The United States enjoys as much religious freedom as can be found on earth, and I will never understand why that isn't enough for the religious right who is driven to force their belief system on everyone. Nor will I ever understand the people who delegate their thinking to the clergy. Doug Wilson is putting forward the gospel of toxic masculinity which appeals to the worst kind of men, and the women who marry them.
As a teacher, I certainly am not going to tell my students that Christ nonsense is actual history, nor will I traumatize them with biblical propaganda. There are better myths and fables we can read, like the crow and the cheese. Take my opinion with a block of salt though. For context into what a horrible type of adult I am, when my son was in first grade, I got an angry call from his teacher. He had told his classmates Santa wasn’t real. I said I was sorry the kids were sad, but I choose not to lie to my child. Just like I’m not going to hide from my students the fact that some kids have two dads or that they deserve to be addressed by the names and pronouns they choose.
So ... Doug Wilson has delusions about how to turn the United States into a Christian nation ... which is weird. I mean, how many bible-believing bimbos already think it IS one? And those ideas of his ARE delusions, too, gang. Does Doug genuinely think that the Apostles' Creed will be voted on by a super-majority of the House and Senate, then approved by 38 states? Considering the current makeup of the Supreme Court, his idea about their declaration is somewhat more likely, but not by much. As for the concept of the president's statement, does anyone here see Biden doing such a thing? I can just hear his response to such a suggestion: MALARKEY!!!
There would be a further reaction, too: from the ACLU, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, American Atheists, shoot, even the Jewish Defense League and the Council on American-Islamic Relations will be screaming bloody murder, never mind thousands if not millions of ordinary citizens who actually care about State - Church separation.
Ugh. The first time I spoke publicly as an atheist was many years ago on a dais with the infamous slavery apologist, Douglas Wilson in front of 600 right-wing, fundamentalist, young-Earth-creationist Evangelicals at a Christian college in my home town. Every similar public engagement since then has been easy and pleasant by comparison.
I have to say that he has changed. He's gotten worse.
In the ensuing years, American Christianity has accelerated as the Incredible Shrinking Religion, mostly because of their own bigoted and backward policies and behaviors. Seeing their grip on the minds of the populace slipping, the remaining leaders are steadily shifting their strategies and tactics from attraction and persuasion to coercion and compulsion. It's a vicious cycle, and vicious is the correct adjective on more than one level. Their attempts to stop the hemorrhaging just drive more people out, especially the young, and as they fail and their numbers dwindle, they double-down on those very same tactics.
We're in the midst of a religious cold war, and it's going to get hotter before it's over. Stay strong.
[Wilson then argued things would be way better for everyone—“way better than what we are dealing with now”—if we just took some key steps toward effectively declaring the U.S. a Christian Nation.]
How did that work out in Europe?
Let's ask the Catholics in England under Protestant reign. Or the Hugonauts in France under Catholic reign? The Donatists in Rome? Gnostics?
At what point has melding Church and State ever yielded a more loving and "godly" populace?
American history...
As the Native Americans how Christian America treated them.
Ask the African slaves how "godly" their masters were.
Ask the victims of racial terrorism in the South how pious and loving their persecutors were who were Christians who attended church every week.
Ask the people who were lynched and butchered by folks who put on their Sunday finest the next day and sang about how great God was. Ask the people of Tulsa or Rosewood or dozens of other neighborhoods whose Christian neighbors acts of loving their neighbors meant burning down their homes and murdering them.
Ask the civil rights workers who disappeared or were beaten or were blasted with hoses or tortured or had dogs set upon them for demanding equality.
Ask the last prophet of America, Martin Luther King Jr.
At what point did official Christianity make men better? When did it stay the hand of violence against people considered inferior by the ones with power? When has state Christianity ever brought an act of good to people without a field of blood brought in the other hand?
Let's ask the ghosts of six million Jews if their Christian neighbors loved them. Or the millions of others who were murdered in death camps in the span of a few short years.
Blood at every turn and the hypocrites dismiss the past and the past victims and say it wasn't true Christianity that did this while they do the same damnable things their ideological and sometimes biological ancestors did.
