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Dominionists in the United States

Started by Recusant, April 14, 2019, 02:50:51 AM

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Icarus

Quote from: Recusant on May 28, 2020, 03:43:03 AM
Quote from: Randy on May 28, 2020, 12:08:13 AM
That is what scares me. Can you imagine the chaos that would erupt if we went into a theocracy? With all the other religions and our kind there would be turmoil with violent protests and so-forth. It would be a dangerous country to live in.

Not to worry. The Christian militia, with their god's help and some funding from the government, will take on the task of ensuring the security of the republic.  :lol:

It seems unlikely that a full-blown Christian theocracy will arise in the US. That doesn't stop people like those mentioned in this thread from doing whatever they can to push the country in that direction. Right now they're on a roll because the current administration wouldn't have existed without solid votes from the right wing Christian evangelical demographic. There is no question that they've seen this administration support and enact policies that they enthusiastically endorse.

I don't think that the majority of the citizenry of the US are in favor of these policies, but there is a definite political imbalance built into the US Constitution. We won't dive in to voter suppression and gerrymandering, but they're also part of the political reality that has helped the Christian right to gain such prominence.

A most interesting book has recently become available.  The title is; Unholy, by Sarah Posner.  The author tells the reader why the Evangelicals are so desperately and stubbornly tied to Trump. The short answer is that they believe, really believe, that Trump was sent by God. Though he is a demonstrated pigs ass, lying son of a bitch, there are bible passages that describe saviors who behave badly.  They actually believe that he is the embodiment of Jesus or Noah or Paul or whomever. .  The author is pretty persuasive and backs her claims with a fair degree of evidence.

MadBomr101

As if regular Xians and Fundamentalists weren't enough now we have the Dominionists who want to take us back to the good old days of the Bronze Age.
- Bomr
I'm waiting for the movie of my life to be made.  It should cost about $7.23 and that includes the budget for special effects.

Recusant

Secretary of State Pompeo out there spreading the good word, representing the True American™ policy agenda.

"Mike Pompeo and the Global Holy War Against Liberal Democracy" | Daily Beast

QuoteIn Russia, where President Vladimir Putin wants to insert references to God and heterosexual marriage into the constitution, certain forms of violence against women have been decriminalized—so long as the violence takes place within a traditional marriage. In Poland, where abortion access is already severely restricted, President Andrzej Duda has promised to sign draft legislation that would compel women to carry to term fetuses with severe congenital deformities, and a third of municipalities have declared themselves "LGBT-free zones"—all in order to "defend Christian values," as one leader of the ruling party puts it. In Turkey, reports of gender-based violence have risen sharply under the auspices of a president who has derided women's equality and railed against birth control while claiming to champion traditional families.

In the United States, we should become increasingly familiar with this pernicious form of religious nationalism—because, under the banner of "religious freedom," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appears to offer his blessing to these kinds of initiatives. In 2019, Pompeo established the Commission on Unalienable Rights, a commission ostensibly intended to reformulate America's commitment to advancing human rights abroad. But the secretary of state already seems to know which rights may take preference, and at whose expense. "There are those who would have preferred I didn't do it and are concerned about the answers that our foundational documents will provide," Pompeo commented last fall at a gathering of the Concerned Women for America, a conservative women's group, at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. "I know where those rights came from. They came from the Lord."

[. . .]

Around the world, the formulas of religious authoritarianism are remarkably consistent. The leaders convince their followers that their religion is under threat from a despicable or demonic force. The invisible enemy usually involves some combination of globalism, secularism, liberalism, feminism. In many Christian-dominated countries, "gay ideology" plays a prominent role; in Islamic countries, the "secular West" is a popular bogeyman. The leaders promise to grant followers the "freedom" to direct their hate against these deviants. And then the regime goes on to strip everyone else of their rights, bolster hyperconservative religious allies with public funds, and consolidate a kleptocracy where religion is too often reduced to organized hypocrisy.

Women and LGBT people are the canaries in the coal mine of human rights. Wherever their rights start to collapse, you can be sure, the freedom of the press, the freedom from corruption, and the freedom from fear will soon fall, too.

[. . .]

Although the American public often has trouble accepting what is going on at the highest levels of the American government, religious authoritarians abroad have no such trouble. They see it—and they like what they see. Over the past several years, alliances between America's Christian nationalists and like-minded religious nationalists in in other countries have grown in strength, with links forged through groups, such as the International Organization for the Family, that couch their advocacy for regressive social positions as a defense of the "natural family."

It is hard to imagine anything worse for the American national interest than making the U.S. a leader of such a regressive agenda. Pompeo's commission and other efforts to promote "religious freedom" will not only undermine the rights of many people around the world; it will also promote some authoritarian regimes at the expense of democratic movements and diminish still further America's credibility as a champion of democracy at home and abroad.

[Continues . . .]
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


Randy

And backwards we go. Why do they have to push their feeble minded madness on everyone else? It won't just stop there. They never seem to be satisfied unless they are fighting for a return to the Bronze Age.
"Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happens." -- Homer Simpson
"Some people focus on the destination. Atheists focus on the journey." -- Barry Goldberg

Recusant

Yeahbut who could possibly be against religious freedom?  :mustache:
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


Randy

A lot of people -- so long as it is their particular religion that gets free reign.
"Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happens." -- Homer Simpson
"Some people focus on the destination. Atheists focus on the journey." -- Barry Goldberg

Dark Lightning

They're going to keep pushing it, but the internet (Thanks, Al Gore  ::) )is going to keep informing people despite their worst interests. I'm a member of several wood working forums. A few years ago, a guy made a silhouette of a woman from 1/4" plywood, ala what one sees on the mudflaps of trucks. Tacky, to be sure, but my amusement came from some guy posting into that forum that his 13 YO son looks at that forum. Yes, I went there and told him that if that is the worst thing his son has ever seen on the internet, he should consider himself fortunate. :lol:

Randy

:lol: That is true! I mean, I've been to the beach many times. He doesn't want his thirteen year old son seeing some of the women I've seen. They may not have the impossible body if the wood cutout but they are in 3-D and animated in real time!
"Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happens." -- Homer Simpson
"Some people focus on the destination. Atheists focus on the journey." -- Barry Goldberg

Dark Lightning

Yeah, 300 Lbs, disappearing bikini straps and a snake around her neck.  :cracked:

Recusant

No surprises here. Property rights and religious rights are more equal than other rights.

"Pompeo Panel Pushes 'Radical, Isolationist, Anti-Rights, Anti-Scientific, Religious Agenda' With Human Rights Report" | Common Dreams

QuoteHuman rights advocates denounced as "dangerous" a draft report released Thursday by the U.S. State Department's controversial Commission on Unalienable Rights that paints property rights and religious liberty as "foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure" while casting doubt on other liberties, including reproductive freedom.

"Make no mistake: this report was not designed with principles of equality, justice, and rights in mind. Instead, it serves as another stepping stone in the White House's radical, isolationist, anti-rights, anti-scientific, religious agenda," Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), said in a statement.

"The Commission on Unalienable Rights is a thinly veiled religious fundamentalist panel, and the people on it should have absolutely no say about the human rights of people all over the world," Sippel declared, calling the panel "a dangerous distraction from the fact that this administration does not believe that all people are equal and entitled to human rights."

[Continues . . .]

The hot, steaming pile:

"Draft Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights" | U.S. Department of State

The reality of attempts to carry this initiative forward should be interesting. For instance I'm curious  how they're going to manage to forbid Islamic madrasas in the US from getting taxpayer funding, just as Christian schools do, what with "religious freedom" and all. 
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


billy rubin

recusant, we re beyond even lip service to legality in this culture now.

theywill simply not give the madrassas money and leave it at that

we are at a turning point this year in which the united states will choose between a republican democracy or the first steps into creeping totalitarianism.

the choice appears in all walkz of civic life


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Randy

Quote from: Dark Lightning on July 17, 2020, 10:35:07 PM
Yeah, 300 Lbs, disappearing bikini straps and a snake around her neck.  :cracked:
You're talking about my daughter-in-law! :lol:
"Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happens." -- Homer Simpson
"Some people focus on the destination. Atheists focus on the journey." -- Barry Goldberg

Recusant

Hey, in a second Trump administration (nobody should kid themselves that it won't happen; it certainly could) we might get to see this bright light in a prominent and powerful position. Maybe it's too soon for the Supreme Court, but perhaps a US federal appeals court, or US Attorney General.

"Trump Campaign Adviser Jenna Ellis: Separation of Church and State Is a Liberal Lie" | The Daily Beast

QuoteThe notion that the United States observes a separation of church and state is a lie, according to President Donald Trump's senior campaign legal adviser.

"The left is going to tell you there's this separation of church and state, and that's just nowhere in the Constitution, nowhere in American law," Jenna Ellis declared Monday evening during a Zoom event hosted by Asian Pacific Americans for Trump. "That's nothing that our founding principles ever, uh, derived whatsoever."

The concept of a firewall between church and state authorities, Ellis claimed, is a mere "twisting a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Church that was simply talking about the three tiers of authority that God himself ordained—the church government, the civil government, and the family government."

Such an interpretation of Jefferson's 1802 letter—which the Supreme Court affirmed in 1879 as an "authoritative declaration" of the First Amendment clause prohibiting government entanglement in religion—has long been a key argument of conservative Christian leaders seeking to end the separation, which serves as the basis for America's historically pluralistic society. But it's not altogether common for a top official of a presidential campaign to so forcefully adopt such a position and it's further proof that Trump—hardly an observant man himself—has strategically allowed his presidency to become a vessel for the religious right.

Ellis has made such an argument before. In late April, while reacting to local bans on church gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic, she argued that "'separation of church and state' is a myth perpetuated by liberals to pretend morality and religion cannot be part of government."

During Monday evening's remarks, Ellis advanced her argument against the separation of church and state by invoking and defending the president's now-infamous walk from the White House to St. John's Episcopal Church for a Bible-holding photo op—which was made possible by police tear-gassing a crowd of peaceful protesters—as a valiant stand against those who forsake religious authority.

"As faith-based Christians and pastors and faith leaders, we need to be telling truth about protecting and preserving religious freedom in our country... and especially protecting and preserving the church's authority in our society," she said. "And so that's what President Trump so remarkably with his walk from the White House over to St. James [sic] Church."

She concluded: "For him to go out and hold up that Bible in front of the church and acknowledge that religious liberty prevails in America like no other society and nation that ever existed in the face of the Earth—that is what our freedom is all about."

[. . .]

"While the literal words 'wall of separation between church and state' don't appear in the Constitution, the concept of church-state separation certainly does," Americans United for Separation of Church and State has written in response to the religious-right argument against a firewall. "If you doubt that, just read the writings of Jefferson, James Madison and generations of U.S. Supreme Court justices tasked with interpreting and applying the Constitution. We're gonna take their word for it."

[Continues . . .]
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


Randy

I have thought about the possibility. After all, who would have thought he would get elected in the first place? Everyone was sure that Hillary would win. The polls aren't always right.
"Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happens." -- Homer Simpson
"Some people focus on the destination. Atheists focus on the journey." -- Barry Goldberg

Recusant

Out there rallying the Christian soldiers. As if anybody who'd take this seriously would be voting for somebody else, or would fail to vote.

"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken