Stop Christian Nationalism: Recent Episodes
Clifford Cook
News about the latest abuses by Christian nationalists and ideas about how to participate in the resistance against Christian nationalism. Now is not the time for silence! Learn more at StopChristianNationalism.com
Your friends on social media may have reposted inspiring graphics in which Pope Leo XIV (AKA Robert Prevost) said, “To be called woke in a world that sleeps through suffering is no insult.”
It’s bogus. Pope Leo XIV never said any such thing.
An atheist made up the fake quote using an artificial intelligence chatbot in order to see how many people would fall for the hoax. “The fact that so many of you wanted this to be true shows how far Catholicism is from real progress,” he said, revealing the fake.
Pope Leo XIV also never said that “To be woke is not a threat. It is a calling.” That’s another fake quote. Pope Leo XIV has never defended the woke perspective. In fact, he has criticized it.
What about the following statement, though?
"You cannot follow both Christ and the cruelty of kings. A leader who mocks the weak, exalts himself, and preys on the innocent is not sent by God. He is sent to test you. And many are failing."
Nope. It’s another fake quote. Pope Leo XIV didn’t say it.
There’s a longer quote claiming to be from Pope Leo XIV that people have been forwarding around in which the new Pope directly criticizes Donald Trump:
“Trump, the immigration policies you've implemented are a blatant trampling on both the teachings of the church and the promises of the American dream. You've made a big show of declaring a state of emergency at the border, dispatched the military to enforce the law there, canceled birthright citizenship and even had law enforcement officers barge into places like churches and schools which are supposed to be inviolable to arrest illegal immigrants. You're turning the United States into a country that has no room for tolerance, going completely against the diversity that the U.S. has always advocated. In order to win those so-called votes and pander to some extreme voters, you've resorted to all means to create external enemies and have intensified social conflicts. All of your actions are a hideous manifestation of white supremacist ideology. What's more, the incident of you accepting an airplane from the cartel is truly despicable. Such behavior of yours has seriously damaged the image of public officials. You're simply using your power as a tool to seek personal gains. I, Robert Prevost, firmly oppose everything that you stand for. Every single thing you've done is dragging the United States into the abyss of darkness and undermining the very foundation of this country.”
By this point, you know what I’m going to say. Yes, it’s a completely fake quote. This supposed statement by Pope Leo XIV was uploaded in a video that was explicitly labeled as generated by AI tools.
When Pope Leo XIV did not speak up for liberal social values, liberal Christians seized upon fake quotes in order to avoid confronting the brutal reality that the Catholic Church is an anti-liberal organization.
What Pope Leo XIV Actually Has Said
In a previous episode of this podcast, I noted Pope Leo XIV’s verbal attack against atheists, accusing them of causing all of the problems that have in fact been caused by Christian Nationalists. Pope Leo XIV said:
"A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society."
Now, Pope Leo XIV has issued a new statement criticizing LGBTQ marriages, saying that governments around the world should only support families that are “founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman”. Pope Leo XIV has also criticized what he calls the “homosexual lifestyle”.
Pope Leo XIV has not made a single statement or gesture that criticizes Donald Trump. At the same time, Pope Leo XIV is criticizing the acceptance of non-Christians and LGBTQ people.
People are spreading false quotes from Pope Leo XIV because the real statements the new Pope is making are unpalatable. Pope Leo XIV is not a liberal. Like every other Pope before him, Pope Leo punches down.
Pope Leo XIV is turning a blind eye to the abuses of Christian Nationalism. He won’t be coming to the rescue of an America that is falling into Christofascism.
The traditional American view of politics is that the population chooses leaders who represent their interests, and manage a government that meets their needs. The government is organized into different departments, which are staffed by people who have studied their areas of expertise, and deliver specialized services for the good of the country.
The Christian Nationalist view of politics is quite different from that. Under Christian Nationalism, people hope that their needs will be met through the magical services of spirits whose powers can be summoned through ritual incantations.
Consider the following prophecy made by Christian Nationalists in July, 2020. The prophecy said that Democrats seek to destroy the United States through spellcraft, political assassination, and allegiances with monsters.
“The goal is to put an evil black Communist woman in the White House, who is dedicated to the tearing down of America and the shredding of the Constitution. If she is a real witch, so much the better, since the Democrats have been using witches and wizards against Trump since he became president. Satan wants to control the White House. She will be the Vice President for Biden, and immediately after he is inaugurated, there will be a fatal accident and Biden will become history. Biden has committed himself to the Marxist agenda of Communist Bernie Sanders, so that is already the goal of the Democrats. And once this poor, senile, incompetent is vanished, freedom in America will be banished.”
In hindsight, we can see that this Christian Nationalist prophecy was not true.
Joe Biden did not advance a Communist agenda while in the White House.
Joe Biden was not assassinated by Kamala Harris.
Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris destroyed the Constitution. Neither did they banish freedom.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but wizards are not real. Witchcraft is not real. Demons are not real.
That this prophecy is nonsense should be obvious. The tragically absurd reality is that it isn’t obvious to many Americans.
When I was a kid, if you asked me about what life would be like for an American in the year 2025, I would have predicted that our world would be defined by astonishing technological advancements.
I would not have predicted that the person who became President of the United States in 2025 would be elected by people who believe that secret societies of wizards and witches control use magic spells to control the American political system. I would not have predicted that fear of Satanic plots motivated Americans to elect a Christian Nationalist fascist with ambitions of becoming the first dictator of the United States of America.
When I was a child, I believed that the political culture of the United States would continue to improve, that Americans would learn from the mistakes of the past and find new ways to live with each other in an enlightened peace with respect for differences. Instead, America has reverted to the superstitions of the medieval Puritans.
In medieval times, people had some excuse for believing in magic, monsters, and evil spirits. Many people were not literate, and did not have access to formal education. Science was just beginning to emerge as a beacon of light in the darkness of religious conformity.
There is no excuse for believing in wizards and witches and demons today. Americans have access to scientific knowledge. They have schools in which they have the luxury of learning how to think clearly over years free from the burden of childhood labor.
32 percent of Americans have chosen to believe in absurd magical nonsense. They have thrown away the opportunities of democracy in favor of idiotic conspiracy theories that don’t even have any internal logic.
32 percent of Americans have voluntarily given their government into the hands of Christian Nationalists who believe that worshipping a prophet who has been dead for two thousand years is more important than feeding and educating children today.
32 percent of adult Americans voted for Donald Trump.
31 percent of adult Americans voted against Donald Trump.
34.7 percent of adult Americans chose not to vote in the 2024 presidential election at all.
34.7 percent of adult Americans could not bring themselves to oppose a campaign that was blatantly fascist and Christian Nationalist.
Because of them, and because of the 32 percent of adult Americans who voted for Donald Trump, we now have a US federal government organized around the belief that an ancient magical incarnation of a vengeful cosmic spirit could return to the Earth at any moment. The USA is under control of people who believe that the return of this ancient cosmic spirit is the foundation of what America stands for.
I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s an absurd basis for a national identity in the year 2025, but I do.
In the year 2025, America is being run by people who are obsessed with a fear of dark wizards and demons.
It is difficult to hold out any hope for a country this moronic.
Christian Nationalism is the ideology of a new Dark Age.
There’s a new Catholic Pope this week. He named himself Pope Leo XIV, and he gave his first speech.
The obvious question on everybody’s mind was how the new Pope would address the danger posed by Donald Trump, who is threatening war with Canada, ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and an end to democracy in the United States, with new concentration camps in Guantanamo, El Salvador, and Alcatraz.
Pope Leo XIV chose to respond to this historical moment of growing fascism by blaming atheists for it all. He declared:
"A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society."
This statement is astonishingly out of touch with the reality of social struggle today, especially given that Robert Prevost, the man who now calls himself Pope Leo XIV, is from the United States. Let’s break down his statement, point by point.
Is the loss of meaning in life caused by lack of faith?
There certainly is a general feeling of a loss of meaning in society these days, but it doesn’t come from a lack of faith.
Donald Trump’s rapid dismantling of American democracy is causing huge numbers of people to feel a loss of meaning, and not just in the United States. People around the world had come to regard the USA as unshakably democratic, with a strong system of constitutional law that established and protected liberty for generations. Now, Donald Trump is violating that system of civil liberties, transforming the United States into an authoritarian regime that upholds few principles other than that Donald Trump can do whatever he wants. Americans, and liberals around the world, are dumbfounded by this turn of events, and many are left feeling unmoored, struggling to find a sense of meaning now that the promises of liberal democracy have been abandoned.
Donald Trump was elected with the support of the majority of American Catholic voters, and through the organized political influence of right wing Catholic organizations.
Pope Leo XIV did not choose to talk about any of that in his homily, however. Instead, he warned against the danger of people entering “a state of practical atheism”.
Is the neglect of mercy caused by lack of faith?
In the world today, the most tragic examples of neglect of mercy come from Christian Nationalist governments, not atheists.
The government of Russia, which aligns itself strongly with Christianity, is mercilessly attacking the nation of Ukraine.
Israel is waging a campaign of explicit ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and is doing so with the strong encouragement of the Christian Nationalist government of the United States.
The Christian Nationalists in charge of the US federal government have begun to defund medical research and disaster response, and have taken systematic action to eliminate programs that deliver food to the hungry and medicine to the sick. Millions of deaths are projected to take place by the end of this year because of this Christian Nationalist neglect of mercy.
None of the perpetrators of these cruelties were atheists. To the contrary, the leaders responsible for this neglect of mercy are both personally religious and politically connected with religious political organizations. Lack of faith has nothing to do with their motivation. In fact, these leaders frequently cite religious faith as a motivation for what they do.
Are appalling violations of human dignity caused by lack of faith?
Donald Trump, the Christian Nationalist President of the United States, has begun systematic programs of the torture and humiliation of prisoners who have no record of criminal activity. He has described entire nations and ethnicities of human beings as “animals” who deserve to be hunted down like “vermin”.
Trump does these things even as he declares that he is “bringing religion back” using the power of the US federal government.
Trump is a lifelong Christian who frequently cites experiences going to church and talks about how his special relationship with the Christian god has brought him to power.
Lack of faith has nothing to do with any of this.
Is a crisis of the family caused by lack of faith?
Donald Trump is ripping families apart, splitting up married couples during ICE raids, putting people into prisons from which they cannot contact their families, and even deporting young children who are citizens of the United States while denying them life-saving medical care.
At the same time, Christian Nationalists are clamoring to declare same-sex marriages null and void. Catholic organizations funded by the US federal government are refusing to allow LGBTQ married couples to adopt children. Christian groups are banning books from public libraries for no other reason than that the books dare to mention that same-sex married couples exist.
In the United States of America, Christians, not atheists, are causing a nationwide crisis of the family. The power of faith is proving corrosive to family life, as religious groups spread divisive conspiracy theories and encourage their adherents to shun family members who refuse to submit to the authority of faith leaders.
Atheists just aren’t doing that.
Lack of Faith Leads to Resistance to Fascism
The Christian Nationalists who control the US federal government are destroying democracy and establishing fascism as an expression of their faith.
Non-religious Americans are the strongest most reliable opponents of Donald Trump’s cruel Christian Nationalist fascism. Americans who live without faith voted against Donald Trump by the largest margins of any cultural group in the United States.
The majority of Christian voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump, and months into Trump’s second presidency, the majority of American Christians strongly support Trump’s seizure of totalitarian power.
Atheists and other non-Christian Americans are the ones most reliably holding the line against cruelty, corruption, and social chaos of fascism. Only 14 percent of American Christians are willing to identify themselves as liberals.
Faith Organizations in America Are Using Fascism to Gain Power
Last week, Donald Trump announced the creation of a new governmental bureau, headquartered in the White House itself, that is dedicated to protecting Christian power in America.
At a ceremony announcing the creating of the bureau, called the Religious Liberty Commission, Trump stated explicitly that the purpose of the government bureau is to blend the power of church and state, defying the First Amendment to the Constitution from the Bill of Rights. Trump gave a wandering speech, in which he acknowledged that this mixture of church and state defies all legal precedent in the United States. Trump said:
“You know, they work right out of the White House. They’ve never done that. That’s never been done before. No other president allowed that. I think, you know, they say separation, they say separation between church and state, they told me. I said, all right, let’s forget about that for one time. We said, really? Separation? I don’t know. Is that a good thing or a bad thing. I’m not sure, but whether there is separation or not, you guys are in the White House, where you should be, and you’re representing our country, and we’re bringing religion back to our country, and it’s a big deal… Today, as the American people turn to God and prayer, we continue a tradition that is older than our independence itself… and interestingly, I had none of them, had I had a rigged election, had the election not been rigged, I would have been out of here. I would have been gone. The radical left would have said, we got rid of him, finally. But no, now they have me for another four years. We talk about that… and we’re going to always bring God with us. We’re going to bring God to those celebrations. We’re not going to forget about God… We rejoice that God answered those prayers, and I think God answered other prayers, because he has put in an Administration to run this country that is going to make you proud again. It’s going make you believe and believe more again. Just a hundred days, we are respected all over the world. Every leader is calling and wants to have a meeting, appointments.”
“We’re not going to forget about God,” Donald Trump said. This is not the voice of a person who is suffering from what Pope Leo XIV called “a lack of faith”. Donald Trump is proposing the opposite of a lack of faith. Trump is proposing that the US federal government “make you believe”, that it force the faith of Christianity on the American people whether they like it or not.
Donald Trump was talking to the members of the Religious Liberty Commission, who are:
Dan Patrick, chair of the Commission
Dan Patrick is Lieutenant Governor of Texas. As Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick has declared that members of the Democratic Party must be fought against because Democrats are either controlled by demons (“powers and principalities”) or are demons themselves. Patrick said:
“Scripture says the horse is made ready for battle but the victory is the lord’s, but we have to be ready for battle. We have to be ready for the fight, because we are not in a fight any longer of Republicans and Democrats of the old days. We are in a fight of lightness and darkness. We are in a fight of powers and principalities.”
Dan Patrick has stated that the United States was created by the Christian god, not by any human political leaders. Patrick declares that the Christian god wrote the Constitution.
The Constitution itself contradicts that claim. It declares that it was written by the people of the United States, and that the Constitution was established by people. The first words of the Constitution are:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
There is no mention of any god or spirit or ghost or anything other supernatural in the Constitution, and that’s by design. The only time the Constitution mentions religion, it is in order to separate government from religion. Dan Patrick either doesn’t understand that, or is willingly exploiting the ignorance of religious Americans about this aspect of American history and law.
Ben Carson
Ben Carson is not a religious leader, but is a politician, a former Trump cabinet member who has embraced Christian Nationalism.
Ryan T. Anderson
Ryan T. Anderson is a former staff member of the Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025, a document that urges Donald Trump to replace constitutional freedoms with the freedom to obey. Ryan has preached against sexual freedom, decries “the widespread acceptance of contraception”, and argues that LGBTQ marriages must be broken up, in order to comply with Christian beliefs. That’s not, “religious liberty”, but Christian Nationalists use the phrase “religious liberty” as a euphemism for Christian power.
Robert Barron
Robert Barron is a Catholic bishop. He is a Christian Nationalist who claims that legal rights of people in the United States were not established by any government, but were established by and are subject to the arbitrary power of the Christian god. “It is exceptionally dangerous when we forget the principle that our rights come from God and not from a government,” Barron writes. Barron has embraced the totalitarian dictatorship of Donald Trump in order to promote this idea that the United States of America is the creation and property of the Christian god, and must submit to that god’s absolute power.
Carrie Prejean Boller
Carrie Prejean Boller is a former beauty pageant contestant who opposes legal equality for LGBTQ Americans. She is a former member of the advisory board for Women for Trump. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Boller paid children to go into public spaces without any mask to protect them from infection.
Timothy Dolan
Timothy Dolan is a Catholic archbishop. Dolan is an anti-LGBTQ activist who has argued that the marriages of LGBTQ Americans “imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage” and has stated that LGBTQ people do not have the right to engage in sexual relationships with each other. Dolan also coordinated with the Vatican to conceal $57 million dollars from legal courts so that the money could not be used to compensate children who had been raped by Catholic priests.
Franklin Graham
Franklin Graham inherited the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association from his father. He is a preacher who called upon the Christian god to physically attack President Barack Obama, and has claimed that Barack Obama collaborated with the “Spirit of AntiChrist”.
Eric Metaxas
Eric Metaxas is a radio talk show host, who says that recognizing the legal rights of transgender Americans is part of “a Satanic war” and claims that separation of church and state is “Satan’s will”.
Kelly Shackelford
Kelly Shackelford is the CEO of a legal firm that specializes in establishing legal precedents for overturning separation of church and state.
