Be terrified and fight like hell.

 Pastor John Pavlovitz: “I’ve been a pastor in the church for over two decades, much of that in predominantly white churches in the American South.

I’ve spent countless hours in church staff meetings and men’s Bible studies and youth pastor conferences.

I’ve stayed connected on social media with thousands of people still there in those churches. I read what they share and post and amplify and I know how they think and what they believe.

I need you to understand something and I say it without any hyperbole: white Evangelicals need to be stopped, now.

If the 2022 midterms elections allow Republicans to gain control of Congress, Conservative Christians will decimate this nation, and LGBTQ people, Muslims, women, people of color, and non-Christians will never have equality under the law again. We will all be at their mercy—and they will no longer have use for mercy.

This is not alarmist, sky-is-falling histrionics, it is the clear and sober forecast from someone who knows these people better than anyone. Over the last decade and a half, as my theology shifted and my beliefs grew more and more progressive, I’ve been a kind of undercover Liberal in an increasingly extremist movement, that while once relegated to minor fringe noisemakers is now at the precipice of Roman Empire-level power. They are less than two years away from having a dominance that they will wield violently and not relinquish.

I watched it all unfold from the inside:

I was at a North Carolina megachurch when Obama was elected and I saw the shift take place firsthand. I saw the fear slowly being ratcheted up and the agenda become solidified and the prejudices leveraged.

I was speaking regularly at the Billy Graham headquarters when Fox News reporters and Republicans like Sarah Palin started walking the halls with frequency.

I saw the messages at pastor’s conferences grow more incendiary and urgent, and heard the supremacist dog whistles become louder and more frequent.

While many decent people around this nation celebrated the progress of a black president and the many civil and human rights victories and gradually let down their guard—the white Conservative church set off the alarms and prepared for a holy war.

Yet, they were still a largely powerless, dying dinosaur until 2016, when Donald Trump acquired the presidency and gave the Evangelicals the perfect amoral partner to serve as the biggest bully pulpit they’ve ever had. Combine that with a fragmented Left, a general fatigue by the larger population, a ceremonial victory in Congress (thanks to Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema), and Republican attacks on voters’ rights— and we are now a hair’s breadth from the subjugation of diverse humanity here.

These are not followers of Jesus despite the trappings and window dressing. They are Jesus-less extremists: blind zealots for nothing but power. They have been conditioned by decades of polluted theology and FoxNews alternative facts to see diversity as a threat, to see progress as attacks on America, and to interpret more people being treated with dignity as oppression of white people.

Trust me when I tell you that we won’t recover from the theocracy Evangelicals are constructing once it is established. If we fail in 2022, they will have a political power that will render every election null and void, and we will never have a voice again in our lifetimes.

Women will lose autonomy over their own bodies.

LGBTQ people will have the rights to marry and adopt taken away.

People of color will be fully squeezed out of the electoral process.

Immigrants will be denied access to opportunity and refuge here.

These are not creative projections. They are precisely what Evangelicals have repeatedly stated as their intentions, and they’re closer than they’ve ever been to having a rubber stamp.

We can still stop it, though.

We just need a unity and coordination that transcends theirs.

We need a sustained, passionate, dedicated defense of humanity that rivals their relentless assaults on it.

I hear many people say they’re terrified, but being terrified alone doesn’t do anything but help these people.

Be terrified and get angry.

Be terrified and get busy.

Be terrified and go to work.

Be terrified and fight like hell.

I wish more decent people in America remembered they are among the vast majority instead of acting as if they are helpless victims of Republican Christians. We could defeat them, and we need to. We just need to stop lamenting how much damage they are doing and start doing something to oppose them.

We’ve seen this play out throughout history and we know how it ends. We know what unchecked religious extremist is capable of and we know the cost of the silence and inaction of good people. We also know what people are capable of when they refuse to accept fascism and white supremacy cloaked in the Bible and wrapped in the flag, when they fight for something inherently good together.

As someone who knows just how much these Christians have lost the plot of their faith tradition, believe me when I tell you that they cannot be allowed to steer this nation. It will not end well for the disparate people who call it home or who one day wish to.

Love and equity and diversity are in the balance.

It’s time we made a choice.

It may be the last one we get.”

Pastor John Pavlovitz

Republicans on the loose...

South Dakota teeters on the edge of an actual theocracy.

Doubting Clarence Thomas.

