Today I Learned

The Seven Mountains Mandate:

A Look at Dominion Theology

The Seven Mountain Mandate

The Seven Mountain Mandate is part of dominionism.

The biblical base for the movement is derived from Revelation 17:1–18, wherein verse 9 reads, "And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains". The seven areas that the movement believe influence society and that they seek to influence are family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. They believe that their mission to influence the world through these seven spheres is justified by Isaiah 2:2 "Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains."

Followers believe that by fulfilling the Seven Mountain Mandate they can bring about the end times.

Prominent followers:

• Michele Bachmann, former US House member (R-MN06) 2007 - 2015.
• Lauren Boebert, US House member
• Rafael Cruz, pastor and father of Senator Ted Cruz
• Mike Johnson (R-LA04) Speaker of the House
• Tom Parker, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court
• Paula White, spiritual advisor to Donald Trump
• Andrew Wommack, evangelical leader

Now try not to think about the kind of nutty rhetoric coming from guys like Mike Flynn or Mike Pence or Mike Pompeo or Mike Johnson. What the fuck is it with these Mikes?

Shit - I may have to change my name now.

They're Not Christians

... they're shameful phonies.

You're allowed to have as many imaginary friends as you think appropriate, and you're allowed to believe every word you think they tell you.

What you're not allowed to do is to use government to force me to obey what you think those imaginary friends are telling me to do.

Stuff that shit in your ditty bag, get on the fuckin' bus, and go home.

A Survey

Luckily (in a dangerous kinda way), as the GOP shrinks, the radical wingnuts will be entertained and feel encouraged by the illusion that their ranks are swelling.

It's not true of course, but Americans aren't exactly well schooled on such subtleties as:

A shrinking pond will make the frog look bigger ...

... so the wingnut influencers will crow about how powerful they're getting while the rubes and a double-digit percentage of normal Americans will go right along with it.

More than half of Republicans support Christian nationalism, according to a new survey

Long seen as a fringe viewpoint, Christian nationalism now has a foothold in American politics, particularly in the Republican Party — according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution.

Researchers found that more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation, either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%).

Robert P. Jones, the president and founder of the nonpartisan PRRI, has been surveying the religious world for many years now. Recently, Jones said his group decided to start asking specifically about Christian nationalism.

"It became clear to us that this term 'Christian nationalism' was being used really across the political spectrum," he said. "So not just on the right but on the left and that it was being written about more by the media."

Christian nationalism is a worldview that claims the U.S. is a Christian nation and that the country's laws should therefore be rooted in Christian values. This point of view has long been most prominent in white evangelical spaces but lately it's been getting lip service in Republican ones, too.

During an interview at a Turning Point USA event last August, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said party leaders need to be more responsive to the base of the party, which she claimed is made up of Christian nationalists.

"We need to be the party of nationalism," she said. "I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

Jones said until now it's been difficult to tell how prominent Christian nationalism is within the Republican Party.

"There was some data out there but what we saw as a need was to have a real set of data that would quantify what that term means, how many Americans really adhere to it," he said. "And we also wanted to have a more nuanced view — not just people who are hard adherents but maybe people who are sympathetic."

Jones said this is just the beginning of his group's effort to track the prevalence of these views in American views. He says over time we will have a better idea of whether these views are becoming more or less widely held.

Americans broadly don't adhere to Christian nationalism

While a majority of Republicans currently either adhere to or sympathize with Christian nationalism, the survey found that this remains a minority opinion nationwide.

According to the PRRI/Brookings study, only 10% of Americans view themselves as adherents of Christian nationalism and about 19% of Americans said they sympathize with these views.

Christian nationalism is still thriving — and is a force for returning Trump to power
Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a history professor at Calvin University, said it's important to note that this is not a novel ideology in American families.

"These ideas have been widely held throughout American history and particularly since the 1970s with the rise of the Christian Right," she said.

Du Mez said these views are mostly a reaction to changing demographics, as well as cultural and generational shifts in the U.S. As the country has become less white and Christian, she said these adherents want to hold on to their cultural and political power.

In fact, according to the survey, half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly 4 in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader in order to keep these Christian values in society.