Paula White
Paula White is a Christian preacher who claims to have the power of prophecy. After Donald Trump lost the presidential election of 2020, she attempted to use magic chanting to call angels from Africa to fly over the Atlantic Ocean in order to use their supernatural abilities to overturn the election. White has argued that the American people are not capable of handling the responsibilities of ruling themselves in a democracy, which is why the Christian god should be allowed to take over the USA.
Meir Soloveichik
Meir Soloveichik is the only non-Christian member of Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. He is an orthodox Jewish rabbi who has spoken against separation of church and state.
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These American religious leaders (well, only some of them are actual religious leaders) did not challenge Donald Trump at this ceremony. They were happy to stand side by side with America’s fascist dictator, endorsing his government, in exchange for political power. Instead of criticizing the sadistic crimes and abuses of Donald Trump, they shook his hand and smiled.
Their faith led them to embrace Donald Trump’s crimes, to embrace his fascism.
These religious leaders show that lack of faith is not the problem.
An excess of faith is the problem.
“The loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society” are problems that result of the lack of healthy skepticism, the lack of critical questions, the lack of independent thinking, and the lack of resistance to people and institutions that claim arbitrary authority.
If he were to approach his new job as Pope Leo XIV with an attitude of honesty and humility, Robert Prevost would focus on the role of Christian Nationalist ideology in promoting the cruelty of fascism. He would preach about how faith can create a vulnerability to exploitation by authoritarian regimes.
For the new Catholic Pope to use this historical moment to blame atheists for the problems created by Christian Nationalists is beyond disappointing. It’s despicable.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio uses Easter to promote the idea that Jesus is king over the entire world, as a matter of official US State Department policy.
In Texas, teams of Christian Nationalists from a group called My God Votes have been laying hands on each other to magically protect the Texas state legislature building from attacks by demons and other spirits.
The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case where the state government of Oklahoma is seeking to provide taxpayer funding for religious schools with the explicit mission of indoctrinating children in Catholic theology and rituals.
Amidst all this rampant Christian Nationalism, a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute finds that non-Christian Americans provide the strongest opposition to Donald Trump’s dictatorship, while the majority of American Christians want to see Donald Trump seize even more power.
Donald Trump has announced that he will disobey a unanimous ruling by the US Supreme Court, placing himself in the position of a totalitarian dictator above the law. Trump also has declared plans to begin sending American citizens to massive concentration camps in El Salvador, each one capable of holding tens of thousands of people as prisoners.
As this new wave of fascist crackdowns in the United States begins, We Are Higher Ed is sharing statistics indicating that thousands of foreign students are having their visas revoked. These nonviolent, non-criminal students are being declared illegal aliens even though they entered and remained in the United States legally.
The Christian Nationalists in charge of the White House are deporting and detaining large numbers of university students at the same time that billions of dollars in funding for colleges and universities is being withdrawn. The goal is nothing less than the destruction of higher education in the United States.
Christian Nationalists know that education is negatively correlated with church attendance, and Christian Nationalist preachers make money by getting people into the pews. With fewer foreign students paying tuition at American universities, the higher education system in the United States cannot survive, and that’s just how Christian Nationalists want it.
Christian Nationalism aims for a less knowledgeable, more gullible American public dependent on churches after the destruction of education and other government services.
Christian Nationalist fascism has begun in earnest.
This week’s episode of Stop Christian Nationalism is a bit different. For the first time, I’m having a guest on the podcast: F.G. Fitzer, who is the author of a new book that confronts Christian Nationalism in an unusual way: By offering a new version of the Christian Bible. The book is called The Demonic Bible: Book of Genesis, and it’s available through Lulu and Amazon, as well as on the Demonic Bible web site as an ebook.
A transcript of our conversation is below.
Clifford Cook:
Thanks for talking with me. I’m wondering about your choice to write The Demonic Bible. It’s combining two ideas, demons and the Christian Bible, that most people don’t think are compatible. Why did you decide to write this book?
F.G. Fitzer:
Hm. Well, I do realize that The Demonic Bible is an unorthodox book, but let's stop and just think about that word for a minute, okay? Unorthodox. What does that word actually mean? It doesn't mean that something is wrong, or harmful. Something is unorthodox if it fails to comply with the ideological expectations of people in power. The word unorthodox comes from Christianity four hundred years ago, when Christian kingdoms around the world were using bloody military violence to force their religious beliefs on people. It was used to refer to someone who did not have the proper opinions. You know, I think we need to ask who has the power to tell other people that their opinions are proper or improper. How did they get that power?
Clifford Cook:
So, you wrote The Demonic Bible to challenge Christian models of power. What makes that an important project?
F.G. Fitzer:
Look at what is happening to the United States of America right now. The country is in chaos. The USA has never been a perfect secular democracy, but from the beginning, that is what it was designed to be, and the secular nature of American democracy is an important part of what has kept the country from falling backwards into Christian dictatorship, which is what the Christian kingdoms that dominated the world before American independence were really all about. Donald Trump and his followers are trying to drag the whole world, not just America, back into the dark days of religious totalitarianism.
Clifford Cook:
How can you deal with the issues of Christian totalitarianism in history, and as they are returning through the Christian Nationalism of Donald Trump, by writing a new version of the Bible? The Bible was written before all of that history. Why bring up this ancient book again?
F.G. Fitzer:
I would love nothing more than to leave the Bible in the past. Christian Nationalists make that impossible. They are trying to make the Christian Bible into the law of the land in the United States, and around the world. We need to deal with that, by taking their fundamental document, the Bible, and giving it a level of scrutiny. People excuse the actions of Christians in power by saying that the Christian religion is a force for good in society. The Demonic Bible does not take that for granted. It looks at the Christian Bible, line by line, book by book, and then examines the connection between Christian scripture and present day Christian abuses of power.
Clifford Cook:
What did you find when you examined the Bible in this way?
F.G. Fitzer:
For one thing, you can see that Christian Nationalism takes its obsession with nationalism and political domination straight from the Bible. Some people say that Christian Nationalism isn’t biblical, but right from the start, in the Book of Genesis, there is an emphasis on dividing people according to national groups, with the story of the Tower of Babel, for example. Violent nationalism is also found in the New Testament, with its promises of a bloody global religious war to establish absolute Christian dominion.
Clifford Cook:
Okay, but why make this a demonic Bible, though? Why not call it The Atheist Bible?
F.G. Fitzer:
I did not want to launch an attack on Christianity from the outside. I wanted to explore Christianity from the inside, but from the perspective of a political dissident. That is what a demon is. Of course, demons are not real. They are mythical creatures. However, the voice of the demon is a useful tool in exploring the problems with Christian politics from within the Christian worldview.
Clifford Cook:
So, how did you find the voice of the demon within Christianity, then?
F.G. Fitzer:
That was simple. I realized that the essence of the Christian Bible is that it makes declarations of reality without allowing any space for questions. Demons are rebels against the divine monarchy of the Bible. Demons are creatures who live within questions. So, I made the voice of the demon a questioning voice. Instead of attacking, the demon merely questions. The conventional interpretation of the Bible falls apart from there.
Clifford Cook:
You represented the conversation between the demon and the angel in The Demonic Bible as a cartoon. Why did you do that?
F.G. Fitzer:
The cartoon format makes The Demonic Bible the most easy to read version of the Bible there is. The traditional Christian Bible is all about the Word. Christians say that the Bible is The Greatest Story Ever Told, but the truth is that the Bible is very difficult to read. It’s full of unstated presumptions, repetitions, inconsistencies, and profoundly out of date cultural references. Worst of all, however, is that the Christian Bible is dense. It’s weird, because the book is full of magic, but it puts most readers to sleep.
Clifford Cook:
How does a cartoon format for The Demonic Bible remedy that?
F.G. Fitzer:
The cartoon format promotes a conversational approach to the text. Instead of one voice going on and on and on, there are two voices, and they are interacting with each other. Furthermore, the demon and the angel both represent the practical, real world view of people living today. They ask the questions that Christian preachers never want to deal with, and talk about the issues that churches just won’t touch.
Clifford Cook:
Won’t making the Christian Bible accessible to readers just strengthen the position of Christian Nationalists?
F.G. Fitzer:
It’s possible, but I don’t think so. Most people who leave Christianity do so because they begin to read the Bible for themselves, and ask questions about it. A sincere question is always a challenge to faith. That’s why I believe that The Demonic Bible will undermine Christian Nationalism. Not every Christian who reads The Demonic Bible will leave Christianity, but those who remain within Christianity will shift to a more demonic Christianity.
Clifford Cook:
Demonic Christianity? That’s an interesting concept. This is a long-term project though. At present, only the first book of The Demonic Bible is available. When will the next book come out?
F.G. Fitzer:
The next book in the Demonic Bible will be out later this year, before the autumn of 2025. That book will cover the Book of Revelation. I think it’s important for critical readers of the Christian Bible to understand both the beginning and the end of Christian scripture before they read the middle, because the beginning and the end together reveal the ideological mission of Christianity. The narrative end of Christianity in the Book of Revelation is essential to an interpretation of the rest of the Bible, but most Christian readers skip over Revelation.
Clifford Cook:
Thank you for talking with me about this fascinating project. I look forward to seeing where you take it next.
Find out more about the Demonic Bible at DemonicBible.com
A few weeks ago, we reported on the demand from Christian Nationalist Andrew Isker that when Christian dominion is established over the United States, Jews must not be allowed to persist within the country.
Now, Isker is promoting the conspiracy theory that airport security scanners have secret “gay beams” in them that allow Jews hiding behind walls to steal adrenochrome from travelers and transform them into flaming homosexuals.
If you wonder how so many Christians can continue to support Donald Trump, here’s your answer: They’re being trained to accept all manner of nonsense in the name of faith.
Yesterday, the Christian U.S. House Chaplain Margaret Grun Kibben rose to the floor of the House of Representatives as Congress began its day of work.
She prayed to her god, claiming that everything that Congress does is because of the Christian god. Then, she prayed to the Christian god, asking that he direct Congress to take on the weight of its responsibility to glorify Christianity and its god.
It was 6:00 in the evening, and the House was just beginning its work day.
What happened after that?
After being in session for seven minutes and forty-five seconds, the U.S. House of Representative adjourned, and everyone went home to sleep, to get energy for the next day.
Then, today, the U.S. House of Representatives met again. They adjourned and went home to rest after two minutes and fifty-eight seconds of work.
Wow. There’s nothing like the power of prayer, is there?
What a sterling example of the contributions that Christian Nationalism is capable of making.
Why isn’t Margaret Grun Kibben fired for incompetence?
Why does the US Congress continue to pay a fat salary, plus office expenses, plus the salary of a staff for Margaret Grun Kibben?
Oh, you know why: The congressional chaplains are paid cheerleaders for the political extremism of Christian Nationalism, an ideology that wants nothing more than to destroy democracy in the United States of America.
One sign of growing fascism in America is that people are being arrested for “unlawful assembly”. Those of you who didn’t sleep through civics class in high school will remember that the Bill of Rights specifically guarantees freedom of assembly to all people in the United States.
In Kansas, however, freedom of assembly is being treated as a privilege, not a constitutional freedom. In Kansas, freedom of assembly is only being granted to Christians. Non-Christians are being told that they need to stay out of the public square, and cede that space exclusively to Christians.
Here’s how it went down. At the end of last week, three non-Christians tried to hold a religious ritual in the state capitol building of Kansas.
You may be thinking to yourself that this doesn't sound proper, and you'd be right. State government buildings do not exist for the purpose of hosting religious rituals. It's better for everybody for religion and the government to remain separate. In fact, the Constitution of the United States declares that government cannot act to establish religion.
The thing is that in Kansas, the state government sponsors Christian religious rituals every day. On some days, there are many different Christian religious ceremonies in the Kansas Statehouse.
Non-Christian citizens and organizations in Kansas, however, have not been given the same access. Government religious rituals in Kansas have been granted to Christians only.
Earlier this year, a group of non-Christians from Kansas requested to be given the ability to hold a religious ritual in the Kansas state capitol, just as Christians do every day. Their request was refused.
So, in protest, the group of non-Christians announced that they would hold their religious ritual in the Kansas Statehouse anyway, as a protest. In response, Governor Laura Kelly, a member of the Democratic Party, issued an order forbidding protests in the Kansas Statehouse.. but only for the precise day when the non-Christians had said they would hold their ritual in protest.
Both houses of the Kansas state legislature also passed resolutions condemning non-Christians in Kansas for trying to hold a ritual as Christians do, and for defying the religious laws of Christianity.
Then, when the non-Christians showed up anyway and attempted to hold their religious ceremony, they were arrested and thrown into jail for “unlawful assembly”.
I wonder, will your opinion of this story change if I tell you the name of the non-Christian group?
Their name is The Satanic Grotto.
You may be thinking that Satanists are bad. How do you know if that’s true, though? Who tells you that Satanists are bad? Christian preachers do, of course. Christian preachers don’t tolerate people who disagree with their sermonizing, after all.
The Satanic Grotto doesn't preach violence. In fact, they operate under these principles:
Self-preservation is the priority of the law. Your rights end where another's begin.
Responsibility is the weight of the law. Own your actions.
Respect is the spirit of the law. Treat others how they treat you.
Consent is the measure of the law. Ask permission. Don't take what isn't yours.
Now, contrast that with the Christian Bible. The character of Satan? Barely mentioned. But the character of God? Well, in Job, it's God who makes a deal to test a man's suffering. And in Revelation, it's God who is prophesied to bring destruction upon the world.
So why are Christian Nationalists so enraged by Satanists?
Because The Satanic Grotto represents something they despise.
They are feminists. They support LGBTQ+ rights. They oppose racism.
And Christian Nationalists? Well, they have a history of opposing women's rights, seeking to criminalize LGBTQ+ Americans, and defending systemic racism.
But this isn't just about ideology. It's about rights.
The Kansas government is not just promoting Christianity—it's enforcing it. A theocracy in practice.
In Kansas, if you're not Christian, you can be arrested simply for asking for the same rights Christians enjoy every day.
And that's the problem. Not whether Satanists are right or wrong. Not a theological debate.
This is about whether religious freedom applies to everyone. Or just one group.
Christians in Kansas claim The Satanic Grotto is committing blasphemy.
And you know what? Maybe they are.
But in a truly free country, blasphemy is not a crime.
In Kansas? It is.
This is what Christian Nationalism looks like. This is how freedom dies.
Christian Nationalism is the handmaiden of fascism in America today.
"Handmaiden" is the Christian Bible's term for a sex slave.
The more we look at the role of Christian Nationalism in government in the USA, the more it sinister it seems.
All across America, in the federal government, state governments, and for all we know, local governments as well, Capitol Ministries, a network of Christian Nationalists is now instructing government officials that they must obey the teachings of Christianity, rejecting non-Christian religions as false and unacceptable. Government leaders who are tasked with making decisions about foreign relations, science, medicine, and disruptive digital technologies are being told by Christian preachers that the problem they really need to focus on is the infiltration of the USA by evil spirits, demons who have gained magical control over the minds of 4 out of 10 Americans.
Is it any wonder that the Christian Nationalists who now control the federal government are shutting down schools, closing scientific laboratories, and placing law enforcement agencies under the control of religious zealots? Christian Nationalists are taking America back to the era of witch hunts and religious inquisitions.
We know what the results of those campaigns for religious purity lead to. From the Salem Witch Trials to the Spanish Inquisition, Christian Nationalism has led to campaigns of terror, with torture and murder in the name of Jesus.
Capitol Ministries is setting the stage for religious violence, instructing government leaders that people who refuse to comply with Christian Nationalism aren’t even really human, having become minions of Satan who must be stopped at any cost.
Donald Trump has seized power, thrusting the United States into a constitutional crisis where absolute power rests in the hands of one man. This totalitarian brutality is inspired by the Christian Bible, where one magical dictator sets the rules for the entire world, and nobody else has any right to say no. In Texas, posters of the Ten Commandments in public schools are teaching children that slavery must be respected, that women are objects, and that freedom of religion is sinful. In West Virginia, a proposed constitutional amendment declares that the Bible is scientific truth and an inerrant historical document, while imposing Christianity on all citizens. These three places share the same despotic ideology of Christian Nationalism.
In a confirmation of exit polls from November 2024, The Pew Research Center data shows that Christian Americans are the group that most strongly identifies with the cruelty and chaos of Donald Trump.
This podcast episode starts out with Christian Nationalist preacher Andrew Isker explaining that in the new America controlled by Donald Trump, there will be no room for Jews. Even a Judeo-Christian theocracy would be too secular for him. Isker wants to replace American democracy with a Christian monarchy.
And what would that Christian monarchy look like?
Let’s not speculate. Let’s see what social scientific survey data shows American Christians want for the USA.
According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center:
First of all, the more religious you are in America, the more likely you are to identify with the Republican Party.
