These articles provide insights into the Religious Right and their support for Trumpism

The Religious Right is obsessed with the End Times. Trump’s war against Iran plays into this for his political benefit.  SEE THIS:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/evangelicals-are-anticipating-the-end-of-the-world-and-trump-is-listening/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=political-mojo-2020-01-24

 

White fundamentalist theocrats empower — and bog down — the Republican Party.  SEE THIS:

https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/theocracy-threatening-fundamentalists.html

 

Read this insightful article about the right wing’s billionaires, media, fundamentalists, and political strategies.  SEE THIS:

https://washingtonspectator.org/nelson-shadow-network/

 

“Christ the King:” How Jesus Became Donald Trump!  At the bottom of page 1 be sure to click the link to continue to page 2:

https://www.opednews.com/articles/Christ-the-King–How-Jes-by-Mike-Rivage-Seul-CHRISTIANS-CANNOT-BE-CONSERVATIVES_Christian-Religion_Christian-Values_Christianity-191118-36.html

 

On January 11, 2020, an excellent non-profit organization (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, www.au.org) provided this information:

It didn’t take long at all for 2020 to throw something new and dangerous at church-state separation: Last Friday, President Trump held a campaign rally inside a Miami evangelical mega-church to kick off “Evangelicals for Trump” – and he made a new promise to attack religious freedom.
Trump said he and Attorney General Bill Barr would soon take action to “safeguard” students’ and teachers’ First Amendment rights to pray in our schools. We’ve heard rhetoric like that before, and it’s typically followed by attempts to institute coercive, unconstitutional religious practices into public schools that should be welcoming and inclusive to all students, regardless of their religious beliefs. Read more about his comments here:  https://www.au.org/blogs/trump-school-prayer?emci=063f9368-eb33-ea11-a1cc-2818784d084f&emdi=774152fc-8b34-ea11-a1cc-2818784d084f&ceid=3714577

Trump’s threat to insert a one-sided view of religion into our public schools aligns with the goals of Project Blitz (https://www.au.org/blogs/activity-in-the-states?emci=063f9368-eb33-ea11-a1cc-2818784d084f&emdi=774152fc-8b34-ea11-a1cc-2818784d084f&ceid=3714577), a coordinated initiative across state legislatures to codify a Christian nation. Legislative sessions are beginning in states across the country and we stand ready to block more Project Blitz bills in the coming months.

ALSO, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (www.au.org) provided this “playbook” to help us understand and stop this assault by the Religious Right:  https://nvlupin.blob.core.windows.net/images/van/EA/EA001/1/58261/images/Proj_Blitz_Full_Four_Panel.png?emci=b05be993-0833-ea11-a1cc-2818784d084f&emdi=6b606c05-0a33-ea11-a1cc-2818784d084f&ceid=3714577

 

Why the Religious Right was ripe for a takeover by Republicans and Trump:

Nowadays the overwhelming majority of Religious Right followers vote for Republicans and are loyal supporters of Donald Trump. This is the culmination of decades of perversion within what has been called the Religious Right that began in the 1970s.

Conservative Christianity has always existed in the U.S. Many people believed the Bible as a word-for-word dictation from God that could not be questioned. Many people believed the basic “Jesus-died-for-our-sins” theology that persists now, but they also believed in compassion, mercy, and helping the poor.

In the 1970s political conservatives started organizing a movement to roll back the social justice progress that had occurred in the 1960s. They opposed the liberation movements (women’s rights, racial justice, etc.), and as the ‘70s moved into the ‘80s they especially opposed progress for LGBTQ rights.

To build their movement to roll back human rights they used the new methodologies of mass-mailings for fundraising purposes that some political conservatives – including right-wing Christians – had been developing. Those tendencies merged, and the highly politicized Religious Right was born.

They discovered that they could accumulate huge amounts of money by fine-tuning their strategies for bulk-mailing people with frightening fundraising letters expressing frantic fears about abortion, gay people, and what the Religious Right saw as the U.S.’s moral decay.

While mainstream Christian denominations were losing members because the churches’ routine theology and practices were not keeping up with the modern world, the very conservative churches were gaining members by promoting and exploiting simplistic theology and fears that helped people cope with our rapidly changing world. Instead of mainstream churches’ half-hearted interest in helping people think for themselves, the conservative churches simply told people what to believe, so they practiced an authoritarian kind of religion. Troubled people seemed comforted by letting the man in front of the congregation (or on TV) tell them what to believe.

In this way, the empowerment and democracy that Martin Luther and the Reformation and the Protestants had promoted (read the Bible for yourself and figure things out) were replaced by a top-down authoritarianism that kept people ignorant and disempowered. The Religious Right opposed democracy. The Religious Right’s politics (opposing women’s rights, opposing Choice, opposing gays, opposing social progress) was basically opposed to the Gospel message of liberation, love, compassion, egalitarianism, human rights, freedom, and so forth. The Religious Right opposed democracy and supported authoritarianism.

The largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. is the Southern Baptist. Traditionally, all Baptists (Southern or otherwise) were fiercely committed to the self-determination of each local congregation, and they fiercely opposed domination by their national church body. Just a very few years ago that flipped and the national church body – which had been taken over by the new Religious Right – began dictating political policies to local congregations.

From the 1970s onward, the Religious Right has fought hard AGAINST the Gospel’s true values – the values I mentioned above – and has fought hard for their OPPOSITES. The Religious Right hollowed out the true Gospel and replaced it with a cruel, oppressive authoritarianism.

During the same time, the Republican Party moved from “centrism” and “conservativism” to right-wing extremism that flirts with fascism. Thoughtful Republicans have been purged from their party and replaced by rigid ideologues who prevent the government from serving the public interest, prevent the government from helping or even protecting people from oppression or pollution, and actually prevent the government from functioning (except that they do accentuate the government’s abusive functions for war, hurting immigrants, subsidizing rich people and Big Business, etc.).

Increasingly the Republican Party has REJECTED America’s best values, and it has become a cruel, corrupt, authoritarian cult without any real moral values.

Likewise, for decades the Religious Right has EXCLUDED true Gospel values from its theology, so it was ripe for take-over by the Republican Party.

Now the Religious Right is an intensely partisan hate group masquerading as a religion.

It was easy to replace a simple wooden cross with a giant golden “T” as their symbol for worship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About GlenAnderson 1499 Articles
Since the late 1960s Glen Anderson has devoted his life to working as a volunteer for peace, nonviolence, social justice, and progressive political issues. He has worked through many existing organizations and started several. Over the years he has worked especially for such wide-ranging goals as making peace with Vietnam, eliminating nuclear weapons, converting from a military economy to a peacetime economy, abolishing the death penalty, promoting nonviolence at all levels throughout society, and helping people organize and strategize for grassroots movements to solve many kinds of problems. He writes, speaks, and conducts training workshops on a wide variety of topics. Since 1987 he has produced and hosted a one-hour cable TV interview program on many kinds of issues. Since 2017 he has blogged at https://parallaxperspectives.org He lives in Lacey near Olympia WA. You can reach him at (360) 491-9093 glen@parallaxperspectives.org