"At its root there are some deeply antidemocratic impulses here," Du Mez said. "So, to see that more than half of one political party is committed to Christian nationalism I think explains a lot in terms of our ability to achieve much bipartisan agreement."

The survey also found correlations between people who hold Christian nationalist views as well as Anti-Black, anti-immigrant, antisemitic views, anti-Muslim and patriarchal views.

Republicans may need to reckon with ideology in its ranks

Tim Whitaker, founder of The New Evangelicals, grew up in the church and now spends his life trying to detangle these kinds of views from the evangelical faith.

"We need to understand that the world of Christian nationalism largely rejects pluralism, which this study shows," he said. "Most Christian nationalists — either adherents or sympathizers — either agree or strongly agree with the notion that they should live in a country full of other Christians."

Whitaker said he has faith that most Americans will continue to reject these ideas when they hear them, but he's worried about the outsized influence these views have in the Republican Party.

"The reality is that a lot of these folks — especially the adherents — are very militant in this belief that God has given them a mandate to rule over the nation," he said. "And so for them, I think that compromise is a sign of weakness and the GOP needs to understand what they are dealing with."

According to the survey, adherents of Christian nationalism say they will go to great lengths to impose their vision of the country. Jones with PRRI said they found adherents are far more likely to agree with the statement: "true patriots might have to resort to violence to save our country."

"Now is that everyone? No. It's not everyone," Jones said. "But it's a sizeable minority that is not only willing to declare themselves opposed to pluralism and democracy — but are also willing to say, 'I am willing to fight and either kill or harm my fellow Americans to keep it that way.'"

Embarrassed

This bible-thumpin' god-knobber is my US Representative.

Stop hiding your own marital angst behind some imaginary threat manufactured by your imaginary friend. If you think a coupla gay people getting married poses a threat to your marriage, then the trouble lies with you, not them.

Get Thee Behind Me, Bitch

Father Ed - Nova Scotia

If I'd had a guy like this guy back when I was a smart-ass mouthy teenager, maybe I'd've known more than I knew, and maybe it takes not quite so fucking long for me to get a few things figured out.

A Fine Rant

Frank Schaeffer

On Loving

WaPo's RetroPod:



The Daddy State is never far from power. And the stealthy resurgence of the TheoCons in the background of both state and federal politics is becoming more of a problem.

Once we're rid of Cult45, we'll still have a struggle on our hands because theocracy and fascism go together like pie and coffee.

Seems Odd

I guess we file this one under "When You've Lost the..."

Daily Caller - OpEd:

When these radical religious ideologies come from within our government, the phone call, as the horror film says, is coming from inside the house. The White House in this case.

Recall Attorney General Jeff Sessions used Romans 13:1-7 to argue that the Trump administration had the political and biblical right to remove and cage children and parents at the southern border. And that is precisely why when Sanders says that God wanted Trump to be the president — we must resist.

Sanders’ statement is a flagrant breach of the First Amendment’s wall of separation between church and state. So concerned were our nation’s founders about the State imposing or restricting religion that they expressly prohibited the establishment of state religion in order to protect the integrity and free exercise of all religions. Sanders took a sledgehammer to the First Amendment when, as an officer of the state, she declared definitive understanding of the mind of God.

The efforts of certain "conservative" allies to put distance between themselves and 45* seem to be increasing in both numbers and alacrity.

We'll see what we see, but there are signs of a break up.

The Daily Caller per Wikipedia

Today's Tweet

In his defense, this is a recording from a time well before Mr Pence became Senior White House Fluffer.

And besides, everybody (ie: every Republican) gets a Perpetual-Motion Mulligan, because apparently, all those "immutable religious tenets" are situational now. So you can bend them and shape them and pound them into any configuration necessary, in order to smash-fit them around any given political circumstance.

WATCH: "Is adultery no longer a big deal in Indiana and in America? I for one believe the 7th commandment is STILL a big deal. It's the most important promise you'll ever make. And holding people accountable to those promises...what could possibly be a BIGGER deal?" Mike Pence pic.twitter.com/tixVisZvaP

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) February 8, 2018

 

These people have no soul and no honor.

Just To Be Clear

They're not Christians - they're Christianists. Right Radical TheoCons.

