Religious Authoritarianism Has America nailed to its Cross

[lippy 764]

1 hour ago, JoeWeber said:

Negative. Lippy wants his wife to keep her friend not the other way around.

I'm pretty indifferent, I just disagree with my wife's approach when the friend repeats a whacko talking point.  I'm in no way defending the point, but attacking her for repeating it just leads to a fight every-single-time.

Quote

I think the world today is harder than we want it to be.

On that much we're in 100% agreement!

[NewGuy2005 51]

10 hours ago, RonD1120 said:

IMO, the next six weeks are going to reveal and utilize the path provided by the U.S. Constitution that most people are not aware of nor understand.

Enjoy the show.

This almost sounds like a Q-Drop.  Why not speak plainly?  What is the path in the constitution you are talking about?  

[billvon 2,380]

1 minute ago, NewGuy2005 said:

This almost sounds like a Q-Drop.  Why not speak plainly?

Because then the issue could be discussed rationally.  This way no matter what happens he can say "well you interpreted my post wrong.  I didn't mean that."

 

[headoverheels 291]

2 hours ago, NewGuy2005 said:

This almost sounds like a Q-Drop.  Why not speak plainly?  What is the path in the constitution you are talking about?  

Cf tvsf up esjol zpvs Pwbmujof.

 

[kallend 1,620]

5 hours ago, NewGuy2005 said:

This almost sounds like a Q-Drop.  Why not speak plainly?  What is the path in the constitution you are talking about?  

Are you questioning the effectiveness of a very effective troll? 

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

3 hours ago, kallend said:

Are you questioning the effectiveness of a very effective troll? 

I don't see Ron as a troll. Not in the way some of the others are. 

I think he really believes in what he posts. 
He's not doing it for a reaction (classic trolling).
He's doing it to 'put the word out'. 

On a slightly different note, Trump's 'true believers' are starting to see through the con (finally).

A few Evangelical leaders are seeing him for the bullshit artist he is.

 

From Heather Cox Richardson's FB post:
 

Quote

...statement by evangelical Karen Swallow Prior, who said she was “now embarrassed and ashamed” for voting for local and state Republican candidates (although she had never voted for Trump). “What a bunch of money-grubbing, power-hungry, partisan cowards who care nothing about conservatism,” she tweeted. Conservative journalist David French also wrote this weekend that “the frenzy and fury of the post-election period has laid bare the sheer idolatry and fanaticism of Christian Trumpism.”

 

[SkyDekker 1,120]

16 hours ago, wmw999 said:

Nearly all white people have benefited from racism; that includes me. Nearly all males have benefitted from sexism; that doesn't include me.

What does that have to do with it?

16 hours ago, wmw999 said:

Maybe I'm just lazy, and want to keep some of my friends, just as Lippy's wife wants to keep her conservative friend without having to look at everything through a "you are a racist" lens.

If you want to stay friends with people who support racism, that's your choice. Seeing what my son has to deal with on a daily basis, I will continue to condemn racism. 

[kallend 1,620]

56 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

I don't see Ron as a troll.

 

Just evidence of his effectiveness.

[NewGuy2005 51]

1 hour ago, kallend said:

Just evidence of his effectiveness.

Just call him Q-aRonD

[Phil1111 908]

4 hours ago, wolfriverjoe said:

I don't see Ron as a troll. Not in the way some of the others are. 

I think he really believes in what he posts. 
He's not doing it for a reaction (classic trolling).
He's doing it to 'put the word out'. 

On a slightly different note, Trump's 'true believers' are starting to see through the con (finally).

A few Evangelical leaders are seeing him for the bullshit artist he is.

From Heather Cox Richardson's FB post:
 

I concur on Ron, but only some of trump's followers are starting to see the giant con for what it is.

"For Eric Metaxas, a prominent evangelical public intellectual and Christian radio host, knowing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is like believing in Jesus.

He just knows in his heart that it is true.

During a prayer call with evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump on Tuesday night (Dec. 2), Metaxas said that God is on Trump’s side in the fight against a “stolen” election.

