Trump/MAGA Supports Religion - But Only When It Agrees With Them

The Trump administration, and his MAGA followers, like to make a big show about supporting religion (particularly the christian religion). But that only applies when the religion or religion leaders agree with the Trump administration. When they disagree, they are viciously attacked.

Consider the following, reported by Steve Benen at MSNBC:

The Religion News Service reported this week on developments in Chicago, where a variety of faith leaders are opposed to the administration’s immigration agenda. The report specifically highlighted what transpired when the Rev. David Black, wearing a clerical collar, stood in front of an ICE facility, with empty arms raised, and invited armed agents to repent. From the RNS report:

[W]hen Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire.

“We could hear them laughing,” Black added.

The same Religion News Service report noted that the Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist pastor who leads United Church of Rogers Park in Chicago, has also protested at the local ICE facility, and she too said she has been shot multiple times with pepper bullets, “including while she was praying with her eyes closed and hands lifted, wearing a clerical collar.”

Religion In The United States

 

From the Pew Research Center.

Religious Faith Is Declining In The United States

 

The following is part of a post by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times:

While much of the rest of the industrialized world has become more secular over the last half-century, the United States has appeared to be an exception.

Politicians still end their speeches with “God bless America.” At least until recently, more Americans believed in the virgin birth of Jesus (66 percent) than in evolution (54 percent).

Yet evidence is growing that Americans are becoming significantly less religious. They are drifting away from churches, they are praying less and they are less likely to say religion is very important in their lives. For the first time in Gallup polling, only a minority of adults in the United States belong to a church, synagogue or mosque. (Most of the research is on Christians because they account for roughly 90 percent of believers in the United States.)

“We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country,” Jim Davis and Michael Graham write in a book published this week, “The Great Dechurching.”

The big religious shifts of the past were the periodic “Great Awakenings” that beginning in the mid-1700s led to surges in religious attendance. This is the opposite: Some 40 million American adults once went to church but have stopped going, mostly in the last quarter-century.

“More people have left the church in the last 25 years than all the new people who became Christians from the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening and Billy Graham crusades combined,” Davis and Graham write.

This “dechurching,” as they call it, is apparent in most denominations, reducing the numbers of Presbyterians and Episcopalians and also of evangelicals like Southern Baptists. White and Black congregants have left churches in similar percentages, but Hispanic religious attendance has dipped less.

To be clear, the United States remains an unusually pious nation by the standards of the rich world. Pew reports that 63 percent of American adults identify as Christian — but that’s down from 78 percent in 2007. And in that same period the percentage of adults who say they have no religion has risen to 29 percent from 16 percent.

If this trend continues at the same pace, by the mid-2030s fewer than half of Americans may identify as Christian.

There are various theories for what is behind the struggles of Christianity, and multiple factors are probably at work. One noted by Davis and Graham is that to many people the church hasn’t seemed very Christian.

When the Rev. Jerry Falwell dismissed AIDS as God’s lethal judgment on promiscuity, he conveyed a sanctimoniousness that in the 1980s and 1990s allowed much of the religious right to turn a cold shoulder to the suffering of people with the virus. . . .

Then in 2001, Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson suggested that the Sept. 11 terror attacks were God’s punishment for the behavior of feminists, gay people and secularists. My view was that God should have sued them for defamation.

The embrace of Donald Trump by many Christian leaders, even as he boasted about assaulting women, separated children from parents at the border and backed an insurrection, was for some a final indication of moral decay. . . .

One of the most thoughtful contemporary religious commentators, Russell Moore, an evangelical who is now editor of Christianity Today, bluntly acknowledges the challenges ahead. . . .

Moore is deeply critical of the way many evangelical leaders embraced Trump, and he is pained by church sex abuse scandals. In his own ministry, Moore said that he increasingly has heard from committed young Christians who are upset that their parents have been politically radicalized: “I was less likely to hear about wayward children going out into ‘the real world’ and losing their faith as I was to hear about wayward parents retreating into an imaginary world and losing their minds.”

Moore cites data suggesting that the reason people leave churches is not that they lose their belief in God so much as that they lose confidence in religious leaders and in the church’s moral leadership. He thinks faith can still recover; I’m not so sure.

Religious charlatans like Falwell may have meant to usher in a new Great Awakening, but in fact they taught millions of Americans to be wary of preening ventriloquists who claim to speak for God.

The GOP Whines About Religious Freedom But Opposes It

Our Founding Fathers did not want a religious state. That's why they created a constitutional amendment that guaranteed religious freedom. They wanted every American to have the right to worship any religion - or no religion at all. Today's Republican Party whines a lot about religious freedom, but their actions show they don't support true religious freedom. Instead, they want the right to force a particular religion (christianity) on all U.S. citizens. That's a clear violation of the Constitution!

Here is what Robert Reich has to say about the GOP and their effort to deny religious freedom:

On June 30, the six Republican appointees to the Supreme Court ruled that a graphic artist who designs wedding websites can refuse to design a website for same-sex weddings, despite a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender, and other characteristics. They said that forcing her to create the website would violate her free speech rights under the First Amendment.