They care for nothing but their Daddy State political agenda of gaining the power to Control & Oppress.

Politico:

Evangelical Christians, says Perkins, “were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists. And I think they are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.”

What happened to turning the other cheek? I ask.

“You know, you only have two cheeks,” Perkins says. “Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”

Matthew 15:8-9 The Message

3-9: But Jesus put it right back on them. “Why do you use your rules to play fast and loose with God’s commands? God clearly says, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel around that by saying, ‘Whoever wants to, can say to father and mother, What I owed to you I’ve given to God.’ That can hardly be called respecting a parent. You cancel God’s command by your rules. Frauds! Isaiah’s prophecy of you hit the bull’s-eye:

These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they’re worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy.”

Today's Tweet

We are so fucked.

Sadly, the Roy Moore pedophilia accusations have successfully distracted from Roy Moore being a batshit lying homophobic Constitution-hating misogynist fake-Christian racist.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) December 10, 2017

 

Judge Roy Moore

Charlie Pierce, Esquire:

On Tuesday night, the voters in the great state of Alabama pushed a lawless theocratic lunatic named Roy Moore one tiny step away from a seat in the United States Senate. Moore lost his job as chief justice of that state’s supreme court twice; on both occasions, he lost it by flouting the authority of the federal court system as though he were Orval Faubus in 1957.


Feel free to judge him harshly (ar ar)

How is it he doesn't know this makes him look like his mommy just dropped a quarter in the horsey ride out in front of the grocery store?

Oh yeah - it's the New GOP. These guys are not big on self awareness. I should write that down.

When Will It Be Enough?

Another OpEd in another major paper, pointing out just how craven political power can make some folks.

Jennifer Rubin, WaPo, 7-28-17:

No group has been as blindly loyal to President Trump as Christian conservatives. They have not let religion or values get in the way of their support. Consider the “Access Hollywood” tape, the attack on a Gold Star family, a mass of inexplicable ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials (and the president’s open invitation to Russia to continue hacking), the firing of the FBI director, the humiliation of evangelical-favorite Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the politicization of the Boy Scouts, the threats to the special counsel and now an interview with Trump’s out-of-control, potty-mouthed communications director.

What about Trump, exactly, reflects their values? (Taking Medicaid away from millions and separating families to deport law-abiding immigrants?) The Trump administration is a clown show — but it’s the evangelicals who supplied the tent, the red noses and the floppy shoes. Each day presents a new insult to the office of the presidency and a repudiation of civilized behavior.

Today's Today

On February 17, 1600, Fr Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy.  According to a letter from the time, he made "a threatening gesture" towards his judges and said, "Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it".

People with balls (using that word in the figurative sense) are the ones who move this whole thing forward - in big and little ways.

Giordano Bruno

... was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer.[3] He is celebrated for his cosmological theories, which went even further than the then novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own (a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism). He also insisted that the universe is in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its "center".

Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges including denial of several core Catholic doctrines (including Eternal Damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and Transubstantiation). Bruno's pantheism was also a matter of grave concern.[4] The Inquisition found him guilty, and in 1600 he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori. After his death he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science,[5] although historians have debated the extent to which his heresy trial was a response to his astronomical views or to other aspects of his philosophy and theology.[6][7][8][9][10] Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.[11][12][13]

In addition to cosmology, Bruno also wrote extensively on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. Historian Frances Yates argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by Arab astrology (particularly the philosophy of Averroes[14]), Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and legends surrounding the Egyptian god Thoth.[15] Other studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial concepts of geometry to language.[16]

A Question

Hey, TheoCons - how is it you can support a guy who is so obviously not a Christian, and proves it by practically everything he does

while you shit on a guy who so obvious is a Christian and demonstrates it all the fucking time?

Jeff Sessions - International Man Of Douchery

Listen for it, and it gets a lot easier to hear it in more and more of what these Radical Right Christianists say about almost anything.  Today's little slice is all about selective application.



Sessions makes the usual head fake with "America's all about religious freedom blah blah blah", but then he goes into bail mode and tries to disguise the bigotry with "those people aren't here in the USA, so they don't qualify under the law yada yada yada..."