How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us

Scott Walker is a Kochhead.... And more from Jim Hightower:

The Birchite billionaire Koch brothers and Walker, their gubernatorial hatchet man in the Badger State, have unwittingly done a tremendous favor for our country's progressive movement. Thanks to them, America's workaday majority has been awakened. With eyes wide open, middle-class working folks everywhere now have their attention riveted on Wisconsin, where a plutocratic, autocratic conspiracy between uber-wealthy corporate elites and obsequious GOP politicos has raised its ugly head for all to see.

Boehner is against net neutrality. Is the man 'for' anything ... besides cutting taxes?

This answers that question...

Bumperstickers

This one has been around for a while:

Bryan of Why Now? found these:

You betcha!

(found via DB)

Welcome to Gilead Cat

Why on earth would God

Demand that there be only one way to find Him? With all the different cultures of man, all the different ways of seeing beauty, of expressing joy, of loving, why would there be only one way?

In the United States we have existed in a religious calm with thousands of different churches side by side for some time. This in itself is amazing. We have been spared the unsolvable quarrels over whose God is better by the Constitution and the separation of church and state. But not only are there some who insist that their way is the only way, all other religions are not only wrong but satanic.

There are fundamentalists who wish to change our Constitution. There are those who have tasted power, have been allowed into the Bush administration with the 'faith-based initiative programs', have received federal monies and have decided that now is the time to grab for more.

There are those who are working diligently to bring about the second coming, the rapture. If you go onto the rapture sites, you will see people rejoicing when Israel attack Lebanon, or bombed Syria. They are waiting with bated breath to see the world destroyed.

These are the people who attack education, evolution, and science. These are the people who are owners of Blackwater, the mercenary group. These are the people who have tried to make the Air Force Academy and the military a religious force. These are the people who have decided Iraq is the beginning to a religious war against Islam, a true crusade.

These are the people who wish to take over the government. They do not hear your demand for your right to live with or without religion. They do not consider your wishes for personal choice. They see themselves as righteous and spreading God's love throughout the world.

But what they are actually spreading is hate. Hatred of other religions. Hatred of other cultures. Hatred of history. Hatred of government. Hatred of individual thought.

What they hate most is having their plans for world domination foiled by people who watch their every move.

So say no to theocracy. Say no and say it loudly.

Say yes to religious freedom, to believe in whatever you so choose and to keep it your personal business.

God is love, and that is enough for the entire world and for everyone in it.

crossposted at Mock, Paper, Scissors

Coming to theaters near you!

Now you can get a real dose of intelligent design at the movies!

Shortly before he was to attend a screening in January of the documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” which is about alternatives to the theory of evolution, Roger Moore, a film critic for The Orlando Sentinel, learned that his invitation had been revoked by the film’s marketers.

“Well, you already invited me,” he recalled thinking at the time. “I’m going to go.”

So Mr. Moore traveled to a local megachurch and planted himself among a large group of pastors to watch the movie. In it, Ben Stein, the actor and economist (and regular contributor to The New York Times) interviews scientists and teachers who say that Darwinism gets too much emphasis in the classroom and that proponents of the theory of intelligent design are treated unfairly.

There were nondisclosure agreements to sign that day, but Mr. Moore did not, and proceeded to write perhaps the harshest review “Expelled” has received thus far. The film will open April 18, but has been screened several times privately for religious audiences. Mr. Moore deplored what he perceived as “loaded images, loaded rhetoric, few if any facts” and accused Mr. Stein of using a “Holocaust denier’s” tactics.

Which, of course, was exactly the reaction the moviemakers were hoping to avoid by keeping mainstream critics out.

Here is part of Roger Moore's excellent review:

That's the mnemonic device Stein came back to, time and again, last night in an Orlando screening of his new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It's a rabble-rouser of a doc that uses all manner of loaded images, loaded rhetoric, few if any facts and mockery of hand-picked "weirdo" scientists to attack those who, Stein claims, are stifling the Religious Right's efforts to inject intelligent design into science courses, science curricula and the national debate.

He was showing the movie to what he and the producers hoped would be a friendly, receptive audience of conservative Christian ministers at a conference at the Northland mega-church next to the dog track up in Longwood. They're marketing this movie, which they had said, earlier, they'd open in Feb. (now April) the same way other studios pitched The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, said Paul Lauer of Motive Entertainment, who introduced Stein.

In other words, a stealth campaign, out of the public eye, preaching to the choir to get the word out about the movie without anyone who isn't a true believer passing a discouraging judgment on it. Friendly words in the press only.

