The Road Ahead?

Posted on by under education, Election 2020, Free Press Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, religion, Social commentary

I cringe when I hear people say that there should be no separation of church and state, when they say that wasn’t what the Founders had in mind, or when they push for their own religious beliefs to dominate our schools and government.  I nearly lost it when I heard the uneducated congresswoman from Colorado, Lauren Boebert, say …

“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution.  The church is supposed to direct the government.”

This nation was established as a democratic republic, NOT a theocracy.  Religion has a place in the lives of many people, but it is a choice, and has NO business on the political landscape, no business dictating government policy.  A number of things lately have led me to believe that we are shifting toward a government dominated by a single religion, thereby excluding the majority of the people in this nation.  Let’s hear what Robert Reich has to say about it …

The Republican Party: God, guns, forced birth, and strongmen

The ideology of Christian nationalism

Robert Reich, Jul 7

The link is tightening between America’s move toward theocracy and its slide toward autocracy.

It is important to understand these connections. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, its expanded reading of the Second Amendment, and its eagerness to elevate religious freedom over the Constitution’s guarantee against established religion come from the same cloth as Republican state legislative attacks on democracy, the GOP’s fealty to Trump’s Big Lie, and white supremacy.

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville last month, speakers explicitly embraced the theology of “Dominionism” — the idea that “right-thinking” Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society.

Trump’s keynote at the conference made the connections explicit. He warned that the “radical Left” is “trying to destroy organized religion” and “trying to shred our Constitution,” and continued: “The greatest danger to America is not our enemies from the outside, as powerful as they may be. The greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from the people from within. And you know the people I’m talking about.”

Other speakers labeled Democrats “evil,” “tyrannical” and “the enemy within,” and charged that Democrats were engaged in “a war against the truth.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida predicted “the backlash is coming. Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this country. It is time to take this country back.” Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina (the state’s first Black lieutenant governor and a virulent critic of so-called “critical race theory”) said he expected “a pitched battle to literally save this nation.” Referencing a passage from Ephesians that Christian nationalists often use to signal their militancy, Robinson added, “I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor.”

The connections between these strands of rightwing ideology are growing clearer and louder — theocratic Christianity, gun violence, the subjugation of women through forced birth, and strongman authoritarianism. Christian nationalism now taking over the Republican Party envisions vigilante justice — “good guys with guns,” neighbors eavesdropping on neighbors, and action to stop what they call “abortion trafficking” — women crossing state lines to access legal abortions. Widespread access to guns is essential to keep everyone under control, suppress protests, and fuel fear.

To call this a “culture” war is to understate its true meaning and potential danger. Those of us who still believe in separating church and state, guarding reproductive rights, ensuring racial equality, ending gun violence, and protecting democracy must understand that much of the Republican Party now stands for the exact opposite of these values.

The funders and kingmakers of the Republican Party see all this for what it is: an effort to hold on to power in the face of massive demographic shifts: toward women (who now constitute 60 percent of all university enrollees, and therefore the future power structure) and people of color, and away from formal religion. Over the longer term, the Republican Party is doomed. In the meantime, with a rightwing majority on the Supreme Court, legislative majorities in states determined to suppress votes and dominate election machinery, an authoritarian strongman president waiting in the wings, and an ideology of Christian nationalism, the GOP will do what it can to hold on.

29 thoughts on “The Road Ahead?”

  1. Pingback: Points to rescue America – Some View on the World

  2. Thank you for sharing!!.. the problem with those who follow religion or faith based ideologies (Norse gods, Greek gods, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.) is they have no physical evidence to defend their ideology.. even books and manuscripts are the theories of the mind, no physical evidence… 🙂

    In generations past, that were not a issue, technology and knowledge being what it was… however, with today’s technology and knowledge, people able to communicate better all over the world and science gathering knowledge at a rapid pace, interest in faith based ideologies are waning and the religious right are having a more difficulty time defending their faith against reality… 🙂

    Their answer is make it a law and all is good… unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way, the laws of nature and the laws of the universe pay little or no heed to the laws of mankind and change will continue to take place… the key is to proceed with wisdom and patience, not to over react as that has not bode well in other countries… the old normal is slowly becoming history, will be interesting to see what the new normal will look like… 🙂

    Until we meet again..
    May the road rise to meet you
    May the wind be always at your back
    May the sun shine warm upon your face
    The rains fall soft upon your fields
    May green be the grass you walk on
    May blue be the skies above you
    May pure be the joys that surround you
    May true be the hearts that love you.
    (Irish Saying)

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    • You’ve made a point that I hadn’t given much thought to … that they have absolutely zero physical proof for their beliefs. That would explain why even as a young child, I found it impossible to believe in the religious doctrine that others, including my parents, took on blind faith. I’ve always been a realist, I believe in what I can see, not a concept that doesn’t even follow a pattern of logic.

      Indeed, my friend, it will be interesting to see what the ‘new normal’ will look like, but I doubt I can stay around that long to find out. I have this notion that the human species is going to destroy itself before its members learn to live with each other in peace and harmony. Religion is but one of the things that divide us, but perhaps the most divisive one.

      Thank you for the much-needed Irish Saying tonight, dear Dutch! You brightened my day/night!