Translation:  Unless it's illegal to treat you like shit because of your religious beliefs, we're gonna treat you like shit because of your religious beliefs.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Redefining

Here's a weird little blast from the past - and there's a bit in here that's been eatin' at me for a while.

First - at about 6:00, when Huck makes the claims about how he wants his faith to be questioned?  That sounds a whole lot like good old Sales Training shit - I think he 'welcomes the feedback' so he can be looking for ways to anticipate the objections and get a few plausible-sounding bromides handy for rebuttal.

But that ain't the big one - here's the big one - starting around the 8-minute mark:
Guys like Huckabee are always slicing it nice and thin when it comes to the question of an all-loving god, especially when you try to make the point about sin and evil and why are there so many shitty people doing so many shitty things?  If god is god, then why do we have to fix all this shit?  The apologists always flop straight over into the Free Will of the Godly Volunteer thing - god loves us so he set it up so we can choose our fate by choosing to love god back or to reject god's love - and after all, if he forces his love on us, then he'd be raping us blah blah blah.  

Wait just one fuckin' minute, bub.

Problem - rape isn't only a situation where the rapist physically assaults the victim.  There's that little thing called coercion too.  And that becomes a huge problem if you then ask, "Isn't god really trying to force himself on us by threatening to send us to hell for an eternity of suffering if we spurn his advances?"

Set aside for a minute the bullshit deflection that "we decide to send ourselves to hell if we decide not to love god", and let's concentrate on the real point.  The real point here is that now we've got a Beyond-Even-Bill-Cosby level problem with a Rapist God - and btw, if Mary really didn't have much choice about whether or not she'd go along with the idea of getting knocked up by a coercive god, then doesn't that make Jesus the product of rape?  And then, all of a sudden, we've got the Son Of God born of sin - and holy fuck, man - this is  some kinda big fuckin' trouble right here.

Enter the TheoCons.  How many Repubs have found themselves in hot water because some dumbass thing or another fell outa their tater traps when they were trying to make a point about rape?

They needed to save Jesus so they needed a new definition for rape, and they decided to hide these cynical maneuverings and manipulations by fucking with the rights of women to make their own decisions for themselves(?)  

And they've been pullin' this kinda shit on our time, on our dime.

Seriously, guys - what the fucking fuck? 

Today's Vast RW Conspiracy

That's been rattling around in my head for a while now. So why does Limbaugh feel the need to slag NASA for finding water on Mars?  

I'm thinkin' a couple or three things here:

1- He has to push back against the normal tendency to give Obama credit for anything (it happened on his watch, so yeah).

2- If there's life on Mars, and it confirms an already-known-as-probable connection to life forms here on Earth, then it further erodes (ie: finally and completely dismantles) the bible's creation myth; and there goes sin; there goes the redeemer; there goes the religion - poof it's all gone.

3- If they can't find some kind of specious denial, then it all plays against the "conservative" strategy to move us closer to authoritarian rule which depends on blending church with state (see #2 above).

But then (not to give y'all whiplash or anything by swerving violently), I gotta ask, why are the wingnuts so strident about "fighting radical Islam"?  Why are the "threats" always Iran and ISIS and al-Qaeda, instead of the real ones like a resurgent Imperial Russia or Global Corporatism or the crashing biosphere?

I think what we're looking at here is pretty much the same old game of Fear Mongering, but nobody's gonna get much traction from the Arms Race / Missile Gap thing, plus this is the age of Branding & Differentiation, so they have to transition to something more topical and up-to-date, so we get something like, "What we have here is a Theocracy Gap - we can't afford to let those Moozlum bastards get ahead of us on this!"

People who're supposed to know about such things are telling us that the governments that're more authoritarian will be better able to react to the enormous shit wave that's beginning to swamp the world because of Climate Change.  The near-total disruption of everything we think of as stable and permanent; all those systems of Politics and Economics and Civilized Societies; all of that will change in a big way, and a shitload of that change will not be for the better.

Controlling the power of the government is the goal for these guys (btw - fuck Godwin, I'll go with Fascism - or TheoFascism if you prefer - on this one); theocracy being both the means to that end, and the mask of benevolence necessary to rationalize and excuse the brutality that always follows.