They postered the Orlando Sentinel with email invitations, then tried to withdraw the one they sent to me. No dice. They also passed out non-disclosure "statement of confidentiality" agreements for people to sign. I didn't.

What are they hiding from you? Straight propaganda, to be sure. But again, if Michael Moore or Robert Greenwald can do it, why not Ben Stein?

It's a movie that uses animation, archival documentary footage, interviews with outraged "people of science" who want ID on the table, and "atheists" (scientists) who see all this as a step backward, all freighted to back up the argument that it stifled "freedom" when you refuse to consider the work of a supernatural being in America's science classes.

It just isn't particularly funny. Or the least bit convincing.

The religious fundamentalists may sound hilarious and silly with their bizarre attempts to hijack the word 'evolution' and deliberately distort the meaning of the word 'science'. They have no idea why scientists use the word 'theory' and the word 'proof'.

But theocracy is truly their focus and their intent. They have gotten close enough to power to think that they can take it. We need to be clear this is unacceptable and unAmerican. Mocking this dangerously silly movie is a necessary step.

crossposted at American Street

Update: Zeno of Halfway There has a wonderful ... review of Ben Stein's movie.

Exposing our worst side to our friends

The former British Ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray discovers what we have been fighting against for years in the United States... the insidious theocrats:

Last year I delivered a talk on Central Asia at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As I sat preparing my lecture, I had the television on low in my hotel room because I don't like complete silence. Gradually I found myself listening intently to an evangelical preacher, telling his TV congregation that they should not worry about casualties in Iraq because the Bible showed us that there had to be a great and bloody conflict in the Middle East before the Second Coming of Christ. So the more people who died in these wars, the closer we are to Jesus.

Now that message would be acceptable to very few people in the UK - just Tony Blair and his immediate friends, really. I related this astonishing thing I had heard to some American lecturers over lunch. They told me that at least a third of their students would believe this stuff. And this was Ann Arbor, not the Deep South. It is essential that we all wake up now to the fact that the US is a deeply disturbed and psychotic society, and by far the biggest danger to world peace.

Sorry, Mr. Murray. The fundamentalists were promised a seat at the high table by the Bush administration. As soon as we get a Democrat back in the White House, we will attempt to put them back in their cages. It won't be easy because they've tasted power and money and want more.

Update:


And Bush did it all just so he could get elected.

Don't let the laughter distract you,

Huckabee is someone we need to keep an eye on.

Sara of Orcinus writes:

Why Target the Southern Baptists?
Some have questioned my suggestion that if local progressives with limited resources need to do some triage, they should start by aiming their monitoring efforts at their neighborhood Southern Baptists. This recommendation was based mainly on their previous record: the SBC is the second-largest Christian denomination in the country after the Roman Catholic Church; yet they have demonstrated, over and over, a blithe willingness to break the law and abridge the civil rights of people they don't like. It would be brain-dead of us to expect that's going to be any better this year than it's been in the past, no matter who the GOP nominee is. And if it's Huckabee, the odds are overwhelming that will get much worse.

I've written extensively about the sense of smug superiority that's settled into the SBC over the past few years, much of it drawn from an essential belief that their special relationship with God not only makes them morally superior to the rest of us, but also exempts them from the need to observe the law. Beyond that: they're openly committed to tearing down the rule of law entirely and replacing it with a theocracy -- and have taken the leading role in the effort to put judges onto the bench who will enforce their Biblical order in the meantime.

The belief that our democratic government is illegitimate, coupled with the arrogance of the twice-born, has already led them into all kinds of serious legal trouble. A brief recap of posts that Dave and I have done in just the past year demonstrates this more than adequately. The church is currently embroiled in a year-long scandal -- to which it has made no effective policy response whatsoever -- involving over 50 ministers arrested (and many convicted) on charges of sexually abusing children in their congregations. They have also allied themselves with hate groups promoting anti-gay violence (including one that's been implicated in at least one murder). One of the SBC's national leaders has gone on record defending torture as scriptural; another lost his military chaplaincy when it was discovered he was keeping a sex slave. His fellow SBC pastors knew -- but they looked the other way.

And, of course, there's the fact that the church's national leadership has already proven itself -- twice over -- more than happy to break the law specifically so it could endorse Huckabee. And this happened long before Huck had a ghost of a chance in a primary. Since Huckabee is himself an SBC minister, it's not out of line to presume that the church will be uniquely aggressive (and, perhaps, characteristically lawless) in campaigning for one of its own. This is the shot they've been waiting for -- and they've got every incentive not to let a little thing like the IRS stand in the way.

