,” because that was somehow sexual—and, in this case, it would involve two female students. But for what it’s worth, even though the two characters kiss in the musical, high school productions often work around that, and that was the plan here regardless of who played the leads.

Ana and her mother didn’t accept the re-casting for those reasons… and so the district canceled the show entirely. The school announced it would start searching for a different musical to produce.

All of this really gained attention after Ana posted an open letter on Instagram highlighting how the district’s decision to double down on the (struck down!) anti-drag SB 12 law meant they were punishing her for being a girl, which violated the (still in effect!) Title IX law, which prohibits sex discrimination in public schools.

… I spoke to the school district on October 8th and was told that the Texas Education Administration did not give the district instructions to disregard the initial ruling of Senate Bill 12. In the end, their compromise was to change the musical all together. I do not feel like this was a compromise. Title 9 states “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” The district was afraid they were teetering the line of the laws stated in SB12 and decided to take extreme caution, removing me from the role. In turn, they violated Title 9, I was excluded from participation in an education program receiving Federal financial assistance because I am a female.

Grand Prairie ISD has failed me as a student, they have failed my school, they have failed every student casted in this musical, but most of all, they have failed this district. I do not want a new musical, I want the part I auditioned for, in the musical I expected to do my senior year. I do not believe it is a fair compromise to take everyone’s parts away instead of just giving what is rightfully mine back. To GPISD, what I want is this musical and the original casting reinstated.

Daaaaamn. She has more courage that everyone in district leadership combined.

It didn’t help when the district issued a statement defending its decision by highlighting something else entirely:

In the musical, a romantic relationship develops between the two main characters. When District leadership learned of this issue and in consideration of themes in the musical involving an abusive relationship, a decision was made to pull that production and find something more appropriate. This decision was made in light of the District’s ongoing effort to ensure its programs remain consistent with Senate Bill 12 and all applicable law.

The musical does involve an abusive relationship between Audrey and a different character, but somehow that wasn’t an issue when they thought Seymour would be played by a boy. It only became an issue when they found out Ana would play the male lead.

Nor was it an issue the last time the school performed this musical… four years ago.

Nor was it an issue that the Grand Prairie Fine Arts Academy—in the same district—is performing the exact same show this year.

The district can’t seem to decide why it doesn’t like this show. They just know they don’t.

Nancy Jimenez-Mota, Ana’s mother, told Sherman they are considering a possible lawsuit. If the district doesn’t change its mind, she said, “we’re going to move forward legally and it’s not going to be a pretty battle.”

She also delivered her own incredible statement:

In her interview, Jimenez-Mota made clear that she sees the situation as representative of larger issues, saying, “Part of me, I say, OK, this is just a high school musical, right? But when I look at this in the greater picture of things, in which our rights are being curtailed by ridiculous, unconstitutional laws, that’s when the fire burns inside of me. I am not a person that is seeking confrontation – I let little things go. But there comes a point where you have to stand up and say enough of this madness. Enough of this intimidation and nonsense. We need to take our freedoms back and I just don’t understand how this is happening. I don’t know at what point we became this.”

Jimenez-Mota went on to say, “I’ve lived here 33 years in Texas. I have never been bothered by any drag shows, any drag queens. They have not been a problem. But you know what I have been bothered with? People not having medical insurance. People not having housing. People not having food. So many other things. Guns, kids getting killed at schools with guns. My kids being extremely anxious about getting shot at school. That has been a concern. So I don’t understand why we are so focused and intent on meddling with the arts when there are bigger issues happening, and you go and waste all of this legislature time on a bill that affects no one. I’m baffled.”

That’s Texas under Republican leadership. No regard for the actual struggles people face, but non-stop culture war bullshit that makes everyone’s lives worse.

The Dallas Morning News points out that this is not a new phenomenon by any means:

In Texas, Sherman ISD in 2023 called off its production of Oklahoma! after a transgender teenage boy was cast in a leading role. The district later reversed its decision after a public outcry. In 2024, Keller ISD canceled a performance of the The Laramie Project, about the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming. The district later backtracked and allowed the production.

You may also recall that a performance of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” was canceled at a Georgia high school last year because district officials didn’t like that it opened with young women supposedly summoning spirits in the opening of a show… about the Salem Witch Trials.

High school musicals are just the latest battleground in the censorship wars. Right-wing morons want to get them canceled because they don’t like the idea that a theater production might challenge anyone’s preconceived notions.

But even if district officials are trying to play it safe rather than play politics, this is still censorship. Ana earned this role and rehearsals were well underway before adults panicked over a struck-down law, invented ever-shifting excuses, and told her the musical could go on if she just accepted a different role. Their decision was essentially a way to blame her for their own actions.

District officials aren’t protecting students from harm. They’re teaching kids that baseless political threats made by thoughtless Republicans are effective even when those laws aren’t in effect. And that the kids can’t count on the adults in their district to fight on their behalf.

All the more reason for students, parents, teachers, and allies to push back. That starts by sharing this story and calling out everyone involved in canceling the show. That continues by making sure decent people aren’t voting for Republicans in the midterms. Because when incidents like this happen without backlash, the next threat just gets easier to make, meaning more students will pay the price.

Ana was right to say this was never just about one role in one musical. It was about whether students can be excluded from educational opportunities simply because government officials don’t like it.