They don't like democracy. The don't trust us with our own governance. They insist on our complacency and our compliance, which makes us complicit in our own downfall.

And now, for your dining and dancing pleasure, here's a quick look at Proto-Limbaugh and the original Dittohead.

If it was any less tragic, it wouldn't be so fucking funny.

Today's Rudeness

The Rude Pundit; the whole Rude Pundit; and nuthin' but The Rude Pundit:

4/14/2015

Fuck Your Conscience; Do Your Job

Let us say, and why not, that you are a firefighter, the captain of the department in Sisterfuck, Arkansas, a little bit outside Little Rock, and, in your off-duty life, you're a good, loyal member of the Church of the Bloodiest Christ You've Ever Seen. At your church, Pastor Jamie Lee Closetqueer preaches about how abortion is just President Obama trying to murder Christians to make room for more Muslims. You never saw a Muslim abortion clinic, did you?

Now let us say, and, indeed, why not, that one night the Planned Parenthood in Little Rock goes up in flames and it's all hands on deck, all around the county, the area, even. Your squad is called into action before the whole complex, maybe the block, burns down. But you know that the Planned Parenthood does abortions. You're faced with a choice. Pastor Closetqueer's words echo in your ear: "If you support the sin, you are a sinner yourself." Do you tell your Sisterfuck squad to stand down, let it burn, let other firefighters handle it? Or do you go against your faith and do your goddamn job?

It's not a big leap from pharmacists to firefighters. Down the road a bit from Sisterfuck is Millegdeville, Georgia, where Brittany Cartrett had a miscarriage. She needed assistance passing the miscarried fetus, so her doctor prescribed her Misoprostol, a pill that would help her complete what had started naturally, if sadly. When her doctor called local Walmart to have it filled, the pharmacist on duty refused to do so because, as she later told Cartrett, "I couldn't think of a valid reason why you would need this prescription." Misoprostol can be used to induce abortion, which is why it would be effective after a miscarriage. When Cartrett explained why she needed it, the pharmacist said, "Well, I don't feel like there is a reason why you would need it, so we refused to fill it."

And it's perfectly fine because Georgia has a law that says if pharmacists think that someone's prescription violates their beliefs, they can refuse to fill it because of a conscience clause, which over 20 states have or are considering. In this case, that meant that, despite a doctor calling in the prescription, the pharmacist thought, "Abortin' babeez" and bugged out.

By the way, Brittany Cartrett is a devout Christian who once worked at the same Walmart. And her response to the ensuing controversy, which became known because of her Facebook post on it, is about as common sense as you can get: "The point is that she refused to fill it based on an assumption and that is not her job. Her job is to fill it. Not to make the decision as to why I needed it. There has to be a line drawn when it comes to stuff like this."

Cartrett also wrote, awesomely, "I don't care about an apology. I care about women going through one of the worst possible things that they could go through and to be judged and refused. And what if I was going to get it for an abortion? I don't personally believe in abortion, but I would never judge or disrespect someone who felt like that was the only choice they had. As a friend, I would try to advise alternative options. As a pharmacist? It's not my place."

When you're right, you're right. Conscience clauses when it comes to things like this are just impositions of one's religion on others. Do your fucking job. If you can't do your fucking job properly, find another fucking job. If your bullshit beliefs are going to prevent you from fulfilling basic duties, then get the fuck out of the public sector. Go work for a church. Just stay away from people who might need you to shut the fuck up and do the job. Conservatives like to talk about "special rights" for different groups. An exclusion from the duties of your profession is pretty much the picture book definition of "special rights."

It ain't just religion. In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a school nurse refused to assist a middle school student and threw the girl out of her office. The girl's crime? She didn't stand during the Pledge of Allegiance, the loyalty oath students around the country are asked to recite every morning at their indoctrination center schools. Except, interestingly enough, the Pledge is voluntary, and the nurse is being investigated for abiding by her patriotic conscience. So there is a line.

When it comes to religion, though, that line is being erased. We are not far from just letting shit burn.

Today In GlennBeck-istan

Christian holocaust.  The delusions of persecution just get deeper and deeper, right along with the phat stacks of spending green in Glenn Beck's bank accounts.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs