As I just said elsewhere, people can self-identify as anything they like. Not my business. But "conservative" Christians, if you wantbto identify as Christian, AND you want me to BELIEVE you, you have to stop asking, "Who is my neighbor?"
All of what you said is true, and sad at the same time. I worship regularly, and it hasn't escaped my notice that a large number of other "Christians " worship to be seen and are quite free with the thoughts and prayers. I love the helping we can do thru taxes and large efforts. An important thing in this situation, it has escaped their notice that by starving desperately poor people, they still won't be getting this money back. It is going into the pockets of the richest citizens. What a profound tragedy.
Have you ever seen Disney’s hunchback movie? There’s a song that Esmeralda sings that is spot on to this…very moving.
I don’t attend church anymore (mostly lazy but some disillusionment too). I grew up catholic in churches that encouraged charity and helping others. This new faith doesn’t correspond with how I saw my faith at the time
This is one of your best, most informative pieces yet. As someone who grew up in a very conservative religion I can confirm that it absolutely rings true about how they see the world.
I have a family member who is totally maga. Whenever I try to give her information or correct something she has seen on faux, her response always is "I don't need to know that."
So interesting that they don’t understand how corruption works huh? They don’t approve of any kind of consumer protection? Assault on your freedoms to be fucked over by the private sector?
Now a bunch if private sector assholes are fucking over your country through your government
Right - we can't do that, but God can, and does. The Abomination and Illegal Elon have the power and opportunity to help people, instead they are hurting them, killing them. God commanded us to help each other, and he doesn't care if it's individually, by group, or even if the government does it. However we do it, if we have the means and opportunity, we must do it. The folks not just refusing to help, but dismantling programs helping people, are going to hell when they die. Atheists who help others, will go to heaven when they die, even though they don't believe in God, heaven, or hell. They, along with people of faith helping others, are the Children of God, and those not helping others, or harming them, are ghouls.
Ta, Evan. Still figuring out to whom I'm going to dole out the gift subscriptions you sent me. Meanwhile, you have this figured out perfectly. No notes.
Taxes are the price for civilization. Billionaires don't want to pay their fair share because they don't give a shit about civil society; they want us all reduced to serfdom.
believe it or not this helped. i was sitting here thinking about the abject cruelty of it all and trying to figure out why so many people are hunky dory with it.
this helped reduce my rage a tiny bit.
also this “the private sector and the church will do it” harkens back to noblesse oblige which didn’t work back then either.
also it assumes that the same churches that pay pastors 7-8 figures would actually put that money into communities.
What Evan describes here is very like the ‘Big Society’ idea that the Tories foisted on the UK for 14 years: absolutely decimate (and plunder) public funding for everything, and let ‘the people’ somehow pick up the pieces as their towns and cities go bankrupt. Literally bankrupt. The result has been a horrifying rise in child hunger and poverty, and a significant decline in the weight of babies at birth.
Oh, and whatever happened to ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’?
Easy to remedy...The government stops funding ONLY AFTER the church has met the funding...Are they also going to be writing paychecks for air traffic controllers and the FAA?
Sigh. As a researcher in pharma: NIH funded/academic research is the backbone of pharma research. NIH research can spend 3 years teasing out exactly how a receptor protein binds a cancer protein. It’s tedious and time consuming. Pharma can’t do that, we need our money to fund drug research and clinical trials (note: there’s plenty of issues with pharma but I’m not interested in discussing them, sorry). Pharma can take that info about the receptor protein and find a drug that binds and prevents cancer growth, and put that in trials. Can’t have one without the other.
Forget religion; how about looking at history? Churches were the primary distributors of aide to the poor until relatively recently. Churches would, understandably, support only members of the church. They discriminated against anyone not a member. Unaffiliated poor people weren't helped at all.
Gov't took over for the churches because churches failed to get the job done. Privitizing gov't services is never more efficient or less expensive.
In fact, the Bible refers to the "End of Times," the period just before the apocalypse, when the Anti-Christ and false prophets lead an unsure population into confusion and chaos, ending in their destruction. Trump is a bit too banal to fit the description, but he is doing his best to be as destructive as possible. It's hard to imagine anyone more diametrically opposed to the teachings of Christ. As one would say, Mr. Trump speaks with a forked tongue. Everything he says is the opposite of what he actually means. He is virulently opposed to everything America is about. He despises the American public and, consequently, democracy. His sole goal is to serve his masters, whether that involves his emotional connection to Vladimir Putin or his delight at being invited to join the Silicon Valley billionaires club. He was never a leader, only a maitre d'hotel, a butler-like middle man serving those rapacious robber barons that he so admires.
Antichrist checklist: he is characterized by pride, envy, anger, lust, avarice, gluttony, and sloth;
he worships golden images, uses the name of God vainly, disrespected both his parents, golfs every Sunday, was accomplice to brutal killings and boasts he could kill personally in plain sight and not lose any of his followers, has made a career of stealing from everyone who works with him, has committed adultery on every one of his wives, bears false witness every time he opens his mouth, moved on his neighbor's wife "like a bitch" and covets everything else that belongs to his neighbor;
he opposes feeding the hungry, letting the thirsty have water, treating the sick, or especially welcoming the stranger, and he abused children, so that it would be better if a millstone were tied round his neck and he were cast into the sea.
I have an entire publishing project here at Substack called STRONGWILLED that is for people who grew up with evangelical parents. People like my parents bought into a conspiracy theory (the Jesus movement) in the 1970s and are now making it everyone’s problem! They are the least likely group to admit they have been lied to by Trump bc then they would have to face how their entire worldview/identity has been shaped by white supremacist patriarchal grifters. From their theology to their politics to their parenting methods, they have been lied to. And they simply don’t have the capacity to face that reality. So here we are!!! But luckily, standing up to authoritarianism works if we all do it together :)
As I just said elsewhere, people can self-identify as anything they like. Not my business. But "conservative" Christians, if you wantbto identify as Christian, AND you want me to BELIEVE you, you have to stop asking, "Who is my neighbor?"
James, the brother of Jesus, wrote that "faith without works is dead." Jesus himself said we will be known by our actions, or something similar.
Agreed. I cannot with the hypocrisy
Closer. Who is my brother/sister?
All of what you said is true, and sad at the same time. I worship regularly, and it hasn't escaped my notice that a large number of other "Christians " worship to be seen and are quite free with the thoughts and prayers. I love the helping we can do thru taxes and large efforts. An important thing in this situation, it has escaped their notice that by starving desperately poor people, they still won't be getting this money back. It is going into the pockets of the richest citizens. What a profound tragedy.
Have you ever seen Disney’s hunchback movie? There’s a song that Esmeralda sings that is spot on to this…very moving.
I don’t attend church anymore (mostly lazy but some disillusionment too). I grew up catholic in churches that encouraged charity and helping others. This new faith doesn’t correspond with how I saw my faith at the time
This is one of your best, most informative pieces yet. As someone who grew up in a very conservative religion I can confirm that it absolutely rings true about how they see the world.
I have a family member who is totally maga. Whenever I try to give her information or correct something she has seen on faux, her response always is "I don't need to know that."
Oof, pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?
These are the Christians who make Jesus vomit. Keep calling them out. Jesus sure as hell would!
They’d turn on Jesus faster than a Pharisee.
So interesting that they don’t understand how corruption works huh? They don’t approve of any kind of consumer protection? Assault on your freedoms to be fucked over by the private sector?
Now a bunch if private sector assholes are fucking over your country through your government
Idiots
𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒄𝒂𝒏’𝒕 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒌𝒆𝒆𝒑 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝑫𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒅 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒎𝒑 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑬𝒍𝒐𝒏 𝑴𝒖𝒔𝒌 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒌𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒘.
Right - we can't do that, but God can, and does. The Abomination and Illegal Elon have the power and opportunity to help people, instead they are hurting them, killing them. God commanded us to help each other, and he doesn't care if it's individually, by group, or even if the government does it. However we do it, if we have the means and opportunity, we must do it. The folks not just refusing to help, but dismantling programs helping people, are going to hell when they die. Atheists who help others, will go to heaven when they die, even though they don't believe in God, heaven, or hell. They, along with people of faith helping others, are the Children of God, and those not helping others, or harming them, are ghouls.