Grand Prairie ISD’s capitulation is embarrassing. It’s even worse because they can’t settle on a consistent explanation for why they canceled the show. The students deserve so much better.

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The same white evangelical Christians who want “Thou shalt not kill” posted in every public school classroom, and who oppose all kinds of reproductive rights because they’re “pro-life” are now cheering on the possibility of a live-streamed public execution.

Last week, the Pentagon announced that Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, is scheduled to die by firing squad on December 3. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be live-streamed so everyone can watch. Donald Trump says he’ll make the final decision about the livestream soon, though reports say he’s waffling on the matter. Who knows what’s gonna happen.

The thing is: Prominent white evangelicals who could have denounced this are doing cartwheels because they love violence, especially against a brown guy with a Muslim name.

Pastor Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s biggest allies, supports it.

He says capital punishment is “commanded by God” and argues that “more people” should see a public execution. He told the Dallas Morning News he would likely watch it himself.

Doug Wilson, the pastor of Hegseth’s church, also prefers public executions.

In a statement to [Religion News Service], Wilson — who oversees the controversial church Hegseth attends — said he prefers “public executions to those conducted in the recesses of a prison somewhere in the middle of the night,” adding, “executions in the Scriptures were public.”

Megachurch pastor Josh Howerton echoed the idea that public executions are acceptable because they were in the Bible, implying that a televised execution isn’t un-biblical.

And the radical TheoBros like Pastor Dale Partridge were calling for more events like this.

These guys all think a Pride flag in a classroom is harmful. They don’t wants kids to watch Ms. Rachel because they insist she’ll steer them wrong. But apparently a government-sponsored snuff film is their idea of a good time. I wouldn’t put it past them to broadcast it to their churches’ Sunday Schools.

I guess I’m not surprised the sort of men who would probably cheer on lynchings are also the sort of people who’ll throw parties to watch a man die. They constantly speak about the power of Christ, but the lesson they learned from a public crucifixion was that they want to be the Romans.

To be clear, though, this is not a position all Christians share. Pope Leo opposes the death penalty in general and denounced this execution, saying it was “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who oversees Catholic ministry to military members, said Catholic soldiers should ask to be excused from participating in the firing squad assigned to murder Hasan. (Vice President JD Vance, the Catholic convert, obviously doesn’t share these views.)

Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, warned that live-streaming an execution turns it into a spectacle and promotes a “culture of death,” though he did not say the death penalty itself was wrong. He just wants it done behind closed doors. Because that’s the evangelical way.

And evangelist Franklin Graham, attempting to find some bizarre middle ground, blamed liberals for depicting fake forms of violence in movies. As if that’s worse than the Republicans he actively supports literally murdering someone to satisfy their base’s bloodlust.

It’s not surprising that Graham can’t tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction since that’s what his entire ministry is about.

The same people who have spent years insisting that Christianity must shape public discourse and who backed Project 2025 have a choice now: Listen to the Christian leaders who represent broader segments of their faith—like Kim or Pope Leo—or listen to Pete Hegseth and his merry band of incompetent frat boys.

If the execution is live-streamed, it’s not hard to guess what most white evangelicals will do, because it’s the same thing they’ve been doing for years: They’ll put out some pathetically weak statements decrying the state of the country, then allow it to happen because they’re all too damn cowardly to speak up against their Lord and Savior Donald Trump.

This administration isn’t interested in what any of these religious leaders have to say if it goes against whatever they want to to do, because they know Trump has way more sway over conservatives than the Pope or Jesus. (You know: liberals.)

So if our country goes through with this, joining the ranks of other public-execution-proponents like Saudi Arabia and North Korea, you can blame right-wing pastors and Republicans in office for continuing to prop up Trump no matter how often and how horribly he debases his office. They don’t care if our own troops will be put at more risk because of his reckless actions. They don’t care if we do what ISIS has done in the past because the desires of religious extremists overlap more than than white evangelicals in America will ever admit.

We shouldn’t be surprised, though.

White evangelicals and conservative Catholics were fine when Trump was bragging about groping women. It wasn’t a dealbreaker. They were fine when his supporters stormed the Capitol. They never cared about any of the corruption. They didn’t do anything outside of a press release when he cut USAID or allowed diseases to spread. They don’t speak out loud enough against the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza. So they’re not going to suddenly find courage when it comes to denouncing a live-streamed execution.

This is just red meat for a group of violent, heartless assholes.

If any of these people actually wanted to punish Trump over this, there is a simple thing they could do: Tell their followers right now not to vote for Republicans anywhere on the ballot. Not now. Not in 2028. They will never do that. Because they don’t actually care. They love having access to power. They can rationalize any amount of death and destruction in the name of promoting their religion. It’s easy to see how they’ll do it, too. They’re just gonna say some bullshit about how abortion kills more people than the death penalty, or whatever lie they prefer to tell to convince themselves they’re not ultimately responsible for this.

Personally, I don’t think the death penalty is acceptable in any situation. But we’re so far beyond that argument right now. If you don’t stop authoritarians, they only get more extreme. And the people with the power to stop him refuse to do anything meaningful.

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A public school district in Tennessee voted to allow a Ten Commandments display to go up in each school—even though they didn’t have to. It’s not just a pathetic attempt to appease Christian Nationalists, it’s a move that could lead to a lawsuit.