Ye adorn the graves of the prophets while plotting to make more dead martyrs.
The only proof we really need that theocracy is a dreadful idea, which would spell disaster for any country consumed by it, is that the loudest advocates for it are invariably the absolute worst fucking people alive.
I lived in Moscow, Idaho for about 12 years, back when Christ Church was relatively new. I knew Doug Wilson, who would come by the local newspaper where I worked. Nice guy, very personable. Not dumb, has a sense of humor. He has stuck doggedly to his lifelong goal of leading a cult and taking over the local government. Women are absolutely secondary in his universe. Children have no rights, including no right not to be sexually molested. He has way more power now than he did back then (1970s-80s). He fits right into the current crazy ethos of my home state. Glad I moved to California.
The experiment has been tried countless times, is still being tried, and it fails. The puritan colonies were not 'way better' than the modern US, in fact things like crime rates, starvation, death from disease etc. are way down now as compared to the 17th century. Illegal Mormon offshoot towns are not 'way better,' they have high rates of violence and unemployment and often survive off of state and federal welfare. As do many orthodox insular Jewish communities. Texas is not 'way better' than Vermont. The branch Davidians were not 'way better' than mainstream US society. Clearly when it comes to women's rights, your 900 person community is not 'way better' than the non-fundie community it lives in (and I'd guess you have other problems in spades, too). Statistically, there is no difference between the crime rates of Christians vs. non-Christians. And so on, and so on.
Prove this 'way better' claim at the small scale before anyone will take it seriously for the large scale. Bet you can't...at least, not without pouring tons of money into social support for that community. Because THAT is the key to lowering crime, poverty, etc - not your faith. Attributing to Christianity the success of some massively well-funded community is much like watching the doctor perform a successful operation and then thanking God for the result.
Religions requiring a helping hand from the government because they can't do it on their own and their god doesn't intercede on their behalf are what Deist key founder Benjamin Franklin referred to as bad religions.
"Wilson then argued things would be way better for everyone"
Easy, peasy. It works the same way with Covid stats, nobody die of it if we don't put it as the cause of death on certificates. The same way, things are better if nobody is allowed to complain.
"Later in the video, he said he could be pushed away from Christian Nationalism [...] or were antisemitic."
This one is easier. He just have to proclaim* the men in the following links are not christians, that way NastCs are not antisemitic
* If there is still doubt, he can either expell protesters from his church by saying they alallowed their wives to choose between doing the dishes or washing the clothes. Or claims that any video where he was antisemitic was doctored by Commatheitanists.
Thinks we'd be better off as a Christian Nation, does he?
Tell that to the students of Oikos University, a Christian College in Oakland, CA. Back in 2012, there was a mass shooting that left 7 dead and 3 wounded. The shooter, a man named One L. Goh, was a former student. IOW, a Christian.
Oh, but of course, Wilson would dub him a "bad actor" and steer clear of him. Typical Christian. Refuse to take any sort of responsibility for the actions of a "brother in Christ." And where was Wilson's god? Did the all-knowing deity of the bible not know what Goh was up to? Why didn't he cause Goh's gun to jam? Did the biblical god WANT this to happen? It would certainly explain why he ignored the prayers of the students and teachers.
Or maybe...just maybe...there is no god and this lunatic (who had disciplinary issues and was asked to leave the school a few months before the shootings) had free reign to deal death.
This is the reason the Founding Fathers set up the Constitution the way they did - they lived under the Brits who imposed The Church of England and all the non-Anglican sects who fled to the colonies were fleeing harassment back home. They knew what having an official religion would do and so do these creeps. The women in his movement are nothing but domestic slaves and baby factories. It would be interesting to see data on the death stats of women in these cults compared to women in the general population.
The United States enjoys as much religious freedom as can be found on earth, and I will never understand why that isn't enough for the religious right who is driven to force their belief system on everyone. Nor will I ever understand the people who delegate their thinking to the clergy. Doug Wilson is putting forward the gospel of toxic masculinity which appeals to the worst kind of men, and the women who marry them.