Confirming exit polls from the 2024 presidential election, among highly religious Americans, this new survey shows that 61% support the Republican Party of Donald Trump. Among Americans who are not very religious, only 27% support Donald Trump and the GOP.
Atheists are the least likely group in America to support Republicans – only 15% of atheists do. The majority of Christians, the survey found, support Republicans and Donald Trump. That’s not just Christian Nationalists, by the way. That’s Christians in general.
Donald Trump is a particularly Christian problem for America, not just a generally religious phenomenom.
Only 31 percent of Jews, 29 percent of Hindus, and 42 percent of Muslims support Donald Trump’s Republican Party. The majority of Christians do.
The survey found that 67 percent of atheists say they’re liberal.
Only 14 percent of Christians said that they’re liberal.
Being kind to others is mostly an atheist value. When it comes to welcoming of outsiders, for example only 27% of highly religious Americans in the survey said that immigrants make America better.
Twice as many Americans with a low level of religious identity believe that immigrants strengthen America. What’s more, a whopping 89 percent of Atheists say that America’s openness to people from around the world is essential to America’s identity as a nation, a much higher level of acceptance of strangers than is found in any religious group in the USA.
Only 27 percent of Christians say that immigrants make America better.
When it comes ideological diversity, the same pattern holds. Only a minority of Christians said that religious diversity strengthens American society, while 75 percent of Atheists agreed that religious diversity is good for America.
What about helping people in need? If you’re in need in America, who should you go to - Christians or atheists?
Two thirds of Christians said that the government should NOT do more to help people in need.
The opposite is true for atheists. Two thirds of atheists said that the government SHOULD do more to help people in need.
Christian America elected Donald Trump. Christian America helped Republicans install a Christian Nationalist majority on the Supreme Court. Christian Nationalists likewise control both houses of Congress.
The results are not a mystery. The cruelty and chaos that we see, and the destruction of American democracy, is not an anomaly. It’s not a mistake.
The cruelty and chaos are what Christian Nationalists have been working for all this time.
A few days ago, The New York Times released a podcast episode reviewing a book written by its most extreme right wing columnist, Ross Douthat (pronounced, “dow that”). Douthat was featured on the episode, but was joined by two other New York Times writers, Michelle Cottle and Carlos Lozada.
The subtitle of the book expresses its central idea: “Everyone Should Be Religious”. Carlos Lozada expanded on that assertion, explaining that the goal of Douthat’s book is “to make this rational, empirical, intellectual case for religious belief.”
The odd thing is that the author, Ross Douthat didn’t make a single rational argument for being religious in the entire podcast episode. He merely stated,
“There probably is a God. The universe is probably made with you and with you, Carlos, and you, Michelle, and maybe even me in mind.”
Not once in the entire episode does Douthat provide any rational argument or source of empirical data to justify the belief that the entire universe, with its quasars, black holes, mostly consisting of a vast cold emptiness, was constructed specially for him. He simply states that it’s true, and expects the podcast audience to agree with him as a matter of faith.
Faith, devoid of facts and reason, was a perspective that Michelle Cottle got right on board with. She declared:
“Look, I’m a big fan of faith, and generally, it might surprise Ross, of organized religion. I do think people have this innate longing for a sense of purpose and order to the universe, and if you’re not believing in a divine power, you tend to gravitate toward less savory options, like political messiahs, whack job conspiracy theories, but look, I grew up Southern Baptist.”
Yes, Michelle Cottle is a Christian, and a big fan of religion. All three of the people participating in the podcast episode are Christians. They didn’t think to invite a non-religious person, or even one person from a non-Christian religion, to participate in the conversation. In New York City, that wouldn’t have been difficult to do, but the editors at the New York Times seem to have decided that non-Christian viewpoints are no longer appropriate for broadcasting and publication.
The decision to exclude non-Christian voices from the New York Times, in order to make Christian faith seem like the obvious, and default choice, is especially disturbing when one considers that Michelle Cottle isn’t just a podcast contributor at the New York Times. Michelle Cottle occupies the US Politics seat on the New York Times editorial board.
Occupying that position, Cottle should know better than to claim that atheists are more likely than religious believers to support demagogues and conspiracy theories. Listen again to what she said.
“If you’re not believing in a divine power, you tend to gravitate toward less savory options, like political messiahs, whack job conspiracy theories.”
A genuinely empirical consideration of the value of religion would acknowledge that social research and other sources of data have consistently shown Michelle Cottle’s claim to be false. The facts:
In 2021, sociologists analyzing Gallup survey data found that “religious belief, religious identity and religious participation are all positively and strongly correlated with believing in popular contemporary falsehoods.”
The results of a 2022 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Research in Personality showed that “people who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely than other people to hold pseudoscientific beliefs, exhibit paranoid ideation, suffer from schizotypy, be narcissistic, be religious/spiritual and have lower cognitive ability.”
A 2022 study in the journal Environmental Research and Public Health concluded that “people with high religious fundamentalism are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories”.
In 2022, a study published in the journal Political Psychology described a “significant positive correlation between religiosity and conspiracy mindset and a slightly stronger correlation between religiosity and the tendency to endorse specific conspiracy beliefs”. The authors explained that, “The positive correlations suggest that similarities in the cognitive and explanatory style—like assuming hidden powers behind events—speak to the same persons and dominate the relation between conspiracy theory endorsement and religiosity”.
In June of last year, an academic analysis published in the journal Politics And Religion found a “relationship between religious attitudes, spirituality, and conspiracism”.
If you’re looking for a “political messiah” in the United States, that’s Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been the only presidential candidate since George W. Bush to claim that he was chosen by God and divinely anointed to become President of the United States. There is no alternative messianic politician on the Democratic side of the aisle. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris never even hinted that they believed they had been chosen by spiritual beings as the rightful occupants of the White House, and Democratic voters did not promote any such nonsensical beliefs.
Exit polls in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections consistently showed both that the majority of Americans voting for Donald Trump were Christian and that the majority of American Christian voters supported Donald Trump.
Exit polls in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections show that non-religious Americans were the most reliable group of supporters for candidates opposing Donald Trump.
There is no empirical source of information that supports Michelle Cottle’s claim that lack of religious faith in gods is associated with belief in conspiracy theories and support for “political messiahs”. All the data points strongly in the opposite direction. Religious people are the most likely to indulge in conspiracy theories and messianic nationalism.
When Michelle Cottle insulted non-religious Americans, she didn’t bother to check the facts. She spoke from her faith, and she got it dead wrong. That’s the kind of mistake we might expect from a YouTube influencer or a member of Moms For Liberty. To see this kind of sloppy failure of all journalistic ethics from the editor of national politics for the New York Times is alarming.
It’s alarming because conspiracy theories and a Christian Nationalist messianic cult of personality are tools that Donald Trump is using to attack the very foundations of democracy in the United States of America. Donald Trump has placed extremist Christian Nationalists in almost every corner of the US federal government, and it’s these Christian Nationalists, using conspiracy theories and weird stories about Donald Trump’s special relationship with God, who are rapidly destroying American society from the inside out.
Yes, Elon Musk is getting a lot of attention for his administrative coup d’etat, and rightfully so. Just as active in the fascist takeover of the USA, though much more quiet in his assault, has been Russ Vought, architect of Project 2025 and White House Director of Management and Budget. Elon Musk is doing dramatic poses with a chainsaw in front of the cameras, but behind the scenes, it’s Russ Vought who is directing the collapse of American democracy through criminally defunding government agencies in defiance of laws passed by the US Congress.
Russ Vought is also one of the most powerful leaders of the Christian Nationalist movement. Vought has explicitly called for an end to freedom of religion in America, in favor of forcing all Americans to obey the harsh religious laws of Christian extremism.
In 2023, Russ Vought appeared on The Sword And The Trowel, a podcast hosted by Tom Ascol, a preacher who has called for homosexuality to be made a crime for which the punishment is death. This is explicitly Nazi ideology, along with the violent Christian Nationalism that the Third Reich used to keep the gullible German public in line. In that podcast episode, Vought said the following:
“We talk about being a nation that's for God. That's a consensus that we want to renew in this country. That we have religious liberty, but it cannot come from this notion that a country isn't understanding the reality that it has to obey God and there is only one true god and that is Jesus Christ our lord.”
The Orwellian doublespeak coming out of Russ Vought’s mouth is astonishing. In one breath he declares that America has religious liberty, but in the next breath goes on to explain that religious liberty should only exist to the extent that the entire nation are forced to obey Christianity, which all Americans will be compelled to accept as the only valid religion.
Russ Vought wants to force all Americans to become Christians. So why is he working as Donald Trump’s Director of Management and Budget?
Christian Nationalists have declared that their goal is to take over every aspect of American society to compel Americans to worship Jesus in every aspect of their lives. The US federal government has been most significant barrier to them achieving that goal. The US federal government has upheld the Constitution, which provides all Americans with equality, regardless of their religion.
When Americans are able to provide for themselves economically, free from all forms of discrimination, they have no need of going to church. Year after year, Americans have been abandoning Christian churches, choosing to live free of abuse by Christian leaders.
Russ Vought wants to herd Americans back into church by destroying civil society. Vought has explicitly said that he wants to “traumatize” Americans so that they won’t want to work with the US government, and won’t be able to expect any help from the government. In the wake of this nationwide destruction, with their economic and social independence smashed to pieces, the plan is for Christian churches to swoop in and regain control.
With public schools destroyed, publicly-funded church-run Christian schools will take their place. With public health infrastructure devastated, publicly-funded Christian hospital networks will take their place. Christian Nationalists plan to do this to every sector of American society, until there is no place left that is not under the control of Christian leaders, who will become wealthy and powerful as the administrators of kind of neo-medieval unelected government under which the will of God and the will of the priestly ruling class will become one and the same.
To achieve the goal of Christian supremacy, Russ Vought is overseeing the destruction of every part of the US federal government that cannot be easily brought under the sway of the Christian Nationalist extremists Donald Trump has appointed in every cabinet department.
As for their Christian values, we can judge them by their works.
They are cutting off medical care for the sick.
They are allowing food to rot in storage rather than giving it out to feed the hungry.
Medical research projects that were saving lives have been shut down.
There is no compassion in Christian Nationalism. There is only the worship of absolute, totalitarian power, with a cruel pyramid of domination that starts with the all-powerful God, then goes down to the all-powerful President, in a structure of religious authoritarianism that ensures obedience through fear.
The Christian Nationalists don’t care how many Americans are being hurt in the process. They are willing to destroy the lives of anyone that gets in the way of their accumulation of power.
So it is that last week, U.S. Representative Mark Alford told fired federal workers at a town hall meeting in Kansas City, Missouri that they shouldn’t worry about losing their jobs because, “God has a plan and purpose for your life.”
This is the Republican plan for America: Take away people’s jobs. Take away their medicine. Take away their food. Take away their democracy. Then, tell Americans not to worry about it, because a magical spirit from the sky has a plan for them.
What is God’s plan for the huge numbers of Americans who are out of work, out of food, losing their homes under the destructive chaos of Christian Nationalism? Well, of course, there is no plan. There’s only, as Donald Trump put it, a concept of a plan.
So we’re all just supposed to pray to Jesus, and hope that some kind of magical power is going to turn it all around, is going to make it all okay, somehow.
Of course, it’s not going to be okay, if all we do is pray about it.
We need to take action.
Take action:
This Friday, February 28, is a nationwide economic blackout. Don’t buy anything on Friday. Don’t go to the store. Don’t fill up your car with gasoline. Keep your money in your pocket.
Take action:
Next Tuesday, March 4, is a day of nationwide protest, with anti-fascist demonstrations in every city across the nation.
Take action! March forth!
Immediately after his victory in the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump met with representatives of Alternative For Germany. Then, Elon Musk, who has become a kind of unelected Chancellor of the United States of America, appeared as an official speaker at a Alternative For Germany convention, declaring that Germany must stop trying to distance itself from its Nazi past. Now, this weekend, Vice President JD Vance made a speech in the German city of Munich in which he announced that the German government must allow for political parties to promote Nazi ideology again, in the name of “free speech”, and urged the German parliament to stop trying to prevent the Alternative For Germany Party from taking power.
Vice President JD Vance was, in essence, calling for a return of the Nazis to power in Germany.
In case there could be any doubt at the pro-Nazi agenda of the Musk-Trump government’s delegation in Germany this weekend, the new American Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who has longstanding ties to American Nazi organizations, came along with JD Vance to Germany. Hegseth brought his own entourage to the event, which included a man named Jack Posobiec. Hegseth appointed Jack Posobiec as an official Trump White House media representative for the American delegation to Germany.
Jack Posobiec is an American Nazi has repeatedly used Nazi symbols and language in his communications, including the code 88, which stands for “Heil Hitler”, and the infamous Fourteen Words mantra, which is derived from Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, and declares, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
One year ago, Jack Posobiec appeared as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and announced that it is the intention of the Republican Party to destroy American democracy forever. Listen to his words for yourself:
“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it, and we will replace it with this. That’s right, we will replace it with this, because all glory is not to government. All glory is to God!”
With his words “replace it with this,” Jack Posobiec raised his hand in the air, to display a necklace with a Christian cross. At another microphone, Trump strategist Steve Bannon bellowed, “Amen!” The point was obvious. Jack Posobiec wants to end democracy, and replace it with Christian power.
Jack Posobiec doesn’t just talk about smashing democracy. He takes action. In 2017, Posobiec organized an event by a group of neo-Nazis that had a history of bombing Jewish homes in Poland. To anyone who knows the history of Polish Jews under the German occupation during World War II, this action should be shocking. Poland was the home to some of the most horrific concentration camps of the Holocaust.
The link between American Christian Nationalists and German Nazis has become undeniable. They aren’t even attempting to conceal what they’re doing anymore.
Elon Musk, Donald Trump and their minions are openly promoting the new German Nazi Party. They’re doing it as an expression of their Christian Nationalism.
Just think about this in terms of what’s happening in the United States. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are scapegoating and persecuting immigrants in order to “purify the blood” of America. They’re opening up a 30,000 person concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay to do it. They’re attacking freedom of the press, and they’re consolidating power in the Executive Branch through a plainly criminal seizure of power.
They’re purging the government of everyone who refuses to pledge absolute loyalty personally to Donald Trump, and they’re doing it in the name of eliminating DEI. DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion used to be bedrock American values, but now, Christian Nationalists are treating these values as if they are something evil. In their hatred of ethnic and cultural diversity, equity, and inclusion, Christian Nationalists are following in the footsteps of the Third Reich.
The goal of American Christian Nationalism is to restore Nazi ideology to Germany, and to do what Adolf Hitler failed to do: To impose Nazi power on the United States of America, and do it in the name of Jesus.
In the name of Jesus, they are replacing DEI with NAZI.
After everything that this country went through to stand up to the Nazis the first time around, are you going to sit still while they try to take power again?
At the National Prayer Breakfast, Donald Trump envisioned an America in which Christianity controls every aspect of life. He promises to make the United States a nation where nobody can escape the power of Christianity.
Donald Trump announced that he is creating a White House office dedicated to imposing Christian Nationalism, and that the Attorney General of the United States will form a task force to identify ways to impose Christianity through the American legal system. He bragged about his power, and praised the Christian god as a god of power.
He did these things having just ordered an end to US government spending on food for the hungry, medicine for the sick, and shelter for the homeless. He did this right after breaking the law to impose his power as an absolute fascist leader of the United States.
Over and over again, Christian leaders applauded the new fascist leader. They clapped and cheered for the man who gleefully made others suffer as a demonstration of his power.
At the National Prayer Breakfast, American Christian leaders showed their adoration for the raw power of fascism. They did so because they know that as Donald Trump’s power grows, the power of Christian leaders to enforce their religion across America will grow as well.
Christian Nationalism in a nation where the law is defined by one unchecked strongman is nothing more than a cult of power.
Christian Nationalists have sacrificed compassion to seize power, and in doing so, they have brought with them the worship of the Jesus of the Book of Revelation, a messiah of fury and vengeance. Theirs is a Jesus who lets the hungry starve, who treats the homeless as despicable plague, and who withholds medicine from the sick, all the while blaming them for their lack of faith.
Their Jesus is cruel and cold, and is ready to punish all those who refuse to accept his Almighty authority. Their Jesus is like their Trump. Their Trump is like their god. Theirs is a worship of power.
Donald Trump:
“It should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there. Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza. This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, twelve. It could be numerous sites or it could be one large site. The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It's right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down.
The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We will own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”
Reporter:
“Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Prime Minister. You are talking tonight about the United States taking over a sovereign territory. What authority would allow you to do that? Are you talking about a permanent occupation there? Redevelopment? And Mr. Prime Minister, do you see this idea as a way to expand the boundaries of Israel and to have a longer peace, even though the Israeli people know how important that land is to you and your citizens, just as the space is inherited by the Palestinians as well?”
Donald Trump:
“I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East. And everybody I have spoken to, this was not a decision made lightly, everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area that nobody would know, nobody could look, because all they see is death and destruction and rubble and and demolished buildings falling all over. It's just a terrible, terrible sight. I've studied it. I've studied this very closely over a lot of months, and I've seen it from every different angle, and it's a very, very dangerous place to be, and it's only going to get worse. And I think this is an idea that's gotten tremendous and I'm talking about from the highest level of leadership, gotten tremendous praise.”
This announcement will utterly delight Christian Nationalists for the very same reason that it will terrify everyone else.
For decades, Christian Nationalists have been agitating for the United States to get involved in a massive military conflict in order to expand the borders of Israel. The reason for this is that Christian Nationalists believe that their divine prophet Jesus can only return to Earth after Israel takes over more land, returning the country to the full territory it occupied in ancient times.
Christian Nationalists believe that the United States is destined to get involved in an enormous war, during which Jesus will return to lead America’s armies in a global bloodbath that slaughters everyone who refuses to convert to Christianity, and then be made king of the entire world.
Christian Nationalists don’t think that a bloody global war of religion would be a tragedy. They eagerly anticipate it, and they want American politicians to engage in belligerent actions that will provoke such a war, because they’re tired of waiting for Jesus to come back. They want to see Jesus as soon as possible, and they’re happy to start a big war in the Middle East in order to make it happen.
It’s obvious to anybody who understands the history of the two Gulf Wars that any attempt by the United States to permanently own and militarily control any territory in the Middle East will lead to disaster. The First Gulf War under George H.W. Bush was itself brief, but led to a long-term presence of the US military on bases in Saudi Arabia and in the air over Iraq. This military presence is what motivated Osama Bin Laden and his followers to attack the United States on September 11, 2001. That attack that led to the longest wars in American history, with a supposed “War On Terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan that lasted for over twenty years.
It’s been just a few years since America’s military has been home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and now, Donald Trump wants to begin the cycle of war all over again. Donald Trump says that everyone he’s spoken to tells him that a permanent American military occupation of the Gaza Strip is a great idea, but that’s only because Trump has surrounded himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear.
No serious historian or military leader can say that an American occupation of the Gaza Strip that begins with a forced ethnic cleansing of the land can be accomplished without massive bloodshed and a destabilization of the region leading to death and despair for the people in the area and any American soldiers unlucky enough to be sent on the insane mission.
A week and a half into Donald Trump’s new term as President of the United States, and already we he is opening a huge concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. Trump has signed a law that forces all non-citizens to be taken away to Homeland Security prison camps if they have merely been accused of a crime. Pete Hegseth, who has called for the murder of all Muslims and wants to make the United States a Christian theocracy, has been confirmed as Secretary of Defense. Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to scientific and medical research and is issuing executive orders forcing public schools to teach a false version of American history. Across the US federal government, career civil servants are being fired and replaced with people who have few professional qualifications other than absolute loyalty to Donald Trump.
At the center of the chaos and destruction from Donald Trump is the ideology of Christian Nationalism, a belief system that rejects the validity of objective reality and demands that everybody and everything in the United States submit to a draconian version of Christianity. Some Americans have a difficult time understanding the relationship between fascist political power and Christian Nationalism. They think of Christianity as something meek and mild, set apart from the crude manner and ruthless agenda of Donald Trump.
In holding to this vision of what counts as Christianity, hopeful liberals ignore what Christianity has come to mean for most American Christians. They pretend that Christian Nationalists are somehow “fake Christians”, even though the majority of American Christians now ascribe to the ideology of Christian Nationalism and voted for Donald Trump in 2024 on the basis of that ideology. While Christianity as a whole is on the decline in the USA, the ranks of American Christian Nationalists are rapidly growing.
The ideological roots of Trump’s fascism in Christian Nationalism are clear to see, if you care to look for them. The religious nature of Donald Trump’s new fascist hold on power were made clear at the 2025 inauguration. At the height of the inauguration ceremony, Christian preacher Lorenzo Sewell delivered a prayer claiming that Donald Trump was chosen by the Christian god to be President of the United States. Sewell said:
“Heavenly Father, we're so grateful that you gave our 45th and now our 47th President a millimeter miracle. We are grateful that you are the one that have called him for such a time as this.”
This wasn’t the first time Lorenzo Sewell had performed for Donald Trump. It wasn’t the first time that Lorenzo Sewell told a national audience that Donald Trump is a magically selected prophet of the Christian god. Last summer, at the Republican National Convention, Sewell told an auditorium of wealthy Republican elites:
“If you believe that Jesus still changes lives, come on, put your hands together and give our great god great glory! I believe that prayer is preventative and prayer is proactive. I believe that praying in the name of Jesus changes everything, and when we prayed for President Trump, only God knew that thirty days later, there would be a miracle by a millimeter. Only God knew that if we prayed for him during his birthday, there would be a miracle by a millimeter. If President Trump had moved one millimeter, he wouldn't have been here on Monday to talk to us about how America was going to be made wealthy again... Before I take my seat, I just got to talk to you about something called providence and something called sovereignty. God's sovereignty is his ability to be able to do what he wants when he wants, because he's God. And God's providence, it's when he does what he wants, when he wants for all of you. Did you know that President Trump was shot on 6/11, and do you know that Ephesians chapter number six, verse number 11 says, 'Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.'
So all my Democrat friends, I want to ask you one question. Do you know anybody that was the 45th president? He was convicted of 34 accounts, he raised $53 million in 24 hours and could be the 47th president of the United States in America, and he was shot one time? Do you know anybody like that? To all my friends back in Detroit who are Democrats, I'm going to ask you just one simple question. You can't deny the power of God on this man's life. You can't deny that God protected him. You cannot deny that it was a millimeter miracle that was able to save this man's life. Could it be that Jesus Christ preserved him forsuch a time as this? Could it be? Could it be that when we prayed for him, when he came to the roundtable in Detroit, that Jesus asked and he received that we sought him and then he found protection? Could it be that the King of Glory, the Lord God strong and mighty, the God who is mighty in battle protected Donald Trump because he wants to use him for such a time as this? If you believe that, come on and put your hands together and give our great god great glory!”
If you’re listening closely, you have noticed a phrase that Lorenzo Sewell used both at Trump’s inauguration and at the 2024 Republican National Convention: “for a time such as this”. Sewell preached last summer that “the God who is mighty in battle” chose Donald Trump “for a time such as this”, and repeated that assertion at the inauguration last week.
It’s a strange phrase, because it’s rooted in the archaic language of the Christian Bible. When Christian Nationalist preachers use the phrase “for a time such as this”, they are making a reference to a specific passage in the Bible. Specifically, this phrase is used as a reference to the belief that Christianity has a rightful claim to totalitarian political power, and that violence is an acceptable tool to achieve Christian political domination.
The phrase “for a time such as this” appears only once in the Bible, in the Book of Esther. It is spoken at the dramatic peak of the book, as Mordecai tells Esther that she has been placed through the magical powers of the god Jehovah in the court of the Persian king for no other purpose than to enact Jehovah’s political will.
The imprisonment of people in a gigantic military-run prison in a place that has been declared to be outside the reach of both international and American law, a place with an infamous history of torture, can only be described as a concentration camp. One week into his second term in office, Donald Trump has taken the United States of America into full fascism, and he’s doing it with the cooperation of Christian Nationalists like Ryan Walters in Oklahoma.
On January 24, 2025, Donald Trump sent ICE agents to rip children out of an elementary school in Chicago, Illinois. The Chicago Public Schools refused to allow them into the school building, but they will be back.
The same day, hundreds of people were seized in federal government fascist raids in Newark, New Jersey. The Trump government refuses to name the people it took prisoner, and refuses to say where they are being imprisoned and what will happen to them.
This is what Donald Trump said he was going to do. Americans didn’t want to believe him, but now it’s really happening. The United States of America is turning into a rogue fascist regime.
This is what Christian Nationalism looks like.
People will tell you that there is no resistance, that everyone has given up. So,. what’s the point?
The point is that nobody, certainly not elementary school children, should be grabbed by fascists, deprived of their habeas corpus rights, and sent off to secret prisons.
The city of Chicago stood up to Donald Trump. The city of Chicago is resisting. Will you remain silent, or will you join them?
Christian Nationalism asserts that war crimes are only committed by other people. Christian Nationalists in the US House of Representatives passed H.R. 23 yesterday, a bill that defunds the International Criminal Court and threatens to punish anyone who helps the Court to do its job.
The ICC is an organization dedicated to giving fair trials and legal punishment to individuals who commit violent atrocities during war. The court prosecutes human rights abuses without discrimination, and that infuriates Christian Nationalists.
Yesterday, Congress passed HR 23, legislation that withdraws US funding for the International Criminal Court, and requires sanctions against any individual or organization that helps the court to do its job of holding war criminals accountable.
Christian Nationalist support for HR 23 puts to the lie the claim that Christianity is a religion of peace. Christian politicians flocked to protect war criminals yesterday, following the ancient religious standard from the Old Testament and New Testament that atrocities should only be punished when they are committed by other people.
HR 29, the Laken Riley Act, allows for people who are merely accused, without any criminal charge, of shoplifting, to be imprisoned in Homeland Security detention camps, and then deported, with no right to a trial or other basic due process of law. The law replaces the presumption of innocence in the United States with the presumption of guilt, and paves the way for Donald Trump’s fascist plans to deport or imprison tens of millions of US residents.
H.R. 29 would allow for the Department of Homeland Security to put people in prison camps on no basis other than an arrest - even without criminal charge. Not convicted for a crime, not having pled guilty for that crime, there's no grand jury. There's no due process of law involved. They could just kick you out of the United States without any opportunity to defend yourself in court.
What’s especially tragic is that 48 Democrats in the US House of Representatives declared their allegiance to Donald Trump by voting in favor of HR 29. The names of the congressional Democrats who voted in favor of giving Donald Trump new fascist powers are:
Brendan Boyle—Pennsylvania
Nikki Budzinski—Illinois
Janelle Bynum—Oregon
Jim Costa—California
Joe Courtney—Connecticut
Angie Craig—Minnesota
Henry Cuellar—Texas
Sharice Davids—Kansas
Don Davis—North Carolina
April McClain-Delaney—Maryland
Chris Deluzio—Pennsylvania
Shomari Figures—Alabama
Laura Gillen—New York
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—Washington
Jared Golden—Maine
Vicente Gonzalez—Texas
Maggie Goodlander—New Hampshire
Adam Gray—California
Josh Harder—California
Jahana Hayes—Connecticut
Steven Horsford—Nevada
Val Hoyle—Oregon
Marcy Kaptur—Ohio
Greg Landsman—Ohio
Susie Lee—Nevada
Mike Levin—California
Stephen F. Lynch—Massachusetts
John Mannion—New York
Lucy McBath—Georgia
Kristen McDonald Rivet—Michigan
Dave Min—California
Joseph Morelle—New York
Jared Moskowitz—Florida
Frank J. Mrvan—Indiana
Chris Pappas—New Hampshire
Josh Riley—New York
Hillary J. Scholten—Michigan
Kim Schrier—Washington
Terri A. Sewell—Alabama
Eric Sorensen—Illinois
Greg Stanton—Arizona
Suhas Subramanyam—Virginia
Tom Suozzi—New York
Emilia Sykes—Ohio
Dina Titus—Nevada
Ritchie Torres—New York
Derek Tran—California
George Whitesides—California
When Donald Trump moved on to Pam Bondi for US Attorney General after the Matt Gaetz train wreck, many Americans overlooked the extremist Christian Nationalism of both nominees.
Pam Bondi came into political prominence by advocating for a ballot proposition that would have changed the Constitution of the state of Florida to require the state government to begin public funding of churches and other blatantly religious organizations.
Now, Pam Bondi is Donald Trump’s nominee to become the next Attorney General of the United States, giving her the power of the US Department of Justice to impose Christianity on all Americans. Pam Bondi would sacrifice equality under the law in order to transform the US federal government into a Christian theocracy.
Pam Bondi is just one of a huge retinue of Christian Nationalist extremists ready to use the levers of power in the US federal government to provide special favors to Christian church leaders who helped Donald Trump get elected. It’s political corruption of the worst kind, and under Pam Bondi, the people who are supposed to be investigation the corruption will instead be participating in it.
The theocratic maneuvers by Pam Bondi and other Christian Nationalists under Donald Trump are just the latest example of the way that Christianity operates as a tool for concentration of power. It’s been that way since Christianity partnered with the Roman Empire in order to spread itself around the world at the end of a sword.
In 2025, it appears that the United States of America is preparing to repeat that history of bloody religious repression.
You’ve enjoyed a period of rest after the election of 2024, but now, it’s January 2. The transfer of power to Republican Christian Nationalists has begun.
We can no longer avoid the news, pretending that as long as we don’t pay attention, everything will work itself out somehow.
It’s time to ask yourself: What are you going to do to stand against the rise of Christian Nationalist fascism in the USA?
Last weekend, a man set a woman on fire and fanned the flames as she burned to death. The man was an immigrant.
Does that mean Donald Trump and his Christian Nationalist followers are right, and immigrants are nothing more than a bunch of nasty, dangerous criminals who need to be rounded up?
Donald Trump warned us that immigrants want to eat all our cats and dogs.
In South Carolina, a group of five people was arrested recently and criminally charged with torturing and killing thirteen cats by poisoning them in a slow and agonizing death.
Those five people were American citizens.
Does that mean that American citizens are nothing but nasty, dangerous criminals?
A crowd gathered around the woman who was set on fire. They took pictures and video of her as she burned to death, screaming. Not one of them did a thing to help the woman, to put out the flames. They were all American citizens.
Is that what the American people have become?
Christian Nationalist ideology divides people into groups, and then declares that a few groups are good, while other groups of people are evil.
Christians are good, they say, and non-Christians are evil. American citizens are good, they say, and immigrants from outside America are evil.
Christian Nationalism is obsessed with group identity. Christian Nationalists make group affiliation the foundation of their morality. Christian Nationalism teaches that whatever a person does to harm others doesn't matter, so long as they join and submit to a community of Christian believers. Believe, and obey, and all is forgiven. If a person doesn't belong to Christianity, however, they say that there can never be any forgiveness.
In order for Christians to be good, they need to accuse non-Christians of being evil.
In order for American citizens to be good, they need to accuse immigrants of being evil.
In order to preserve the moral purity of the American nation, Christian Nationalists are preparing to haul people out of their homes, divide children from their parents, and send them off to become prisoners in concentration camps. They call this morality.
In three weeks, Donald Trump will give Christian Nationalism unrestrained power over all three branches of the US federal government.
It will seem that they are unstoppable. It will feel like there is nothing you can do. It will appear as if the entire nation of the United States of America has gone mad.
When you see it happening, when you see the power of the Christian Nationalist fascists take hold, I want you to remember one thing: The United States of America is not united. It never has been. The USA is deeply divided. Nationalists want you to believe that this division is a bad thing. They want you to feel guilty for not standing together with other Americans. They want you to be silent.
Remember the truth: Donald Trump has no mandate. Donald Trump only gained the votes of 49.8 percent of the country, just 1.47 percent more than Kamala Harris.
Half of American voters rejected Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. That half is under no obligation to be silent now that the election is over.
The lives of millions of people are at stake. The attacks against them are soon going to begin.
You don't have to stand by in silence.
You don't have to be like one of those American citizens in the New York City subway, watching the horror and doing nothing to stop it.
You can step forward.
You can help put out the fire.
U.S. Representative Nancy Mace from South Carolina appeared on a podcast this week, and declared that flying drones in the air above New Jersey could be part of an invasion from Iran or China, or could be from outer space, or might even be from outside the universe. Outside the universe? What does that even mean? This babbling nonsense from U.S. Representative Nancy Mace fits perfectly into her worldview of Christian Nationalism, an ideology that holds as a matter of undeniable faith that the world is filled with magical monsters such demons, angels, witches, unicorns, dragons, and leviathans in the ocean. Nancy Mace’s Seacoast Church is an extremist evangelical organization that insists that the Christian Bible is without error, instructing people to believe in magical spells and the resurrection of the dead as things that are literally real. Once a person believes in the reality of such absurd things, why wouldn’t they also believe that flying drones are part of an invasion of New Jersey from outside the entire universe? Christian Nationalism leaves no space for careful, critical thinking. That’s why Christian Nationalist Nancy Mace is using her position in the US Congress to whip up fears into an outright panic.
The US federal government has looked into the weird claims by Christian Nationalists that New Jersey is being invaded from the skies, actually. The government explains that sightings of drones include law enforcement drones, authorized commercial drones, and the mistaken identification of standard manned aircraft, such as small planes and helicopters. The government has provided answers, but U.S. Representative Nancy Mace prefers for voters to be living in fear of exotic invaders. That’s because Christian Nationalism depends upon irrational fear of outsiders as a political tool for consolidating power. Such is the nonsense that the Republican Christian Nationalists are set to impose upon the entire United States one month from now when Donald Trump takes power on January 20, 2025.
What are the Whos in Whoville celebrating when they celebrate Christmas? They’re singing Christmas carols with lyrics like this:
“God rest ye merry gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas day to save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray.”
In Christianity, those who have gone astray are those who no longer obey the commands of the tyrant god who rules the world, Christianity’s own Wizard of Oz. Satan’s power is the power of the wicked, those who rebel against the power of Christianity, those who refuse to conform.
The Whos are singing the Hallelujah Chorus, which celebrates Jesus as “King of Kings! Lord of Lords!”
That phrase, “King of Kings! Lord of Lords!” isn’t a random phrase of generic praise. It comes from just one place in the Christian Bible: Book of Revelation Chapter 19, in which it is promised that Jesus will come back to Earth to lead a worldwide bloody religious war against non-Christians that will culminate in the bodies of the victims Jesus and his followers being picked apart by hungry birds.
“I saw Heaven opened, and behold, a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns; and He had a name written that no man knew, but He Himself. And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and His name is called, The Word of God. And the armies which were in Heaven, clothed in fine linen white and clean, followed Him upon white horses. And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword with which He shall smite the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written: King Of Kings, and Lord Of Lords. And I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven, “Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.”
Good times, right?
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of a person who the Bible says will go on to wage a global war of religious vengeance, killing all people who refuse to obey Jesus, with the bodies of the people killed by Jesus and his Christian army pecked apart by birds after they have been crushed in the sacred winepress of the wrath of God.
Jesus is the Wizard of Oz.
Would you stand with Elphaba?
Stand with the Grinch.
In Pasco, Washington, the leader of a Christian church has been charged with engaging in a massive cryptocurrency fraud that targeted the members of his church. Francier Obando Pinillo, the pastor of the Pasco Spanish Adventist Church, tricked 1,515 people, most of them members of his church, out of $5.9 million by telling them he had a special cryptocurrency scheme that could deliver them a 34.9% return on their investments every month.
It was all a fraud, as cryptocurrency schemes are, but it was enabled by the religious faith that members of Pinillo’s church placed in their pastor. They had to have faith, they were told, or they wouldn’t go to Heaven when they died.
The Commodities Futures Trading Commission declared, “Pinillo provided customers with access to an online dashboard with account statements showing their purported account balances and profits. He encouraged customers to involve friends and family in his fraudulent scheme by offering to pay a 15% referral fee to them for referring additional customers. These representations and account statements were false. During the relevant period, there was no trading platform, no trading took place, no profits were generated, and Pinillo misappropriated all assets that customers transferred to him.””
In Donald Trump’s Christian Nationalist political movement, religious faith and financial fraud go hand in hand, just as they did under the criminal Pastor Pinillo. That’s why Donald Trump is appointing Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is the organization that is supposed to protect Americans from financial fraud, but Paul Atkins is an advocate of fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes. Cryptocurrency is nothing more than a financial faith, with no physical assets to back up its extravagant spiritual promises of wealth and liberation. Donald Trump is putting Paul Atkins in the SEC to make sure that the Securities and Exchange Commission looks the other way while cryptocurrency scammers like Sam Bankman Fried rip Americans off.
In the same way, Donald Trump’s Christian Nationalist Cabinet appointees will be looking the other way while Christian leaders rip off their congregants. Pastor Pinillo and Paul Atkins are ultimately leading the same scam.
Pete Hegseth says that his lord and savior Jesus Christ has made him a changed man from what he was a few years ago, so that all the awful things he ever did don’t count against him any more. He gets a Christian Nationalist hall pass from Jesus, he says.
The truth is that Pete Hegseth was raised as a right wing Christian extremist. He has been a Christian Nationalist extremist his whole life. Pete Hegseth has been following the religion of Jesus Christ into violence, drunkenness, and a brutal vision of holy war the whole time.
I’m hearing a lot of people in the media, in the podcasts, on the TV, on the pages of the few newspapers that our country has left, say that we must not use the label of “fascism” to describe what is happening, and must not call the people who are doing it fascists. They say that we should stop talking about democracy, and freedom, because these are abstractions that don’t really matter to people.
They say that we should stop talking about fascism, because we tried that during the election, and it didn’t WORK.
Robert Reich says that we shouldn’t get bogged down in paying attention to “culture war” issues like the right to marry the person you love, and the right to define your own identity, and the right to make your own choice about whether to teach your own children to follow a religion. He says that these issues are just a “distraction” from what this is all REALLY ABOUT, which is the economy, and the effort by financial elites like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg to use the power of Donald Trump’s government to grab even more money for themselves.
I like Robert Reich. Robert Reich is not wrong that Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley benefactors are using Trump as a means to consolidate wealth and power for themselves.
However, Robert Reich is dead wrong to characterize issues of freedom and democracy as nothing more than a distraction. He is wrong that economic inequality is the only real story, the only valid thing that’s going on.
The movement behind Donald Trump is complex and multidimensional, as fascist movements always have been. It includes economic opportunists, Christian Nationalists, and a huge number of gullible, ignorant suckers who are proud to have avoided an adequate education.
The leadership of the Democratic Party doesn’t want Americans talking about this, because as a political strategy, they think that it doesn’t WORK. They want to keep pretending that the Americans who voted for Donald Trump are good, intelligent people who just somehow mysteriously happened to vote for a politician who promised to terminate the Constitution, become a dictator, and exterminate tens of millions of Americans like vermin.
The truth is that good, intelligent people don’t support a candidate like that. The truth is that there are two reasons for an American to have voted for Donald Trump. If you voted for Donald Trump, you’re either a cruel person who doesn’t care about other people or you’re an idiot.
The Democratic Party leadership wants to convince us otherwise. They want to argue that, somehow, the Americans who voted for Donald Trump simply held their noses and voted for a narcissistic aspiring dictator because the price of eggs is too high.
Sure, the price of eggs is too high. But is it really that high? Is it so high that you would choose to live under the dictatorship of a madman?
The price of eggs matters, but if we talk about the price of eggs INSTEAD of talking about the attacks against the essential liberties defined in the Bill of Rights, we will cheapen ourselves along with our eggs.
Are we willing to sell away our freedoms for the low low price of a dollar for a carton of a dozen eggs? Is that the price of our liberty?
If we stop talking about the values of democracy because it’s not popular to do so, because democracy does not feel like a winning strategy, that is not a way to win against the fascists. It is a way to help the fascists win.
The fascists want us to agree that the only thing that the government of the United States of America really stands for is the price of eggs. If we agree to those terms, the fascists will always win the argument, because the fascists will always find someone else to blame when the price of eggs is high. They will find someone else to blame, and they will send those people into the concentration camps.
The minute that we agree that the price of eggs is more important than freedom, we have lost.
Let’s get practical about this. Let’s talk about kitchen table politics.
When Donald Trump and his fascists are done, who will be left to sit at your kitchen table?
Democracy is not an abstraction. Freedom is not an abstraction. They are matters of life and death.
This is no longer about how to win an election. The election is over.
This is about whose family gets rounded up in the middle of the night and separated from each other.
This is about who gets sent to the concentration camps.
This is about who survives.
Don’t tell me that democracy doesn’t matter. Don’t tell me that the cost of eggs is more important.
When you’re in a prison camp, when you’re dead, it won’t matter what the price of eggs is.
For now, we still have the right to speak freely. While we have that freedom, we should use it to speak honestly.
I don’t oppose the fascism of Donald Trump because it’s a strategy that works.
I speak out against the fascists because it’s the right thing to do.
I call them fascists because that’s what they are.
Speak honestly, while you still have the freedom to speak.
The Texas Tribune reports that Texas General Land Office is offering President-elect Donald Trump a 1,400-acre ranch in Starr County, near the border with Mexico, as a site to build concentration camps for his promised mass deportations of residents of the USA. The concentration camps will imprison many undocumented immigrants, but will also contain documented immigrants working under legal arrangements that have been canceled by the Trump Administration, as well as American citizens who are the children of immigrants.
Donald Trump has confirmed that he will use the US military to round up massive numbers of people living in the United States and take them to concentration camps.
Imagine a concentration camp 1,400 acres in size. Imagine the number of people such a concentration camp could hold. Imagine the kind of things that could happen in such a place.
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in a letter to Donald Trump that Texas is "fully prepared" to "allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination" to imprison millions of people currently living in the United States.
In February of this year, the Arizona Republic reported that Stephen Miller, who Donald Trump has now selected to become the White House Deputy Chief of Policy, announced a plan to use National Guard troops from states controlled by Republican governors to invade states controlled by Democratic governors in order to seize millions of residents and take them to concentration camps.
There are signs that groups are organizing in Democrat-majority states to assist in the execution of Donald Trump's plans to place massive numbers of US residents into concentration camps. In some cases, these signs are literally signs.
In the week before Election Day, for example, signs appeared across New York State, a Democratic Party stronghold. The signs carried a message reading: "No legal rights for illegal immigrants" and a small notification declaring that the signs had been produced by the New York Republican State Committee.
In the United States of America, all people have legal rights. American citizens have legal rights, but so do noncitizens. All people within the borders of the USA are protected by the Constitution, whether they have been accused of criminal activity or not.
What the New York Republican State Committee announced with its signs is that the Republicans in New York State seek to overturn the Constitution of the United States in order to create new classes of people who have no legal rights at all. What this suggests is that Donald Trump and the Republican Party intend to imprison large numbers of people in concentration camps like the one proposed by the state of Texas General Land Office, and keep people there without recognizing their habeas corpus rights, their right to due process of law, the right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment, the right to a fair trial, and their rights under current US immigration law and international treaties.
In order to create concentration camps in the United States, Republicans following Donald Trump are planning to end the rule of law. These lawless concentration camps are just one example of what we mean when we use the word "fascist" to describe the government now being prepared by Donald Trump and his followers. The fascists are developing specific plans to execute on these threats.
Let's also use the term "Christian Nationalist" to describe these plans. Christian Nationalism is the ideological foundation being used to justify the destruction of the Constitution and the rule of law in the United States. Donald Trump and his followers claim that their loyalty to the Christian god and the rules described in the Christian Bible can be used to overrule any law in the United States.
Christianity does not forbid concentration camps. The Christian Bible does not provide for habeas corpus rights, or protection from punishment without due process of law.
Christian Nationalists like to say that Christianity is the basis of law in the United States, but until now, that hasn't been true. The Constitution of the United States of America, not Christianity, established the right to a fair trial, protections from cruel and unusual punishments, and a legislative and judicial system designed to protect the rights of all people, whether they are citizens or not.
Christianity allows for authoritarianism. The Constitution does not.
That's why Donald Trump has promised to terminate the Constitution, and give power to Christian leaders instead. Donald Trump knows that he can use Christian Nationalism as an excuse to impose totalitarian fascism in the USA.
Already, Republicans are taking concrete action to prepare Christian Nationalist concentration camps. We don't have long to prepare.
In less than two months, Donald Trump will have the power he needs to build a 1,400 acre concentration camp in Starr County, Texas and begin to imprison massive numbers of people there.
I know you may feel exhausted with politics, but this isn't about politics. This is about the basic survival of the rule of law in the United States of America. This is about the creation of massive concentration camps that exist outside the law, right here in our own country. This is about fascism.
What are you going to do about it?
Now is the time for you to decide whether you're going to be one of the people who stand up to fascism, or if instead you will be one of the people who did nothing, who pretended not to know what was going on.
This is the time for you to choose whether you’re going to take action to resist fascism, or whether you’re going to turn away, and engage in self-care.
This is not a drill.
It is time get organized.
If you can find even just one other person who doesn't agree with the new fascist regime, you can begin to get ready. As a next step, you can find other people who are willing to take a stand.
Now is the time to decide: Which side are you on?
Are you with the fascists, or are you against them?
Donald Trump got less than 50 percent of the vote in 2024. The current vote count shows Trump getting just 1.64% more of the vote than Kamala Harris, who earned the support of 48.24% of American voters!
Donald Trump has no mandate to impose his extremist Project 2025 agenda, or his clown car of nominees for the White House Cabinet either. Donald Trump barely won a very close election. Trump should be reaching out to Democrats, not trying to steamroll them.
No one who looks at the facts can seriously claim that Donald Trump has a mandate. Of course, Donald Trump doesn’t like to bother himself with facts, and neither do his Christian Nationalist supporters. Trump and his Christian Nationalist followers prefer to operate on blind faith, and their faith claims that Donald Trump has a mandate from God himself.
Of course, if that’s true, it’s a problem for the America First agenda, because God is not an American. God doesn’t speak English. God has never registered to vote and doesn’t pay taxes. Jesus has never been to the United States of America.
Yet, Christian Nationalists want you to believe that this non-American magical being should have the right to fly across US borders and come interfere in our presidential elections, and then grab control of our government.
That doesn’t sound like a genuine America First agenda to me.
Any justifications RFK Jr. may have had about using his power within the Trump Administration to fight processed food were destroyed yesterday, with the release of a photograph from the Trump Transition publicity team. The photograph showed RFK Jr. sitting down on a private jet with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., eating a meal of processed food from McDonald’s, consisting of a large order of French fries, a Big Mac, a 10 piece box of Chicken McNuggets, and a bottle of Coca Cola. Behind RFK Jr. was Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who was on the same flight but apparently wasn’t allowed to sit at the table to have his own feast of McDonald’s processed food.
The photograph was a dominance display, a demonstration by Donald Trump that he will not allow anyone to ally themselves with him without a complete and degrading surrender. It’s not just on the matter of processed food that Robert F. Kennedy was humiliating himself for the pleasure of Donald Trump, either.
RFK Jr. used to be known as an environmentalist activist. In this photograph, however, he was shown riding with Donald Trump on a private jet that flies that around the world burning fossil fuels.
A recent study by Professor Stefan Gossling of Linnaeus University in Sweden found that there has been a 46% increase in emissions by private jets over the last 5 years. A typical private jet flight, Professor Gossling found, “emits in one hour as much as an average human being emits in a year.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01775-z
Not only has RFK Jr. abandoned his public health principles in a display of obedience to Donald Trump, but he has ritually destroyed his environmentalism as well.
The message from this ritual humiliation is clear. There are only two paths forward under the second presidency of Donald Trump: Either you give Donald Trump total obedience, doing anything he says, or you are an enemy of Trump. No in-between position will be recognized.
In this Christian Nationalist model of leadership, there can be only one leader, to whom everyone else offers complete blind obedience.
There are no democratic elections in the Christian Bible. There are no senators or representatives in Christian texts. There are only kings and lords, and over them all, one leader who rules them all, with complete power, listening to no one, one leader who knows everything, and can do anything he wants.
What will Donald Trump tell you to do?
Will you obey the commands of this absolute leader?
The Washington Post has submitted to Donald Trump under pressure from its owner, Jeff Bezos, and is replacing reporting with artificial intelligence slop.
The New York Times, meanwhile, has declared in an editorial by Bret Stephens that Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election because they are “prigs” who care too much about the truth, and are too preachy about fascism. The New York Times apparently no longer cares about speaking truth to power.
In the face of the surrender of big journalism, can community grassroots media make up the difference, before it’s too late?
It’s Christian Visibility Day.
That’s what the America First Policy Institute declared Election Day would be. They said that on November 5, Christian Visibility Day, the world would see what American Christians really stand for.
Today, we can see what American Christians stand for. They stand for Donald Trump.
According to exit polls conducted by NBC News, 62 percent of Protestant Christian voters supported Donald Trump, and 56 percent of Catholic Christian voters supported Donald Trump.
By comparison, only 26 percent of non-religious Americans voted for Trump. Only 19 percent of religious Jewish Americans voted for Trump. A minority of Americans of other non-Christian religions supported Trump.
Donald Trump won because the majority of American Christians voted for him.
So, for the next four years, every day will be Christian Visibility Day.
Every day, as we watch what Donald Trump does as President-elect and then President of the United States, we will know that his actions embody what American Christianity is all about.
No one can pretend that American Christianity is somehow something set apart from Donald Trump’s fascist ideology. We have clear data showing that a strong majority of American Christians support what Trump is doing.
Donald Trump said he would put tens of millions of people into concentration camps, and then the majority of American Christians voted for him.
Donald Trump said that he would use the military against Americans to crush political dissent, and then the majority of American Christians voted for him.
Donald Trump said that he would persecute his political opponents like vermin, and then the majority of American Christians voted for him.
Donald Trump said that he would use his power to ban books across America, and then the majority of American Christians voted for him.
Donald Trump said that he would use the power of the presidency to promote cryptocurrency scams, and then the majority of American Christians voted for him.