That said, it feels odd that we’re even talking about Tennessee.

Over the past year, there have been laws passed requiring classrooms to post the Ten Commandments in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. All three states have faced lawsuits over the matter, and most of the judges have declared those laws to be unconstitutional; lawmakers did it anyway because they see an opening to inject Christianity into the public schools. The bills even said the state would cover a district’s legal fees if they were sued over the matter.

Despite its Republican supermajority, though, Tennessee hadn’t followed suit… until this year.

Back in May, the state passed its own version of a Ten Commandments bill, but HB 47 wasn’t like the bills we saw in other states. This one gave school districts the option of putting up the display in a “prominent” location in each building.

What display? Specifically one that included the full KJV text of the Ten Commandments, the “first sentence of the second paragraph of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence,” and the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

Something like this:

By making it a choice, and by requiring the inclusion of those other actual historical documents—or at least snippets of them—the state was hoping to avoid legal battles.

But you can already see the problem here. The bill requires the full text of the Ten Commandments, but only partial text of the other two. If this is meant to teach kids about our “Founding Documents,” as the title in that image says, why all the focus on a religious list that has nothing to do with the nation’s origins?

Republicans also left it to the districts to decide how big the displays should be. The districts didn’t have to put up anything, but if they did, the only requirement was that the text needed to be in at least 26-point font.

After that bill was signed into law, five school districts agreed to participate: Blount County School District, Rutherford County Schools, Washington County Schools, White County Schools and Wilson County Schools. All five have already been sent letters from church/state separation groups demanding public records about the decision. That could be the prelude to a lawsuit.

It probably doesn’t help that one of those districts, the Rutherford County Schools, already chose the following as their design, making it very clear which document they really care about:

But none of those districts have posted the documents in their schools yet because, at least in some cases, they haven’t raised enough money. Until they do, there won’t be any litigation.

Now the Hamilton County Schools are getting in on the action.

Last month, the board voted 6-4 to approve the plan, despite warnings from one board member, Ben Connor, who said this could lead to an expensive and unnecessary legal battle:

I know from talking to people [in the Tennessee legislature] that they removed it from being “mandatory” because they’re not going to be dumb enough to pay the bill to fight this. They specifically wanted to pull out “mandatory” so some moron school board would vote for it and then be on the hook to pay millions of dollars to fight a dumbass lawsuit.

Sharp language, but he’s not wrong. He voted against the displays. Sadly, he was outnumbered. He probably saw that coming, though, because at the same meeting, the board voted 6-4 to elect a new chair, Jodi Schaffer, whose completely inappropriate introductory remarks included a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer:

That’s the sort of deranged majority that runs this public school board. And now they could be the first to put up those religious posters.

All of these districts will almost certainly be sued if they go through with this. When they are, they’ll likely be forced to pay a hell of a lot of money in legal fees. That’s what happens when you violate federal law—and the law still says promoting religion in the classroom like this is illegal.

It’s irrelevant that Tennessee lawmakers gave districts permission to do this. By going through with it, these districts won’t escape the consequences of forcing religion onto students under the guise of teaching them about American history.

(Interestingly enough, this wouldn’t even be the area’s first time fighting a Ten Commandments battle. In 2002, the Hamilton County Courthouse posted Ten Commandments displays at multiple buildings, only to have a judge declare those displays unconstitutional.)

None of this is necessary. It sends a horrible message to students that the Ten Commandments influenced our country’s founding (it didn’t) and that there’s value in being told they must worship the Christian God or honor the Sabbath (there isn’t). It creates far more problems than it solves.

If and when they’re hit with a lawsuit, it’ll be the fault of those six irresponsible board members for wasting taxpayer dollars to fight it.

Even beyond the fact that the Commandments didn’t influence the Constitution, think about what this district wants to teach students: If you’re coming from a Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, or other non-Christian family, your beliefs aren’t as valued. No public school should be sending that message. No public school board should be pressuring children to accept their preferred theology.

Students will ultimately pay the price for the negligence of their school board. Money that could have funded teachers, counselors, and classroom supplies will have to be diverted to lawyers who’ll have to defend an entirely avoidable act of religious favoritism. All because a bunch of Christian Nationalists want to gamble that money away on a religious vanity project.

They were warned. They knew the risk. They chose indoctrination anyway.

What an embarrassment.

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Another Satanic invocation at a city council meeting has led to right-wing backlash, mostly because supporters of the practice assumed only Christians would be delivering those prayers.

I wrote earlier this summer about how Christian Nationalists were trying to take over the town of Battle Ground, Washington—just north of Portland, Oregon. Basically, the wealthy right-wing business owners of Maddox, an electrical equipment company, were buying up properties all over the place, claiming they were doing so to help revitalize the area. But in doing so, they were effectively making it impossible for anyone to stand in their way if they disagreed with how the owners were reimagining the city. Hell, they took over the local newspaper, too.

Those owners, including Maddox CEO Camden Spiller, are connected to Christian Nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, which makes all of this even more concerning.

One Maddox manager was elected mayor. The deputy mayor was married to another Maddox employee. Another person tied to the company was on the public school board. And another manager, who co-hosted a podcast with a prominent local pastor, said their show was “an experiment in Christian localism,” talking about how they wanted to control as much as they could in Battle Ground. (Reporter Erik Neumann of Oregon Public Broadcasting has done extensive reporting on all of this.)

