I was born and raised in the South. Schools were completely segregated until the mid-1960's (at least in my little town in West TN). When the DoJ forced schools to desegregate there was an explosion of private "Christian" schools all across the South. The purpose was not to provide a Christian education but to keep the black kids away from the white kids. After 20 or 30 years this practice became less prominent. Recently, however, there developed a well-organized and funded effort for school "vouchers". Essentially using public funds so the kids could attend private and charter schools. Ostensibly the voucher program was to facilitate "school choice" but in reality its so that white parents could send their kids to (mostly if not completely) segregated schools in which they could be taught the Christian-Nationalist view of the world. This is the Hillsdale College "classical" education model. That model is that White Christians are ordained by God to rule the planet and are annoited to tell you who to love, how your body is to be controlled, that women are subordinate to men, and that non-believers are not just apostates but are the enemy to be defeated.
Yes, very well done and so, so true. Mike Johnson is the worst. As an evangelical myself, and even a Baptist like Johnson, you nailed him 100%. He literally makes me sick. Our Baptist heritage is NOT Christian nationalism, it is championing the separation of church and state, it really is. You are also right about evangelicals and abortion and the Catholic Church. The worst thing that ever happened to America was Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. It merged Christianity and the Republican Party, and here we are. The VAST MAJORITY of Christians supporting the most vile and evil person of my lifetime???? What the heck??????
EVERYTHING you said is true, and Mike Johnson IS that creepy camp counselor no one can stand and who gives off WEIRD vibes. Thanks for this article today. We are not the crazy ones, we really are not!
"Our Baptist heritage is NOT Christian nationalism, it is championing the separation of church and state, it really is"
It seems you're the only one who got the memo then, so congrats on that! But If evangelical Baptists are championing the separation of church of state they are doing it so wrong as to be doing the exact opposite...and there's no way to claim otherwise without falling into the no true Scotsman trap.
You sound like a really good person, but you have to face the fact that you are in a very tiny minority within evanangelical Christianity, or we wouldn't be having this conversation
There's really a lot of complexity to the roots of a lot of these institutions, and what they've turned into today. For instance, as Bruce said below, there's a big difference between saying you're a "Baptist," in general, and saying you're a "Southern Baptist." The second is a very specific organization, while lots of different things came out of the original Baptist tradition, some awful, some not.
One of Memphis's major open and affirming congregations is First Baptist, a beautiful old church not far from my house. Not surprisingly, it left the SBC a good while back.
But the Southern Baptist convention was formed as an explicitly white supremacist theology, in order to provide a theological basis for slavery of Blacks.
It just seems so much more efficient to just abandon it altogether instead of trying to fix it. Its tendrils are too deep into our history to completely extricate.
I watched the clip of The Tiniest Johnson several times trying to make out what the reporter's second question (at about the 20 sec mark) was. The one that made him roll his eyes and continue with a dismissive response. The fact that this half-witted nonentity rose to hold the power he now has is horrifying. My hope is the election of 2024 will break all records for turnout, and the Blue Wave will wash these swamp creatures back under the rocks they crawled out of.
Thank you Evan. I have that politico article URL about the real origins of the Religious RIght on my desktop of my computer(s) and ahve been trhowing that into any comments about these issues for years now. It was NEVER about abortion, it was ALWAYS about Jim Crow.
It's a really good one. Both the church I grew up in and the high school I graduated from were founded in response to desegregation. The church said it more out loud at the time, but now they pretend it never happened.
Like Molly Ivins said, "Once you realize they've been lying to you about race, you question everything."
As I understand the Christian concept of Redemption, one has to actually ask forgiveness and atone. Like if Higgins went to Ohio and actually did something POSITIVE and truly understood his wrong doing, then he'd find redemption. You can't be an asshole on day one, "say, oops, I'm sorry", then continue being an asshole.
Maybe I'm wrong. I didn't always pay attention in Mass. Or Mike Johnson was inaccurate and should have said "he deleted the tweet. Good enough for me!"
