That old classic hypocrisy. Then again, a religion that promotes a message of love via the threat of death, I dunno, looks like a certain hypocrisy has been there from the start. ((signed) Not an expert on theology or history of great religions)
Literally laughing out loud at David French’s description of historic racial segregation at church as “white identity politics.” Conservatives will do almost anything to avoid saying “racism.”
I’ve said this before, but conservative Christianity is just reactionary fascism with a thin decoupage of Jesus on top to provide the excuse for any and every heinous thing conservatives want to inflict on the rest of us: “don’t blame me, I’m just following orders from the Man Upstairs.”
No surprise a growing number of people, especially young people, are catching on to their act.
I hadn't thought of it that way, but yes, such as French may adopt more academic language like “white identity politics" because, being clinical, it has less sting than "racism."
Oh, I agree it's a very useful as well as an *accurate* descriptor. But I object to it being used as a sanitized replacement for the word "racism," when "racism" is the most accurate and commonly understood term for the behavior being described.
oh noes! jeebus is being cancel-cultured! there's a parallel between declining numbers of church attendees and declared republicans for a good reason. they're both Grift universities. the church is, in a way, the ultimate ideal of the right: absolutely tax-free, authoritarian, misogynistic institutions. I can't be too soon that they are both banished from earth.
I thought it was obvious that the same “qualities” that MAGAs like about Trump are what “Christians” like about preachers: telling them what they want to hear, confirming they’re the chosen tribe, loud fact-free ranting, and yes, the endless fleecing of the flock for personal gain. Why so many feel the need to embrace these type of leaders instead of someone with useful information and practical recommendations is beyond my ken. Cults and cultists are hard to understand if you’re not built to swing that way, I guess.
One attraction of the MAGA cult is the reassurance that you will never, ever be wrong about anything. Whatever half-assed opinion you form out of your pre-existing bigotries is 100% correct and will be defended to the death. Even if you lose an election, you'll have the reassurance of knowing you didn't really lose, it was all fraud and you're still on the winning team.
I passed a conservative looking church the other day and noticed its logo was a large Star of David with a tiny cross in the middle. I thought that summed up conservative “Christianity” quite well. Ninety eight percent Old Testament hate and superstition, two percent lip service to Jesus.
On a different note, apropos of your hed, if you haven’t watched First Reformed with Paul Schroeder’s commentary, I highly recommend it. Gives a lot of insight into how “slow” films are made.
Much agreed... most WASP-y types, even if secular, completely buy into the historical & textual deformation inherent in the Xtn appropriation of Judaic scriptures. A deformation that produces anti-semitism in a terrifying number of USians across the political spectrum.
But also, the OP is misreading the more likely intention of the symbolism.
Umm, the OP doesn't give a flying fuck about the likely intention of the symbolism, and I'm unclear how anything in the comment could be read that way. Same thing for an attack on Judaism. That's one of the most annoying things about these little internet flame-ups, that they often have nothing to do with the words that were actually written, but become entirely about some ridiculously wrong misreading and/or projection on the part of the offended. I mean, dudes (yes, you have been duded), lighten up. It's just a (n attempt at a) humorous comment on a blog post making a point about conservative "Christian" hypocrisies vis-à-vis their professed beliefs, not some anti-semitic rant like Hitler. And yes, I considered the possibility that I had never thought of it the way you seem to want me to think of it, but realized I am thankful I never thought of it that way because I'd hate to be the kind of person that thinks of things that way, always searching for, and finding ways to be offended by what I think someone may have meant beyond the words they actually wrote. Nevertheless, sorry for coming off as surly. I agree we don't need any of that kind of crap here. I will continue to strive to do better– to be, in the spirit of the blog, comedic rather than churlish. Peace, dudes.
On top of equating Judaism with "Old Testament [ugh -hq] hate and superstition [!! -hq], it shows no interest in what the symbol means to those who display it. I'm hoping that Roy will re-read it as well and re-consider his like.
Given the way Christianity works, upon achieving hegemony they will surely turn to more and more overt antisemitism and then the Catholics and the Prots will drop their facade of alliance and start in on each other once again. Something to look forward to.