Donald Trump said that he would become a dictator and terminate the Constitution of the United States of America, and then the majority of American Christians voted for him.
Christian Nationalist activists in organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute wanted the world to see what Christian values are all about.
A man knocks on your door.
His speech is rambling and difficult to follow, but you hear him say that he has been robbed.
He says some strange things about your neighbors eating dogs and cats, and about there being an invasion of the country. He talks about Hannibal Lecter. He talks about sharks. He says that he has been chosen by God. He says that he is the only one who can put things straight.
"I need a gun," he says, "so I can fix things. I'm going to punish the people who robbed me. There are enemies within this town. They're vermin, and I'm going to get rid of them. I am your retribution!"
Then, he laughs, and says he was just kidding. It was just a joke, he says.
Then, he asks you again to give him a gun.
Would you give this man a gun?
Donald Trump has said all these things, and more. He has promised to persecute anyone who stands in his way. He has threatened to turn the US military into a weapon against the American people in order to punish his political enemies. He has pledged to put tens of millions of people in concentration camps. He has said that he will terminate the Constitution and its freedoms. He has said that he will be a dictator, and that he will send police out on a rampage of bloody violence so that no one ever defies him again.
Donald Trump's supporters say that he doesn't really mean it. They say he's only joking.
The American Presidency is a deadly weapon. It has entire armies at its command. It wields attack drones running on artificial intelligence to fire explosive missiles at its targets from a distance. The American President controls an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
If Donald Trump came to your door, ranting and raving about being persecuted, telling you about his plans to take revenge on his enemies, would you put a gun in his hand?
Today is Election Day.
You know the right thing to do.
Some people say that the Fascism of Donald Trump and the America First Policy Institute that is planning his presidential transition are less important to Americans than practical policy decisions. The truth is that Trump’s Fascists have plenty of policies that will have a practical impact on Americans’ daily lives. Among these are the Christian Nationalist family policies in the America First Agenda, approved of by Donald Trump. The America First Policy Institute declares that Americans’ families only exist in order to conform to the demands of God’s purpose, and the mission of Christian churches. They say that your body does not belong to you, but is the property of the Christian religion. The practical implications of these extremist fascist policies will be devastating to American families, because there is nothing more personal, and more important, than the freedom to choose when to make a family, how to make a family, and who to form a family with. The Christian Nationalist America First Agenda want to take that freedom away from you.
This first in the Stop Christian Nationalism series on the America First Policy Institute looks at the distortions by Institute Board member and Christian Nationalist Paula White Cain, who says that the American people cannot be trusted to govern themselves. What is the relationship between the Nazi America First Agenda and Christian Nationalism?
JD Vance is part of a network of Opus Dei activists, an international cult of Christian Nationalist power that maintains its fascist ideology and hatred of secular democracy.
Why is JD Vance spending so much time with Opus Dei acolytes Leonard Leo and Kevin Roberts of Project 2025?
Donald Trump’s former generals are warning us that Trump is “fascist to the core”, and that Trump believes Adolf Hitler did a lot of good things. Donald Trump is threatening to send the US military after Americans who refuse to obey him.
It’s high time that people start taking the threat of the Christian Nationalist fascism of Donald Trump seriously. It’s no joke.
As members of Donald Trump's Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, Mark DeFord, Udit Singh, Ajai Prakash and Maureen Prakash say that marriage must only be between one man and one woman. They say that marriage has to be that way because the Bible says so.
Actually, the Bible has lots of examples of marriages that don't fit the one man one woman model. Take the prophet Abraham, for example. This is the guy who is supposed to have founded the nation of Israel. You don't get more biblical authority than that.
Yet, Abraham was polyamorous. Abraham told his wife that they should go to Egypt, knowing that other men would want to marry her there. Abraham became friends with the Pharaoh and took the Pharaoh's gifts while the Pharaoh married Abraham's wife. Then, Abraham did it again, cucking his wife Sarah off to marry another king. Then, Sarah told Abraham to get a second wife so he could get her pregnant.
In the Book of Genesis, marriage is sometimes not one man and one woman. Sometimes, biblical marriage is three men and two women.
When Christian Nationalists tell us that Christianity can only accept marriage of one man and one women, it makes me wonder: Do Christian Nationalists actually read the Bible?
Republican Christian Nationalist Prophet Joseph Z says that the AntiChrist has personally chosen Tim Walz to be the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2024 because Walz is under the control of goblin puppet masters and Lizard Mafia Overlords.
Cosplay is okay. The problem is that Christian Nationalists take this stuff seriously, and they want to force it on everybody else.
Charlie Kirk wants to remind you that you have to obey an Asian sky god because he delivered you out of Egypt... but wait a minute. You were never in Egypt, were you? When Charlie Kirk says that environmentalism is just nothing more than a god that you worship, it's only because he has become such an obsessed fanboy of ancient Middle Eastern mythology that he has become incapable of paying attention to anything else.
No, TikTok is not a god. Environmentalism is not a false idol. Atheism is not a psyop from Satan.
Christian Nationalism is lost in a bizarre fantasyland. We need more serious political leadership from people who are willing to pay attention to the reality we're actually living in.
Why does JD Vance get weird over the idea that women might live happily with a cat instead of pumping out babies in a marriage? Why do Christian Nationalists get so obsessed with other people's sex lives? It's all about control.
When churches are able to control people's access to sex and affection, they can control every other part of people's lives too. That's why Christian Nationalism supports totalitarianism. The Christian Nationalist hunger for control cannot be satisfied until its control over society is complete.
In defiance of Christian Nationalist schemes for control, cats, and the single women and men of America, will not be leashed.
Donald Trump recently promised Christian Nationalists that if they elect him, they will never need to vote again, because he’s going to make sure the government is “fixed” in their favor. What many people didn’t note was the way that Trump then praised the Puritan pilgrims that settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He said they came to America for freedom, when in fact they came to America to establish a hellish torture-filled authoritarian city on a hill.
The city on a hill of Puritan times wasn’t a utopia. It was a place of misery that people were desperate to escape. Puritan leaders themselves made it plain that they were opposed to democracy. They wanted Christian theocracy instead. Puritan leader John Winthrop wrote:
“If we should change from a mixed aristocratic to mere democracy, first we should have no warrant in scripture for it: for there was no such government in Israel. We should hereby voluntarily abase ourselves and deprive ourselves of that dignity, which the providence of God has put upon us, which is a manifest breach of the Fifth Commandment, for a democracy is, amongst civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government.”
Donald Trump’s Christian Nationalism movement is seeking to return the United States to the bad old days of Puritan extremism. Ben Zeisloft, a prominent Trump Supporter online advocate for Christian Nationalism, declared this a few days ago:
“We need to restore true blasphemy laws. For centuries the entire Western world had statutes that prohibited the brazen public blaspheming of the Triune God. Now most of the Western world has the same types of laws, except to protect sodomy and other forms of perversion. We need the former and not the latter.”
Then Zeisloft cited a specific law from colonial times he wants to be re-enacted: The Act against Atheism and Blasphemy from the Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1697. This law provided for the public torture and execution of atheists and blasphemers.
“Be it declared and enacted by the Lieutenant Governor, Council and Representatives, convened in General Court of Assembly, and it is enacted by the Authority of the same, that if any person shall presume willfully to blaspheme the holy Name of God; Father, Son, or Holy Ghost; either by denying, cursing or reproaching the true God; his Creation or Government of the World: or by denying, cursing, or reproaching the holy Word of God; that is, the canonical Scriptures contained in the Books of the Old and New Testament; namely Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Samuel, Kings, Kings, Chronicles, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkak, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, Corinthians, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, Peter, Peter, John, John, John, Jude, Revelation: Every one so offending shall be punished by imprisonment, not exceeding six months, and until they find sureties for the good behavior; by fitting in the pillory; by whipping; boring through the tongue, with a red hot iron; or setting upon the gallows with a rope about their neck; at the discretion of the Court.”
Brad Sherman, an Iowa State legislator and member of Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, supports an extremist restoration of the cruel and violent Christian Nationalism of ages past. Sherman perceives the purpose of Christianity as to conquer and dominate everyone in the United States and around the world. He writes:
“We are called to be soldiers in God's army - and we are supposed to win. Jesus has given us the authority and commissioned us to ‘...make disciples of all the nations’… We are called to boldly proclaim Christian values, not only in our churches, but also in the public square and make disciples of all the nations. We are called to prepare the way for the King and His appearing, at which time every knee will bow and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord.”
At the end of last week, Donald Trump told a crowd at the Christian Nationalist Turning Point Action Believers Summit:
"Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won't have to do it anymore for more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you. Get out. You've got to get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not going to have to vote."
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is depicting voting as a terrible burden, as something that people don't want to do and that they shouldn't have to do. If the government is run right, and he's promising that he's gonna run the government in such a way that Americans will not want to vote again, and they will not vote in another election because things are going to be fixed.
When we were young, we were taught that voting was a civic duty, that voting a way for us to be empowered. It was a chance for us to be heard. It's not a burden. It's not a terrible thing. It's not a pain in the neck to have a voice in our own government. It's a privilege. It's something we should be proud of. But Donald Trump doesn't see it that way. He sees voting and having a country in which Americans turn out to vote as a burden, as an obstacle, as something that we would all be better off if it was just done away.
Donald Trump wants to fix it so that Christians never have to have another vote, never have to turn out on Election Day ever again, because their way of doing things, the Christian nationalist way of doing things, is going to become permanent. And that's another indication in this speech that Donald Trump intends to effectively end democracy in the United States.
Donald Trump and his supporters at organizations like Turning Point Action's Believers Summit believe in Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism is their core moral and political ethical foundation. They don't believe in the values of the Constitution of the United States of America. They don't believe in the worth of democracy.
New Apostolic Reformation leader Lance Wallnau claims that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is possessed by a demon. On Fox News, Megyn Kelly claims the Christian god planned the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Instead of addressing the real challenges Americans face today, Christian Nationalists are trying to make the election of 2024 a referendum on ancient mythologies from thousands of years ago.
This spring, Tennessee passed a resolution calling on all the citizens of the state to make July 2024 a month dedicated to prayer and fasting, declaring the Christian god to be the king of Tennessee, in order to stop violent crime there.
We’re halfway through the month of July now. So, let’s look at the facts to see whether Tennessee’s month of prayer and fasting is working.
Crime reports from across Tennessee show that the state's high rate of violent crime is continuing. In the most recent violent crime in the state, a a 12 year-old girl was arrested in Humboldt, Tennessee and charged with first degree murder after she suffocated her 8 year-old cousin to death after an argument about an iPhone. If praying to stop violence has any effect, why couldn’t it at the very least have kept Tennessee’s children from killing each other?
They’ve got serious problems to deal with in Tennessee. Once again this year, the annual survey by CNBC ranked TN as one of the least livable states in the USA, with a score of F+.
Instead of taking concrete action to deal with Tennessee’s problems, state legislators are spending the month of July praying, and encouraging citizens not to eat.
Tennesse’s month of prayer and fasting shows that Christian Nationalism isn’t just a betrayal of the American way of life. Christian Nationalism is also a thoroughly ineffective form of government.
What Christian Nationalists did in Tennessee they want to do to the entire country. They want to replace good government with magical incantations.
America is in no condition to fool around with this kind of nonsense.
It’s time to put the fantasies of faith-based government aside and deal with reality.
The government of Tennessee can pray all it wants, but it isn’t helping. If the Christian god exists, he isn’t listening.
The facts show that Christian Nationalism is an ineffective form of government.
The Ziklag Elite is the first coordinated effort to unite wealthy donors to create a Christian Nationalist ruling class. The Ziklag Elite pushes for the Seven Mountains Mandate of the New Apostolic Reformation… and for special tax breaks and economic loopholes for America’s most powerful financial dynasties. The Ziklag Elite would create an American aristocracy in the name of Jesus.
Along the way, members of the Ziklag Elite want to create a Christian Nationalist big government system of centralized control over American culture. Members of Ziklag say that they intend to “take down the education system”, and to bring Hollywood under Christian Nationalist control.
Under the Ziklag Plan, 80% of American movies and television shows would be required to spread the message of Christian Nationalism. Ziklag also wants the federal government to require that all executives in movie and television studios are Christian Nationalists.
According to documents and video recordings obtained by ProPublica, in order to achieve its seizure of power, the Ziklag Elite plans to use its massive wealth to mobilize pro-Republican voters. Going even further, members of Ziklag have developed plans to prevent large numbers of other Americans from exercising their right to vote.
Ziklag’s Steeplechase project will encourage Christian churches across the country to break the law by making their congregations part of the Republican Party’s political machinery. A preacher working for the Ziklag Elite says that the group will “coordinate extensive pastor and church outreach through pastor summits, church-focused messaging and events and the creation of pastor resources …We need a church that’s willing to do anything and everything to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”
The Ziklaq Elite is also funded by other Christian Nationalist organizations. One of these is the extremist organization WaterStone, which is in turn funded by Fidelity Investments, which sends checks to the Christian Nationalist organization for six million dollars each. Fidelity Investments is heavily invested in other projects of Christian Nationalism extremism as well, having given at least $100,000 to the racist white nationalist magazine American Renaissance between 2015 and 2019.
Thank you to ProPublica for their research into the dangerous Christian Nationalism of Ziklag.
From Chuck Wichgers, Wisconsin State Legislator at the Republican National Convention, to David Brooks at The New York Times, everyone is preaching at you that America needs unity.
Unity is not what democracy is for.
Christian Nationalists and other conservatives crave for there to be just one answer and one source of power and authority for everything and everybody, but that’s just not how people work.
We disagree about things, and in a democracy, that’s how things are supposed to be!
David Brooks writes in the New York Time that a treasured cultural consensus has been lost, and that “science and reason failed to produce a substitute moral order that could hold the nation together.” What he never explains, however, is what makes cultural consensus matter. Why do we need one moral order to hold the nation together.
Democracy is about protecting difference, not about enforcing unity. Yet, David Brooks longs for a new religious power to bring Americans back in line, writing that, “this work of cultural repair will be done by religious progressives, by a new generation of leaders who will build a modern social gospel… the work of building that culture will take decades. Until then, we, as a democracy, are on thin ice.”
Christian Nationalists are never going to agree to a progressive religion modern social gospel. Progressive secular Americans will reject it too.
We shouldn’t be afraid of diversity. A pledge of allegiance to unity is antithetical to American democracy. Unity is an oppressive problem, not a solution.
There has been an assassination attempt against Donald Trump. You know all about this, of course. You’ve heard all the details, and much of the generic analysis of the situation.
I’m not going to bother repeating that. Instead, I’m going to speak specifically to the impact of this assassination attempt on the movement to resist Christian Nationalism. I’m going to talk about how this event changes the outlook for our resistance, and what it means for the form our resistance can take. I’ll also discuss how top Republican Party insiders are using the assassination attempt as an excuse to amplify their elevation of Christian Nationalism.
Republican former US Attorney General Bill Barr says, “Democrats have to stop their grossly irresponsible talk about Trump being an existential threat to democracy.” Yet, in the past few months, Barr has said the same thing about Joe Biden several times. Less than two weeks ago, for example, Barr said that “I think the threat to democracy and the threat to the United States and the most damage would be done by four more years of Biden.”
Republican and potential Trump vice presidential running mate JD Vance says that warnings about Trump being a potential dictator are what sent the bullets flying through the air: “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
According to JD Vance, guns don’t kill people. Liberals warning that Donald Trump wants to become an authoritarian dictator somehow send bullets flying through the air. Has anyone said that Donald Trump must be stopped at all costs? Well, there have been some…
A couple of weeks ago, when the US Supreme Court ruled that as a former President of the United States, Donald Trump has immunity for pretty much any crime he committed while President, a listener wrote a comment in response to something I wrote. He said that he was sick and tired of hearing people talk about the need for activism.
“People are always saying we need to get politically active, and it never comes to anything. It’s time we start throwing punches. We need to fight for our freedom, to take up arms to defend our democracy. I’m imagining a Civil War. I’ll take as many of them with me as I can.”
These were anonymous comments, left under a pseudonym. For all I know, they could have been left by Matthew Crooks, the 20 year-old who had been trained to use a rifle to shoot at people from a distance.
When I read these comments, I thought of a podcast episode created by my cousin, Anise Cook, as part of our project to provide Iowa voters information about a Christian Nationalist network that was helping Donald Trump win the Iowa caucuses and seize the Republican presidential nomination.
The following is a shortened version of what she said:
It's looking very dark. We're talking about a Republican presidential nominee proposing massive prison camps, and deportations, and the execution of his enemy, and the suspension of the Constitution, and using the military against peaceful protestors, about rooting out Americans like vermin, treating people like they're rats and cockroaches.
