WEEK IN REVIEW: Sen. Lindsey Graham failed to expose a religious double-standard
Ketanji Brown Jackson, the IRS, Hillsong scandals, and more!
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This week marked the tenth anniversary of the 2012 Reason Rally, arguably the largest gathering of atheists in American history. You may be wondering: What’s the guy who helped lead that event doing these days?
Oh… Oh no.During the second day of her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had to put up with the expected barrage of Republicans’ predictable and theatrical questions, designed more for the FOX News coverage than learning anything useful about the nominee.
But it was the questions about Jackson’s faith from Sen. Lindsey Graham that were most concerning for the church/state separation crowd. In an attempt to get revenge for Democrats calling into question the religious beliefs of Amy Coney Barrett, he asked a series of personal questions about Jackson’s religious beliefs.
The problem with that logic is that Democrats had good reason to question whether Barrett’s faith would impact her decision making. Republicans have no reason to think Jackson will do the same. I explained all this in more detail here.At least the current administration isn’t ignoring us entirely…
Pastor Ken Peters, the head of the Christian nationalist “Patriot Church” in Knoxville, Tennessee, endorsed a political candidate during Sunday’s service… while bragging about how it was perfectly legal for him to do so because his church wasn’t subject to the IRS restrictions that other churches must follow.
Pastor Ken Peters of "Patriot Church" endorsed a Republican candidate from his pulpit on Sunday. He added that he was allowed to do this because his church found a workaround for IRS rules. He has no idea what he's talking about. onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/a…He has no clue what he’s talking about. He absolutely is subject to the IRS rules whether he likes it or not. And by ignoring those rules, he’s actually putting his congregation in danger if they ever get audited.
North Carolina’s Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is a Christian nationalist who says of abortion, once a woman is pregnant, “it’s not [her] body anymore.” His campaign website also made clear that, “As a Christian, Mark will honor the sanctity of life.”
Nowhere on his website or in his speeches, however, does he bring up the fact that he paid for an abortion when that was the most convenient option for him.Kim Davis —remember her? —still isn’t out of the woods for refusing to sign marriage certificates for gay couples even when that was her job as a government official. A judge ruled that she violated couples’ constitutional rights. Soon we’ll find out if she’ll pay a literal price for her Christian bigotry.
The biggest church scandal of the week involved Brian Houston, the head of the global megachurch Hillsong. While other Hillsong-affiliated pastors have been subjects of their own scandals, Houston’s biggest problem had been covering up the sexual abuse committed by his late father. (He’s going to trial for that later this year.)
We learned this week, however, that Houston was also involved in two additional scandals with him at the center. In one case, he texted inappropriate sexual messages to a staff member (and blamed sleeping pills). In another, he spent 40 minutes inside the hotel room of a woman who wasn’t his wife (and blamed anti-anxiety meds). No matter your reaction to those incidents, both violate the church’s own policies.
Houston initially said he was stepping down through the end of 2022 to focus on his trial, but a couple of days ago, he announced his resignation. Good riddance.A tiny church in Portland, Oregon was already accused of harboring leaders who were sexually abusive and used members for free labor. Now the plaintiff has amended her complaint to cast a wider net. She says more leaders and companies were aware of the problems, benefitting from the abuse.
There are sore losers in elections… and then there’s Bianca Gracia.
Well done, team.
A preschool teacher at a private Christian school in California taught her students an anti-Biden chant, filmed it, and uploaded it to an internal school app that parents can access. Before the school realized what she had done and removed the footage, one parent captured the video and shared it with the media. (Not all heroes wear capes.)
The scandal involving Ginny Thomas (Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife) and former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows involves Jesus. But I’m sure you already guessed that.
Jaw-dropping story and don't miss the Christian nationalism: "[T]he White House chief of staff invoked God to describe the effort to overturn the election. 'This is a fight of good versus evil,' Meadows wrote. 'Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs.'"Ginni Thomas urged Mark Meadows to overturn the 2020 election by any means necessary—while her husband was ruling on cases attempting to overturn the election. A truly extraordinary level of corruption. https://t.co/Nyf2q1T9mo https://t.co/2L73ERgCeS
Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DCThe Babylon Bee has been booted from Twitter after refusing to back down from the only joke their writers know.
I still haven’t received a good response to this. I don’t think I ever will.
I’m not sure what’s worse: The location of the guns or the Christian worship music playing in the background.
I suppose this counts as good news: After ten years of running a free summer camp open to the community, the Dare County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina will no longer make it “faith-based” as it had been in the past. It took a letter from the Freedom From Religion Foundation and complaints from members of the community to make it happen, but Sheriff J.D. ‘Doug’ Doughtie said publicly that he didn’t want to miss out on “children that had different beliefs or no belief at all.”
It’s the right thing to do, and it avoids a potential legal conflict. Sure, he made it sound like he had a revelation instead of admitting the legal pressure got to him, but I’ll take it.Share this with your local Sunday school teacher:
A new analysis from American Atheists and Secular Woman finds that non-religious women suffer "more discrimination because of their nonreligious beliefs in nearly every area of their lives." Check out the full report here.
If fundamentalist Christians are right, Satan sounds amazing:
It’s bad enough that some lawmakers are trying to pass “Don’t Say Gay” bills to make sure kids are never taught about sexual orientation or gender identity. But when Rep. Dodie Horton, a Republican legislator in Louisiana, filed one of these bills, she literally credited her pastor for it: “I talked to my pastor and he challenged me and said, ‘we definitely need to do this.'”
If the head of a cult says it’s not a cult, then we should just take her word for it.
My favorite thing about “classical liberals” who side with Republicans is that Republicans hate them too.
This chart says more about the problems with organized religion than the appeal of secularism, but I don’t think these numbers have plateaued yet…
I mentioned last week that there was a $100 million campaign for Jesus. Just Jesus. This video explains the campaign and why I think it’ll ultimately fail:
Hell sounds preferable to an afterlife forever surrounded by this guy.
I know what I want for Easter.
Good luck with your future governor, Arkansas:
Cancer will be cured soon, says Christian “prophetess” Kat Kerr, who failed to ask God why He won’t cure it right now…
And now for your weekly dose of fundie insanity:
Speaking of hate-preachers, I spoke with Seth Andrews about these New Independent Fundamentalist Baptists for his podcast:
One last thing about those preachers: They’re NOT on the fringes of the conservative movement.
This week in Atheist Bible Study? Leviticus 21. After all those rules calling for the death penalty, it's kind of nice to have a section where we just talk about rules for priests... where murder isn't one of the consequences.
Finally: The Catholic Church needs to come collect its boy.
That’s it for this week! Stay safe. Get vaccinated. Get boosted. Please become a full subscriber or share this with someone who may enjoy it. It would mean a lot to me :)