“I would say Christian Nationalism, as I define it…”
“In my book…”
As you define it and in your book, Christian Nationalism is not what the reality is. Christian Nationalism has already killed people. Every woman hemorrhaging to death in the parking lots of hospitals because the hospitals cannot intervene in the miscarriage she’s experiencing. Every drowned child trying to enter the country with their family. Every child beaten to death for their status as an LGBTQ person. Every black person murdered by gunfire in their church or supermarket or wherever. Every successful suicide from LGBTQ to immigration status to a simple lack of access to trained expert counselors. All are a result of Christian nationalism.
Of course he can brush off the threat of Christian Nationalism, he’s a white, cis-het, Christian man. It serves him to allow it, despite his mouthing his displeasure at it.
Certainly he's safe ... for the moment. However, as so many here have previously observed, once the field is purged of anything non-Christian, that's when the internecine conflicts start.
And I can't imagine that ANYONE will be safe, once and IF that happens.
Sadly, insofar as we can tell, neither Jesus nor any form of afterlife is real. It's left to us and people like us to rub Mark's nose in his foolishness until he can smell his own bullshit.
We all are. Except the ascetic celibate hermits that live in caves. The US average income is 4x the global average income, and it takes an income of about $122,000 to be in the top 10% of wealthiest people on earth. Meaning if the NT is right about heaven etc., there's a whole lotta Christian US families gonna need to fit through the eye of that needle before they can get to heaven.
As far as I know "And so it came to pass that Jesus did say unto them, 'it's okay to be richer than 90% of the people on Earth, if you're just keeping up with the Joneses.'" did not make the NT cut. So whatever the *reason* for being relatively wealthy, they, you, me, we're all going to hell.
Which is entirely consistent with Revelations. 144,000 saved could leave out literally every person in the western world/1st world, and still have billions more to cut.
Do you think that the pearly gates will be like a court case? St Peter sitting on a dais and there'll be a prosecutor and someone acting as defence?
"Now, Mr Johnson, can you tell us, why did you vote to cut food stamps, cut housing assistance and decimate Medicaid? It's in clear contravention of the exhortation to feed the poor, heal the sick and house the homeless? I'll introduce Exhibit A, the personal bible of the applicant. Passages [insert bible location] are marked in highlighter yellow, green and orange. ...."
It is a Bizarro comic of a man arriving in heaven to see a monkey sitting on a throne and the monkey says, "I created in you in my image in the beginning, yes. But then you evolved."
The link worked for me in 3 different browsers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's only a matter of time before right wing fundamentalists and right wing catholics turn on each other. Both of them will turn on the mormons. It's gonna get real nasty real fast.
No group better demonstrates the disconnect between religion and morality than the Christian nationalists. Conservative religion and authoritarian government are natural allies. It is a symbiotic relationship that has dealt humanity nothing but misery.
Of course he's lying. He's playing the "move along, move along, nothing to see here" card until he and his fellows figure that they are sufficiently entrenched that dislodging them from government becomes a near impossibility.
I suspect he is someone who assumes he could not possibly be wrong about anything when it comes to religion. The words Bible, Jesus, and Christianity do not appear in the Constitution, and that foundational document bans religious tests for holding public office in this country. In spite of this, he evidently sees his particular brand of authoritarian religion as the solution to all the country's problems. Never mind that about half the people in this country no longer claim any religious affiliation. If the people of this country wanted a theocracy, we would have one, but that is definitely not the case. Mixing religion and government is the same terrible idea it has always been.
" If the people of this country wanted a theocracy, we would have one, but that is definitely not the case. Mixing religion and government is the same terrible idea it has always been. "
THIS ! THIS ! THIS !
Also, they keep flogging the notion that the USA was founded as a christian nation.
Please, people, read a real book of history. It most definitely was not !
Absolutely. Hall cites Seidel as someone who supposedly overstates the Christian Nationalist position, when what Andrew REALLY does is STATE ITS POSITION, accurately and clearly. This, of course, scares the pants off of Hall, so he has to find some way to attempt to discredit his critic.
Fact is, though, he doesn't do a very good job of that at all!
Says the rich white straight Christian man. I'm sure his Constitutional rights wouldn't get worse under the regime he imagines. It would be the women whose rights to medical care go away. The gay man who gets tossed in jail for being gay. The Muslim, Jew, and atheist who find themselves looking at "No Muslim Need Apply" signs in shop windows and blacks who find themselves served out the side entrance to the restaurant. And so on.
Technically, if your plan requires *changing the Constitution* then your plan is a threat to the current Constitutional order. Making Christianity the officially preferred religion of the nation would require that.