I re-read my comment and confirmed that I didn’t equate anything with Judaism. That was all you, dude. The conversation is about what the symbol means to conservative christians.
It can be read as saying 98% of the Old Testament is hate and superstition from its logical to take that as a characterization of Judaism. With some effort, it seems that you meant this branch of Xianity is 98% Old Testament hate and superstition.
I don't want to be argumentative, but as I did not mention Judaism but was explicitly writing about conservative "Christianity," I do not get why it is logical to think I was writing about the thing I didn't write about rather than the thing I did? Wouldn't it take more effort to speculate on nefarious, unwritten motives rather than just read the words on the screen and take them at face value?
I’ve read the Old Testament, took classes on it in college, and read a lot about it, and know plenty of Jewish people are aware it contains some hate and a lot of superstition, so not really seeing the problem. Unless you are saying one shouldn’t be honest about religious texts lest some ignorant folk or fundamentalists be offended?
I'm saying that if your response to seeing a Star of David is to say it stands for "hate and superstition," then you have a way bigger problem than you're acknowledging.
I see we are continuing our fine tradition of one of our community having some statement or attitude of possible offense pointed out to them, but instead of saying, "Hmm, I never thought of it that way," they get all defensive & snarly.
A fine look.
Maybe a better response would be "I'm aware that the 'Old Testament' and the 'Tanakh' are not the same thing, and the uses of the OT as a basis for hateful beliefs in Xtn cultures is the prodfuct of mis-translation, selective reading, lack of relevant historical contexts, cross-pollination with other Merditerranean cultures (esp. Rome), and massive cultural appropriation by fundamentalist Xtns in the last 200 years.
I'm sure all your classes taught you that, right?
I can go into a more likely explanation for the symbol on the church, which I agree is disturbing. But I imagine you'd rather just "dude" me.
It’s worth understanding that the very phrases “Old Testament” and “New Testament” are products of traditional supersessionist doctrine that contrasts the Hebrew Bible, seen as angry and ritualistic, with its upgraded version — the peace-and-love Christian Gospels. So the view of the Hebrew Bible as biased and hateful isn’t something educated and edgy, something that would be alien to American evangelical Christians. Rather, it was long part of the standard Christian position, part of the felt imperative that the Jews be converted to Christianity. It’s true that, sorta recently, some U.S. evangelicals have adopted premillennial dispensationalism, which is to say the view that God’s covenant with Jews persists and is entirely separate from his covenant with Christians. But those would be the last people to identify themselves with a Jewish star surrounding their cross. To my knowledge, the only folks who identify themselves with that symbol are the so-called messianic Jews, better known as “Jews for Jesus.”
Anyway, like Grouchy Medievalist says: If you see a symbol that represents a minority group, but it's embedded in an unexpected context; and that causes you to have Thoughts, which you express online; and you’re told that the folks whom the symbol represents would find something about those Thoughts troubling . . . well, it's a good opportunity for a learning experience.
I think it’s a matter of an EZ misreading from poor drafting, Teach. The jumping to conclusions here were a little less knee jerk, a little more triggered, albeit inadvertently.
Which isn’t to say you’re wrong, just that there’s another or alternative angle.
If you pass by a synagogue with a Star of David, do you figure that those folks are even more contemptible than the evangelists, since evangelists are only 98% hate and superstition, while the synagogue congregants display only the Star of David and therefore must be 100% hate and superstition?
My point is strictly clarity. I know you weren’t referencing Judaism except it was possible to be read that way. But because of the way it was written, it was possible to read it that way which was approximately of the point you were actually making.
It’s a comments section and we sometimes fire from the hip with the risk that we’re not making ourselves as clear as we’d like or think we are or whatever. We get spanked rightly or wrongly but move on. You know, forgive and forget. God knows no one should expect perfection in a comments section.
I was (blessedly) not pressed into that particular service, but was already too far gone by the age of 6 anyway. I may have inherited (or self generated) an overly fine-tuned BS detector.
The hand-wringing God-botherers, who overlap significantly with the self-styled pedophile hunters, seem (conveniently?) not to have considered the many child sex scandals that have been revealed in recent years (and not just in the Catholic Church, although certainly it deserves a shout-out for the institutionalization and massive international cover-up of widespread sickening crimes). Maybe folks just don't want their kids mixing with pervs.
I was initially tempted, as I started reading, to go let''s say heavily offensive Failings-of-Xianity-wise by reading on, I saw that Roy did enough of that to relieve the pressure. Thank god?
But a few loose points.
I'm curious whether that less religious thing: Has it been broken down by religion? And in the case of the great tent that's Xianity where you have, I dunno, at one end Mennonites, the other the prosperity gospel, what there any break down in any way of which beliefs, sects and/or denominations are going which way? (Now that I think about, I guess when this nation becomes more explicitly a Xian theocracy (to go with a plutocracy -- talk about a prosperity gospel!), SCOTUS, for one, will have to make theological decisions. I'm thinking of Dobbs which has the effect Orthodox Jewish women, contra to their religion, in cases of pregnancy-related emergency, be allowed to die because the law says the embryo's life is more important than the mothers while the religion says otherwise.)
Too, I get that a Xian thing is suffering in this life, so it's wrong for the state to intervene and mitigate anything -- actually extends to Covid and pandemics -- but, I dunno, when you see mass impoverishment, hollowing out of the economy, etc., etc., one would think even at least some believers are having trouble believing. Hollowed out economy, a mismanaged global pandemic, and now the world on fire -- I dunno, that's gotta do something to the ability to believe. I mean, clearly at least one god out there is clearly not providing.
Anyway, all that suing aside, it looks like religious belie is growing only amongst those for whom it's their flavor of identity politics. Yes, of course, I love that irony.
Jul 21, 2022·edited Jul 21, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
I think these days when the church leadership pulls their usual fuck kids, steal money, hire pool boys to fuck their wives while they watch stuff all the while living like degenerate royalty it's more than likely going to end up all over the internet and subsequently turning a lot of people away from the mainstream religious experience .
Out in the country where I live
folks will build a pole barn and open a feed store or a tractor dealership.Some sell horse trailers and utility trailers and such. The Smart Ones will open a church because the real big money is in Jesus.
Everyone knows that.
Right around the corner from me some guy built a pole barn and opened a church a couple of years ago.. It wasn't anything real big - couple thousand square foot and after a year or so on a Sunday morning there would be 20 - 30 cars in the parking lot. Probably enough donations to pay the bills maybe take one of those nice Cancun vacations.
Early this year they tripled their parking lot space and built another, jumbo size pole barn.
Once they increased the size of the facility they went from 30 cars there on a Sunday to what seems like a couple of hundred. I don't know what that was about. Hey, God is good and now they probably own a time share in Cancun.
it's one of those non- denominational churches. The sign out front says " Heritage Church." There isn't a cross or a stained glass window or picture of Jesus anywhere.
Just Heritage. Oh yeah. Everybody seems pretty white. I work early Sunday Mornings and they are usually letting out as I drive by. White, White White. There's probably a big picture of Trump over the altar and Nazi flags on either side. Maybe a Confederate flag.It's Heritage after all. Not hate.
Jul 21, 2022·edited Jul 21, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Two things you've pointed to here that are worth thinking about more broadly: these absolutely smack-on analogies between both 'prosperity gospel,' which of course would exalt the flashy, gold- toilet-having fictious-real estate czar as its hierophant, but also the idea of the 1% as the 'elect' in the Calvinist sense. These are theological structures being mapped directly onto the political and the economic & are in all likelihood going to crush us, at least in the short term.
Jul 21, 2022·edited Jul 21, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
"reminiscent of many rightwing observations I’ve seen that Americans really agree with them if you just take out the black people"
Robin Vos, Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, who has been in the news of late, once said, "If you take out Madison and Milwaukee, Republicans do pretty well." I laughed when I first heard that, until I realized it was an actual program of action and not just an idle observation.
The whole "yoots are getting less religious" thing reminds me of the old "yoots will save us in the next election" that for me dates back to when Nixon signed that amendment lowering the voting age to 18 (ah, the 26th Amendment. Misty watercolored memories). As overall yoots vote like their parents, so too the human need for something that looks like religion will remain strong, the only question is what will fill that hole.
The 1-2 punch of tax exemption and incumbency advantage means the Christian faith has powerful motivation and advantage to keep their monopoly on faith, adapting their message to appeal to the current generation of their "flock" as they so accurately view their parishioners. The megachurches with their coffeehouses and day care are I think a good example of how that plays out. The Catholic church, on the other hand, has chosen to move its focus from its traditional European/American base in favor of recruiting in the ROW rather than give up its need for unquestioned obedience from its flock. Devotion matters more than anything else (other than power, whose engine is that devotion) to them. Their goal in the West is stronger commitment from fewer numbers, much like the Republican party. Bring back the Latin Mass! Opus Dei! No communion for you, liberal baby killer!
Christian/Protestant churches will have the numbers in the West, but the Catholic church will give up power when you pry it from its cold, dead, hands.
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q881g1L_d8
Brother, I just came in here to post that. And don't forget James Baldwin repeated that quote on the Dick Cavett show.
Black folks may have a friend in Jesus, but they have no friends in white churches.
That old classic hypocrisy. Then again, a religion that promotes a message of love via the threat of death, I dunno, looks like a certain hypocrisy has been there from the start. ((signed) Not an expert on theology or history of great religions)
Literally laughing out loud at David French’s description of historic racial segregation at church as “white identity politics.” Conservatives will do almost anything to avoid saying “racism.”
I’ve said this before, but conservative Christianity is just reactionary fascism with a thin decoupage of Jesus on top to provide the excuse for any and every heinous thing conservatives want to inflict on the rest of us: “don’t blame me, I’m just following orders from the Man Upstairs.”
No surprise a growing number of people, especially young people, are catching on to their act.
I hadn't thought of it that way, but yes, such as French may adopt more academic language like “white identity politics" because, being clinical, it has less sting than "racism."
"White identity politics" in that only Whites are allowed to have identities. Everybody else is Darkness, literally and figuratively.
I think "White Identity politics" can be a useful phrase, but definitely NOT as a substitute for racism.
Oh, I agree it's a very useful as well as an *accurate* descriptor. But I object to it being used as a sanitized replacement for the word "racism," when "racism" is the most accurate and commonly understood term for the behavior being described.
oh noes! jeebus is being cancel-cultured! there's a parallel between declining numbers of church attendees and declared republicans for a good reason. they're both Grift universities. the church is, in a way, the ultimate ideal of the right: absolutely tax-free, authoritarian, misogynistic institutions. I can't be too soon that they are both banished from earth.
hierarchical, too
I thought it was obvious that the same “qualities” that MAGAs like about Trump are what “Christians” like about preachers: telling them what they want to hear, confirming they’re the chosen tribe, loud fact-free ranting, and yes, the endless fleecing of the flock for personal gain. Why so many feel the need to embrace these type of leaders instead of someone with useful information and practical recommendations is beyond my ken. Cults and cultists are hard to understand if you’re not built to swing that way, I guess.
One attraction of the MAGA cult is the reassurance that you will never, ever be wrong about anything. Whatever half-assed opinion you form out of your pre-existing bigotries is 100% correct and will be defended to the death. Even if you lose an election, you'll have the reassurance of knowing you didn't really lose, it was all fraud and you're still on the winning team.
I passed a conservative looking church the other day and noticed its logo was a large Star of David with a tiny cross in the middle. I thought that summed up conservative “Christianity” quite well. Ninety eight percent Old Testament hate and superstition, two percent lip service to Jesus.
On a different note, apropos of your hed, if you haven’t watched First Reformed with Paul Schroeder’s commentary, I highly recommend it. Gives a lot of insight into how “slow” films are made.
<Silvio voice> Yeah, I'm gonna try that.
It might be worth your re-reading this comment and thinking about how it reads to Jews.
Much agreed... most WASP-y types, even if secular, completely buy into the historical & textual deformation inherent in the Xtn appropriation of Judaic scriptures. A deformation that produces anti-semitism in a terrifying number of USians across the political spectrum.
But also, the OP is misreading the more likely intention of the symbolism.