Back in May, the city council considered adding religious invocations to the starts of their meetings. In August, it became a reality. As writer Brian Kaylor notes, at the meeting when they considered a formal resolution, one pastor even said during the public comments that an “invocation prayer at the beginning of each council meeting will be a blessing. I know because the Bible tells us so.”

So the city passed a resolution allowing invocations prayers—it was a 5-1 vote—and said speakers would be chosen on a “rotating, first-come, first-served basis.” Speakers would only be allowed to give those invocations once a year and anyone who wanted a slot could schedule it by calling the City Manager or filling out an online form. The only rules were that the invocations had to be under three minutes, the message had to be “positive and uplifting,” and speakers could not “denigrate any other faiths or beliefs, including nonbelievers, threaten damnation, proselytize, or preach conversion.”

If the goal was to avoid any lawsuits, they seemed to check all the boxes. I have to assume they thought only Christians would sign up to do the honors.

Instead, the first person to sign up was a Satanist.

That invocation was delivered this week by Bast Sekhmet of The Satanic Temple:

MAYOR: We welcome Bast Sekhmet of The Satanic Temple to present an invocation this evening.

…

SEKHMET: Good evening, and on behalf of the Satanic Temple, we thank you for this opportunity and look forward to doing this again next year.

This invocation today was inspired by the Seven Tenets or ethical principles of The Satanic Temple… a non-theistic organization that believes in compassion, empathy, justice, autonomy, freedom of speech, scientifically based beliefs, accountability, and wisdom.

Let us begin.

Let us never bow our heads or bend the knee in obeisance to any faith from the past that is based on ignorant, bigoted savagery.

Let us not look back with reverence to dark times of fearful minds, unenlightened by modern scientific knowledge, but move forward with critical thinking, the only way to determine actual, factual truth.

Let us not fear the tree of knowledge but extend our grasp and devour its fruit.

Let us make rational decisions rather than imposing outdated authoritarian religious doctrine with varied interpretations, some more vile than others.

Let us cast out harmful ideas that threaten individual autonomy and our collective rights to liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness, which must necessarily include free thought and freedom of expression, especially of our very identity.

Let us bravely face the truth rather than hide behind comforting delusion. Because regardless whether a Supreme Being really exists, history will be our judge.

So let us embrace those among us who understand that morality, compassion, and service to others do not require devotion to any faith of ancient doctrine.

Let us recognize that humans are capable of choosing kindness, empathy, and helping those in need, regardless of any religious faith.

Finally, let us trust in ourselves and others working with us to know what is best for us and our families and not force conformity to mistaken beliefs of the past.

Hail Satan, the archetype or symbol of the bringer of knowledge and hail thyself.

Thank you.

Beautifully done. Inspiring message. And a slap in the face to anyone who assumed only Christians would be signing up for the opportunity.

Last night, I had a chance to chat with Bast about the whole situation, and she told me she actually had no intention of being the first invocation speaker at all. She had seen a post on Reddit about the policy getting passed and commenters saying how funny it would be if a Satanist signed up to speak.

Bast, a newer member of The Satanic Temple, figured she might as well step up.

She reached out to members of the group in Washington to see if anyone else was interested in doing it, but as a resident of Clark County, where Battle Ground is located, she turned out to be the best option.

So she followed the protocol and reached out to city officials. Eventually, she was asked which date would be a good fit, and she chose October 5, not realizing that would be the inaugural invocation.

In terms of what she wanted to say, she remembered that YouTuber Aron Ra had delivered an invocation in Las Vegas (complete with devil horns!) earlier this year. She reached out to him to see if she could use his speech, and he gave her permission to do so. (She modified it a bit, but it’s mostly identical.)

When she arrived at the city council meeting, Bast brought along some support, but she was pleasantly surprised by how professional everyone was. Even the mayor shook her hand before the meeting began to make sure he was pronouncing her name correctly.

That night and even the next morning, no one even seemed to notice anything had happened. There was no chatter online about it, much less any backlash. Bast said that was the ideal outcome. In a way, it meant her Satanic invocation was so uncontroversial, it was basically normalized.

When comments finally appeared online, they were mostly from left-leaning supporters who were thrilled to see this kind of invocation. It was only after that when conservative zealots online—the ones who don’t understand how an open-door invocation policy works—began complaining about how a Satanist got included in the mix.

Bast told me that those comments were frustrating only because they seemed to focus on the Satanism of it all. They paid attention to the words “Hail Satan” and what she looked like, rather than the substance of anything she said. “They didn’t listen to the invocation at all,” she told me.

She did have some indirect support from one prominent local politician, though. State Senator Adrian Cortes, a former Battle Ground mayor himself, made a backhanded joke that when he left the city council to join the legislature, he “never imagined the city would go to hell in a handbasket. But judging by what’s happening under the current mayor’s leadership, it looks like that’s exactly where we’re headed.”

As I’ve said before, though, this should be expected. If you want invocations, and you have a legal policy that’s open to everyone, then you’re bound to hear from members of non-Christian and non-theistic groups. If you don’t like that, there’s a simple solution: End the practice and just get to work instead of wasting this time.