Osama is not a liberal.

As Chet Scoville of Vanity Press points out, he would be more at home with the rabid far right wing of the Republicans:

This game is really getting tiresome. As RT observes, no sooner does the new Bin Laden tape come out than some right-wingers notice nothing about it except that Bin Laden name-drops Noam Chomsky and mentions the Kyoto Protocol, and those same right-wingers reflexively say, "Ah ha!!!! See, he and the left really are the same!"

Let's take a closer look, shall we? ABC News has made a grainy little pdf transcript available here, and by looking it over (yeah, go ahead, it won't hurt you), we can see that OBL also makes the following assertions:

• He says, right out loud, that his own "interests overlap with those of the major corporations and also with those of the neoconservatives."
• He says that democratic capitalism is a failure because its taxes are too high.
  
• He can't seem to tell the difference between lefty heroes John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.
• And he says that theocracy is wicked cool, and that the division between church and state is a really bad idea.
  

Identical with the left? Nonsense.

But the thing is, this guy is not identical with the right either. He's not actually definable in right-left terms, and why should he be? For one thing, those are Western political terms, and he's not a Westerner. But more importantly, he's just not very lucid; his speech wanders all over the map without any kind of focus, centre, or discipline.

The rights of your religion stop

Where my thoughts begin.



Having grown up in a religious household and being 'religious' for a large percentage of my life, I have great love and respect for those who are sincere in following their beliefs. But I do not believe only one religion is the right one. I do not believe those who try to be and do good and search for ways to benefit humanity would be ignored by a loving God. I do not believe a God of Love would create the Rapture. Frantically joining a religion because of fear of agony and death is bizarre and wrong.

As Martin Luther said: "Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."

All you can do is be honest and true to who you are. Anything else is dishonest and cannot stand.


Update: tripped over this interesting site while getting Luther's quote.

Christianists once allowed into the halls of power

Will not leave. They have come too far to let it go now!



Update: link isn't working. Found these links:
"The Rise of Dominionism"
Recorded October 11, 2004, 44 minutes

Play the Real Video version. Works best on faster connections. Dialup users can try the audio only version below.

Play the (Windows) WMV Video version. This is a full motion, but low resolution video for 256Kbps or faster connections.

View the QuickTime Video version.

(Check the TheocracyWatch Materials page to get a copy of this video on DVD or videotape.)

If these links fail, go to this site.

Circling the drain

The neocon agenda, their glorious thousand year reich, their wonderful and eternal war on terror, their power grab, their theocracy, their money.....

It looks like the American citizens have finally awakened from their stupor.

Vanity Press has the line up.

Perverting Justice

In the name of God. Just another way the Bush administration is remaking the country in its image.

Ripley at Zen Cabin does the research and exposes the White House's efforts:

It sure seems like there’s a concerted and coordinated effort within the DOJ to push a religious agenda on America, or at least allow some other folks to get away with it. I haven’t looked into Regent much, but from my minimal research on BYU/BushCo I can tell you that the pieces are falling into place for a good old-fashioned American Theocracy.

Let’s hope that Congress asks Gonzales, and everyone else, about the people who have been placed in the DOJ over the last six years. There’s something going on there and it’s definitely not Justice.

All I want to know is ... how long will it take us to weed these religious nutjobs out of our government? They're trying to deny us privacy in the bedroom, deny us pills in the pharmacies, deny us access to scientific facts, deny us the right to die with dignity, deny us tolerance to other religions, deny us justice untainted by partisanship.

If they want to go live in a theocracy, great. Jonestown is unpopulated I hear. Just leave me and my country out of it.

When you run such a bad school you can't earn accreditation

The obvious thing to do is change the rules.

Thers of Whiskey Fire:

Last month the Dept of Education issued a proposal to strengthen its hold over college accreditation bodies -- broadly speaking, the organizations that set the standards for public and private colleges and universities. Inside Higher Ed sums up the proposals:

The draft language, which will be considered next week by a federal panel weighing possible changes in federal rules governing higher education accreditation, would give accreditors three options for measuring institutions’ success in educating students — two of which force them to set minimal levels of acceptable performance, which accreditors (and many college officials) have traditionally considered it inappropriate for them to do.