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  4. The church, any church, is built around authoritarianism, the leader tells the masses what to do. God, being the prime leader, instructs each church in how to interpret his words to their advantage, and those leaders pass God’s Words down to the masses of church goers. Every Sunday, all over this world,, church leaders interpret god’s words to their congregations. And how many of those people in those congregations get to hear different versons of what their god meant when he “wrote” the bible, especially when at the time of its writing humans had no written languages. Amazing that! I guess God gave scribes the knowledge of how to write, along with ink and feather tips to write with.
    Sorry, went off track. Churches are suthoritarian in nature, so people are used to being told what to do, and what to believe. They are never given the chance to learn how to think for themselves.
    I had to learn to think for myself as a child, when I kept getting mixed messages from the authority figures around me. I guess I was lucky the “authorities” gave mixed messages. If they all told me the sames truths, maybe I would have believed them…

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  5. Jill,

    This country has far too many poorly educated (only HS diploma attained?) citizens and active/semi-active voters in what is supposed to be a representative state or Republic. Sadly, as we have been witnessing in this country for over 4-6 decades, these horribly uneducated—or wrongly educated as the case may be—citizen voters are easily swayed by ultra-charismatic, cultish demi-gods into believing just about ANYTHING they spew out. A very sad testimony of our nation’s pubic education track-record, particularly in social studies, history, and state/federal government.

    As I addressed in my May 2015 blog-post regarding Church-and-State and whether the U.S. was founded as a purely Christian nation (is wholly false & unsupported by historical facts):

    https://professortaboo.com/2015/05/11/the-mistaken-identity-of-the-u-s/

    …this too reflects the terrible condition our public education (in social studies & government) has been the last 4-6 decades, further eroded by the rising trend of more and more private and charter religious (mostly Xian) schools in this period. Lauren Boebert is only one prime example out of thousands or millions. 😔

    Btw, I KNOW you will enjoy and want to read my latest blog-post: For American Pro-gun Pro-violence Originalists. It’s right up your/our alley. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    • I fully agree with you, Prof … our education system is failing in a major way! Not only do our voters not understand the issues, but they cannot differentiate between fact and conspiracy theory, and in most cases, they don’t even bother to try! As Malcolm X is credited with saying, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

      I have bookmarked both of the posts you mention here to read tomorrow … er, later today! For now, it is nearly 3:00 a.m. and I still have about 40 comments left to answer before I can get to bed! But, I shall read both later today and comment there!

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Jill, if a football coach took a team to the 50 year yard line to bow and pray toward Mecca, that would not get the same reaction as a Christian leading a prayer. If a Jewish person did the same it would also be frowned on. Separation of church and state does exist for a reason. One religion does not take precedence over another.

    I have seen those pictures where Jesus has blessed the US constitution, but to be frank, I don’t think he would have blessed a document that said an African-American was 3/5 the value of a white American. He also would not have been too keen on slavery, Jim Crow, various lynchings and bombings, the communist witch hunt, etc.

    Jesus also hung out with the disenfranchised, so he would not be turning up behind gated communities. Keith

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    • Unfortunately, Keith, the Catholics and Evangelicals of today see themselves as being disenfranchised, so therefore Jesus must be on their side. It all a matter of believing propaganda over what the rest of us see as fact.
      But I wonder, where in the Bible did Boebert find the Commandment to bear arms? I think I missed that one!

      Liked by 2 people

    • EXACTLY!!! There are many religions in the world … who’s to say that one is ‘right’ and that everybody must adhere to that one? Religious bigotry is just as bad, in its own way, as racism … maybe even worse. Separation of church and state in the U.S. has protected us from religious zealots, but I fear that may be on the chopping block now. From what I understand, Jesus was one for diversity, for helping everyone, regardless of their skin colour or beliefs.

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  7. I’m not surprised Lauren blah blah blah said that. She only has a GED; she never learned about the wars of religion that Europe suffered through in the 1600s nor did she learn about the English Civil War, which was also a war of religion as well as a parliamentary war. Two of my husbands had GED’s & one of my common-law husbands also had a GED; although all three were quite intelligent men, the lack of education really set them back when it came to any kind of reasonable political discussion or any kind of discussion that wasn’t about anything that wasn’t geared toward their own ken. So … I have to be compassionate when I think about her & her lack of knowledge. The people for whom I have contempt are the ones who voted her into office. WTF. I used to want to live in CO.

    Of course … there are idiots everywhere. I don’t have to leave NY for that.

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    • I try not to put people down for things they can’t help, but she dropped out of high school, ultimately did get a GED, but she’s too damn stupid to even realize that she is unqualified for a seat in the U.S. Congress. But more to the point, she is trying to shove her uneducated ideas on us … on an entire nation, many of us far more intelligent and better educated than she is. But to your point, you ARE right … WTF were the people of her district thinking when they voted for her??? And I understand she is polling well for the upcoming mid-terms, too! She and Margie Greene should NEVER have even been given space on the ballots! Sigh. Yeah, there are idiots everywhere and they have been coming out from under their rocks ever since 2016. Not sure how we get them to just slither back under the rocks.

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    • I stand by what I’ve said many times over the years … a world without religion would be a much kinder, more peaceful world. People use religion for their own goals, use it to manipulate and control. The same is true of ever religion, as best I can tell. Sigh. xx

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  11. AND PEOPLE WONDR WHY i VIEW RELIGION AS DANGEROUS AND BORDERING ON EVIL, THOUGH IN FAIRNESS IT’S MORE THE PEOPLE THAT ARE EVIL THAN THE IDEA. RELIGION HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT CONTROL AND THOSE IN CONTROL HAVE OFTEN BEEN MORE POLITICAL THAN MOST POLITICIANS. ONE DAY THE CATHOLICS MAY RISE UP AGAINST ALL THE HERETICAL PROTESTANTS AND THAT SLAUGHTER WILL BE ON A BIBLICAL SCALE TO REGAIN CONTROL OF jESUS.

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    • Exactly! Most religions that I know even a little about, which includes Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam … actually have good premises. They speak to helping others, to doing good things … but then people “interpret” the text to mean what fits the way they would LIKE the world to be, and then you have a bigoted, racist, autocratic mess. A mess that I do not want ruling our lives!!! Sigh.
      Cwtch

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