I attended church of my choice last Sunday. No one barred the doors or stationed armed militia to block my path. So I’m trying to see what this Religious Liberty Task Force is all about.
ITEM: New Regime Directive Lets Federal Contractors Discriminate Against LGBT People – For Jesus
ITEM: A nominee for a U.S. House of Representatives seat (R-NC) is an ordained pastor who was recorded just three years ago longing for the days when “homosexuality was once criminalized.” “Mark Harris, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 but lost the nomination, also insisted that being Christian in America is illegal.”
ITEM: Evangelical U.S. Air Force General Has Secretly Been Running a Christian Online Ministry in Possible Violation of Rules. “AF brigadier general newly in charge of one of the nation’s most celebrated and elite Air Force wings has been running an online evangelical Christian ministry for the last five years—in violation of Air Force and Defense Department rules about religious proselytizing, according to a formal letter of complaint sent to Defense Secretary James Mattis…
[Brigadier General E. John] “Teichert, who flew combat missions over Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, according to his official bio, runs a website called Prayers at Lunchtime for the United States (PLUS). The website doesn’t mention Edwards Air Force Base, but Teichert recently posted a picture of his newly acquired general’s epaulet star, alongside a note about his new rank on the PLUS site.”
Why these are terrible situations! We definitely need a task force to protect us from these religious zealots! Say, what? Religious Liberty Task Force is only protecting what is still the majority religion in the United States?
So this cartoon, or this one aren’t as far-fetched as it would seem.
Stealing from my former presbyter: “I am proud to be part of a Christian tradition that doesn’t peddle in this theological heresy. Let’s be clear, everything these people are advancing from a policy perspective is against the most important religious/theological tenants of all three Abrahamic faiths: Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
“They are not people of faith but the exact opposite. People of faith do not separate families or desecrate the Creation or engage in militarism or discriminate or abuse women or harm the poor. And people who take sick, perverse joy in this are most certainly not people of faith and don’t need protecting.”
As you know, this whole topic drives me round the bend. I sick of fake Christians using their crosses to beat others into submission, but that gets at one of the reasons these extremists have become the very definition of Christianity in the USA: Mainstream Christians were always admonished not to criticise the faith of other Christians because, as one told me, “you can’t know what’s in their heart”. That was the very worst advice I was ever given. What I know to be true is that, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.
So I no longer shy away from calling our the fake Christians on the far right. I know what’s in their hearts because they’ve shown us! The majority who don’t believe in religious fascism need to let people know clearly and and unambiguously that these bigots do NOT speak for Christianity, and they must be called out on their (frequent) lies.
I know that religious people have different ways from me, but if mainstream Christians truly care about their faith, they MUST speak up. It was charlatans, conmen, and bigots like Jeff Sessions that drove me from organised religion, and I’m hardly unique in that. I’ll fight the extremists in the political sphere, but it’s up to religious people to fight them in the churches, because I guarantee that failure to do so could very well lead to far greater oppression of us all.
“But God told me I’m supposed to hate these people!”
God didn’t tell you any such thing. Now pipe down and watch the show.