Now obviously when people say "existential threat" they are thinking something more like Mad Max than Prohibition. But both are changes to the Constitutional order.
It doesn't matter what you call it, it's the same rabid animal. When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Building in 1995, he was acting in the name of the christian identity movement. But just as when the tea party morphed into MAGA, it remained the same collection of weirdos, kooks, and cos-players, when christian identity morphed into christian nationalism it remained the same vile brew of patriarchy, racism, and white supremacy.
Quibbling, but TEA Party was more white supremacy than Christian nationalism. I know, tomato tomatoe. But it was a reaction against Obama's presidency specifically, and IMO not really any broader movement like we're seeing today.
I understand that the tea party was a backlash against our first Black president, but it's not like they disappeared after he left office, so he wasn't entirely the motivating factor. Eventually the tea party types took over the base of the republican party and morphed into MAGA when Trump came along. It was always the same toxic mix of weirdos, kooks and cos-players - with a generous dose of racism thrown in. The same applies to christian nationalism. There's a reason they look at the pre-Civil Rights era as 'the golden age' of America.
The organization DID disappear after 2016. Some of it's ideas became GOP mainstream, but its disappearance was probably more because Trump won over Hilary so there really wasn't any purpose to a movement whose identity was all about "this president illegitimate and their tax policies bad."
It didn't disappear; it morphed into MAGA. The same thing happened with christian identity; it morphed into white christian nationalism. They're viruses; they mutate. 2024's MAGA is what happens when two virulent strains merge.
This is gaslighting, pure and simple. A christian nationalist arguing that christian nationalism is no big deal and not a threat to anyone is LYING. It's not a threat to him because he’s one of them, but it’s a clear threat to everyone who’s non-christian or isn’t ‘the right kind’ of christian. The times and this country have changed considerably since the 1950s when, according to Pew Research, over 90% of Americans identified as christian; that held true through the 1990s. But, by 2022, that number had dropped to 63%. There was a time when christianity was so pervasive, it was taken for granted as the default religion of this country. That’s no longer true. And christian nationalism is the backlash to that loss of hegemony.
This is nothing new. We’ve been fighting religious establishment since the 18th century. James Madison, in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, argued that we should all ‘take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties’; that 'religion or the duty we owe to our creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction'. He went to say that the religion of any person and the right to exercise it is up to the conscience of the individual and is ‘an unalienable right.’ He then warned: ‘Who does not see that the same authority which can establish christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of christians [we 👁️ you, christian nationalists].
When christians argue that imposing christianity on a free country is no big deal, you know it’s a Big Fucking Deal! And it’s a violation of our rights under the First Amendment.
Minus the sexism? Really? Denying women the right to seve in combat roles is inherently sexist. Calling the cops on a woman in the women's restroom because she doesn't appear sufficiently feminine is sexist. Denying them the same bodily autonomy that evey man has is sexism. Denying LGBTQIA+ people the same rights to marriage and healthcare is sexism.
Minus the racism? Really? Anti immigrant policies are inherently racist. Whitewashing the history textbooks is racism. Opposition to DEI is racism. Young black men stopped and arrested by the police for walking around in a white neighborhood is fucking racism.
Mr (I refuse to give him the honorific attached to his postgraduate degree) Hall is mistaken if he thinks that Christian Nationalism is harmless.He thinks that Jim Crow is not part of it. What does he think Jim Crow was? The Nazis modeled their oppression of the Jews, Roma, and LGBTQ on the oppression of the Jim Crow era. The NSGOP is modeling their oppression of the LGBTQ, women, immigrants, and non-christians on the Nazis. They are even arresting and trying to deport 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 immigrants over thoughtcrime.
The show was very different in its first two seasons (back when it was shot on film). In Season 3, the show took the emphasis off the Cunninghams and put it on Fonzie. The producers basically reinvented the show by switching from a series about a 50s family and going for broad comedy instead. From the 3rd season on, the show was shot in front of a live audience.
The 5th season got weird. The show's ratings started to decline and the cast started meeting aliens (Robin Williams as Mork). What really sent it on a downhill spiral was the now-infamous episode where Fonzie literally jumped a shark on water skis (still wearing his leather jacket!). Ever hear the phrase "Jump the shark?" This is where it originated.
After that, they started introducing new characters that were completely anachronistic (long feathered hair, half-t-shirts, etc.). How it made it to 11 seasons is beyond me. The final episode had Joanie Cunningham (Erin Moran, who died at 56) and Chachi Arcola (played by the Scott Baio) getting married and Fonzie adopting an orphan.
Yes, shows like the Brady Bunch, (once the kids aged up) would somehow add an obnoxious child to improve ratings. I hated that and always stopped watching if I hadn't done so already. Always hated the Brady Bunch, anyway.