The department’s proposals would also require accrediting agencies to bar the colleges they monitor from basing decisions about whether to accept a transfer student’s academic credits on the accreditation status of the “sending” institution, and significantly increase the amount and types of information that accrediting groups would have to make public.

There's a lot to discuss in that first paragraph. But here let's highlight the second part: "The department’s proposals would also require accrediting agencies to bar the colleges they monitor from basing decisions about whether to accept a transfer student’s academic credits on the accreditation status of the 'sending' institution."

It's an arcane-sounding point, but what it really is, is a big giveaway to schools like The King's College, which I discuss here. Religious wingnutty schools like that have trouble getting accreditation from one of the regional bodies, which leads to trouble when students want to transfer their credits to schools that are accredited in the usual way.

These people don't miss a trick. The overall goal is to create a parallel ideological universe, a nation with a nation, one with its own rules and even laws.

When you don't like the truth, challenge the facts. When your faith is threatened by science, disparage science. When you want a theocracy, flood the judicial system with your minions.

From the Carpetbagger Report:

Thanks to the prosecutor purge scandal, and former Alberto Gonzales aide Monica Goodling’s role in it, the public is learning about Robertson’s Regent University, which, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick noted over the weekend, is doing exactly what it set out to do.

Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in this administration, as Regent’s Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that “approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work.” And that’s precisely what its founder desired. The school’s motto is “Christian Leadership To Change the World,” and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a “lie of the left,” according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.

The law school’s dean, Jeffrey A. Brauch, urges in his “vision” statement that students reflect upon “the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system.” Jason Eige (’99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter, Regent Remark: “Your Resume Is God’s Instrument.”

As Christopher Hayes explained in The American Prospect, more than two-thirds of Regent students identified themselves as Republicans, but the numbers aren’t as important as the school’s mission. As Hayes noted, “what students are taught at a place like Regent, or even Calvin and Wheaton, is to live out a Christ-centered existence in all facets of their lives. But what they learn is to become Republicans.”

Slate’s Lithwick suggests the more significant problem here is that these Regent grads left Robertson’s confines confused: “Goodling and her ilk somehow began to conflate God’s work with the president’s.” I think there’s some truth to that — Regent grads may be convinced that Bush is somehow God’s messenger on earth — but I suspect the problem is more practical than that.

Thanks to Robertson’s minions infiltrating Bush’s Justice Department, religious right activists are literally helping drive federal law enforcement, particularly when it comes to civil rights and picking U.S. Attorneys.

The Bush administration really does believe it can change reality.
Just to remind you, a quote from a senior adviser to Bush in 2002:

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

What a theocracy would look like

(Pic stolen from Little Purple Fooshballs)

The stirring of a theocracy

Sinfonian at Blast Off! predicts we will lose this first real challenge to the separation of church and state:

For the first time, the current Supreme Court has faced the thorny issue of the separation of church and state. The case argued yesterday is the first challenge to Drunky McStagger's faith-based initiatives to reach the SCOTUS, but the issue is one of standing -- that is, "whether ordinary taxpayers have the right to sue over the Bush administration's embrace of faith-based organizations."

He quotes the Washington Post:

Alito, Justice Antonin Scalia and Roberts -- whom Clements three times said was "exactly right" in his view of the case -- seemed most sympathetic to the government's argument, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy worried about the courts "supervising the White House." Justice Clarence Thomas did not ask questions, but has written in the past that he does not think that the establishment clause gives rise to individual complaints.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer seemed most skeptical of the government's position that only congressional action involving taxing and spending was open to taxpayer challenge. "What's wrong with just saying that Flast stands for the proposition that when the government spends money in violation of the establishment clause, a taxpayer -- after all, the money comes from the taxpayer -- can bring a lawsuit?" he asked.

Made in his own image

Falwell still sees grabbing the White House and making the United States a theocracy:

DALLAS (Reuters) - His influence may be diminished but his zeal is undaunted. Evangelist Jerry Falwell is on a mission to keep a like-minded Republican in the White House and get at least one more conservative judge on the Supreme Court.

Despite his years in the trenches of America's culture wars, Falwell -- who founded the Moral Majority political movement in 1979 and helped propel the rise of the religious right -- said a major victory in his broader crusade to restore the country's moral righteousness has so far eluded him.

With abortion still legal, prayer banned in public schools and pornography rife, he sees a long struggle ahead. For now, he is focusing on voter registration drives and rallying the faithful with his eyes on the twin prizes of the 2008 presidential election and control of the Supreme Court.