There’s no indication Battle Ground is reversing its policy. That means they should expect more “Hail Satans” than they ever bargained for. Even in a city that’s being overtaken by Christians, there are plenty of people who don’t share those beliefs.

Get used to it.

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We’ve heard plenty of stories about non-Christian invocations being delivered at city council meetings, but rarely do they descend into the kind of chaos we saw in Ottumwa, Iowa on Tuesday.

The invocation was delivered by former City Council member Matt Dalbey, a member of the (non-theistic) Satanic Temple of Iowa, who called on the crowd to “embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat from the tree of knowledge” before ending his invocation with a “Hail Satan.”

Thank you, Mayor Council. Let us pray.

Dear Dark Father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times.

Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old.

Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations.

Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all.

That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.

It is done. Hail Satan.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that invocation. It’s uplifting and thoughtful. If you remove the Satanic references, no one would find that controversial in the least.

But this is Iowa. Shortly after that invocation was given and the roll call was complete, New Life Center Pastor Rick Bick ran up to the microphone and demanded the council “reverse the curse.”

“That was a curse put on the city when he said, ‘Hail Satan’ and ‘Dark God" [sic]. And you most of you know that and we need to just stop and reverse it,” he whined.

This is Christian privilege. No one has the right to rush the mic and demand a different invocation be delivered because he didn’t agree with the first one. I think Christian invocations are inappropriate at government meetings, but it would also be inappropriate to demand a secular one be delivered immediately afterwards to undo the damage. There’s a process. And if Bick wanted to deliver a Christian invocation in the future, he would have that opportunity.

Council member Cara Galloway attempted to wrest control of the meeting away from the arrogant pastor, saying he could speak during the public comment portion of the meeting if he wanted. But Mayor Benjamin Foote stepped in to say he ran the meeting, and he insisted they pause the meeting to hold a 30-second moment of silence. That way the Christians could ask God for whatever the hell they wanted.

While Foote may have wanted to prevent this controversy from getting out of control, he made a mistake. There was no reason to have a moment of silence because it was essentially a capitulation to Christians unhappy with the invocation. There’s no world in which a request for a Revenge Invocation after a pastor’s prayer would have been accommodated in any way.

And when Foote explained his decision to Fox News Digital later, he only made the problem worse:

Reacting to the controversy, Foote told Fox News Digital, "This is not a reflection of our community. As the mayor of my hometown in Iowa, I know the people of Ottumwa, and the invocation read at the start of Tuesday’s meeting does not represent the faith or the values of families who call this city home."

He’s lying. That invocation represents the values of someone who lives in the city. Which part was he upset with? Being judged for his actions? Rejecting arbitrary authority that threatens people’s personal rights? Or the fact that Satan was invoked instead of his preferred mythological figure?

If you don’t want non-Christian invocations at meetings, then cancel the useless tradition altogether.

The Ottumwa Courier reports that when the invocation policy was adopted earlier this year, Galloway was the only council member to vote against it and she’s never stood for any of the invocations delivered so far. That policy says invocations are an opportunity to “include our Creator into our decision making,” falsely suggesting everyone’s Christian to begin with. Nevertheless, it appears that anyone can request to give one. Next year’s calendar is already full, and Dalbey is once again on the list. He’s also slated to give one on November 3.

Toward the end of the meeting, Galloway chimed in once more to deliver a well-deserve “I told you so” remark:

… I just want to kind of comment on what happened tonight. So, opening with an invocation means allowing viewpoints that may not reflect our own. And responding to someone’s invocation is a slippery slope to putting a financial liability on the taxpayers and allowing for others to object or respond.

And this is exactly why I had concerns about having an invocation when we first talked about it. I think I even specifically referenced… having someone from the Church of Satan, or a prayer about Satan, when we talked about that—that this could happen and we would need to allow it.

So, I just want to remind us that, again, sometimes things are said that we may not agree with… while you’re allowed to do the moment of silence and that kind of thing, too, I think we’ve opened ourselves up for others to object or respond to others’ invocations. And we need to remember that we are up here to be neutral and allow viewpoints because we’ve opened up invocations.

She gets it. The mayor doesn’t. The other council members didn’t say anything publicly to back her up.

But it doesn’t look like the backlash has died down. On Wednesday, the city issued a formal statement reminding people that opening invocations to everyone (the only legal way to do it) means accepting speakers you may not like.

… It is very clear that many of you have watched at least the first two minutes of the October 6 City Council meeting.

We have been fielding calls all day about the invocation given at this meeting. Some calls have been cordial, while many have been rude and full of profanities.

An invocation policy was passed on January 20, 2026, that started the practice of invocations at regular meetings… We cannot discriminate against a denomination and everyone that is invited to perform the invocation has followed the correct protocol.

We are not informed ahead of time what will be said for an invocation nor do we automatically endorse what the speaker is saying. We encourage everyone to review the policy.

The statement itself is fine, but you have to wonder: What the hell did they expect? Did they seriously think they would only hear Christian invocations? That no one would get upset if a non-Christian was allowed to speak? Just because religious zealots don’t understand The Satanic Temple (and the fact that they don’t believe in a literal Satan), you can bet they’re going to complain if they don‘t get their way every time. That’s how it always goes.