As it comes to that whole "symbolic preference" business, they already have embraced that in the form of "ceremonial deism." The catch is that ceremonial deism is nothing more than poorly disguised Christianity which has been sanctioned by the government, from "In God We Trust" on the money and courthouses to the Bladensburg Cross.
It's smoke and mirrors, designed to obfuscate what they are doing and their ultimate goals, and it's working.
I want to pick up on one line of his, that a 'return*' to a society as desired by the christian nationalists would be 'no big deal'. Of course it would not be a big deal - for him! It is much much easier to be in favour of discrimination when you're going to be part of the 'in-crowd'! As a white, wealthy, articulate man he is unlikely ever to be at the receiving end of the planned discrimination.
He'll be ok. He's unlikely ever to be a client of a crisis pregnancy centre, where a woman is being forced to sit through bible classes to obtain some supplies and support (food stamps and housing payments having been cut). He's unlikely to be hemorrhaging where the only hospital for miles does not have Mife/Miso handily available or refusing D&Cs thus forcing him to go septic. He'll not be refused viagra unlike his daughter who'll be unable to get a coil.
I read an article or blogpost written by a clinic manager or doctor (can't remember the details, it was quite a while ago), where they were writing that one of the fine upstanding ladies in the community was coming in for her or her daughter's procedure via the back door and out of hours and the following day they were back out front protesting against abortions and shouting at the women coming into the clinic for their healthcare.
Because they needed their abortion, unlike those other sluts who just wanted to murder babies.
Isn't there actually such a scene in 'The Cardinal'? I dimly remember, that the doctors were asking him for permission to intervene as the pregnancy was killing his sister. He refused. (I think they might have both died, it's a looooong time since I read that book.)
Just wait. Christians are a rapacious bunch. When all the nonbelievers are out of the way, they'll target each other.
Christians love to persecute each other as much as they do non-Christians. The key founders (Deists, mostly) knew this and kept church and state well apart.
You have not spent much time in church then? They start in on each other, well before targeting others.
The bible contradicts itself, so they (we) trained in quoting the bible to prove each other wrong, while still believing (believed) that "the bible is the inerrant word of God". Which even it dioes not claim. (I know the verses that could be taken that way, but that does nor line up with the history of the canon.)
Yes. The cognitive dissonance does indeed drive one mad.
Indeed I had some woman bible-splain to me about Leviticus, I replied I was aware it was stolen by the xtians to give their bible more history, she said my reply was condescending. (mind you she gave a wall of text defending Leviticus) I wished Nogodz was available to explain it to her.
While it is true they start in on each other before targeting anyone else, it is everyone outside the church walls that are first targeted for bloodshed when the take over the power of the state. The heretics aren't burned until the apostates are gone.
Martin Luther would probably take exception to your opinion of Calvin, but he was also an evil man who flamed the hatred of Jewish people in Northern Europe for centuries.
Ummm, has he ever been to a conservative church on the 4th of July? Flag waving jingoistic pro military rhetoric abounds then. Does he not remember the Crusades? How controversial it was when Dubya called the War on Terror a Crusade? 𝘖𝘯𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘴!?
Yeah, the consewertives on the TBT forums got pissed at me every time I pointed out that they and the Taliban, ISIS, et al were two sides of the same coin.
The weirdest thing is that in the light your description of him is completely accurate. But as soon as the lights dim in the bathroom at the rest stop by exit 4, only two of those three adjectives are correct.
"Swedish electric car maker Polestar is offering Tesla owners 5000 Euros to break up with Elon and buy a new Polestar 3. The campaign is called “Tesla Conquest” and the number of orders placed has been “incredible.”
Who knew overpriced cheap cars huckstered by a avowed Nazi could be easily conquered. Don't know what they're going to do with all those used Teslas though, scrounge for spare parts?
It amazes me how many people think that simply forcing kids to recite prayers in school is going to "return us to the 1950s". The '50s happened because we had come out of a major war where our infrastructure was not destroyed. We had the factories and the tooling to supply the world with manpower, materials, and know-how to rebuild their infrastructures. Additionally, patriotism was at an all-time high and so were tax rates. We were in a boom-time and our government could've used that time to fund our government forever. Instead, they squandered our future. But yea, let's go back to a post-war era with a 91% top tax rate. I'm sure Elon won't have a problem with that.