“It’s like somebody saying, ‘Oh, you don’t have enough evidence to believe in Jesus.’ We have enough evidence in our hearts. We know him and the enemy is trying harder than anything we have seen in our lives to get us to roll over, to forget about it.”

Once a Trump doubter, Metaxas has become one of the most devout Trump followers. “I’d be happy to die in this fight,” Metaxas told Trump earlier this week, during a call with the president broadcast on his show. “This is a fight for everything. God is with us.”

In recent days, Metaxas has become a chief evangelist for conspiracy theories about the 2020 election on his daily radio show and social media feeds — assuring his audience that Trump will triumph because Jesus is on the president’s side."

Above from Dec,3 2020 Religion News service. I found it amusing that he is considered a "public intellectual" emphasis above mine. When he peddles the trump line. But there is an entire area of classical religious study that even awards PhD's to thumping the bible, koran, etc!

It should be noted that this religious broadcaster has the bully pulpit of radio. He also uses the same language that Ron uses: God, trump and we are in this together and its a "fight for everything".

Edited December 14, 2020 by Phil1111

[tonyhays 86]

4 hours ago, Phil1111 said:

God is on Trump’s side in the fight against a “stolen” election.

Don't know why they think God being on Trump's side is a plus.  He can't even defeat armies with iron chariots. 

Judges 1:19 "The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron."

4 hours ago, Phil1111 said:

But there is an entire area of classical religious study that even awards PhD's to thumping the bible, koran, etc!

About as respectable as a doctorate in Mother Goose

[jaybird18c 4]

On 12/14/2020 at 4:37 PM, tonyhays said:

Don't know why they think God being on Trump's side is a plus.  He can't even defeat armies with iron chariots. 

Judges 1:19 "The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron."

About as respectable as a doctorate in Mother Goose

[But there is an entire area of classical religious study that even awards PhD's to thumping the bible, koran, etc!]

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford...  All founded as seminary institutions.  Mother Goose?......

Edited December 28, 2020 by jaybird18c

[gowlerk 1,902]

11 minutes ago, jaybird18c said:

[But there is an entire area of classical religious study that even awards PhD's to thumping the bible, koran, etc!]

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford...  All founded as seminary institutions.  Mother Goose?......

Studying religion is not the same as believing in it. The more a person studies religion the more decisions she will have to make over just what to believe. Because any serious study of it will involve examining ideas that directly conflict over and over again. There is nothing wrong about any particular religion, except everything. Believe what you want, expound it with fellow believers, but don't expect others to follow because they have no reason to.

[jakee 1,254]

4 hours ago, jaybird18c said:

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford...  All founded as seminary institutions.  

And if they still were, they would not be what they are.

[kallend 1,620]

10 hours ago, jaybird18c said:

[But there is an entire area of classical religious study that even awards PhD's to thumping the bible, koran, etc!]

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford...  All founded as seminary institutions.  Mother Goose?......

So was Liberty U.

It still is, they aren't,

[Phil1111 908]

22 minutes ago, kallend said:

So was Liberty U.

It still is, they aren't,

Just to summarize for those who may have missed. Falwell Jr. is trumps inspirational religious model. Mr. Granda, picture above from a month ago. Had a lengthy sexual relationship with Falwell's wife. Falwell liked to watch them have sex from a corner in the same bedroom. Mr Granda was a pool boy when he met Mrs. Falwell and subsequently to that sexual relationship. Ended up in a $4.6 million dollar real estate deal with them.

Falwell told Liberty University that he was just friends with Granda and" Falwell sought to characterize the affair as something between Granda and his wife. He wrote in the statement to the Examiner that "Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved."

All stuff that you typically don't see at all those stuffy uptight boring Ivy League colleges.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Phil1111

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

7 hours ago, Phil1111 said:

...All stuff that you typically don't see at all those stuffy uptight boring Ivy League colleges.

Not that it doesn't happen.

But since those folks don't run around proclaiming their righteousness, and condemning those who believe differently, it's not a big scandal and blatant hypocrisy when it does become public.

[jaybird18c 4]

1 hour ago, wolfriverjoe said:

Not that it doesn't happen.