The council should eliminate the invocation entirely and just do their damn jobs. Let people pray on their own time. Because there will be more Satanic invocations after this, and you can expect local pastors to whine about it every time it happens because guys like Bick don’t understand how religious pluralism works.

For what it’s worth, this isn’t the first time a corrective measure to a secular or Satanic invocation has been requested or allowed. It’s happened multiple times in Florida. It even occurred in the Arizona legislature in 2017 when a state legislator gave a secular invocation, only to see one of her colleagues request and receive permission to deliver a Christian one right after.

I reached out to Dalbey to see what he thinks about this backlash but haven’t heard back as of this writing.

Bick, on the other hand, spoke with Christian Nationalist Tony Perkins about his supposedly courageous stand, and Perkins glazed him, saying he commended Bick’s “righteous indignation,” told him he “did the right thing to break that curse,” and said his actions were “appropriate.”

It’s a reminder that Perkins doesn’t believe in religious neutrality at all. He’s a theocrat who believes non-Christians in any aspect of government are illegitimate. He would be apoplectic if an atheist did what Bick did after a Christian invocation, but Perkins is incapable of putting himself in anyone else’s shoes because his religion teaches him never to do that.

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Dale Partridge, a Christian Nationalist pastor who runs King’s Way Reformed Church in Prescott, Arizona, said on his podcast that interracial marriage should be avoided whenever possible.

And then he got even more racist.

He said he would never let his own daughter marry a Black man, even if that man were Christian, because that would lower the IQ of their potential children.

“If a black man with an average IQ of say 82 marries a white woman with an average IQ of 105, their children’s average IQ will typically fall somewhere in the middle, 90 to 95,” he continued. “Now IQ remains one of the strongest predictors of individual and societal success, including the ability to have higher educational attainment, economic productivity, crime rates, long-term civilizational stability. And for this reason it’s a serious consideration, not only for nations, but also for interracial marriage and family formation.”

“So people ask me often, they go, ‘Hey, Dale, would you allow your daughter to marry a black man if you were a strong Christian?’” Partridge declared. “Now my answer is no.”

“Basic statistics [show] black men leave their wives at a far higher rate,” Partridge asserted. “They have higher rates of physical abuse ... Sure, if you have a great Christian man, you’re probably going to eliminate some of those things, but those patterns are actually tracking with average IQ for the black population.”

“Even if you have a strong Christian man that’s black, why would I still say no?” he added. “Before you decide that I’m crazy, just remember that our Christian forefathers treated interracial marriage as illegal. They actually made what’s called anti-miscegenation laws, which were against intermarriage. Now, I’m not saying that it must be illegal. I don’t think that it should be illegal. I’m saying that it is not normative and not natural.”

To state the obvious, everything he’s saying about IQ is information pulled out of his own ass to justify his bigotry. (This isn’t new for him. As Right Wing Watch points out, earlier this year, Partridge called for European Christians to re-colonize African countries.)

And let’s be honest: This guy’s children are already starting at a disadvantage when it comes to intelligence. Marrying up, on that front, may be their only option. As one online commenter noted, “I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Dale, but the low IQ is coming from inside the house.”

You just know this guy thinks Jesus was white, too.

These are not merely the fringe beliefs of someone who is a relatively nobody. Partridge was the subject of a New York Times article earlier this year focused on how his brand of Christianity involves fantasizing about repealing the 19th Amendment and putting head scarves on women (while ironically railing against the dangers of “Sharia Law”).

More importantly, Partridge and men like him are in the same theological circles as preacher Doug Wilson and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Wilson has previously said slavery was a net positive because it “produced in the South a genuine affection between the races.” And Hegseth has refused to promote people of color (and women) in the military for no good reason.

What makes Partridge’s racism even more jaw-dropping is that his own wife is a woman of color.

In a now-deleted tweet from earlier this year, Partridge said he opposed interracial marriage even though he was “happily married to a Mexican/Spanish/American woman.” He explained that away by saying God helped them overcome the “additional hurdles.” Because he’s romantic like that.

So, to summarize: Partridge says you shouldn’t marry someone of a different race. Unless it’s him, in which case it’s fine, even though it’s not what God wants. But also, he wouldn’t let his daughter get married to a Black man because he doesn’t want his grandkids to have lower IQs. Even though his biracial children also couldn’t get married to white men since those would technically be interracial marriages.

This is the bulletproof logic we get from radical theobros like him. I can’t decide whether I wish Partridge didn’t have a platform at all or if I’m thrilled he just puts his Christian racism right out there for everyone to see.

You might think this is a marriage where the woman is submissive and has no real voice, but that’s not true either. In fact, over a decade ago, Partridge and his wife appeared on Good Morning America after she wrote an article about why wearing leggings was sinful:

This is what you expect from racists and sexists like Partridge (and Clarence Thomas and JD Vance). They can be as racist and sexist as they want to the rest of the world, despite being in interracial marriages where their wives have their own voices.

I’ve said this before, but if you follow people like Partridge, it can be hard to tell if they’re just trolling or actually bigoted. There’s no trolling going on here. He’s seriously this deranged. He has personally called for “household voting” in the same tweets where he says Muslim and Hindu immigrants should be banned from the country and that only Christians should be allowed to hold elected office.