He's probably thinking of crime rates, among other things, which were at an all-time low in the 1950s. (Maybe...that's what a prosperous middle class with a comparatively high buying power can do.) The homicide rate in 2024 (7.5 per 100,000) was indeed higher than 1959 (5.9), but that number was up around 10 for 1960s-90s, so we're actually looking in good shape and much more similar to 50's era than we have been in the past 30-40 years. All without any prayer in schools! Also, I'm guessing some of that low 50's number was due to less reporting not actually less crime. Lynchings and wife-fell-down-stairs sorts of violence I'm guessing went largely unreported, uninvestigated, and unprosecuted.
Religion has ALWAYS been an impediment to progress. Something with zero evidence, oppression, intimidation and absolute rights and wrongs, can never be a good thing. Christian Nationalist are merely the extreme end helped out by the continued privileging of Christianity in US & Europe & Islam in the Middle East. Mono-theistic worship is a great set up gor the Fascist-minded controlfreaks.
“I would say Christian Nationalism, as I define it…”
“In my book…”
As you define it and in your book, Christian Nationalism is not what the reality is. Christian Nationalism has already killed people. Every woman hemorrhaging to death in the parking lots of hospitals because the hospitals cannot intervene in the miscarriage she’s experiencing. Every drowned child trying to enter the country with their family. Every child beaten to death for their status as an LGBTQ person. Every black person murdered by gunfire in their church or supermarket or wherever. Every successful suicide from LGBTQ to immigration status to a simple lack of access to trained expert counselors. All are a result of Christian nationalism.
Of course he can brush off the threat of Christian Nationalism, he’s a white, cis-het, Christian man. It serves him to allow it, despite his mouthing his displeasure at it.
Certainly he's safe ... for the moment. However, as so many here have previously observed, once the field is purged of anything non-Christian, that's when the internecine conflicts start.
And I can't imagine that ANYONE will be safe, once and IF that happens.
Jesus has stern words for those who call themselves his followers yet do not feed, clothe or house the poor. Or do not visit the sick or imprisoned.
So stern that it sends those believers to eternal punishment.
They don't pick that cherry.
Were Jesus and the afterlife real, those cherry pickers would be in for a rude awakening at the end of their lives.
Sadly, insofar as we can tell, neither Jesus nor any form of afterlife is real. It's left to us and people like us to rub Mark's nose in his foolishness until he can smell his own bullshit.
It's a lousy job, but SOMEBODY has got to do it.
We all are. Except the ascetic celibate hermits that live in caves. The US average income is 4x the global average income, and it takes an income of about $122,000 to be in the top 10% of wealthiest people on earth. Meaning if the NT is right about heaven etc., there's a whole lotta Christian US families gonna need to fit through the eye of that needle before they can get to heaven.
See you at the barbeque!
That's barely a middle-class lifestyle where I live and barely a living wage in much of the U.S. Tariff Man is going to make that much worse.
As far as I know "And so it came to pass that Jesus did say unto them, 'it's okay to be richer than 90% of the people on Earth, if you're just keeping up with the Joneses.'" did not make the NT cut. So whatever the *reason* for being relatively wealthy, they, you, me, we're all going to hell.
Which is entirely consistent with Revelations. 144,000 saved could leave out literally every person in the western world/1st world, and still have billions more to cut.
Yep.
Do you think that the pearly gates will be like a court case? St Peter sitting on a dais and there'll be a prosecutor and someone acting as defence?
"Now, Mr Johnson, can you tell us, why did you vote to cut food stamps, cut housing assistance and decimate Medicaid? It's in clear contravention of the exhortation to feed the poor, heal the sick and house the homeless? I'll introduce Exhibit A, the personal bible of the applicant. Passages [insert bible location] are marked in highlighter yellow, green and orange. ...."
https://www.zentaur.org/memes/a0bbaf8f-dffa-4642-a110-876cd460427d.JPG
The fact that god is dog spelled backwards should've been a tip-off.
Aria was a good example.
Your link is blocked at the office.
Oh yeah, they are for a big rude awakening.
https://ibb.co/TDb57YSN
The link shows "Then-You-Evolved-Bizarro-2016" but not the actual comic itself. Just text.
It is a Bizarro comic of a man arriving in heaven to see a monkey sitting on a throne and the monkey says, "I created in you in my image in the beginning, yes. But then you evolved."
The link worked for me in 3 different browsers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So-Called Believers: "Lord! Lord! I feed the poor. I drove out demons in Your name. I healed the sick..."
Jesus: [to the so-called believers] "I never knew you. Depart from me you evil people."
Matthew 7:21-23
It's only a matter of time before right wing fundamentalists and right wing catholics turn on each other. Both of them will turn on the mormons. It's gonna get real nasty real fast.
This is how I see it too.
No group better demonstrates the disconnect between religion and morality than the Christian nationalists. Conservative religion and authoritarian government are natural allies. It is a symbiotic relationship that has dealt humanity nothing but misery.