Ta, Evan. Still figuring out to whom I'm going to dole out the gift subscriptions you sent me. Meanwhile, you have this figured out perfectly. No notes.
Taxes are the price for civilization. Billionaires don't want to pay their fair share because they don't give a shit about civil society; they want us all reduced to serfdom.
Two classes: elites and wage slaves to do what the robots can’t
There’s no one left to count the dead—that one hit me in the gut.
believe it or not this helped. i was sitting here thinking about the abject cruelty of it all and trying to figure out why so many people are hunky dory with it.
this helped reduce my rage a tiny bit.
also this “the private sector and the church will do it” harkens back to noblesse oblige which didn’t work back then either.
also it assumes that the same churches that pay pastors 7-8 figures would actually put that money into communities.
What Evan describes here is very like the ‘Big Society’ idea that the Tories foisted on the UK for 14 years: absolutely decimate (and plunder) public funding for everything, and let ‘the people’ somehow pick up the pieces as their towns and cities go bankrupt. Literally bankrupt. The result has been a horrifying rise in child hunger and poverty, and a significant decline in the weight of babies at birth.
Oh, and whatever happened to ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’?
Easy to remedy...The government stops funding ONLY AFTER the church has met the funding...Are they also going to be writing paychecks for air traffic controllers and the FAA?
Sigh. As a researcher in pharma: NIH funded/academic research is the backbone of pharma research. NIH research can spend 3 years teasing out exactly how a receptor protein binds a cancer protein. It’s tedious and time consuming. Pharma can’t do that, we need our money to fund drug research and clinical trials (note: there’s plenty of issues with pharma but I’m not interested in discussing them, sorry). Pharma can take that info about the receptor protein and find a drug that binds and prevents cancer growth, and put that in trials. Can’t have one without the other.
Forget religion; how about looking at history? Churches were the primary distributors of aide to the poor until relatively recently. Churches would, understandably, support only members of the church. They discriminated against anyone not a member. Unaffiliated poor people weren't helped at all.
Gov't took over for the churches because churches failed to get the job done. Privitizing gov't services is never more efficient or less expensive.
In fact, the Bible refers to the "End of Times," the period just before the apocalypse, when the Anti-Christ and false prophets lead an unsure population into confusion and chaos, ending in their destruction. Trump is a bit too banal to fit the description, but he is doing his best to be as destructive as possible. It's hard to imagine anyone more diametrically opposed to the teachings of Christ. As one would say, Mr. Trump speaks with a forked tongue. Everything he says is the opposite of what he actually means. He is virulently opposed to everything America is about. He despises the American public and, consequently, democracy. His sole goal is to serve his masters, whether that involves his emotional connection to Vladimir Putin or his delight at being invited to join the Silicon Valley billionaires club. He was never a leader, only a maitre d'hotel, a butler-like middle man serving those rapacious robber barons that he so admires.
Antichrist checklist: he is characterized by pride, envy, anger, lust, avarice, gluttony, and sloth;
he worships golden images, uses the name of God vainly, disrespected both his parents, golfs every Sunday, was accomplice to brutal killings and boasts he could kill personally in plain sight and not lose any of his followers, has made a career of stealing from everyone who works with him, has committed adultery on every one of his wives, bears false witness every time he opens his mouth, moved on his neighbor's wife "like a bitch" and covets everything else that belongs to his neighbor;
he opposes feeding the hungry, letting the thirsty have water, treating the sick, or especially welcoming the stranger, and he abused children, so that it would be better if a millstone were tied round his neck and he were cast into the sea.
Thanks, excellent summation
I have an entire publishing project here at Substack called STRONGWILLED that is for people who grew up with evangelical parents. People like my parents bought into a conspiracy theory (the Jesus movement) in the 1970s and are now making it everyone’s problem! They are the least likely group to admit they have been lied to by Trump bc then they would have to face how their entire worldview/identity has been shaped by white supremacist patriarchal grifters. From their theology to their politics to their parenting methods, they have been lied to. And they simply don’t have the capacity to face that reality. So here we are!!! But luckily, standing up to authoritarianism works if we all do it together :)