Umm, the OP doesn't give a flying fuck about the likely intention of the symbolism, and I'm unclear how anything in the comment could be read that way. Same thing for an attack on Judaism. That's one of the most annoying things about these little internet flame-ups, that they often have nothing to do with the words that were actually written, but become entirely about some ridiculously wrong misreading and/or projection on the part of the offended. I mean, dudes (yes, you have been duded), lighten up. It's just a (n attempt at a) humorous comment on a blog post making a point about conservative "Christian" hypocrisies vis-à-vis their professed beliefs, not some anti-semitic rant like Hitler. And yes, I considered the possibility that I had never thought of it the way you seem to want me to think of it, but realized I am thankful I never thought of it that way because I'd hate to be the kind of person that thinks of things that way, always searching for, and finding ways to be offended by what I think someone may have meant beyond the words they actually wrote. Nevertheless, sorry for coming off as surly. I agree we don't need any of that kind of crap here. I will continue to strive to do better– to be, in the spirit of the blog, comedic rather than churlish. Peace, dudes.
On top of equating Judaism with "Old Testament [ugh -hq] hate and superstition [!! -hq], it shows no interest in what the symbol means to those who display it. I'm hoping that Roy will re-read it as well and re-consider his like.
Given the way Christianity works, upon achieving hegemony they will surely turn to more and more overt antisemitism and then the Catholics and the Prots will drop their facade of alliance and start in on each other once again. Something to look forward to.
I re-read my comment and confirmed that I didn’t equate anything with Judaism. That was all you, dude. The conversation is about what the symbol means to conservative christians.
It can be read as saying 98% of the Old Testament is hate and superstition from its logical to take that as a characterization of Judaism. With some effort, it seems that you meant this branch of Xianity is 98% Old Testament hate and superstition.
I don't want to be argumentative, but as I did not mention Judaism but was explicitly writing about conservative "Christianity," I do not get why it is logical to think I was writing about the thing I didn't write about rather than the thing I did? Wouldn't it take more effort to speculate on nefarious, unwritten motives rather than just read the words on the screen and take them at face value?
I’ve read the Old Testament, took classes on it in college, and read a lot about it, and know plenty of Jewish people are aware it contains some hate and a lot of superstition, so not really seeing the problem. Unless you are saying one shouldn’t be honest about religious texts lest some ignorant folk or fundamentalists be offended?
I'm saying that if your response to seeing a Star of David is to say it stands for "hate and superstition," then you have a way bigger problem than you're acknowledging.
Big if, dude.
I take Michael's meaning. The tiny cross in the middle gives it away.
I see we are continuing our fine tradition of one of our community having some statement or attitude of possible offense pointed out to them, but instead of saying, "Hmm, I never thought of it that way," they get all defensive & snarly.
A fine look.
Maybe a better response would be "I'm aware that the 'Old Testament' and the 'Tanakh' are not the same thing, and the uses of the OT as a basis for hateful beliefs in Xtn cultures is the prodfuct of mis-translation, selective reading, lack of relevant historical contexts, cross-pollination with other Merditerranean cultures (esp. Rome), and massive cultural appropriation by fundamentalist Xtns in the last 200 years.
I'm sure all your classes taught you that, right?
I can go into a more likely explanation for the symbol on the church, which I agree is disturbing. But I imagine you'd rather just "dude" me.
It’s worth understanding that the very phrases “Old Testament” and “New Testament” are products of traditional supersessionist doctrine that contrasts the Hebrew Bible, seen as angry and ritualistic, with its upgraded version — the peace-and-love Christian Gospels. So the view of the Hebrew Bible as biased and hateful isn’t something educated and edgy, something that would be alien to American evangelical Christians. Rather, it was long part of the standard Christian position, part of the felt imperative that the Jews be converted to Christianity. It’s true that, sorta recently, some U.S. evangelicals have adopted premillennial dispensationalism, which is to say the view that God’s covenant with Jews persists and is entirely separate from his covenant with Christians. But those would be the last people to identify themselves with a Jewish star surrounding their cross. To my knowledge, the only folks who identify themselves with that symbol are the so-called messianic Jews, better known as “Jews for Jesus.”