I've met Christian Nationalists. Hall is lying.
Of course he's lying. He's playing the "move along, move along, nothing to see here" card until he and his fellows figure that they are sufficiently entrenched that dislodging them from government becomes a near impossibility.
And they've gotten a dangerously good start.
He's a Christian. Lying is in his very nature.
Likely lying to himself.
How else could one be a Christian?
I suspect he is someone who assumes he could not possibly be wrong about anything when it comes to religion. The words Bible, Jesus, and Christianity do not appear in the Constitution, and that foundational document bans religious tests for holding public office in this country. In spite of this, he evidently sees his particular brand of authoritarian religion as the solution to all the country's problems. Never mind that about half the people in this country no longer claim any religious affiliation. If the people of this country wanted a theocracy, we would have one, but that is definitely not the case. Mixing religion and government is the same terrible idea it has always been.
" If the people of this country wanted a theocracy, we would have one, but that is definitely not the case. Mixing religion and government is the same terrible idea it has always been. "
THIS ! THIS ! THIS !
Also, they keep flogging the notion that the USA was founded as a christian nation.
Please, people, read a real book of history. It most definitely was not !
I suggest Andrew L. Seidel’s “The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American.”
Absolutely. Hall cites Seidel as someone who supposedly overstates the Christian Nationalist position, when what Andrew REALLY does is STATE ITS POSITION, accurately and clearly. This, of course, scares the pants off of Hall, so he has to find some way to attempt to discredit his critic.
Fact is, though, he doesn't do a very good job of that at all!
𝘯𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢 [𝘸𝘢𝘴] 𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 2006
Who cares about those specific words? The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1985. Atwood was on to you already by then.
𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑, 𝑝𝑟𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙, 𝑏𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠—𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠—𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦!
Says the rich white straight Christian man. I'm sure his Constitutional rights wouldn't get worse under the regime he imagines. It would be the women whose rights to medical care go away. The gay man who gets tossed in jail for being gay. The Muslim, Jew, and atheist who find themselves looking at "No Muslim Need Apply" signs in shop windows and blacks who find themselves served out the side entrance to the restaurant. And so on.
𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑆𝑎𝑚 𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑤 𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑔𝑜 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔—𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑚 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟
Technically, if your plan requires *changing the Constitution* then your plan is a threat to the current Constitutional order. Making Christianity the officially preferred religion of the nation would require that.
Now obviously when people say "existential threat" they are thinking something more like Mad Max than Prohibition. But both are changes to the Constitutional order.
He's grown so used to the Christian box he lives in that he can't conceive of NOT being in that box or having a different perspective on the issue.
Hall has a bad case of tunnel vision ... that simple.
Quote: "if your plan requires *changing the Constitution* then your plan is a threat to the current Constitutional order."
That's basic logic.
Are you sure, that they taught logic at the school this chap was attending?
That class was right after lunch, when the students were guaranteed to be mostly napping.
It doesn't matter what you call it, it's the same rabid animal. When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Building in 1995, he was acting in the name of the christian identity movement. But just as when the tea party morphed into MAGA, it remained the same collection of weirdos, kooks, and cos-players, when christian identity morphed into christian nationalism it remained the same vile brew of patriarchy, racism, and white supremacy.
Quibbling, but TEA Party was more white supremacy than Christian nationalism. I know, tomato tomatoe. But it was a reaction against Obama's presidency specifically, and IMO not really any broader movement like we're seeing today.
I understand that the tea party was a backlash against our first Black president, but it's not like they disappeared after he left office, so he wasn't entirely the motivating factor. Eventually the tea party types took over the base of the republican party and morphed into MAGA when Trump came along. It was always the same toxic mix of weirdos, kooks and cos-players - with a generous dose of racism thrown in. The same applies to christian nationalism. There's a reason they look at the pre-Civil Rights era as 'the golden age' of America.
The organization DID disappear after 2016. Some of it's ideas became GOP mainstream, but its disappearance was probably more because Trump won over Hilary so there really wasn't any purpose to a movement whose identity was all about "this president illegitimate and their tax policies bad."
It didn't disappear; it morphed into MAGA. The same thing happened with christian identity; it morphed into white christian nationalism. They're viruses; they mutate. 2024's MAGA is what happens when two virulent strains merge.
🎯
This goes back to the 19th Century and the split of a number of Churches, North and South.
See what the various Presbyterian churches are in this country and why the split.
Then there is the Southern Baptists, who preach about Ham and god keeping people split up by skin color.
Slaves obey your masters and by doing so you serve God.
Same can be said in right to work states I guess.
Funded directly by the then Koch brothers now it is the Koch "machine" since only Charles is left of the brothers.