That touches on something important, and I recommend the link I posted above on "cheap grace." Mike Johnson is a Southern Baptist, and I don't know what Clay Higgins is, but the religion of the Christian nationalists is getting ever more Calvinist, regardless of where any of them attends.
Calvin's theology is, in my opinion, some of the most monstrous of all, as it sets up a scenario where God chooses -- predestines -- some for salvation, while predestining all the rest for eternal damnation. When they're trying to sound scholarly or pastoral, they talk about how this is a demonstration of the depth of the free gift of grace, that nothing we could ever do could make us good enough for God, so praise Him for even deciding to save some!
Which is kind of (a lot) creepy to begin with.
But in practice, you can imagine what these people in to when all your sins are white as snow from the beginning, and always have been from eternity going either way. Doesn't leave much need for any personal acts of atonement. That's why the lip service from Johnson was so revelatory. Why, Clay Higgins went to the back and he prayed on it, oh yes he did! And now it's all better and the heathens better stop asking questions.
That’s Christianity. Higgins and Johnson are Christian Nationalists, whereby whatever a white man does is forgiven because he asked God for forgiveness (allegedly) but if someone who is NOT a white man asks for forgiveness, they must also be shamed until the end of time. It’s how Trump having kids by 3 women (at least) and cheating on every one is fine, but Kamala having dated a separated man at some point makes her unfit for office.
These people terrify me. Like you, Evan, I grew up in the Evangelical world and perhaps the scariest part is their firm belief that they are right. Not just that, but they cannot conceive of not being right and just; it simply does not occur to them. That's why it's damn near impossible to reason with them. You're not just not in the same ballpark, you're in a different city and playing a different sport.
I was raised around this kind of Christianity when the culture war stuff was just getting going. What I’ve observed is that men are always right and just, anyone else is probably not. It explains how a lot of right leaning men think they’re right even when they’re having their asses handed to them.
It's segregation the evangelicals really want to return to. They have been trying with their systematic attacks on government policies and laws against racial discrimination. They teamed up with the Catholics to help get Roe Vs. Wade nullified and abortion laws went back to the states to individually decide. The evangelicals hope to do the same thing with segregation and return to the "Jim Crow" days wherever they can.
I follow Slacktivist over on Patheos' blog network and he often points out that Evangelical Christians opposing abortion is a stance that is younger than the Happy Meal.
When he first appeared on the “scene” I thought he was the most wretched person. A white Christian Bible Thumper with baggage. He didn’t disappoint! I remember seeing Bobert and Governor Ivey (George Wallace in drag) rudely yelling at reporters supporting him. This led to being permanently banned on Facebook for my comments about him that violated community standards. I can just imagine the “community “🙄
These bloodthirsty maniacs are going to kill millions of us if they take over this country. I'd have to become a less moral person in order to become a member of their religion. But I'm old so I'd probably be on their kill list automatically. As would my 37 year old autistic daughter who lives with me.
As someone who grew up in a very religious family and community and who now is solidly in the atheist column, I am forever filled with rage at just how pervasive religion is in our supposedly secular government. Even Democrats are fine with the status quo of having paid religious leaders in Congress and ending every speech with “God bless America”. I know they know people like me aren’t voting for someone else but damn if I wouldn’t like to feel like I was actually represented now and then.
And moreover, if 99% of us went to our jobs and injected as much religion into them as our elected representatives do, we’d have a meeting with HR and likely be out of a job in record time. This isn’t normal or ok and we need to be saying so more often.