But where and how to draw the line between protected expression and illegal discrimination? What about wedding planners, photographers, florists, caterers, decorators, musicians, or dressmakers who consider their work to be artistic expressions and also believe that forcing them to offer their services to gay couples violates their free speech rights? 

The point is, there is no clear line. Instead, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority is prioritizing religious beliefs over all other values. 

Over the past three years, the court has sided with a public school football coach who insisted on praying at midfield after games, on some accounts causing students to feel pressure to participate. A religious foster-care agency that refused to certify same-sex couples as foster parents. Religious schools in Maine that sought public subsidies. A religious group that wished to fly a Christian flag over Boston’s City Hall. Religious organizations that challenged early Covid restrictions on gathering in large groups. And, of course, those who oppose abortions, largely because of their religion, which they prioritize over the rights of women to control their bodies. 

Unlike the court’s older important religious freedom rulings that protected members of minority religions from discrimination, the recent cases have protected practitioners of mainstream Christianity. 

It is not just the court. All over America, the wall separating church and state is getting hit with a Republican battering ram. 

A few weeks ago, Oklahoma Republicans approved the nation’s first religious charter school — St. Isidore — offering Catholic religious instruction and financed by taxpayers. They claimed that excluding religious schools from charter funding would violate the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom.

Texas lawmakers have pushed bills requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state, allowing chaplains to replace counselors in schools, and letting school districts set time for staff and students to pray and read religious texts.

Montana’s House recently passed a requirement that schools accept “without question” a “conscience exemption” for immunizations for school attendance — thereby doing away with required vaccinations for measles, rubella, mumps, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, and influenza type B.

 

Idaho and Kentucky have signed into law measures allowing teachers and public school employees to pray in front of and with students while on duty.

Republican state lawmakers are falling over themselves to pass book bans, abortion prohibitions, and anti-trans laws — and justify them with scripture.

“Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes,” Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis proclaimed at the Christian Hillsdale College (substituting “left’s schemes” for the “devil’s schemes” of Ephesians 6:11).

And it’s not just any religion. It’s Christianity. As former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn (whom Trump has promised to bring back for a second Trump term) put it at a recent ReAwaken America event, “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion.”

The paradox is that religious observance has shown a steep decline over the past quarter century. In 1999, Gallup found that 70 percent of Americans belonged to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. In 2020, the number was 47 percent. For the first time in nearly a century of polling, worshippers were the minority in America. 

Does this precipitous decline help explain the militance of white Christian nationalism? A fierce minority religious movement has taken over the Republican Party — giving the GOP fervor and purpose that are now being championed by Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, Republican state legislators, and Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

Christian Nationalism - Beliefs And Adherents

 The charts above are from a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute between November 22nd and December 14th of a nationwide survey of 6,212 adults, with a 1.6 point margin of error.

Most Touting "Christian Nationalism" Lost In This Election

One of the biggest dangers in the election just completed was candidates espousing "Christian Nationalism". That movement is both authoritarian and anti-secular. Fortunately, most did not fare well on Election Day.

Here is how Anthea Butler describes it for MSNBC.com: 

The GOP Game of Thrones headed by former President Donald Trump, Christian nationalists and an assortment of unsuitable candidates met reality on Election Day. Instead crowing about big wins, they are eating crow instead — and pointing fingers. Some high-profile Christian nationalist candidates — most notably Doug Mastriano, the Republican who ran for governor of Pennsylvania — struggled Tuesday. What does it mean for those candidates, and do Tuesday’s results mean the promotion of Christian nationalism will no longer be a Republican political strategy?

Christian nationalism is the general idea that America is a Christian nation and that it should be run by Christian leaders (with no regard for the idea that we have a secular government and that there should be a separation between church and state). And the biggest takeaway for the candidates who generally embrace those beliefs is that being a raving Christian nationalist isn’t enough by itself to win. At least not the biggest elections. Yes, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., one of few Republicans to actually embrace the Christian nationalist title, won her noncompetitive congressional district in Georgia with 66% of the vote; but Mastriano, who talks like a Christian nationalist even if he doesn’t explicitly call himself one, lost by 14 points to Democrat Josh Shapiro in that statewide race.

In those big races, Republicans found out that the issues they thought would be winners with voters were weaknesses. Take, for example, those Republicans, such as Mastriano, who were ecstatic about the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and ecstatic about the rollbacks of abortion rights that followed that decision. They found themselves the victims of a backlash. On top of that, all of the five statewide ballot initiatives that would have restricted or eliminated abortion access were defeated by voters Tuesday. Kansas voters upheld abortion rights in August.

The large turnout of younger Generation Z voters and other voters disturbed by that Dobbs decision and the looming threat of authoritarianism from people pushing for an officially Christian nation stopped the predicted “red wave” from happening.

What is clear from that outcome is that Trump did poorly. He endorsed Mastriano, who lost. And stuck in very tight races are Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Col., who said “The church is supposed to direct the government” and Kari Lake, Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, who has said, “The same God who parted the Red Sea, who moved mountains, is with us now as we save this republic.”. . .