This is gaslighting, pure and simple. A christian nationalist arguing that christian nationalism is no big deal and not a threat to anyone is LYING. It's not a threat to him because he’s one of them, but it’s a clear threat to everyone who’s non-christian or isn’t ‘the right kind’ of christian. The times and this country have changed considerably since the 1950s when, according to Pew Research, over 90% of Americans identified as christian; that held true through the 1990s. But, by 2022, that number had dropped to 63%. There was a time when christianity was so pervasive, it was taken for granted as the default religion of this country. That’s no longer true. And christian nationalism is the backlash to that loss of hegemony.
This is nothing new. We’ve been fighting religious establishment since the 18th century. James Madison, in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, argued that we should all ‘take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties’; that 'religion or the duty we owe to our creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction'. He went to say that the religion of any person and the right to exercise it is up to the conscience of the individual and is ‘an unalienable right.’ He then warned: ‘Who does not see that the same authority which can establish christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of christians [we 👁️ you, christian nationalists].
When christians argue that imposing christianity on a free country is no big deal, you know it’s a Big Fucking Deal! And it’s a violation of our rights under the First Amendment.
𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑠𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑦, 𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘, 𝑖𝑛 𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡, 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎 𝑡𝑜 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 1950𝑠, 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑚.
Minus the sexism? Really? Denying women the right to seve in combat roles is inherently sexist. Calling the cops on a woman in the women's restroom because she doesn't appear sufficiently feminine is sexist. Denying them the same bodily autonomy that evey man has is sexism. Denying LGBTQIA+ people the same rights to marriage and healthcare is sexism.
Minus the racism? Really? Anti immigrant policies are inherently racist. Whitewashing the history textbooks is racism. Opposition to DEI is racism. Young black men stopped and arrested by the police for walking around in a white neighborhood is fucking racism.
Mr (I refuse to give him the honorific attached to his postgraduate degree) Hall is mistaken if he thinks that Christian Nationalism is harmless.He thinks that Jim Crow is not part of it. What does he think Jim Crow was? The Nazis modeled their oppression of the Jews, Roma, and LGBTQ on the oppression of the Jim Crow era. The NSGOP is modeling their oppression of the LGBTQ, women, immigrants, and non-christians on the Nazis. They are even arresting and trying to deport 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 immigrants over thoughtcrime.
https://www.jta.org/2025/03/10/united-states/the-judge-who-blocked-palestinian-activist-mahmoud-khalils-deportation-is-an-observant-jew/
The 50's, the good old white men club when married women couldn't work or opening a bank account without their owner permission.
Happy Days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VijD3WjREgw
Caucasoid heaven.
‘Caucasoid he was a caucasoid
Happier than you and me
Caucasoid he was a caucasoid
And it determined what he could see’
I hated this show* and this song, still does. DM did too.
* The rare glimpses I could see when not in boardschool and when we were in a place where the antenna could function.
Sit on it. : )
*Picture of confused dog*
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sit%20on%20it
The show was very different in its first two seasons (back when it was shot on film). In Season 3, the show took the emphasis off the Cunninghams and put it on Fonzie. The producers basically reinvented the show by switching from a series about a 50s family and going for broad comedy instead. From the 3rd season on, the show was shot in front of a live audience.
The 5th season got weird. The show's ratings started to decline and the cast started meeting aliens (Robin Williams as Mork). What really sent it on a downhill spiral was the now-infamous episode where Fonzie literally jumped a shark on water skis (still wearing his leather jacket!). Ever hear the phrase "Jump the shark?" This is where it originated.
After that, they started introducing new characters that were completely anachronistic (long feathered hair, half-t-shirts, etc.). How it made it to 11 seasons is beyond me. The final episode had Joanie Cunningham (Erin Moran, who died at 56) and Chachi Arcola (played by the Scott Baio) getting married and Fonzie adopting an orphan.
I mostly remember the story of the older brother who went up stairs and apparently into the crack in Amy Poole's wall.
Amy Poole?
Yes, shows like the Brady Bunch, (once the kids aged up) would somehow add an obnoxious child to improve ratings. I hated that and always stopped watching if I hadn't done so already. Always hated the Brady Bunch, anyway.
Cousin Oliver. Yech.
*Blink rapidly*
TMI? :)
Lest we forget bans on Muslims, and immigrants from south of the border. And don't forget Head-of-Household voting.
"If federal, statem and local governments embraced a kind of symbolic preference for Christianity, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal."
Europe from 4th century to 21th. Some need history books thrown at them.
As it comes to that whole "symbolic preference" business, they already have embraced that in the form of "ceremonial deism." The catch is that ceremonial deism is nothing more than poorly disguised Christianity which has been sanctioned by the government, from "In God We Trust" on the money and courthouses to the Bladensburg Cross.
