Dominionists in the United States

[The Magic Pudding..]

  My nation has some serious problems wrought by millions who know no better.

Did it used to be better?
If so what happened?

[Icarus]

Yes, it used to be better!

My nation has a population of about 330,000.000.  A significant proportion of then have the poorest of analytic skills. That is not the worst of it. A hefty proportion of them are proud to announce that they have made up their minds and no amount of persuasion will change their minds. Education is for the Hoity Toity and there is no real reason for them to get an education. 

Few of those people have ever read a book, they do not subscribe to newspapers,  If they, did they would only peruse the comic strips. They are conspiracy theorists who are convinced that elections are stolen and the theft is arranged and financed by Jewish oligarchs.............And one  more outstanding trait is that they believe that the bible is the absolute and indisputable word of God. However, they have never actually read their bible. They leave that to the preacher person who extracts money from them on Sundays and Wednesdays. Halleluia brother let us pray.   

[Icarus]

Here we have evidence of our intellectual shortcomings.

[Tank]

This is horrifying

[Recusant]

The legislature and governor of the great state of Louisiana have decided to require the posting of a particular version of the Ten Commandments in all classrooms in all publicly funded schools from kindergarten to university. The governor says he looks forward to the lawsuits, and I think he has reason to believe that he stands a good chance of winning when the suits make it to the US Supreme Court. He already has the support of one of the two viable candidates for the presidency.

Many, if not most Dominionists fully support Trump's candidacy, and he in turn is completely willing to pander to them. It will be interesting to see the progress they make toward their dreams of theocracy if he manages to get back into office.

"Trump Has Violated At Least Half of the 10 Commandments He Wants Placed in US Public Schools" | Common Dreams

Trump has brazenly compared himself to Jesus Christ, eagerly sought to line his pockets by hawking a $60 "God Bless the USA" Bible on social media, and infamously used a Bible as a prop after he marched through a square near the White House that had just been forcibly cleared of nonviolent protesters. Some of Trump's supporters quite literally see him as an instrument of God, a "messiah-like figure" divinely chosen to rule. Trump depends on support from Christian nationalists, including rank-and-file voters as well as public figures like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and other Republican members of Congress. An organization associated with the unabashedly anti-democratic Project 2025 agenda "is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas" in a possible second Trump administration.

[. . .]

Liberal democracy depends on free and fair elections, limits on power, the rule of law, independent courts, individual rights, and equality. Christian nationalism, which seeks a "Christian dominion over government" in which "Christian people [are] privileged in the United States," simply cannot be reconciled with liberal democracy. The Trumpist goal to define the United States as a country first and foremost for Christians "in a way that it is not for everyone else" should be understood in the context of Trump's broader desire to rule as a dictator in a country where some Americans have more rights than others.

[Continues . . .]

[Tank]

    

Home of the coward
Land of the idiot

[Firebird]

Hey, look, now Oklahoma is going to require teaching the Bible in public schools!


 

[Dark Lightning]

I think that they should use the Old Testament. That would be amusing.

[Harmonie]

Hey, look, now Oklahoma is going to require teaching the Bible in public schools!


 

My previous home state just can't go five seconds without embarrassing itself. Jesus Christ. So glad I'm outta there!

Do these people not see what they're doing? Even the most conservative of Christians should be concerned about the Bible being taught to their kids in government-run school. I feel like this is so obvious. I mean, think about it for more than one second. Public school teachers are going to be the arbiters of how the Bible is taught to your child, not you or your pastor that you trust. These wannabe-theocrats are going to be the end of religious freedom, and someday even the conservative Christian base will have to see it. But it seems like it will be too late. Fools.

[Tank]

Hey, look, now Oklahoma is going to require teaching the Bible in public schools!


 

It'll probably lead to a rise in atheism.

[billy rubin]

oklahoma has always been the center of gravity for the southern baptist convention. lots of pentacostalism as well. missionaries would routinely knock on my door there and in texas, bible in hand.

public school education in oklahoma is ranked 44 out of the 50 american states, and 49 out of 50 in university educational quality. if education was a priority, the legislators would be working on that rather than dictating bible study.

but education is looked at as a threat to religion, not something that informs it. college especially is considered an exposure to hedonism and immorality, with liberal ideas being encouraged instead of godliness. people actively advise families not to send their kids out for higher education because of the risks they will face to their faith.

a few branches of my family have lived in oklahoma for over 180 years. ive fed the chickens on the steps of the farmhouse my mother was born in 100 years ago. back in an earlier age it is more understandable to me how an impoverished, scattered, and rural society could have trouble distinguishing christianity from christendom. but its become wilful ignorance now, and forced indoctrination and conformity.

we ll be seeing much more of it, i think.

[Recusant]

One of the Republican Party's rising young stars, US Senator from Missouri. Just what the country needs. 

"Josh Hawley: 'I'm Advocating Christian Nationalism'" | New Civil Rights Movement

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) declared Monday he is advocating for Christian nationalism, a far-right ideology that claims there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution, and promotes as a national religion Christian fundamentalism, a hardline, extremist brand of Christianity at odds with the religious beliefs of many Christians across the country. It opposes LGBTQ people and people of other faiths or of no faith, and their civil rights. It often has links to neo-Nazis, white supremacy, and dominionism, and many see Russia and Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, as its leader.

"Some will say I'm calling America a Christian nation. And so I am. Some will say I'm advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do. My question is – is there any other kind worth having?" Senator Hawley said at "NatCon 4," the National Conservatism conference being held in Washington, D.C., this week . . .

[Continues . . .]

[Icarus]

   We have some dangerous crackpots in our midst.   

We also have legions of gullible people who elect those crackpots.

[Recusant]

A historian gives the lie to the narrative behind the Louisiana Ten Commandments law, as well as the Oklahoma Bible study law.

"Conservatives say liberals took religion out of schools. Truth is, it was never there to begin with." | The Philadelphia Inquirer

Once upon a time, public schools respected religion. They taught the Bible and posted the Ten Commandments. Then big bad liberals came along and took God out of the schools. And the rest, as they say, is history.

That's what right-wingers want you to think, but they're wrong. In earlier eras, religious instruction wasn't nearly as common as they say. And when it did happen, it was promoted by political liberals as well as conservatives.

You're unlikely to hear that from Republicans in Louisiana — who recently pushed through a law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in all classrooms — or in Oklahoma, where the GOP superintendent of education ordered schools to teach the Bible in grades five through 12. They've got their story, and they're sticking to it.

According to the Louisiana measure, the Ten Commandments "were a prominent part of American public education for more than three centuries." No, they weren't.

True, as the law notes, the Ten Commandments were included in the New England Primer and McGuffey's Reader in the colonial period and in the 1800s. But James Madison never claimed that "the whole future of our new nation" rests upon "the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the principles of the Ten Commandments," as the measure also says.

According to the editors of Madison's papers, there's no record of him making that statement. It's a hoax, which Louisiana has now enshrined into law.

[Continues . . .]

[Recusant]

One of God's saintly little bigoted foot-soldiers has not given up on her crusade to purify the institution of marriage in the US.

"Kim Davis' legal counsel moves to make her appeal a springboard for overturning marriage rights" | Kentucky Lantern

A conservative legal group has filed a brief on behalf of a former Kentucky county clerk that it says could lead to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Kim Davis, then the Rowan County clerk, made national headlines in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to several same-sex couples based on her religious beliefs.

Liberty Counsel, based in Orlando, Florida, and labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed the brief Monday with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, according to a news release from Liberty Counsel and first reported by Jezebel.

Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver said in a Tuesday press release that "Kim Davis deserves justice in this case since she was entitled to a religious accommodation from issuing marriage licenses under her name and authority."

"This case has the potential to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and extend the same religious freedom protections beyond Kentucky to the entire nation," Staver said.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning in 2015 ordered Davis to jail for five days for contempt for refusing to comply with a court order. Bunning earlier this year ordered Davis to pay  $260,104 in fees and expenses to attorneys who represented one of the couples she refused a marriage license. Bunning had earlier ordered Davis to pay the couple, David Ermold and David Moore, $100,000 in damages for violating their constitutional rights. Liberty Counsel is appealing Bunning's decisions.

Davis lost her bid for reelection as Rowan County clerk in 2018.

Chris Hartman, the director of Kentucky's Fairness Campaign, told the Lantern Tuesday that the latest legal move on Davis' behalf is "sad and desperate" but also within the realm of possibility under the current U.S. Supreme Court.

"The threat of anti-LGBTQ hate groups ... is real, however, and it comes as no surprise that they are seeking to overturn LGBTQ marriage in America. With an arch-conservative Supreme Court that's already upended half a century of abortion rights, anything is unfortunately possible."

[Continues . . .]