Anyway, like Grouchy Medievalist says: If you see a symbol that represents a minority group, but it's embedded in an unexpected context; and that causes you to have Thoughts, which you express online; and you’re told that the folks whom the symbol represents would find something about those Thoughts troubling . . . well, it's a good opportunity for a learning experience.
I think it’s a matter of an EZ misreading from poor drafting, Teach. The jumping to conclusions here were a little less knee jerk, a little more triggered, albeit inadvertently.
Which isn’t to say you’re wrong, just that there’s another or alternative angle.
If you pass by a synagogue with a Star of David, do you figure that those folks are even more contemptible than the evangelists, since evangelists are only 98% hate and superstition, while the synagogue congregants display only the Star of David and therefore must be 100% hate and superstition?
Your words, not mine.
Jesus loves me, this I know
'Cause He makes me lots of dough!
I damn those liberals! And the Blacks!
'Cause Jesus says "Make these attacks!"
Beatitudes? That's all fake news!
And Jesus says "Watch out for Jews!"
So give your money, check or cash!
'Cause Jesus says "Increase my stash!"
Genius.
You continue to hit it out of the park. I can't resist joining in the fun, so here's my small contribution to the jollity:
Prosperity Gospel is no lie,
Just ask my Friend up in the sky!
Libs are groomers who plot with guile,
Jesus is vengeance, let us pray Sieg Heil!
[The spirit of Joe Hill nods with approval]
Stand Fast ‘gainst the leftist iniquity
Hew closer – there’s strength in propinquity
Lean a little more fash
And we’ll rake in the cash
Then shower ourselves with liquidity
Edit to add: Jesus loves me, I guess. Felipe, Matty & Moises, they just don't know me that well...
My point is strictly clarity. I know you weren’t referencing Judaism except it was possible to be read that way. But because of the way it was written, it was possible to read it that way which was approximately of the point you were actually making.
It’s a comments section and we sometimes fire from the hip with the risk that we’re not making ourselves as clear as we’d like or think we are or whatever. We get spanked rightly or wrongly but move on. You know, forgive and forget. God knows no one should expect perfection in a comments section.
"the young will get to know and love Him through forced exposure" Why, it's as if the concept of faith and the idea of coercion are contradictory!
My parents sent me to a Catholic boys school, and I wasn't an atheist when I went in, but I damn sure was an atheist when I left.
I was (blessedly) not pressed into that particular service, but was already too far gone by the age of 6 anyway. I may have inherited (or self generated) an overly fine-tuned BS detector.
I haven‘t had to think about folk masses for decades... Thanks fella
The hand-wringing God-botherers, who overlap significantly with the self-styled pedophile hunters, seem (conveniently?) not to have considered the many child sex scandals that have been revealed in recent years (and not just in the Catholic Church, although certainly it deserves a shout-out for the institutionalization and massive international cover-up of widespread sickening crimes). Maybe folks just don't want their kids mixing with pervs.
I was initially tempted, as I started reading, to go let''s say heavily offensive Failings-of-Xianity-wise by reading on, I saw that Roy did enough of that to relieve the pressure. Thank god?
But a few loose points.
I'm curious whether that less religious thing: Has it been broken down by religion? And in the case of the great tent that's Xianity where you have, I dunno, at one end Mennonites, the other the prosperity gospel, what there any break down in any way of which beliefs, sects and/or denominations are going which way? (Now that I think about, I guess when this nation becomes more explicitly a Xian theocracy (to go with a plutocracy -- talk about a prosperity gospel!), SCOTUS, for one, will have to make theological decisions. I'm thinking of Dobbs which has the effect Orthodox Jewish women, contra to their religion, in cases of pregnancy-related emergency, be allowed to die because the law says the embryo's life is more important than the mothers while the religion says otherwise.)
Too, I get that a Xian thing is suffering in this life, so it's wrong for the state to intervene and mitigate anything -- actually extends to Covid and pandemics -- but, I dunno, when you see mass impoverishment, hollowing out of the economy, etc., etc., one would think even at least some believers are having trouble believing. Hollowed out economy, a mismanaged global pandemic, and now the world on fire -- I dunno, that's gotta do something to the ability to believe. I mean, clearly at least one god out there is clearly not providing.
