Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

I’m high school I went from a Cavalry born-again congregation to a Southern Baptistery one. Like night and day. The Baptists were the kindest, most open loving people around with no axe to grind no damning of anyone. The born agains……. No they weren't the same.

 

Worth a read tho long. Covers some of the things I’ve talked about it - and where the “evangelical” church is going.

Opinion | The Dissenters Trying to Save Evangelicalism From Itself

 

In 2020, roughly 40 percent of the people who called themselves evangelical attended church once a year or less, according to research by the political scientist Ryan Burge. It’s just a political label for them. This politicization is one reason people have cited to explain why so many are leaving the faith.

also, and ffs:

Roughly 80 percent of white evangelical voters supported Trump in 2020. But it is often a minority of this group who spark bitter conflicts and want their church to be on war footing all the time.

 

This might have been posted elsewhere but needs to be here as well.
In fairness, this dude in no way reflects your regular Main Street churches.
Westboro Baptist might even tell him to turn it down a notch.

Tennessee pastor holds burning of books, other materials deemed demonic

 

I noticed that Christian identity thing right around the start of the Tea Party. Lots of people who hadn’t stepped foot in a church or expressed any belief in Jesus Christ who found that place to be a harbor for their yearnings for a more traditional America.

You dovetail that with an evangelical church that largely had discarded denominations and fixed beliefs beyond simplistic born-againism and you had this monster political movement building. You paired the Falwells with the Birchers. Faith meets nihilism and both are comfortable with the other. Voila, Trump’s foundational movement when he could pair it with people who only cared about their taxes being slashed.

 

Good piece - if limited in the way David Brooks is often limited. He's writing from the very narrow sunny side of things.

To write it without mentioning the dark power/money centers like the Fellowship and the Family means it's a partialist view into the weaponization of faith that began under Reagan. The evangelical presidency: Reagan's dangerous love affair with the Christian right (And it wasn't just Falwell. Don't forget how much of the social safety net Reagan tried to turn over to the churches. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...r-needy/19daa1ec-b343-44ae-8a5a-1bb4d989aefd/

That well-meaning conservatives and "centrists" like Brooks are only noticing this now is sort of heartbreaking.

 

Also also, this came out 5 years ago, so it's not as if Brooks has discovered something. Like Friedman, he's doing here what he always does, reprocessing real reporting into some sort of cultural comforter for people who haven't been paying attention.

 

13 years old:

 

15 years old:

 

Where've you been, David?

 

Thinking of the television preachers of my lifetime, I think they belong in different groups.

Billy Graham: I honestly think he practiced what he preached. Agree with him or not, I don't think he should be lumped in with the rest. His son is a piece of shit.

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson: They have a messed up set of beliefs that want to force on others, but they probably did/do believe them. Both likely are gigantic hypocrites behind closed doors. Falwell Jr. doesn't even warrant a mention.

Jimmy Swaggart and Oral Roberts: Old fashioned traveling sideshow con men that hit the big time.

Jim Bakker and Kenneth Copeland: Pure grifters that should only be mentioned alongside Scientology.

 

Last add:

Trump in the White House is the inevitable outcome of this decades-long process.