I was born and raised in the South. Schools were completely segregated until the mid-1960's (at least in my little town in West TN). When the DoJ forced schools to desegregate there was an explosion of private "Christian" schools all across the South. The purpose was not to provide a Christian education but to keep the black kids away from the white kids. After 20 or 30 years this practice became less prominent. Recently, however, there developed a well-organized and funded effort for school "vouchers". Essentially using public funds so the kids could attend private and charter schools. Ostensibly the voucher program was to facilitate "school choice" but in reality its so that white parents could send their kids to (mostly if not completely) segregated schools in which they could be taught the Christian-Nationalist view of the world. This is the Hillsdale College "classical" education model. That model is that White Christians are ordained by God to rule the planet and are annoited to tell you who to love, how your body is to be controlled, that women are subordinate to men, and that non-believers are not just apostates but are the enemy to be defeated.
Mike Johnson gives me PTSD. He is practically every smarmy smug hypocrite male I grew up with.
Same. He's extremely typical for that archetype.
Mike Johnson will be the only one who's surprised when he wakes up (hopefully, for the good of America, very soon) in hell
Yes, very well done and so, so true. Mike Johnson is the worst. As an evangelical myself, and even a Baptist like Johnson, you nailed him 100%. He literally makes me sick. Our Baptist heritage is NOT Christian nationalism, it is championing the separation of church and state, it really is. You are also right about evangelicals and abortion and the Catholic Church. The worst thing that ever happened to America was Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. It merged Christianity and the Republican Party, and here we are. The VAST MAJORITY of Christians supporting the most vile and evil person of my lifetime???? What the heck??????
EVERYTHING you said is true, and Mike Johnson IS that creepy camp counselor no one can stand and who gives off WEIRD vibes. Thanks for this article today. We are not the crazy ones, we really are not!
"Our Baptist heritage is NOT Christian nationalism, it is championing the separation of church and state, it really is"
It seems you're the only one who got the memo then, so congrats on that! But If evangelical Baptists are championing the separation of church of state they are doing it so wrong as to be doing the exact opposite...and there's no way to claim otherwise without falling into the no true Scotsman trap.
You sound like a really good person, but you have to face the fact that you are in a very tiny minority within evanangelical Christianity, or we wouldn't be having this conversation
🙂↕️
There's really a lot of complexity to the roots of a lot of these institutions, and what they've turned into today. For instance, as Bruce said below, there's a big difference between saying you're a "Baptist," in general, and saying you're a "Southern Baptist." The second is a very specific organization, while lots of different things came out of the original Baptist tradition, some awful, some not.
One of Memphis's major open and affirming congregations is First Baptist, a beautiful old church not far from my house. Not surprisingly, it left the SBC a good while back.
I expect he's referring to the Danbury Baptists, and their correspondence with Thomas Jefferson
https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html#:~:text=Believing%20with%20you%20that%20religion,whole%20American%20people%20which%20declared
But the Southern Baptist convention was formed as an explicitly white supremacist theology, in order to provide a theological basis for slavery of Blacks.
It just seems so much more efficient to just abandon it altogether instead of trying to fix it. Its tendrils are too deep into our history to completely extricate.
I watched the clip of The Tiniest Johnson several times trying to make out what the reporter's second question (at about the 20 sec mark) was. The one that made him roll his eyes and continue with a dismissive response. The fact that this half-witted nonentity rose to hold the power he now has is horrifying. My hope is the election of 2024 will break all records for turnout, and the Blue Wave will wash these swamp creatures back under the rocks they crawled out of.
Thank you Evan. I have that politico article URL about the real origins of the Religious RIght on my desktop of my computer(s) and ahve been trhowing that into any comments about these issues for years now. It was NEVER about abortion, it was ALWAYS about Jim Crow.
It's a really good one. Both the church I grew up in and the high school I graduated from were founded in response to desegregation. The church said it more out loud at the time, but now they pretend it never happened.
Like Molly Ivins said, "Once you realize they've been lying to you about race, you question everything."
As I understand the Christian concept of Redemption, one has to actually ask forgiveness and atone. Like if Higgins went to Ohio and actually did something POSITIVE and truly understood his wrong doing, then he'd find redemption. You can't be an asshole on day one, "say, oops, I'm sorry", then continue being an asshole.