Anyway, all that suing aside, it looks like religious belie is growing only amongst those for whom it's their flavor of identity politics. Yes, of course, I love that irony.
" break down in any way of which beliefs, sects and/or denominations are going which way?"
Mainline Protestantism and the Catholic church not doing well, the growth is in fundamentalist Christian sects.
I think these days when the church leadership pulls their usual fuck kids, steal money, hire pool boys to fuck their wives while they watch stuff all the while living like degenerate royalty it's more than likely going to end up all over the internet and subsequently turning a lot of people away from the mainstream religious experience .
Out in the country where I live
folks will build a pole barn and open a feed store or a tractor dealership.Some sell horse trailers and utility trailers and such. The Smart Ones will open a church because the real big money is in Jesus.
Everyone knows that.
Right around the corner from me some guy built a pole barn and opened a church a couple of years ago.. It wasn't anything real big - couple thousand square foot and after a year or so on a Sunday morning there would be 20 - 30 cars in the parking lot. Probably enough donations to pay the bills maybe take one of those nice Cancun vacations.
Early this year they tripled their parking lot space and built another, jumbo size pole barn.
Once they increased the size of the facility they went from 30 cars there on a Sunday to what seems like a couple of hundred. I don't know what that was about. Hey, God is good and now they probably own a time share in Cancun.
it's one of those non- denominational churches. The sign out front says " Heritage Church." There isn't a cross or a stained glass window or picture of Jesus anywhere.
Just Heritage. Oh yeah. Everybody seems pretty white. I work early Sunday Mornings and they are usually letting out as I drive by. White, White White. There's probably a big picture of Trump over the altar and Nazi flags on either side. Maybe a Confederate flag.It's Heritage after all. Not hate.
"The Smart Ones will open a church because the real big money is in Jesus."
And there are no taxes!
Two things you've pointed to here that are worth thinking about more broadly: these absolutely smack-on analogies between both 'prosperity gospel,' which of course would exalt the flashy, gold- toilet-having fictious-real estate czar as its hierophant, but also the idea of the 1% as the 'elect' in the Calvinist sense. These are theological structures being mapped directly onto the political and the economic & are in all likelihood going to crush us, at least in the short term.
Ohhhh. So close. Made it all the way through the essay and comments to here without having to look -up any words.
Write it down, it's sure to be on the final.
I know this was just a typo, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but in case anyone really doesn't know it, the word is "hierophant."
Has French ever actually listened to a black preacher? Franklin Graham = William Barber?
I’m sure he weighed in on whatever second hand reporting he got on Jeremiah Wright.
Periodic reminder that El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) was *also* a Black preacher.
Amen and put another high capacity mag in the collection plate!
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!
Yep. In many white Evangelical churches God 'n guns go together like soup and sandwich.
"reminiscent of many rightwing observations I’ve seen that Americans really agree with them if you just take out the black people"
Robin Vos, Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, who has been in the news of late, once said, "If you take out Madison and Milwaukee, Republicans do pretty well." I laughed when I first heard that, until I realized it was an actual program of action and not just an idle observation.
The whole "yoots are getting less religious" thing reminds me of the old "yoots will save us in the next election" that for me dates back to when Nixon signed that amendment lowering the voting age to 18 (ah, the 26th Amendment. Misty watercolored memories). As overall yoots vote like their parents, so too the human need for something that looks like religion will remain strong, the only question is what will fill that hole.
The 1-2 punch of tax exemption and incumbency advantage means the Christian faith has powerful motivation and advantage to keep their monopoly on faith, adapting their message to appeal to the current generation of their "flock" as they so accurately view their parishioners. The megachurches with their coffeehouses and day care are I think a good example of how that plays out. The Catholic church, on the other hand, has chosen to move its focus from its traditional European/American base in favor of recruiting in the ROW rather than give up its need for unquestioned obedience from its flock. Devotion matters more than anything else (other than power, whose engine is that devotion) to them. Their goal in the West is stronger commitment from fewer numbers, much like the Republican party. Bring back the Latin Mass! Opus Dei! No communion for you, liberal baby killer!
Christian/Protestant churches will have the numbers in the West, but the Catholic church will give up power when you pry it from its cold, dead, hands.