America has a serious problem with Christianity. Well not all Christian religions, just those born out of Charlie Colson's "Born Again Christianity" movement. The movement began in 1976, the year that Southern Christians of all faiths supported Jimmy Carter, a Democrat for president. Charlie was really just jumping on to the popularity of the Christian Broadcast Network which hit the airwaves in the 60's. Somehow this Nixon parole caught fire among the older Baby Boomers. The younger ones knew better.
America butting heads with Southern Christians is nothing new. In the Eighteenth Century, Loyalists were led by their Anglican pastors who recognized King George as the head of not just Great Britain but their church too. For them signing the Declaration of Independence was like Maryland declaring war on Pope Pius VI. Eventually the Adams' cousins, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and others managed to drag the Carolinas and Georgia into the Revolution.
In the next century, those same Southern pastors were in their pulpits quoting scripture to justify their crime against humanity, slavery. In the Twentieth Century they led the temperance movement leading to the only Constitutional Amendment to take away rights from Americans. They mustered enough votes to outlaw drinking alcohol.
Three things happened in reaction to their political might. First Lucky Luciano began the modern Cosa Nostra. Second, the KKK who supported temperance (while making shine in their hollers) gained considerable political power. Enough power to be emboldened enough to march enmasse in their hoods & robes up Pennsylvania Ave from the Capitol towards the White House. Third, 18 was repealed.
Then there are the Greatest Generation's years, which continued through LBJ. In the middle of those years of progress, "Christianity" had two heros, Joe McCarthy and Douglas Coe, founder of the National Prayer Breakfast.
Coe and Billy Graham flexed their right wing religious power to force Dwight Eisenhower to attend their first National Prayer Breakfast in 1953. They made it pretty clear if he did not attend, his reelection in '56 would be questionable. Every president since has treated it as a presidential precedent that must be followed.
McCarthy decided that we needed to stop trusting in our fellow Americans, making one nation out of many people. We needed to start trusting in God. I never understood this, was God asleep until Joe McCarthy and his buddy, the disbarred Roy Cohn, decided we were veering towards communism with that kind of thinking.
Then in the Twentieth Century's biggest insult to Dixie, we elected that Catholic Kennedy and his liberal sidekick Johnson. Kennedy kept sending federal troops to enforce Brown v. Board of Ed. then Johnson gave Black America voting rights and civil rights, outlawing Southern bigotry, at least in the public square.
The religious right rallied behind Jimmy Carter who was proud of his Christian faith. They were so disappointed in his Christian behavior however, it gave voice to Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell and the modern conservative Christian political movement.
This is a movement more powerful than the anti-war movement. They have elected lawmakers and seated judges. The goal of both being the cementing of their conservative point of view into law. Nevermind that they are a minority of the national population. They will say they are not because when they count Christian voters they include Christians of other sects, that would never vote for their conservative politicians.
There are seven branches of Christianity, which divide into thousands of different sects. In contrast, there are three sects of Judaism and only two in Islam. So how is conservative Southern Christianity the one true religion?
Their "culture wars" against homosexuality and abortion have been dividing this nation since way before Roe and before Stonewall. The problem with it is again, America's opinions on these subjects do not align with theirs. So, in the conservative Red states they fill their airwaves with a mix of commercials for various conservative churches and conservative politicians, frequently in the same commercial break.
Blue states have commercials for their churches too. Yes, we have churches. But their commercials don't run together with political candidates and more importantly don't look like they came from the same ad agencies.
The new buzzword for the Right is, indoctrination. This is laughable, since Reconstruction Southern states have been indoctrinating their children, and their children's children, that the Confederate States of America was an honorable cause. This indoctrinates them into believing their Great Grand Pappy's treason in support of a crime against humanity was an honorable cause. A cause the rest of the Union had no business in, it was their state's right to support the slave trade.
Like I said at the top America's problem isn't with all of Christianity, only the conservative Christian Right. They have acquired through their alliance with conservative business owners a considerable political war chest. With it they bought control of the New GOP, the GOP full of the Southern conservative bigots that defected from the Democratic Party after LBJ.
What these big money people didn't plan on was the Internet. They had learned how to benefit from Rush Limbaugh and conservative AM Talk Radio. They didn't have a clue how to control the Internet. First the Tea Party Movement and now QAnon, flourished online and infecting the GOP base.
Here's a quote, "Estimations show there are more than 200 Christian denominations in the U.S. and a staggering 45,000 globally, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. So why does Christianity have so many branches?
A cursory look shows that differences in belief, power grabs and corruption all had a part to play." [Why does Christianity have so many denominations? By Donavyn Coffey published February 27, 2021 "Live Science]
Think about that, yet Southern Christian conservatives are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to claiming to be "the one true religion". "The one true religion" is a phrase I heard from every priest at nearly every Catholic mass of my youth.
We are a nation founded by men of diverse religious beliefs. They put those beliefs aside to form a government where laws they agreed on and passed through the legislative process would govern, not anyone's individual religious beliefs. Why now are we allowing one party controlled by religious zealots and barely enough Electoral Votes, to control our Congress.
Because of the Religious Right controlling the GOP we are back where their party began. We are once again a nation divided against itself. January 6th should be viewed in the same light as firing on Fort Sumter, the first shots of a new civil war. A war without definitive dividing lines, no states have seceded. They are just passing unconstitutional laws and sending them to the Supreme Court they have infected with their zealous religious heresy.
Hero of the MAGA movement Gen. Mike Glynn recently told a rally crowd, if we are one nation under God, we should have only one religion. That's an open endorsement of the repeal of one of the freedoms in the First Amendment. Since their MAGA founder calls the free press the enemy of the people, how secure is the freedom of the press? We have seen how the MAGA nation thinks Black protesters should be greeted with a platoon of militarized police but their protests should go undisturbed. So there goes the peaceful assembly clause. And there goes the First Amendment to the Constitution; the Amendment that was most important to the writers of the entire constitution.
We cannot sit back and watch the Ukrainian people fight a war just as one sided as our Revolution and do nothing here at home. We cannot abandon the freedoms our own founders secured for all Americans. We must vote out the religious zealots infecting the Republican National Committee.
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