Maybe I'm wrong. I didn't always pay attention in Mass. Or Mike Johnson was inaccurate and should have said "he deleted the tweet. Good enough for me!"
That touches on something important, and I recommend the link I posted above on "cheap grace." Mike Johnson is a Southern Baptist, and I don't know what Clay Higgins is, but the religion of the Christian nationalists is getting ever more Calvinist, regardless of where any of them attends.
Calvin's theology is, in my opinion, some of the most monstrous of all, as it sets up a scenario where God chooses -- predestines -- some for salvation, while predestining all the rest for eternal damnation. When they're trying to sound scholarly or pastoral, they talk about how this is a demonstration of the depth of the free gift of grace, that nothing we could ever do could make us good enough for God, so praise Him for even deciding to save some!
Which is kind of (a lot) creepy to begin with.
But in practice, you can imagine what these people in to when all your sins are white as snow from the beginning, and always have been from eternity going either way. Doesn't leave much need for any personal acts of atonement. That's why the lip service from Johnson was so revelatory. Why, Clay Higgins went to the back and he prayed on it, oh yes he did! And now it's all better and the heathens better stop asking questions.
That’s Christianity. Higgins and Johnson are Christian Nationalists, whereby whatever a white man does is forgiven because he asked God for forgiveness (allegedly) but if someone who is NOT a white man asks for forgiveness, they must also be shamed until the end of time. It’s how Trump having kids by 3 women (at least) and cheating on every one is fine, but Kamala having dated a separated man at some point makes her unfit for office.
Oh hell, they think that she's unfit for office simply based on the color of her skin and the lack of a Y chromosome.
These people terrify me. Like you, Evan, I grew up in the Evangelical world and perhaps the scariest part is their firm belief that they are right. Not just that, but they cannot conceive of not being right and just; it simply does not occur to them. That's why it's damn near impossible to reason with them. You're not just not in the same ballpark, you're in a different city and playing a different sport.
I was raised around this kind of Christianity when the culture war stuff was just getting going. What I’ve observed is that men are always right and just, anyone else is probably not. It explains how a lot of right leaning men think they’re right even when they’re having their asses handed to them.
It's segregation the evangelicals really want to return to. They have been trying with their systematic attacks on government policies and laws against racial discrimination. They teamed up with the Catholics to help get Roe Vs. Wade nullified and abortion laws went back to the states to individually decide. The evangelicals hope to do the same thing with segregation and return to the "Jim Crow" days wherever they can.
I follow Slacktivist over on Patheos' blog network and he often points out that Evangelical Christians opposing abortion is a stance that is younger than the Happy Meal.
Slacktivist is great, and YUP.
This movement is led by truly the most evil members of our society,
When he first appeared on the “scene” I thought he was the most wretched person. A white Christian Bible Thumper with baggage. He didn’t disappoint! I remember seeing Bobert and Governor Ivey (George Wallace in drag) rudely yelling at reporters supporting him. This led to being permanently banned on Facebook for my comments about him that violated community standards. I can just imagine the “community “🙄
These bloodthirsty maniacs are going to kill millions of us if they take over this country. I'd have to become a less moral person in order to become a member of their religion. But I'm old so I'd probably be on their kill list automatically. As would my 37 year old autistic daughter who lives with me.
Well done, Evan.
"Saved!!!"
https://youtu.be/VC5eSSaVGcE?feature=shared
As someone who grew up in a very religious family and community and who now is solidly in the atheist column, I am forever filled with rage at just how pervasive religion is in our supposedly secular government. Even Democrats are fine with the status quo of having paid religious leaders in Congress and ending every speech with “God bless America”. I know they know people like me aren’t voting for someone else but damn if I wouldn’t like to feel like I was actually represented now and then.
And moreover, if 99% of us went to our jobs and injected as much religion into them as our elected representatives do, we’d have a meeting with HR and likely be out of a job in record time. This isn’t normal or ok and we need to be saying so more often.