But since those folks don't run around proclaiming their righteousness, and condemning those who believe differently, it's not a big scandal and blatant hypocrisy when it does become public.

Biblically, Christians don't proclaim their righteousness.  They proclaim Christ's righteousness.

[wmw999 2,116]

Biblically, they don't. But humanly, many proclaim their lives as being more on track.

The thing is, that being human, they can look past the "little transgressions" in people like them, that are highlighted in people not like them. That's also very human, and the source of all those "all the bad things Hillary/Obama/Biden has done" memes, when they're composed of looking through a lifetime for the problems, while "understanding" how someone like Trump (or Jerry Falwell, etc) could have sinned but now they're forgiven.

The verse about the mote in someone else's eye while ignoring the beam in one's own comes to mine.

I think faith is very important for a lot of people; it's a part of my life, but I'm not in charge of explaining mine, I'm only in charge of living my life as best I can, and hoping that I can improve the world at least some by being here. Because the world will continue after me, whether or not anyone's understanding of an afterlife is real.

Well, unless that asteroid hits us and wipes everyone out.

Wendy P.

[kallend 1,620]

3 hours ago, jaybird18c said:

Biblically, Christians don't proclaim their righteousness.  They proclaim Christ's righteousness.

We aren't living in Biblical times. 

For as long as I've been alive, self-professed Christians have had no hesitation in professing how righteous they are, all the way up to photos of prayer meetings in the Oval Office posted on social media.

 

20th - 21st Century versions of the Pharisees.

[jaybird18c 4]

6 minutes ago, kallend said:

We aren't living in Biblical times. 

For as long as I've been alive, self-professed Christians have had no hesitation in professing how righteous they are, all the way up to photos of prayer meetings in the Oval Office posted on social media.

 

20th - 21st Century versions of the Pharisees.

 

We are in fact living in biblical times until Christ returns.  I didn't say the ones you mentioned were right and I wouldn't generalize like you did.  I just expressed a biblical principal. 

[Phil1111 908]

1 hour ago, kallend said:

We aren't living in Biblical times. 

For as long as I've been alive, self-professed Christians have had no hesitation in professing how righteous they are, all the way up to photos of prayer meetings in the Oval Office posted on social media....

The righteous political right. A new license from trump and the GOP. From Politico this week:

"Former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.’s decision to spend millions of university dollars on Republican political causes followed an executive order by President Donald Trump directing the IRS to avoid whenever possible investigating religious organizations veering into politics.

Trump issued the order in 2017. The following year, under Falwell’s leadership, the university directed more than $3 million to conservative organizations. In 2019, it created a think tank that purchased Facebook ads featuring Trump’s image and the slogan “Pray For Our President,” produced a podcast that amplified Trump’s claims of a stolen election, and recently staged a strategy session for the 2021 elections that featured only Republican politicians.

These actions appear to push the boundaries of the university’s nonprofit status, particularly given that the law explicitly bans nonprofits from assisting political candidates under a provision called the Johnson Amendment, named after former President Lyndon Johnson, who sponsored it in the Senate.

But Trump’s administration furthered the IRS’ already hands-off approach to monitoring churches and other religious nonprofits to the point that enforcement now appears to be nearly nonexistent, giving Liberty and other groups new opportunity to test boundaries they couldn’t have in the past.

“For someone like Falwell, who was eager to use tax-exempt resources to engage in politics, it may have given the green light,” said Brendan Fisher, director at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center. “It’s a correlation — but it certainly seems like you can draw a line between the executive order, and Liberty ramping up its political activity in the years following it.”

What was the title of this thread again!

[jaybird18c 4]

That Bill of Rights is a pesky little document, isn't it Phil1111?

[jakee 1,254]

51 minutes ago, jaybird18c said:

That Bill of Rights is a pesky little document, isn't it Phil1111?

If you say so, but what does it have to do with the stuff Phil just said?

[timski 80]

4 hours ago, jaybird18c said:

 

We are in fact living in biblical times until Christ returns.  I didn't say the ones you mentioned were right and I wouldn't generalize like you did.  I just expressed a biblical principal. 

 

JESUS H CHRIST! Another Ron thumper. You live in Georgia too??? Asking for a friend.