As a teacher, I certainly am not going to tell my students that Christ nonsense is actual history, nor will I traumatize them with biblical propaganda. There are better myths and fables we can read, like the crow and the cheese. Take my opinion with a block of salt though. For context into what a horrible type of adult I am, when my son was in first grade, I got an angry call from his teacher. He had told his classmates Santa wasn’t real. I said I was sorry the kids were sad, but I choose not to lie to my child. Just like I’m not going to hide from my students the fact that some kids have two dads or that they deserve to be addressed by the names and pronouns they choose.
So ... Doug Wilson has delusions about how to turn the United States into a Christian nation ... which is weird. I mean, how many bible-believing bimbos already think it IS one? And those ideas of his ARE delusions, too, gang. Does Doug genuinely think that the Apostles' Creed will be voted on by a super-majority of the House and Senate, then approved by 38 states? Considering the current makeup of the Supreme Court, his idea about their declaration is somewhat more likely, but not by much. As for the concept of the president's statement, does anyone here see Biden doing such a thing? I can just hear his response to such a suggestion: MALARKEY!!!
There would be a further reaction, too: from the ACLU, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, American Atheists, shoot, even the Jewish Defense League and the Council on American-Islamic Relations will be screaming bloody murder, never mind thousands if not millions of ordinary citizens who actually care about State - Church separation.
Blowback? By the shit-ton!
Ugh. The first time I spoke publicly as an atheist was many years ago on a dais with the infamous slavery apologist, Douglas Wilson in front of 600 right-wing, fundamentalist, young-Earth-creationist Evangelicals at a Christian college in my home town. Every similar public engagement since then has been easy and pleasant by comparison.
I have to say that he has changed. He's gotten worse.
In the ensuing years, American Christianity has accelerated as the Incredible Shrinking Religion, mostly because of their own bigoted and backward policies and behaviors. Seeing their grip on the minds of the populace slipping, the remaining leaders are steadily shifting their strategies and tactics from attraction and persuasion to coercion and compulsion. It's a vicious cycle, and vicious is the correct adjective on more than one level. Their attempts to stop the hemorrhaging just drive more people out, especially the young, and as they fail and their numbers dwindle, they double-down on those very same tactics.
We're in the midst of a religious cold war, and it's going to get hotter before it's over. Stay strong.
[Wilson then argued things would be way better for everyone—“way better than what we are dealing with now”—if we just took some key steps toward effectively declaring the U.S. a Christian Nation.]
How did that work out in Europe?
Let's ask the Catholics in England under Protestant reign. Or the Hugonauts in France under Catholic reign? The Donatists in Rome? Gnostics?
At what point has melding Church and State ever yielded a more loving and "godly" populace?
American history...
As the Native Americans how Christian America treated them.
Ask the African slaves how "godly" their masters were.
Ask the victims of racial terrorism in the South how pious and loving their persecutors were who were Christians who attended church every week.
Ask the people who were lynched and butchered by folks who put on their Sunday finest the next day and sang about how great God was. Ask the people of Tulsa or Rosewood or dozens of other neighborhoods whose Christian neighbors acts of loving their neighbors meant burning down their homes and murdering them.
Ask the civil rights workers who disappeared or were beaten or were blasted with hoses or tortured or had dogs set upon them for demanding equality.
Ask the last prophet of America, Martin Luther King Jr.
At what point did official Christianity make men better? When did it stay the hand of violence against people considered inferior by the ones with power? When has state Christianity ever brought an act of good to people without a field of blood brought in the other hand?
Let's ask the ghosts of six million Jews if their Christian neighbors loved them. Or the millions of others who were murdered in death camps in the span of a few short years.
Blood at every turn and the hypocrites dismiss the past and the past victims and say it wasn't true Christianity that did this while they do the same damnable things their ideological and sometimes biological ancestors did.
Ye adorn the graves of the prophets while plotting to make more dead martyrs.
The only proof we really need that theocracy is a dreadful idea, which would spell disaster for any country consumed by it, is that the loudest advocates for it are invariably the absolute worst fucking people alive.
Why do Christians like Wilson hate America?