A person came to me and said, “I think we may have to prepare to fight back. We may have to prepare to defend ourselves.” The one thought that I had when I heard him say that is, if it comes to that, I don't want to fight back. If Donald Trump gains power and he actually does the things that he is threatening to do, if he enacts the retribution and punishment and judgment that his preachers are encouraging him to, I don't want to fight back.
I say, let them come and let them kill me, and that will be a fine death. Just don't make it slow, but fighting back is the one thing we must not do.
Here's why: Fighting back justifies their extremism. I knew back in the 1990s some anarchists who would go to places like Seattle, and they would infiltrate good, peaceful protests on good social issues, and then they would start to break glass and smash things, and the protests would lose all of their credibility. They would become street battles against the police, and it didn't bring any good end for the causes that people were protesting about. It only made it more difficult to go work on those issues. They were discredited.
They are looking for an excuse, and we cannot give it to them.
We're not going to defeat Donald Trump by fighting him militarily or through some kind of crazy guerrilla movement to try to rise up against him violently with guns if he becomes president.
If we actually believe in democracy and freedom, which means respect for all points of view and true diversity, we have to show what it means to get along in a nation with people with whom we desperately, desperately disagree, and that includes Donald Trump. And that includes people like the preachers of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, even as they talk about punishment and vengeance and going to war against other Americans. We cannot meet them where they are.
We have to contest them democratically by defeating them at the polls in November 2024. It can be tempting to think that we're going to get angry and we're going to fight them. But when we do that, we are in danger of becoming them, of becoming a shadow of them.
When the Nazis rose to power, they did so based upon the excuse that communists were on the verge of taking over Germany, and that communist gangs of thugs were going through the streets of Germany and were endangering the people. The Nazis promised they were going to keep everybody safe. They were going to restore the peace. They were going to restore order. Donald Trump is using some of that same language now. He talks about criminal gangs of immigrants. He talks about Marxist thugs.
We need to demonstrate the values of democracy that we seek to preserve. And that doesn't mean that we're weak, and it doesn't mean that we're inactive.
It means that we show restraint. It means that we show discretion. It means that we get organized and we get active.
It means that we speak the truth instead of speaking with our fists. It means that we have to be dedicated to nonviolence no matter what. I hope that we can do that.
I am afraid that there are some people who do not desire such a thing. In the coming months, we shall see which vision holds.
In contradiction of the Christian Bible's claims that an all-powerful god will soon give all the political power on Earth to Christians, Christianity is on the decline in America. In order to avoid the cognitive dissonance inherent in Christian decline, the Republican Party has enshrined bizarre religious conspiracy theories in the 2024 GOP Platform, addressing a supposed international conspiracy to send a wave of anti-Christian migrants to invade the United States. The GOP platform also pledges to enable Christian students to pray and read the Christian Bible in public schools, although individual students are already free to do so, as long as they don't coerce other students.
In another weird plank in the GOP platform, Republicans would create a federal task force to protect Christian Americans from bias and persecution by the government. The only case of supposed discrimination against Christians by the federal government that the Trump campaign has cited, however, is the conviction of a woman named Paula Harlow.
Christian Nationalists claim that Paula Harlow was sentenced to two years in prison as punishment for engaging in peaceful prayer. That's a lie.
Actually, Paula Harlow was sentenced for forcefully entering a reproductive health clinic, chaining the doors shut, and injuring and intimidating medical workers and patients. Christianity and prayer had nothing to do with her conviction. Paula Harlow violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, plain and simple.
Now, Biden is saying that he will only step aside as the Democratic presidential nominee if “the Lord Almighty” tells him to do it.
That’s not how American democracy is supposed to work.
When Louisiana forced every public school classroom to post commands for all the state’s children to obey the god of the Christian Bible, Joe Biden did nothing. He said nothing.
When Oklahoma required every public school classroom to contain a Christian Bible and required every high school science class to teach from the Christian Bible instead of real science, Joe Biden did nothing. He said nothing.
Instead of confronting Christian Nationalism, Joe Biden is encouraging it.
Christian Nationalists are campaigning to dismantle American democracy and replace it with a Christian theocracy, and Joe Biden isn’t doing a thing to stand in their way.
Americans who believe in a democracy in which everyone has the right to make their own choices about what to believe about religion, without government interference, deserve a presidential candidate who will vigorously defend that vision. Joe Biden is not that candidate.
The time is long overdue for Joe Biden to step aside, resign the presidency, and allow Vice President Kamala Harris, who grew up in a multi-religious household, to become the 2024 presidential nominee.
A listener to the podcast leaves a comment saying that the majority of Christians oppose Christian Nationalism, and so the podcast is being unfairly negative about Christianity in general.
So first, THANK YOU for leaving a comment. Democracy thrives on disagreement and discussion. The alternative to Christian Nationalism is not any particular ideology, but an open space in which ideas can be discussed freely.
So, listeners, please leave more comments, and don’t think that you should limit yourself to supportive comments. There is more than one way to think about things. I don’t ask for agreement. I do ask that you think about what you say, so that others can learn and the discussion can move forward productively.
However, in response to this comment, we note that the most recent Pew Research survey on politics and religious identity in American finds that solid majorities of both Protestant and Catholic Christians in the USA support Donald Trump and his Christian Nationalist agenda.
Only a minority of American Christians oppose Christian Nationalism. Donald Trump's dangerous Christian Nationalism could not be where it is today without Christian support.
What's more, Kevin Roberts of the extremist Heritage Foundation and editor of Project 20205 have warned progressive Americans that a "second American Revolution" is underway in counterrevolution against the spirit of 1776 to bring Christian Nationalism into power. Roberts says that if progressive Americans resist Christian Nationalism, his revolution will not be bloodless.
In this context, we cannot responsibly refrain from examining the uncomfortable connections between mainstream Christian theology and violent Christian Nationalism. By this time next year, after all, Americans may no longer have the freedom to speak critically about Christianity.
Christian Nationalists say that the United States needs an absolute leader to lead with strength that is unrestrained by the law. That’s why the Christian Nationalist majority on the US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Donald Trump has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution even as an ex-President.
The idea of presidential immunity is found nowhere in the US Constitution, however.
The American constitutional tradition of democracy holds that in order to prevent autocracy, the President must be weak, constrained by checks and balances.
Joe Biden is weak, and that's what makes him exactly the kind of President America needs right now.
The kind of weakness America needs in its leadership is a humble weakness, a wise weakness, a restrained weakness. This form of weakness is a countercurrent to the main theme of absolute monarchy found in the mainstream of the Christian Bible.
For a few years now, I have been warning that the United States has been moving toward an authoritarian, fascist takeover by politicians linked with extremist Christian Nationalism. America dodged a bullet in 2021 when Donald Trump was prevented from his attempt to overthrow the federal government of the United States of America.
Today, an attack from Christian Nationalist totalitarianism against American democracy has struck its target and delivered a grave injury.
It is still possible for our democracy to survive this attack, but there can be no mistaking that a full assault by Christian Nationalist fascists against our democracy has now begun in earnest.
As of today, I am no longer merely warning of a future takeover of the United States by Christian Nationalist fascists. As of today, I am describing that takeover.
The Christian Nationalist fascist takeover of the United States has begun.
US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote:
In its purest form, the concept of immunity boils down to a maxim, “the King can do no wrong”, a notion that was firmly rejected at the birth of our Republic.
The majority holds that the President, unlike anyone else in our country, is comparatively free to engage in criminal acts in furtherance of his official duty. This point bears emphasizing. Immunity can issue for Presidents under the majority’s model even for unquestionably and intentionally egregious criminal behavior… Ultimately, the majority’s model simply sets the criminal law to one side when it comes to crimes allegedly committed by the President… The starting presumption is that the criminal law does not apply to Presidents, no matter how obviously illegal, harmful, or unacceptable a President’s official behavior might be.
The President can commit crimes in the course of his job even under circumstances in which no one thinks he has any excuse. The law simply does not apply to him.
It is certainly true that a scheme of government like ours no doubt at times feels the lack of power to act with complete, all-embracing, swiftly moving authority. But any American who has studied history knows that our government was designed to have such restrictions. Our Constitution’s separation of power was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but to save the people from autocracy.
The majority incentivizes all future Presidents to cross the line of criminality in office.
It suggests that the unofficial criminal acts of the President are the only ones worthy of prosecution. Quite to the contrary, it is when the President commits crimes using his unparalleled official powers that the risks of abuse and autocracy will be most dire.
From this day forward, Presidents of tomorrow will be free to exercise the Commander-in-Chief powers, the foreign-affairs powers, and all the vast law enforcement powers enshrined in Article II however they please, including in ways that Congress has deemed criminal and that have potentially grave consequences for the rights and liberties of Americans.
The seeds of absolute power of Presidents have been planted, and without a doubt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote:
Two days ago, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Christian Nationalist superintendent of public instruction, announced that the state government of Oklahoma is going to go ahead with plans to create the St. Isidore of Sienna Catholic Virtual School despite Oklahoma Supreme Court orders not to do so.
Oklahoma state law HB1775 prohibits any books or other educational materials that might cause a student to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress” about their ethnic or gender identity. In practice, this law was used to ban books that teach about racism or non-heterosexual identities.
For example, books teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 when 6,000 African-American residents of Tulsa were imprisoned and somewhere between 75 and 300 of them were killed, and 10,000 of them kicked out of their own homes, would be removed from classrooms under this law. In another example, the book Gender Queer, a memoir of a teenager contemplating their gender identity, is banned.
Ryan Walters, who has no legal education or training, says that the judges don’t understand the Constitution. Ryan Walters is, in fact, being purposefully dishonest about the requirements of the Constitution in government-established and government-funded schools. There are two Constitutions in question, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the state Constitution of Oklahoma.
The Constitution of the USA sets this standard: There can be no government establishment of religion. That includes, under the First and Fourteenth Amendment, a prohibition on government-established and government-funded religious schools. The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School was established by the government and funded by the government. It was therefore plain and simple.
This government religious school was also unconstitutional by the standard of the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma Constitution. Article 2, Section 5 states:
"No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such."
Is that so hard to understand?
The St. Isidore government Christian school was so thoroughly religious that its bylaws explicitly prohibited more than two non-Catholics from occupying seats on its board of directors. This was a public school that was set up to be directed by the Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City and the Catholic Bishop of Tulsa, with no religious dissent allowed – not even from Protestant Christians. This was a public school, created by the government, that planned to engage in religious discrimination in its hiring and leadership appointments.
Christian ideology and rituals infiltrated the entire curriculum of the St. Isidore government Christian school, with “online prayer services, scripture study through Lectio Devina, Visio Divina, the rosary, theology classes, study of the saints”. The school even made science classes religiously themed, reframed into the nonsensical “study of God’s well-ordered universe”.
The study of gods is inherently non-scientific, because science is based on evidence. There is no evidence for the existence of gods, demons, spirits, monsters, or any other supernatural creatures. A school of dentistry might as well try to teach its students the study of the Tooth Fairy’s magically constructed mandible. Agriculture students might as well be instructed to study the Easter Bunny’s influence on egg production on chicken farms. Schools like St. Isidore teach children nonsense and fantasy while pretending it’s real.
This tragic confusion was nowhere more clear in the St. Isidore school’s promise that it would teach “children to seek Truth through faith and reason”. If a person is seeking truth through faith, they are by definition not being taught how to properly apply the principles of reason. St. Isidore’s plan was to teach the children of Oklahoma to think and behave unreasonably.
The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School did not exist before it received government funding from the state of Oklahoma, and it could not have operated without government funding. The state government of Oklahoma didn’t just give money to the Christian school. A state government organization actually worked with Catholic church to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in the first place.
The creation and funding of the St. Isidore Christian school was government establishment of religion, and as such, it was in violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. That made the government religious school illegal.
It wasn’t just the Constitution of the USA that made the St. Isidore government religious school illegal. The school was in violation of the Constitution of the state government of Oklahoma as well.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court, however, ruled that the government creation and funding of the St. Isidore Christian school is in violation of the law. The court stated in its opinion, released today, that
“We hold that the St. Isidore Contract violates the Oklahoma Constitution, the Act, and the federal Establishment Clause… We first look to the Oklahoma Constitution. Article 2, Section 5 states: ‘No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.’
…The framers' intent is clear: the State is prohibited from using public money for the "use, benefit or support of a sect or system of religion." Although a public charter school, St. Isidore is an instrument of the Catholic church, operated by the Catholic church, and will further the evangelizing mission of the Catholic church in its educational programs. The expenditure of state funds for St. Isidore's operations constitutes the use of state funds for the benefit and support of the Catholic church. It also constitutes the use of state funds for "the use, benefit, or support of . . . a sectarian institution." The St. Isidore Contract violates the plain terms of Article 2, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution. Enforcing the St. Isidore Contract would create a slippery slope and what the framers' warned against--the destruction of Oklahomans' freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention.
…Under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, made binding upon the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, Oklahoma cannot pass laws ‘which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.’”
The Attorney General of Oklahoma responded to the judgment by saying, “The framers of the U.S. Constitution and those who drafted Oklahoma’s Constitution clearly understood how best to protect religious freedom: by preventing the State from sponsoring any religion at all.”
Half of The Ten Commandments amount to commands that people worship the Jewish tribal god Jehovah, and no other gods. That’s ironic, because Christians worship Jesus, who is not Jehovah. Christianity itself violates the Ten Commandments.
Governor Landry claimed that it’s necessary to post the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom because the Ten Commandments are the foundation of American law. “If you want to respect the rule of law,” he said, “you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.”
That’s a ridiculous claim, because the Constitution of the United States of America explicitly forbids any legislative act that establishes any religion in the law. That’s the opposite of the intention of the Ten Commandments, which aims to force people into religious worship.
The Ten Commandments contains a prohibition of “graven images”, artwork that represents real things in the world. Here in the USA, the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. Louisiana is going to be posting an anti-art message from the 10 Commandments in every public school art classroom in the state. Did Louisiana legislators even think about that?
Furthermore, Moses was clearly not the original law giver. It’s ludicrous to suppose that before Moses came along, there were no laws anywhere in the world. Human societies had existed for at least 197,000 years before the fictional/legendary timeline attributed to Moses. People love rules.
This episode of Stop Christian Nationalism contains an original song in the series Country Music Against Christian Nationalism. It's called Keep Your Commandments To Yourself, with the following lyrics:
The Ten Commandments are not American. Keep your Commandments to yourself. The Ten Commandments are thousands of years old. Keep your Commandments to yourself.
I don't want your creepy Christian preachers bothering my children. I don't want your pushy Christian preachers running through our schools.
Keep your Commandments in your pants, Reverend.
A school is not a church. Keep your Commandments to yourself.
The Ten Commandments have nothing to do with our laws. Keep your Commandments to yourself. The Ten Commandments are ancient and irrelevant. Keep your Commandments to yourself.
I don't want your creepy Christian preachers bothering my children. I don't want your pushy Christian preachers running through our schools.
Keep your Commandments in your pants, Reverend.
I do not send my kids to school to learn some superstitious imaginary history about spirits from the skies and laws against artistic freedom.
What the heck, Louisiana? The more you push your old religion at us the more we walk away.
The more you push Christian nonsense at us the more we walk away.
Don't you get it? A school is not a church.
I don't want your creepy Christian preachers bothering my children. What the heck is wrong with Louisiana?
Keep your Commandments in your pants, Reverend.
Patricia Lage's belief that witches make fortune cookies is part of a larger theme within American Christian Nationalism that refuses to accept that anything good can come from any culture other than white protestant Christianity. That's why Patricia Lage, a spiritual advisor to Donald Trump, believes that yoga is witchcraft, and dream catchers are witchcraft, and hypnosis is witchcraft, and yes, that fortune cookies are witchcraft. Patricia Lage of Holy Spirit Led Ministries even believes that rosary beads are a form of witchcraft, because in her zealous insistence that no other form of religion be allowed besides her own, she can't even tolerate Catholic Christianity. Christian Nationalists, once they defeat non-Christians, always start targeting other Christians, eventually, finding heretics and burning them at the stake.
This episode of Stop Christian Nationalism features an original song in our Country Music Against Christian Nationalism series. This week, the title of the song is Fortune Cookie Witchcraft. The lyrics are as follows:
What's going on
out there?
[Verse]
There's a woman
a faith healer
says she fights demons
a scene stealer
uses magic to stop the rain
shouts to Jesus to heal your pain
says she can take the dead
out of their graves
and make them live again.
[Bridge]
We all know
that's not reality.
No one has magic powers.
There are no spells.
No monsters.
No demons.
No zombies.
But there's more
[Chorus]
She says fortune cookies
are a kind of witchcraft.
She says fortune cookies
are an evil spell and that
if you eat fortune cookies
you'll go to hell
because those fortune cookies
are made by witches.
Not the cute kind
but the evil kind
that consorts
with Satan.
[Bridge]
Wooooooo
Fortune cookie witches
are going to get you.