It's smoke and mirrors, designed to obfuscate what they are doing and their ultimate goals, and it's working.
No, no, no .... we're not throwing history books, that's what bibles are for!
:-)
And anyway, you can't actually read a history book, when it's in midflight.
They are a wilfully lost cause.
https://www.zentaur.org/memes/not_a_weapon.gif
I want to pick up on one line of his, that a 'return*' to a society as desired by the christian nationalists would be 'no big deal'. Of course it would not be a big deal - for him! It is much much easier to be in favour of discrimination when you're going to be part of the 'in-crowd'! As a white, wealthy, articulate man he is unlikely ever to be at the receiving end of the planned discrimination.
He'll be ok. He's unlikely ever to be a client of a crisis pregnancy centre, where a woman is being forced to sit through bible classes to obtain some supplies and support (food stamps and housing payments having been cut). He's unlikely to be hemorrhaging where the only hospital for miles does not have Mife/Miso handily available or refusing D&Cs thus forcing him to go septic. He'll not be refused viagra unlike his daughter who'll be unable to get a coil.
Yeah, right, he'll be ok.
He believes in the conservative party line: I got mine, fuck you.
Indeed that is the only creed they all have in common.
That could change if/when his own wife and daughter experience problems with their reproductive organs and had to go to the hospital for treatment.
I read an article or blogpost written by a clinic manager or doctor (can't remember the details, it was quite a while ago), where they were writing that one of the fine upstanding ladies in the community was coming in for her or her daughter's procedure via the back door and out of hours and the following day they were back out front protesting against abortions and shouting at the women coming into the clinic for their healthcare.
Because they needed their abortion, unlike those other sluts who just wanted to murder babies.
Worked for a clinic doing escort duty can confirm. or they walk over and give you a letter apologizing for being there, but the church makes them.
There are enough people like him that would rather loose an already existing person than lose a fetus.
Isn't there actually such a scene in 'The Cardinal'? I dimly remember, that the doctors were asking him for permission to intervene as the pregnancy was killing his sister. He refused. (I think they might have both died, it's a looooong time since I read that book.)
I have never seen that so I don't know.
Well maybe the one thing that hasn't changed much since the '50s is well-off, high status people find their way around rules like that.
No, they just go trap a younger one, who is too naive to know why she should never be alone with Rapey McRaperson.
He just means its not a threat to him, personally.
So far.
Just wait. Christians are a rapacious bunch. When all the nonbelievers are out of the way, they'll target each other.
Christians love to persecute each other as much as they do non-Christians. The key founders (Deists, mostly) knew this and kept church and state well apart.
But the leopards won't eat 𝘩𝘪𝘴 face!
He'll go on thinking that even when he can see those leopards are looking at him and licking their chops.
They will probably have half his face digested before he realizes something may be wrong.
Preach it! True. True.
You have not spent much time in church then? They start in on each other, well before targeting others.
The bible contradicts itself, so they (we) trained in quoting the bible to prove each other wrong, while still believing (believed) that "the bible is the inerrant word of God". Which even it dioes not claim. (I know the verses that could be taken that way, but that does nor line up with the history of the canon.)
Yes. The cognitive dissonance does indeed drive one mad.
“You have not spent much time in church then?”
Not since I was 8. Thank God. ;)
While I was in Vietnam, I read the bible cover-to-cover in 4 different translations. It cemented my atheism.
Its a common phenomenom. Atheists have bothered the read the bible. Christians (churchians) jusr read bits of it.
I tend to get along with the atheists, better, though i am not an atheist's elbow.
But i am autistic and adhd, which does not go down too well in a church.
Oh, and a woman.
Yeah.
They dont like that, either.
I used to be a good little misogynist. But now i just..
Cant.
You are welcome here! You will find a lot of us here who know the bibble better than most Christians. Nogodz is our Cherry picker king!
D'awwww. 🙂
Indeed I had some woman bible-splain to me about Leviticus, I replied I was aware it was stolen by the xtians to give their bible more history, she said my reply was condescending. (mind you she gave a wall of text defending Leviticus) I wished Nogodz was available to explain it to her.
Even the books of the Bible are arranged out of order in many spots.
While it is true they start in on each other before targeting anyone else, it is everyone outside the church walls that are first targeted for bloodshed when the take over the power of the state. The heretics aren't burned until the apostates are gone.
Church history can get pretty grim.
Calvin killed a hundred thousand fellow Christians for not agreeing with him.
And he remains the biggest protestant theologian. Heinous, evil man.
But despite growing up calvinist, i never knew anything of his atrocities, done in God's name, until wikipedia.