He has just as much disdain toward single men and childless couples—he doesn’t believe they should vote either. Basically, the only people who should be allowed to vote, in his mind, are people who look, think, and act like him. And who have enough money to buy property. He doesn’t say “white” on that list, but it’s certainly implied given our nation’s history.

Partridge might think his own marriage absolves him from criticisms of racism. It doesn’t. Instead, it exposes his hypocrisy. He’s saying the racist stuff out loud now so that his more powerful allies can make it sound respectable later as they turn it into public policy.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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In a blow to church/state separation, a federal judge has ruled in favor of a publicly funded religious school. It comes after the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board rejected the establishment of the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School earlier this year because the state’s Supreme Court had previously ruled that using taxpayer dollars to fund a religious school would violate Oklahoma’s Constitution. Because of course it does.

A little backstory is helpful here. A few years ago, the Statewide Charter School Board gave a stamp of approval to the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. This school very clearly intended to push Catholic doctrine on children. They wanted to use public dollars to do it and the state was giving them a green light.

But Oklahoma’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond (who’s currently running for governor) sued to prevent it, and the state’s highest court stopped them. That 7-1 decision was a clear defense of church/state separation, with the justices saying that funding the religious school violated both the state and federal constitutions.

An appeal went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, her colleagues were deadlocked 4-4, which left the earlier ruling in place, ending the threat.

Last year, some of the same right-wing zealots who pushed for a publicly funded Catholic school tried to do it again, this time with a Jewish school. They wanted the same board to approve the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School in the hopes that if this inevitable situation ever reached the Supreme Court, Barrett wouldn’t have to recuse herself and the conservatives might finally rule in their favor.

That’s why conservatives didn’t sweat when the charter school board voted to reject the school’s application in February. It was a unanimous vote, with members saying their hands were tied because of the legal precedent. More specifically, the board cited 10 reasons the application was flawed, with the blatant sectarianism being just one of those reasons.

When a revised application was submitted afterwards, the same board said most of their concerns had been alleviated… but they still had to reject it due to the school’s “religious tenets.”

We knew—and they knew—how this would play out: The board members of the Jewish school would file a lawsuit citing religious discrimination by the state—which they did—and then judge after judge would say that’s not the issue here, and this would eventually be appealed to a sufficiently right-wing court.

Turns out the first judge in that chain isn’t following the plan.

Oklahoma Western District Judge David L. Russell (A Reagan appointee) ruled late last month that the state violated the First Amendment when it denied approval of the Jewish charter school due to religion. He said the Court is not expressing “judgment on the wisdom of the State of Oklahoma opening up its coffers to charter schools of disparate philosophical or educational persuasions,” but once it does, it can’t deny a school on account of its “religious character.”

It doesn’t mean the school is about to open, but it can now continue going through the steps of becoming an established school. They’ve overcome the biggest hurdle in front of them.

This decision, if it stands, could lead to a slew of taxpayer-funded religious schools.

The judge’s conclusion “opens the door to a dangerous sea change for our democracy,” the [pro-church/state separation] group’s legal team said in a statement.

“Forcing taxpayers to fund religious public schools violates state and federal law,” the attorneys said. “Ben Gamla will not only indoctrinate students into a particular religion — it will discriminate against families that don’t share the school’s beliefs. We will continue to fight for all Oklahomans, who deserve public schools that are secular and open to all students.”

…

“In 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a religious charter school violates the Oklahoma Constitution, state law and the U.S. Constitution,” Drummond said in a statement Thursday. “The U.S. Supreme Court left that decision in place last year.”

What that means in practice is that the Charter School Board will have to reconsider the school’s application at its next meeting. It’s worth noting that Attorney General Drummond also sued the board earlier this year saying they didn’t thoroughly explain all the existing problems with the school’s application. By simply citing the school’s faith, they were making it much easier for a right-wing judge to claim there was religious discrimination at play—and that’s precisely what happened here. Drummond’s lawsuit remains ongoing.

It’s entirely possible the charter school board still rejects Ben Gamla for a host of other reasons that don’t involve religion, as Drummond had demanded, but there’s now a possibility that they could say yes despite the proposed religious indoctrination.

It also means there will be more appeals and a longer legal fight. It’s not just me saying that; it’s what the lawyers for the school are saying:

Board attorney Hiram Sasser said no matter what the ruling is, it will likely be appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Whoever doesn’t like [the ruling] is going to appeal it to the Tenth Circuit, and so on and so forth,” Sasser said. “Frankly, probably all the way up until we break the 4-4 tie at the Supreme Court.”

This is a school that must be stopped before the floodgates are destroyed. The closer it gets to the Supreme Court, the more likely it is that we could see taxpayer dollars fund religious schools across the country—and those would be predominantly Christian in nature.

Remember: No one is stopping the school’s organizers from teaching Judaism, promoting religious doctrine, or opening a private religious school. The only issue here is whether taxpayers should finance their mission by allowing this place to operate as a public school. What Russell effectively said in his ruling is that the First Amendment guarantees religious groups access to public funds.

If that stands, it’s not going to end with a single Jewish school in Oklahoma. You can bet Christian Nationalist groups will help private schools across the country turn into state-funded public schools, imposing their beliefs on students and staff, while siphoning money away from already underfunded secular public schools.

If Ben Gamla succeeds, it wouldn’t be a victory for religious freedom. It would just be further erosion of our Constitution.