Wooooooo
Fortune cookie witches
will take you to hell.
[Verse]
So this woman
who is afraid of evil cookies.
is not a normal kind
of religious kooky.
She's part of Donald Trump's campaign
Trump has mentioned her by name
She is helping Donald Trump
climb out of his grave
to become President again.
[Chorus]
She says fortune cookies
are a kind of witchcraft.
She says fortune cookies
are an evil spell and that
if you eat fortune cookies
you'll go to hell
because those fortune cookies
are made by witches.
Not the cute kind
but the evil kind
that consorts
with Satan.
[Bridge]
I don't want
a President
who gets
advice
from
crazy people
who believe
fortune cookies
are evil
the work of the Devil.
[Bridge]
Woooooo
I want a President
who lives in reality.
Woooooo
No Donald Trump
for me.
Please.
Christa Sullinger of Garrett, Indiana is pushing for public school resources to be used to take students away from education to attend Christian religious indoctrination sessions run by LifeWise, but she says the reason she wants public schools to give way to Christian proselytization, however, is that her 10 year-old son plays baseball on Sundays instead of going to church.
Christian Nationalists have already forced everybody else to change their weekly schedules so that Christians can devote their Sundays to going to church. Only 5% of Americans, 1 out of 20, however, go to church every week.
If Christian Americans are not taking advantage of the special privileges they already get to have preferential access to religious organizations on Sundays, why should they be allowed to drain resources from public schools to have even more religious indoctrination of children during the school week?
Donald Trump wants his followers to see him in the role of Jesus, introducing angels, demons, and even crucifixion into his fictionalization of his trial. Of course, no witnesses in any of Donald Trump’s trials have been literally crucified. They have been asked questions. They have been asked to tell the truth.
Donald Trump's supporters never question him because to them, he has become a religious leader, not a political leader. Faith tolerates no questions or doubt, regardless of what the facts are.
This podcast includes the original song 34 Times Guilty as part of the Country Music Against Christian Nationalism series.
Dave Leach has identified himself as the Secretary General of the Army Of God, a significant position of leadership within this Christian terrorist organization.
Members of the Army Of God have openly acknowledged their involvement in terrorist activities. Army of God member Clayton Waagner stated it plainly, admitting, "They’re right. I am a terrorist."
As a consequence of his terrorist activities, Waagner was indicted on charges of bank robbery, possession of a bomb, carjacking, and possession of a firearm as a convicted felon during a prison escape. Waagner was also charged with threatening forty-two abortion clinic employees.
It’s a lucky thing for Waagner’s intended victims that he was as incompetent as he was violent. He devised a plan to murder multiple abortion providers while traveling across the country. That plan was thwarted, however, when a car he stole to reach his first victim broke down and had to be abandoned by the side of the road.
Clayton Waagner sent packages of fake anthrax to over 500 abortion providers across the United States in 2001. These packages were sent in the wake of actual anthrax attacks, along with a note that read: “We are going to kill all of you. From the Army of God, Virginia Dare Chapter.”
Eventually, Waagner was convicted of fifty-one crimes, including threatening the use of weapons of mass destruction.
David Leach was in frequent communication with Clayton Waagner while Waagner was in prison. In one letter to Leach, Waagner discussed the possibility of the two developing a “Combat Information Center” that would share "data on every abortion mill in the country: address, phone number, hours of operation, names of staff and photos. The type of intelligence that would be useful to a field warrior”.
The Department of Homeland Security designated the Army Of God as a perpetrator of terrorism in its 2014 report, "Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism in the United States, 1970-2013." The group was listed just above the white supremacist organizations Aryan Nations and Aryan Republican Army.
The Army Of God was not merely a group of radical theorists. Its central mission was to engage in violent action to shut down abortion clinics. The organization went on a bloody rampage with the goal of forcing an end to legal abortion in the United States. According to the Global Terrorism Database, the Army Of God murdered three Americans during the 1980s and 1990s, and injured ninety others.
Flying the Christian Nationalist Appeal To Heaven Flag, the Pine Tree Flag, along with an upside down Stars and Stripes flag, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made a statement that he wants to see the end of American democracy, to be replaced by a Christian Nationalist theocracy with Donald Trump in charge.
There are consequences for having a Christian Nationalist who prejudges religious liberty cases before he hears the facts on the Supreme Court. Carson v. Makin in 2022 is an example of that, when Samuel Alito voted with the five other Christian Nationalist justices to force the state government of Maine to fund a private Christian church school, replacing genuine education with religious indoctrination.
When a man sits in judgment of America flying a flag
a Bible thumping rag
while they attack our country
I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with that.
Samuel, I won't tell you to go to Hell,
I don't believe in it,
but I don't trust your judgment, Samuel Alito
flying the flag of injustice
outside your window
It's time for you to quit
Samuel Alito
It's time for you to step down
and get out of town.
Take of your gown.
America will never be a Christian nation.
Get out of town.
Take off your gown.
Imagine being a 24 year-old woman, and you have only been allowed one night away from your fundamentalist preacher father, who says you're filled with demons. On the day you plan to make your escape, your mother confronts you. What happens next?
Most of us understand how history actually works. One event follows another. We can’t go back to the past, and we cannot foretell the future.
Christian Nationalist supporters of Donald Trump see it another way. They believe that there is only one story that matters, the story of the Bible. So, they reinterpret the rest of reality to fit within that monotheistic story. When reality fails to comply, they become enraged, and begin to make violent demands that the rest of us comply, or else.
In this episode of Stop Christian Nationalism, we hear Christian Nationalists talking about how current events were somehow foretold 2500 years ago. They proclaim that we are marching toward World War III under Donald Trump’s promise of a Final Battle.
Also, we introduce a new song in our Country Music Against Christian Nationalism series: You Are Not The Chosen One.
The way that you treat your dogs shows a lot about your character. Republican Christian Nationalist Kristi Noem kills her puppy with a gun. Iowa Faith Leader Coalition member Kelley McAtee advises her dog training clients that their pooches might be harboring the spirit of Satan. Donald Trump, for his part, refuses to be house trained, throwing cheeseburgers at the wall, shouting at his aides, and refusing to pay the workers who do construction labor on his swanky digs.
Also, country music gets things back to the basics, and cuts through all the rational arguments of who’s right and wrong to put forward a more authentic way of life. That’s why this episode is the first of Stop Christian Nationalism to feature an original country song. This one is called Go On Home Kristi Noem.
We just might make this a regular feature.
This episode of Stop Christian Nationalism begins a new series investigating Donald Trump’s top religious supporters, beginning with Tom Sooter, an Iowa preacher who reinterprets world history according to biblical scripture in order to promote the idea that we are on the verge of World War III. Are anti-Israel, pro-Gaza protesters falling into a trap of his religious nationalism?
In 2023, the Trump campaign hired Christian Nationalist Jackson Lane to recruit Christian Nationalists from across Iowa into a new part of the Trump political machine called the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition. The Iowa Faith Leader Coalition included many Christian Nationalists who have been telling their followers that there is a supernatural war taking place across America, with Donald Trump at the head of the armies of the Christian god.
One such member of Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, Katherine Watsey of Fire on the Altar Ministries out of Fairfield, Iowa, has been traveling across the Midwest, visiting churches as a guest preacher, telling audiences that the United States has been infested by an army of demonic sorcerers who have used dark spellwork to create a network of secret underground magical altars hidden across the country. These magical altars, Watsey says, are giving supernatural powers to worshippers of the ancient Babylonian god Baal, who is at war with the Christian god. Baal, she says, is really just a demon pretending to be a god.
This battle between the Christian god and evil American wizards working for the demon Baal, Watsey says, is what explains current political conflicts. Watsey has endorsed Donald Trump, and joined the Trump for President campaign’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, as a means of battling demons.
Donald Trump has, in turn, officially recognized the support of Katherine Watsey, and tacitly endorsed her battle against demons. Trump has welcomed Katherine Watsey as a Christian Nationalist leader into his campaign organization. It was through the centrally-organized political campaign work of hundreds of Christian Nationalists like Katherine Watsey, many of them declaring themselves to be at war against armies of demons who want Joe Biden to remain in the White House, that Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses.
Now, in the wake of the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump is bringing this story of his campaign being anointed by the Christian god in a magical war against demons to the rest of the nation. That’s where the extreme declarations by Eric Trump and his attorney Alina Habba come from. They weren’t spontaneous declarations inspired by a swelling of religious faith in the moment. They were part of a consistent plan by the Trump for President campaign to sustain the Christian Nationalist conspiracy theory that demons, evil sorcerers, and other dark magical powers are in control of Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, federal prosecutors and judges, and anyone else who dares to stand in the way of Donald Trump.
Preachers from the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition are telling us that if Donald Trump is elected, people who refuse to obey their churches will be punished. Right now, there is a network of at least 300 churches in Iowa alone that is working to make this destruction of American democracy happen. How many other churches are part of this criminal conspiracy nationwide? A speech and press release in Coralville, Iowa are the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson signed a statement demanding the punishment of all non-Christians, then called for an end to American democracy. Speaker Johnson called on American politicians to follow the Christian god instead of the will of the people
Many Christian sects believe that the practice of scientific medicine is unholy and should be completely replaced exclusively by prayer. They believe that parents should not take their children to see doctors, even when they are dangerously ill. Under Donald Trump and Project 2025, these Christian sects could have the power to use the new federal government Bureau of Religious Medicine to restrict children’s access to proper medical care in the name of Jesus.
Project 2025 makes the following declaration about what it regards as the proper role of individual freedom in the United States of America:
“When the Founders spoke of “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought.”
According to Project 2025, freedom of speech will be revoked under Donald Trump. You won’t be allowed to say anything that Christian leaders don’t want you to say. In this one short section of Project 2025, Donald Trump’s network of supporters is promising to replace American freedom with the religious tyranny of Christian theocracy.
Christian Nationalists like Candace Owens and Matt Walsh lie to their audiences, with wild conspiracy theories about Satanic plans by Target to attack America’s children with Pride Month merchandise. Instead of standing against Christian Nationalism’s antigay bigotry, Target executives have allowed Christian terrorists to take control of their company.
This episode analyses speeches given by US Representatives Mary Miller, Diana Harshbarger, Andrew Clyde, and Rick Allen on the floor of the United States Congress. One by one, these Christian Nationalist politicians used the concept of faith to attack democracy and call for an end to religious freedom in the United States.
Christian Nationalist Nazis are engaged in violent attacks on America’s streets, and Christian Nationalist supporters of Donald Trump are promoting bizarre conspiracy theories about mermaids. So why are Democrats like Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul promoting Christian Nationalism within the Democratic Party?
How on Earth did Nick Fuentes become so politically influential? He’s been successful in promoting himself by being outrageous. What Fuentes says is genuinely outrageous. We should be outraged by it, but what do we do with that outrage? If Nick Fuentes is building his political reputation through outrage, can we speak about our outrage without promoting Fuentes himself?
The midterm elections of 2022 are over, but local elections are happening across the USA sooner than you think. Christian Nationalists are organizing to take over school boards and city councils to impose their violent unforgiving religious zealotry on the rest of us. Their Christian Nationalism is historically ignorant, prophetically incoherent, and terrifyingly hateful, but we can’t count on Christian Nationalists to fall apart from the weight of their own absurdity. It’s time for us to organize a peaceful resistance to Christian Nationalism. (This podcast episode contains audio of a Christian Nationalist using a crude expletive over and over again, thus the explicit content rating.)
Christian Nationalist politicians from coast to coast claimed that they had the all-powerful god of Christianity on their side. A few of them, like Marjorie Taylor Green, lucked out, but the heavenly mandate failed to show up for most, like Pennsylvania loser for Jesus Doug Mastriano. Still, Oklahoma’s Christian Nationalist Governor Kevin Stitt was re-elected, and now he says that the whole state of Oklahoma is no longer a democracy, but belongs to Jesus. Jesus, you may remember, is not a citizen of the United States.
It’s the day before the midterm elections of 2022, and Christian Nationalist preachers are calling for the use of force to compel Americans to convert to Christianity. Christian prophet Julie Green threatens that US President Joe Biden will be shot dead, and Christian Nationalist Stephen Wolfe wants women to lose the right to vote.
New research from Pew shows that the majority of American Christians are Christian Nationalist. 79 percent of American Christians say they want the Christian bible to shape the American government, but that’s not how democracy works. Real American history shows that founders like Thomas Paine wanted freedom from religion.
Christian Nationalism comes in screaming crazy antisemitic extremism and in gently spoken demands that members of Congress stop following false gods. We explore the full gamut of Christian Nationalism’s manifestations, and its brutal history in the English Civil War.
Geoffrey Grider says that god wants the world to burn. Kari Lake says that Jesus suffered from name calling. Steven Lawson preaches loving hate. What about the microchips of Satan in electric cars?
When Christian Nationalist Chuck O’Neal of Beaverton, Oregon demands that parents be put in prison and have their children taken away for violating Christian biblical law, he is only repeating the violent extremism of Christian Nationalism under Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco in the 20th century.
Rebecca Mastriano, the wife of Doug Mastriano, who is the Republican Party candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, has argued that democracy must die and has cited an antisemitic bible verse used by the Nazis to justify the Holocaust, accusing Jews of being part of a Synagogue of Satan. Did you know Billy Graham and Richard Nixon used to have jam sessions about the Synagogue of Satan too? Yes, the Christian Nationalists are getting extra crispy crazy. There’s so much Christian Nationalism to cover this week, we don’t get it all, but we’re doing what we can!
This week, I want to take a break from warning you about the dangers of Christian Nationalism to telling you about the delights of a world free of Christian Nationalism.
When I hear the word “delight”, my mind leaps to things that feel good in an immediate sense. There is certainly plenty of that in a life free of the harsh control of Christian Nationalism.
Sex, for example, can feel pretty good for most people. We’re going to talk about other things too, but yes, we’re going to talk about sex.
Let’s break free from paradise!
The story Senator Josh Hawley told about the destruction of the temple of Serapis made it sound as if the violent mob of Christian vandals that destroyed the temple of Serapis were making a brave stand against Emperor Julian, an anti-Christian tyrant. Actual history shows that’s not at all what happened.
We can fall into the trap of supposing that Christian Nationalism is only there when the people who express it are shouting wildly out in the streets. In fact, Christian Nationalism is expressed both by raving fanatics and by political insiders who manifest the extremist ideology in subtle ways.
Connecting these different manifestations of Christian Nationalism is a consistent ideology, a political religious movement that seeks to end American democracy and replace it with a Christian dictatorship that forces Christianity on everyone.
This episode of the podcast Stop Christian Nationalism covers the gamut of Christian Nationalist voices, from the raving radicalism of Nick Fuentes to the institutional Christian Nationalism of the US Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black and the Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano.
It’s easy to think sometimes that all we need to do to defeat Christian Nationalism is to defeat the Republican Party. After all, the most extreme Christian Nationalists are Republicans. This week, however, a speech by Democratic President Joe Biden embraced the fundamental perspective of Christian Nationalism. Democrats in Congress are introducing Christian Nationalist legislation. This podcast episode considers the question of what we ought to do when the Christian Nationalists we face are in the Democratic Party.
Baptist preacher Bill Grady threatens to fill one billion body bags with the bodies of non-Christians. Christian Nationalists are planning to commit genocide at a scale that the world has never seen before.
Christian Nationalism isn’t content to just accept the word of the bible. New prophets of Christian Nationalism claim to have word straight from the Christian god, and what they are saying ought to terrify those who believe in peace and democracy.
Ceremonial Deism an imaginary government religion made up by the Supreme Court in order to justify the promotion of Christian nationalism through the power of government. Judges invented the concept of Ceremonial Deism in order to justify the government establishment of religion in open defiance of the First Amendment, which clearly states that government establishment of religion is not allowed.
The judges who promote the idea of Ceremonial Deism are almost always Christian.
Consider the makeup of the Supreme Court that ruled in the Lynch v. Donnelly case that introduced the concept of Ceremonial Deism into legal precedence. Every single member of that Supreme Court was Christian.
Republican US Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers has introduced a bill in Congress to create a National Year of Humiliation. Donald Trump says he wants to destroy American public schools to make way for Christian indoctrination. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick says that the Christian god wrote the Constitution, and that Democrats are in league with demons. What can we do in the face of such outrageous Christian nationalism? We can start talking about how very strange Christian nationalism is, and erode the power of Christian normativity.
American Nazis mingled with Christian nationalists at the Turning Point USA meeting in Florida last week, while Donald Trump and Andrew Torba commanded Americans to fall on their knees to worship the Christian god. Nick Fuentes and Louie Gohmert add their demands for an end to American democracy. We deconstruct the strange claims that Christian nationalism is somehow an imposter Christianity, and talk about the importance of turning out the vote in the 2020 local, state, and national elections.