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Showing posts with label Alternet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alternet. Show all posts
Alternet ★For over a decade now, the political movement of President Donald Trump has relied heavily on the support of American Christians. 

This is especially true of Evangelicals, roughly 80 percent of whom backed Trump in all three of his elections. But on Friday, one Christian writer asserted that the faithful who voted for Trump should take a closer look at their Bibles.

This is according to Martin Thomas Johnson, who wrote in the popular spiritual publication Patheos that the Bible has much to say about recent political news, and that Trump is a “Master” who no one should rush to serve. To Johnson, there is an important connection between the president’s ego, the Reflecting Pool debacle, and a wave of recent cyberattacks.

As Johnson explains:

This week there’s been a lot of news about U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro over the alleged vandalism of the reflecting pool. At first she was adamant that it was vandalism that damaged the pool after Trump’s nearly $16 million beautification project.

But then:

she did a 180 and dismissed four of the cases of vandalism … Once she realized there was no legal standing for the cases, she quickly disagreed with the president . . . 

Continue @ Alternet.

Christian Writer Lays Out Biblical Justification For Rejecting Trump

Alternet ★ Written by John Stoehr.

America is not a Christian nation. Yes, I know what they say. But we're not, and it's not because history and the Constitution say so. It's because the people who call themselves Christian, especially the supporters of Donald Trump, are often so ignorant of their religion. How can we be a Christian nation when Christians here don't know much about Christianity?

The question occurred to me while reading an essay by Hannibal Hamlin in the Pittsburgh Review of Books in which the Ohio State English professor said that though we're called the most religious nation on earth, "Americans are ill-informed about even their own religion."

According to a 2010 Gallup poll, only just over half of Americans knew that the Golden Rule was not one of the Ten Commandments, and just under half could name the four Gospels. A meager 16 percent knew that salvation through faith alone is a Protestant rather than Catholic doctrine. I once had to point out to a student, a Catholic school graduate, that I didn’t think belief in transubstantiation was optional for Catholics. A number of evangelical pastors have recently reported shrinking congregations, as their parishioners discovered, to their irritation, that Jesus asked them to turn the other cheek.

Continue @ Altermet.

Behind America’s 'True' Religion - 🪶Why Millions Are Quietly Quitting Jesus

Alternet ✏ Written by Robert Reich.

Trump is following Putin’s, Xi’s, and Orban’s playbook. First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you.

Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with.

Intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)

Then focus on independent sources of information: the media and the universities. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews.

Then go after the universities.

Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests. On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University.

This is an extension of Republican tactics before Trump’s second term. Prior to Trump appointing her ambassador to the United Nations, former Representative Elise Stefanik (Harvard class of 2006) browbeat presidents of elite universities over their responses to student protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, leading to several presidents being fired.

Senator Josh Hawley (Stanford class of 2002 and Yale Law class of 2006) called the student demonstrations signs of “moral rot” at the universities.

But antisemitism was just a pretext.

JD Vance (Yale Law 2013) has termed university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Victor Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination of universities.”
I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”


Trump is also targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on university campuses.

But of all Trump’s and Republicans’ moves against higher education, the most destructive is the cancelation of research grants and contracts. The destruction is hardly confined to Columbia and other suspected left-wing bastions.

Continue reading @ Alternet.

Here's Trump's Next Target 🪶 According To The Tyrant's Playbook

Alternet ✏ In the days since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had established the constitutional right to an abortion, some Christians have cited the Bible to argue why this decision should either be celebrated or lamented.

Melanie Howard

But here’s the problem: This 2,000-year-old text says nothing about abortion.
As a university professor of biblical studies, I am familiar with faith-based arguments Christians use to back up views of abortion, whether for or against. Many people seem to assume the Bible discusses the topic head-on, which is not the case.

Ancient context

Abortions were known and practiced in biblical times, although the methods differed significantly from modern ones. The second-century Greek physician Soranus, for example, recommended fasting, bloodletting, vigorous jumping and carrying heavy loads as ways to end a pregnancy.

Soranus’ treatise on gynecology acknowledged different schools of thought on the topic. Some medical practitioners forbade the use of any abortive methods. Others permitted them, but not in cases in which they were intended to cover up an adulterous liaison or simply to preserve the mother’s good looks.

In other words, the Bible was written in a world in which abortion was practiced and viewed with nuance. 

Continue reading @ Alternet.

What The Bible Actually Says About Abortion May Surprise You

Alternet ✏ Americans in past generations lived in a sea of religion inherited largely from the Middle East by way of Europe, with home grown refinements.

Valerie Tarico
Most still do. When Americans venture off the continent, one of the things many find fascinating is the religious beliefs they encounter. Some people worship flying monkeys, or magical big breasted dancers, or Prince Phillip.

From the outside, beliefs like these seem fantastical and unlikely. They played a key role in evoking such ethnocentric ideas as noblesse oblige and manifest destiny and white man’s burden. But if we could see our own culture from an outside vantage point, as if we were travelers, the world might look a little different. Even one of the Bible writers pointed out that self-examination is the first order of business. Why are you looking at the speck in your brother’s eye, he asked (to paraphrase), when you have a plank in your own?

So, how well do you know what your neighbors believe? How about the church to which your parents are quietly tithing away your inheritance? For that matter, how about the actual details of the creed to which you yourself give a nod?

Continue reading @ Alternet.

Test Your Knowledge Of Wild, Weird And Outright Wacky American Religious Beliefs

Alternet ✏ On Thursday, June 8, the Rev. Pat Robertson — a far-right Christian fundamentalist and the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and the Christian Coalition — died in Virginia Beach at the age of 93.

Alex Henderson
Robertson was a controversial figure in U.S. politics and within Christianity, but he was also highly influential. And he helped shape the radical Christian nationalism that the late conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) vehemently warned against more than 40 years ago.

Robertson founded CBN in 1961, launching his program "The 700 Club" several years later. But it wasn't until the early 1980s that he became so influential in the Republican Party. Along with the late Moral Majority founder the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr. and Pentecostal evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, Robertson was a major supporter of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign and helped the Religious Right gain considerable influence in the Republican Party.

It wasn't influence that Goldwater welcomed. The Arizona senator was part of Reagan's right-wing coalition, but he viewed the Religious Right as dangerous and saw far-right evangelicals like Robertson, Falwell and Swaggart as toxic for the conservative movement.

Continue reading @ Alternet.

How Pat Robertson Helped Shape The Radical Christian Nationalism Barry Goldwater Warned Against

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