(via Religion Clause. Portions of this article were published earlier)

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Scamvangelist Jim Bakker, who spent decades of his life convincing gullible Christians to fork over their money, health, and critical thinking skills in order to make himself wealthy, is finally dead at 86. The cause of his death wasn’t given, though Bakker had a stroke in 2020. Despite all his promises, Jesus never showed back up during his lifetime.

He leaves behind a legacy of grift and, I’m assuming, giant unsold buckets of apocalyptic food.

The general public may know him best as the televangelist who was married to makeup-clad Tammy Faye and whose scandals were the subject of tabloids in the 1980s.

He allegedly sexually assaulted his secretary Jessica Hahn in 1980, a claim he later denied. In 1985, he gave her $265,000 from his Praise The Lord ministry to keep her quiet. When that became public knowledge anyway in 1987, he was shunned from the Assemblies of God denomination and became a pariah even among other well-known evangelists. As the New York Times notes in its obituary, Jerry Falwell called him “the greatest scab and a cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history.”

Things got worse for Bakker in 1988 when he was indicted for fraud and mail conspiracy. The Bakkers had built a retreat in South Carolina called “Heritage USA” and sold “exclusive partnerships” for $1,000 that would allow donors to spent three nights there each year. Even though they could theoretically sell only 25,000 partnerships, they sold nearly 160,000—the money was rolling in even though the Bakkers knew they couldn’t uphold their end of the deal. Bakker was eventually sentenced to 45 years in prison… but, after the appeals process, that was reduced to about five years. (He later said this incident made him one of the first victims of “cancel culture.” He also blamed witches.)

That should have ended his career.

But he was a free man by 1994 and returned to television in 2003, this time with a new wife, Lori, and his headquarters in Branson, Missouri, to begin another act.

Despite writing a book (“I Was Wrong”) in 1996 in which he admitted Jesus had nothing good to say about getting rich, Bakker knew he was good at convincing Christians to buy into his bullshit. Which is why his focus soon shifted from telling non-believers about Jesus to telling believers the return of Jesus was imminent. To survive the Apocalypse, they needed to buy his products.

Like his giant buckets of food.

He urged people to buy those up because food would become scarce and cannibalism would become commonplace.

He also regularly told viewers they needed to support Republicans. After the 2016 election, he told his audience that a Hillary Clinton victory would have “sealed God’s judgment against us” and that earthquakes would befall cities that voted for her. There was also a segment in which Trump’s “spiritual adviser” Paula White told the audience that they would be rewarded by the “Department of Treasury in Heaven” if they made donations to Bakker’s ministry so he could build a new TV studio.

His claims became even more serious in 2020.

Before the public really understood how harmful and transmissible COVID was, Bakker began selling “Silver Solution” as a “cure” for coronavirus, saying the solution would kill off the virus in under 12 hours.

It wasn’t his only claim about the liquid’s powers. Bakker said the product could get rid of all venereal diseases and prevent SARS and HIV. He added that the silver is “almost like a miracle” and that “God created it in Heaven.”

Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt—long before he became an embarrassment of a senator who confused the Atlanta Hawks and Iowa Hawkeyes—went after Bakker for lying to his audience. So did New York Attorney General Letitia James. They eventually got him to stop hawking the fake product and won a $156,000 judgment against him.

Beyond all that, his guests were often a mix of fellow hucksters like Mike Lindell and right-wing propagandists. Even when he wasn’t selling bullshit in a can, Bakker spent years poisoning the minds of his viewers. It was lucrative enough that a new generation of grifters now knows exactly how to use Jesus and fear tactics to convince conservative Christians to open their wallets and shut off their brains. Bakker didn’t invent scamvangelism, but he was arguably the godfather of it.

He never truly apologized for a life of grifting. Whenever he repented, it was an intermission in between scams.

So what’s his legacy? Saying he was a Christian hypocrite would be too easy. He’s someone who realized early on that religion could be used to fleece people—and that television was an excellent way to get his message out to the most ignorant viewers in the country. By constantly scaring them, then offering his products as the only biblical way to respond, he became wealthy. And despite a relatively brief stint behind bars, he never truly faced consequences for the harm he caused. His ministry was never about saving souls. It was always about finding the most vulnerable people, highlighting their anxieties, turning that fear into cash, and claiming his critics were enemies of God.

That’s not just a Christian thing anymore. It’s the Republican Party in a nutshell. If Bakker wasn’t such a human punchline in his later years, you can easily imagine him fitting right in with the Trump administration.

It would be deeply dishonest to treat Bakker like a “pioneering televangelist” who merely experienced a “fall from grace.” That assumes he had any grace to begin with. He was a grifter from the get-go. A convicted fraudster who found the spotlight again and picked up right where he left off, exploiting Christians by convincing them the end was near.

By the way, in all the obituaries of Bakker I’ve seen today, none of them pay proper respect to Right Wing Watch, which has chronicled his bullshit so thoroughly, especially over the past two decades. I doubt people would understand just how harmful Bakker has been in the years since he returned to television if not for the constant clipping they’ve done. While Bakker’s biggest scandals were national news stories in the 1980s, he’s spent the past two decades effectively operating in a Christian bubble that hasn’t always spilled over into public view. When it does, it’s because of sites like RWW. Support them if you can.