I have kept what Jesus taught. Chucked paul, renounced calvin, and try to love people.
I have become very simple and far more human.
One time Calvin killed a man just for calling him a hypocrite.
That got Jesus into trouble, too.
But calvin did not care for His teachings.
Martin Luther would probably take exception to your opinion of Calvin, but he was also an evil man who flamed the hatred of Jewish people in Northern Europe for centuries.
Though yeah, i did describe the mass murderer as evil and heinous. Is that an opinion?
Stating historical facts is not an opinion.
Yup.
Lemme just run all that through the 'ol Bullshit-to-English translator:
"𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 me, 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘸𝘢𝘺; 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘪𝘨 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴. 𝘊𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘺 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘱𝘴 quietly, 𝘴𝘰 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶?!"
...𝑙𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ ... 𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑚...
Ummm, has he ever been to a conservative church on the 4th of July? Flag waving jingoistic pro military rhetoric abounds then. Does he not remember the Crusades? How controversial it was when Dubya called the War on Terror a Crusade? 𝘖𝘯𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘴!?
Oldie, but a goodie.
https://snarkynomad.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Explain-the-Difference.png
Yeah, the consewertives on the TBT forums got pissed at me every time I pointed out that they and the Taliban, ISIS, et al were two sides of the same coin.
Shall we also mention that Mosaic Law and Shariah look remarkably similar? Seems I just did.
Funny that conservative Christians are stricter about it than most religious American Jews.
Fact check: True.
Oooh, ooh, I know!
The one on the left is exposing her 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴, that hussy!
And her hair!
Separated at birth?
Difference? WHAT difference? [sorry, I HAD to say that!]
The one on the left is wearing blue, the one on the right is wearing green?
Picky, picky! 😁
One is bent on eradicating our secular constitution in favor of a new religious order, the other is vaccinated.
The Duggars gun retreat weekends, where they practice shooting and tell them they are an "army for God"
“minus the racism and minus the sexism”
Read your bible, Hall. The racism and sexism are baked in.
I'm shocked a straight, white, cis Christian man would find Christian nationalism to be no big deal.
So stunned that I'm reaching for my smelling salts.
And will you take a fainting couch with your burger ?
Do I also get a side of clutching pearls?
You did order the combo, right?
If I can take them from Aria's greedy paws.
I don't see any pearls.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8086f51b19afb27d09da5c84c1f12d6b3b9b1cb65938d8ee9c212e0303aeff1e.gif
“Your winnings, Sir.”
Made me laugh - great film!
The weirdest thing is that in the light your description of him is completely accurate. But as soon as the lights dim in the bathroom at the rest stop by exit 4, only two of those three adjectives are correct.
"Swedish electric car maker Polestar is offering Tesla owners 5000 Euros to break up with Elon and buy a new Polestar 3. The campaign is called “Tesla Conquest” and the number of orders placed has been “incredible.”
Who knew overpriced cheap cars huckstered by a avowed Nazi could be easily conquered. Don't know what they're going to do with all those used Teslas though, scrounge for spare parts?
The way they break down/fail and get recalled, the parts are needed. Teslas are the only vehicles that require "car wash" mode added.
❤️❤️❤️❤️
It amazes me how many people think that simply forcing kids to recite prayers in school is going to "return us to the 1950s". The '50s happened because we had come out of a major war where our infrastructure was not destroyed. We had the factories and the tooling to supply the world with manpower, materials, and know-how to rebuild their infrastructures. Additionally, patriotism was at an all-time high and so were tax rates. We were in a boom-time and our government could've used that time to fund our government forever. Instead, they squandered our future. But yea, let's go back to a post-war era with a 91% top tax rate. I'm sure Elon won't have a problem with that.
He's probably thinking of crime rates, among other things, which were at an all-time low in the 1950s. (Maybe...that's what a prosperous middle class with a comparatively high buying power can do.) The homicide rate in 2024 (7.5 per 100,000) was indeed higher than 1959 (5.9), but that number was up around 10 for 1960s-90s, so we're actually looking in good shape and much more similar to 50's era than we have been in the past 30-40 years. All without any prayer in schools! Also, I'm guessing some of that low 50's number was due to less reporting not actually less crime. Lynchings and wife-fell-down-stairs sorts of violence I'm guessing went largely unreported, uninvestigated, and unprosecuted.
Religion has ALWAYS been an impediment to progress. Something with zero evidence, oppression, intimidation and absolute rights and wrongs, can never be a good thing. Christian Nationalist are merely the extreme end helped out by the continued privileging of Christianity in US & Europe & Islam in the Middle East. Mono-theistic worship is a great set up gor the Fascist-minded controlfreaks.