"Former President Trump at a Tuesday night rally in Wisconsin said he wants Election Day this year to be called 'Christian visibility day.'"
~ Sophia Cai
Just a friendly reminder that white US Christians are singularly responsible for Donald Trump, the cruelty he has unleashed, his attacks on democracy. More than half of white Christians voted for Trump twice, in 2016 and 2020. US democracy has a white Christian problem.
Trump's not the only Republican shamelessly exploiting Christian religious symbols to justify his crime and grift. As Liz Dye reports, the children of John Eastman, who's now facing the consequences of criming, have penned a public letter comparing their father to Jesus crucified on the cross, and – of course – asking for money. Eastman is a right-wing Catholic closely connected to Leonard Leo's Federalist Society.
"Somehow the NYT can’t bring itself to use the phrase 'Christian nationalism' in its story on 'The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement.'
The story fails to place Trump’s bible-thumping faux populism in the broader historical context of right-wing extremism and Christian nationalism. It also has the effect of conceding too much."
"The man facing a criminal trial in New York next month for paying hush money to a porn star after having an affair with her just six months after his wife Melania gave birth to their only child, told us: 'All Americans need a Bible in their home and I have many, it’s my favorite book.'”
"The problem facing our nation is not Trump, it’s his followers. While we are disgusted by all things Trump from his attempted coup to his selling Bibles, they love him for it….
With each Trump lie and new product he sells, he reminds us: There's a MAGA sucker born every minute!"
"That Trump has turned Holy Week into an ugly carnivalesque grift is not surprising, given his character and the financial crisis he is facing due to legal troubles, but it should be appalling to every Christian. Christian theology has a word to describe those who claim the attributes a deity or who treat sacred things with contempt and disrespect. That word is blasphemy."
"And the failure of Christians—especially white evangelical Christians to whom Trump is pandering—to speak out against such disgrace during the holiest week of the Christian liturgical year is a measure of our captivity and complicity in Trump’s denigration of both Christianity and our nation."
The #settlement declares that actions taken by the fmr Reedy Creek special taxing district (#RCID) days before it was taken over by #DeSantis appointees would be “null & void.” That included a long-lasting development agreement that would have greatly limited what the new board could do.
The #Florida State Board of #Education, which was sued along w/ the Department of Education, is required to send the agreement to every school district under the settlement terms.
Now you can celebrate the most important time of the Christian calendar by buying your copy of the 'God Bless the USA' Bible and doing your part to Make America Great Again!
In a stunningly blatant display of white Christian nationalism, Donald Trump is encouraging his followers to buy a pro-America Bible in partnership with singer Lee Greenwood…."
“Name a force or impulse that threatens the stability of the American political system – distrust in the fairness of elections, conspiracy theorizing, the embrace of authoritarianism – and it is always more prevalent among rural Whites than among those living elsewhere."
~ Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2024), p. 5
Theda Skocpol replies, “Toward a locking-in of minority rule along ethno-nationalist lines. The objective is to disenfranchise metro people, period. I see a real chance of a long-term federal takeover by forces that are determined to maintain a fiction of a white, Christian, Trumpist version of America.”
Jeff Brumley highlights a new book by Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood called Baptizing America, which shows that the problem of fusing Christianity and Americanism into white Christian nationalism goes way beyond white evangelical churches. It has been part and parcel of white Christianity in the US across the board for a long time now, and pointing to white evangelicals as the sole problem lets other white US Christians off the hook.
“For anyone who grew up in a white church in the U.S., Christian nationalism is just in the air that we breathe. We all need to do the work to detox, to separate the wheat and chaff from what’s gospel and what’s American. But it’s easier and more comforting to look at the extreme and dangerous examples of Christian nationalism today and to say, 'Oh, we are not like those people over there.'"
More than half of white Christians — across the board, not just white evangelicals — voted for Trump in 2016, and having seen who he is, more than half of white Christians turned around and voted for him again in 2020.
As Robert P. Jones says in his book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, Christian theology and institutions have been "the central cultural tent pole holding up the very idea of white supremacy" in the U.S.
The U.S. doesn't merely have a Trump problem or a white evangelical problem. It has a white Christianity problem. Christianity in the U.S. has long been shaped and distorted by white supremacist assumptions that have turned it into something radically disconnected from the Christian gospels — and the price we're all paying for that distortion is high.
"The best approach to understanding the Right has always been to take seriously and actually grapple with their vision for American society. In that sense, 'Project 2025' is tremendously helpful. Rightwing leaders could not possibly be clearer about the reactionary vision they want to impose on the country."
"They are telling us that they do not accept this egalitarian, pluralistic idea of a society in which the individual’s status is no longer determined by race, gender, religion, and wealth. They feel justified in taking truly radical, extreme measures to prevent that society from ever becoming a reality because they believe they are defending 'real America' in service of a higher purpose:"
"In today’s America, the right wing seems to be echoing its antebellum predecessors. It is attacking women’s rights; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; immigration; LGBTQ+ rights and so on. At the same time, it continues to push an economic system that has moved as much as $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 10% since 1981 while exploding the annual budget deficit and the national debt."
"Just as it was in the 1850s, the right-wing emphasis on religion and opposition to a modern multicultural America today is deeply entwined with preserving an economic power structure that has benefited a small minority. That emphasis is growing stronger in the face of the administration’s effort to restore a level economic playing field."
Brad Onishi and Dan Miller look at the Society for American Renewal, “an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “aligned regime." IIt includes Harvard grads, millionaire industrialists, the president of the Claremont Institute, financiers, and other upper-crust right-wing men (and they are all men).
"In the second segment, they turn to more toxic masculine Christianity in the form of a call for violence and spiritual warfare from Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers – an abortion abolitionist who is trying to outlaw pornography.
To finish the episode, the hosts discuss the tragic news about Nex Benedict’s death – the non-binary teenager who died by suicide after bullying at school."