Civil Commotion

Among the many surprises I had while conducting the Non-Believing Clergy study, was that it was routine for people who entered the clergy in the south not to have received legitimate science education in public school. Call me naïve, but I thought that textbooks had to teach facts. It was shocking to hear these clearly intelligent people acknowledging the gaps in their science education regarding evolution.

Something else that I found shocking was listening to religious programming on the radio as I drove through the south on my way to interviews. Some of it I really liked – the lovely Gospel melodies that were so soothing, memorable and easy harmonize with. But the stories on the radio were horrendous.

Linda LaScola

It’s not called the Bible Belt for nothing, and it’s not a coincidence that every social and family pathology ever named is most acute across the South.

I pointed yesterday to a story that explains why John MacArthur has decided to ignore a shutdown order:

“Government officials have no right to interfere in ecclesiastical matters in a way that undermines or disregards the God-given authority of pastors and elders,” MacArthur wrote.

Services went forward yesterday as promised, and at least one attendee was grateful that MacArthur didn’t surrender his “God-given authority”:

Stop and think about that for a moment: MacArthur is being applauded for breaking the law in a way that endangers their lives. Granted, they have the right to expose themselves to the risk of Covid-19 if that’s what they wish to do — but they have no right whatever to make such a decision on behalf of their children, your children, their co-workers, your parents, the pizza delivery kid or the drive-through attendee at the dry cleaner or McDonald’s.

Let’s be straight about this: those people have sewage where they ought to have brains and character, and MacArthur (like The Donald) is running a cult of personality.

At least one tweet got it right:

There is no defense against these morons but to put them out of your life and let natural selection have them. None.

I was a wild-eyed outlier when I said in 2017 that I didn’t think Trump would go peacefully if he lost the upcoming election. Now, lots of other people are worried about that, too.

The group, which included Democrats and Republicans, gathered to game out possible results of the November election, grappling with questions that seem less far-fetched by the day: What if President Trump refuses to concede a loss, as he publicly hinted recently he might do? How far could he go to preserve his power?

[ … ]

“All of our scenarios ended in both street-level violence and political impasse,” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Defense Department official who co-organized the group known as the Transition Integrity Project. She described what they found in bleak terms: “The law is essentially … it’s almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.”

There is no defense but a defeat so lopsided, so epochal, so downright annihilating, that Trump is humiliated and broken beyond repair or hope of support.

#AnnihilateTheGOP

John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church is going to ignore a government shutdown order and denies that the state has a right to issue it.

About two weeks after California indefinitely closed churches and other businesses in more than 30 of the state’s 58 counties as part of its response to the coronavirus, author and theologian MacArthur has given a biblical basis for his decision. “Compliance would be disobedience to our Lord’s clear commands,” he wrote in a statement to the congregation on Friday.

“Government officials have no right to interfere in ecclesiastical matters in a way that undermines or disregards the God-given authority of pastors and elders,” MacArthur wrote.

But, of course, the state is not interfering in an ecclesiastical matter; it is acting in behalf of public health. To interfere in an ecclesiastical matter would be to make a pronouncement on infant baptism.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that MacArthur is so stupid that the distinction is inaccessible to his mind. I’ve never met him and can’t say.

I’m especially charmed by the complaint that the order “undermines or disregards the God-given authority of pastors and elders.” Our Invisible Friend has put MacArthur over the duly-elected civil authority? I suppose it’s possible that MacArthur is so stupid that he believes that, too — but I doubt it; it’s more likely that he’s got notes coming due, receipt are way down, and he doesn’t actually care a hoot if his church serves as the locus of yet another outbreak.

A piece at the Christian Post argues, basically, that Christians should vote for Trump because the end justifies the means.

I’ll admit that in 2016 I abhorred the man’s behavior and I certainly wasn’t confident that Donald Trump would be the conservative policy-pusher that the Christian-right wanted.

But I have no reservations now, and, my brothers and sisters in Christ, neither should you.

Read that again, let your mind steep in it, try to comprehend the squalor of a mind capable of writing such words.

Like Albert the Pious His Very Self, the author of this piece was skeptical of Trump in 2016. But now, after …

• The child-separations and imprisonments, and …

• The mismanagement of America’s response to the pandemic, and tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, and …

• Thousands of documented lies, and …

• Damaging the NATO Alliance, and …

• Mobilization of secret police, and …

• On and on …

… why, The Donald seems Downright Dandy! Verily, the end does justify the means!

By the way, I’m still waiting for some believer to step forward and show me where Christians are authorized in the Inerrant Bible to make deals with the Devil.

Better than anything I’ve read in a long while, this editorial captures perfectly the moral and intellectual squalor of the Evangelical Right. Trump must be put out of office in November, and this squalid pack of self-serving pious frauds need to be shoved to the margins of our public life.