I lived in Moscow, Idaho for about 12 years, back when Christ Church was relatively new. I knew Doug Wilson, who would come by the local newspaper where I worked. Nice guy, very personable. Not dumb, has a sense of humor. He has stuck doggedly to his lifelong goal of leading a cult and taking over the local government. Women are absolutely secondary in his universe. Children have no rights, including no right not to be sexually molested. He has way more power now than he did back then (1970s-80s). He fits right into the current crazy ethos of my home state. Glad I moved to California.
Evangelical Christians are never happy unless everyone else is either as miserable as they are or are also Evangelical Christians.
“𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑛𝑜𝑤”—𝑖𝑓 𝑤𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑘𝑒𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑝𝑠 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈.𝑆. 𝑎 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛.
The experiment has been tried countless times, is still being tried, and it fails. The puritan colonies were not 'way better' than the modern US, in fact things like crime rates, starvation, death from disease etc. are way down now as compared to the 17th century. Illegal Mormon offshoot towns are not 'way better,' they have high rates of violence and unemployment and often survive off of state and federal welfare. As do many orthodox insular Jewish communities. Texas is not 'way better' than Vermont. The branch Davidians were not 'way better' than mainstream US society. Clearly when it comes to women's rights, your 900 person community is not 'way better' than the non-fundie community it lives in (and I'd guess you have other problems in spades, too). Statistically, there is no difference between the crime rates of Christians vs. non-Christians. And so on, and so on.
Prove this 'way better' claim at the small scale before anyone will take it seriously for the large scale. Bet you can't...at least, not without pouring tons of money into social support for that community. Because THAT is the key to lowering crime, poverty, etc - not your faith. Attributing to Christianity the success of some massively well-funded community is much like watching the doctor perform a successful operation and then thanking God for the result.
I think Alabama should just take it one step further and ban all books.
https://www.al.com/news/2024/04/alabama-house-approves-bill-criminalizing-librarians-if-they-dont-remove-obscene-material.html
stupid fascist assholes
Religions requiring a helping hand from the government because they can't do it on their own and their god doesn't intercede on their behalf are what Deist key founder Benjamin Franklin referred to as bad religions.
"Wilson then argued things would be way better for everyone"
Easy, peasy. It works the same way with Covid stats, nobody die of it if we don't put it as the cause of death on certificates. The same way, things are better if nobody is allowed to complain.
"Later in the video, he said he could be pushed away from Christian Nationalism [...] or were antisemitic."
This one is easier. He just have to proclaim* the men in the following links are not christians, that way NastCs are not antisemitic
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/divisive-pastor-john-hagee-criticism-role-march-israel-rcna125346
https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/new-ifb-pastors-promote-anti-lgbtq-bigotry-and-antisemitism-annual-conference
* If there is still doubt, he can either expell protesters from his church by saying they alallowed their wives to choose between doing the dishes or washing the clothes. Or claims that any video where he was antisemitic was doctored by Commatheitanists.
Thinks we'd be better off as a Christian Nation, does he?
Tell that to the students of Oikos University, a Christian College in Oakland, CA. Back in 2012, there was a mass shooting that left 7 dead and 3 wounded. The shooter, a man named One L. Goh, was a former student. IOW, a Christian.
Oh, but of course, Wilson would dub him a "bad actor" and steer clear of him. Typical Christian. Refuse to take any sort of responsibility for the actions of a "brother in Christ." And where was Wilson's god? Did the all-knowing deity of the bible not know what Goh was up to? Why didn't he cause Goh's gun to jam? Did the biblical god WANT this to happen? It would certainly explain why he ignored the prayers of the students and teachers.
Or maybe...just maybe...there is no god and this lunatic (who had disciplinary issues and was asked to leave the school a few months before the shootings) had free reign to deal death.
This is the reason the Founding Fathers set up the Constitution the way they did - they lived under the Brits who imposed The Church of England and all the non-Anglican sects who fled to the colonies were fleeing harassment back home. They knew what having an official religion would do and so do these creeps. The women in his movement are nothing but domestic slaves and baby factories. It would be interesting to see data on the death stats of women in these cults compared to women in the general population.
In God We Trust. This phrase should invalidate US Currency throughout the world. And yet...