As for Christian nationalism, it is not going away. A Pew Research survey found that 45% of Americans say that America should be a Christian nation. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, half of white evangelicals believe that America is their promised land. These kinds of beliefs about America, which require that we ignore the clause in the Constitution that says there shall be no “religious test” for candidates, have made conservative Christianity a foundational plank of the Republican Party. . . .

The troubles some Christian nationalist candidates had this election cycle may hold some clues to the 2024 cycle. The RNC will have to decide if putting up Trump-style candidates who are all bluster but have lackluster messaging and theocratic leanings will be enough to retake the Oval Office, Congress and the Senate. The public is now much more aware of QAnon, and conferences such as ReAwakening that feature religious hucksters. The Republican Party is not the party of conservative values anymore; it is the party of extreme religious views that attract not only conspiracy theorists but violent agitators.

Should The United States Be A "Christian Nation"?

The charts above are from a survey by the Pew Research Center -- done between September 13th and 18th of a nationwide sample of 10,588 adults, with a 1.5 point margin of error.

Less Than Half In U.S. Will Be Christians By 2070

These charts are from the Pew Research Center. They provide 8 scenarios of the future of religion in the United States. All of the scenarios show the number of christians dropping radically. The most likely scenario (scenario #1) has christianity dropping to less than half of the population -- only 46%.

Boebert Says The Church Should Rule The Government

 

The following op-ed regarding the dangerous idea of a christian-dominated government is by Steve Benen at MSNBC.com:

Rep. Lauren Boebert was already one of Congress’ most controversial members, but after the Colorado Republican argued this past weekend that “the church is supposed to direct the government,” GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger apparently couldn’t let that go. HuffPost noted:

Kinzinger likened Boebert’s vision to that of the Taliban, the militant group that violently imposes an extremist interpretation of Islam on much of Afghanistan. “There is no difference between this and the Taliban. We must [oppose] the Christian Taliban,” he tweeted. “I say this as a Christian.”

To be sure, the Illinois Republican’s pushback was provocative, so it’s worth taking a closer look at what exactly Boebert said.

The far-right congresswoman, just a couple of days before her GOP primary, spoke at a religious service and told attendees, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it.”

Boebert added, “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution.”

It’s difficult to overstate how spectacularly wrong this was.

Right off the bat, the idea that “the church is supposed to direct the government” is antithetical to everything in the American tradition. One of the bedrock principles of the United States is that we’re governed by a secular Constitution. There are, to be sure, countries in which religious institutions “direct” their governments, but they’re generally known as theocracies.

If Boebert is looking for examples, I’d refer her to countries like Iran. The idea that the United States should abandon our traditions and emulate the Iranian model is ... how do I put this gently ... a curious thing for a member of Congress to say out loud and on purpose in the 21st century.

What’s more, the congresswoman’s belief that the nation’s framers “intended” for the United States to have a system in which “the church” — she didn’t say which one — “is supposed to direct the government” is utterly bonkers. We’re talking about a group of Americans who created a Constitution that doesn’t even mention “God” or any specific faith tradition.

If the Founding Fathers wanted a theocratic-like system, they would’ve created one. They instead did the opposite.

As for the Coloradan’s assertion that the separation of church and state is “junk that’s not in the Constitution,” I’d refer Boebert to the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

According to Thomas Jefferson, those 16 words created a “wall of separation between church and state” — and he’s a bit more credible in this area than the first-term far-right lawmaker.

Gwen Calais-Haase, a political scientist at Harvard University, toldThe Washington Post that Boebert’s interpretation of the Constitution was “false, misleading and dangerous.” Calais-Haase added that she’s “extremely worried about the environment of misinformation that extremist politicians take advantage of for their own gains.”

Steven K. Green, a professor of law and affiliated professor of history and religious studies at Willamette University, went on tell the Post, “While the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ does not appear verbatim in the Constitution, neither do many accepted constitutional principles such as separation of powers, judicial review, executive privilege, or the right to marry and parental rights, no doubt rights that Rep. Boebert cherishes.”

All of this, of course, coincides with the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority becoming overtly hostile towards the concept of government neutrality in matters of faith.

All of which is to say, Kinzinger is right to be concerned.

The 9/11 Attack Changed Most People's View Of Islam

The chart above is from the Pew Research Center. It shows that the view of islam as a violent religion increased after the 9/11 attacks -- especially among Republicans. That's sad, because islam is no more violent than christianity. The fundamentalists in both religions put their beliefs over the lives and safety of everyone, but most in both religions are peaceful people.

The "Religious Exemption" To COVID-19 Vaccine Is A Farce

As most readers of this blog will know, I am an atheist. But I was raised in a fundamentalist / evangelical church, and I attended two religious universities to get my Bachelor's Degree -- Harding University (Church of Christ) and Texas Wesleyan University (Methodist). So, I am very familiar with christianity and the Bible. 

That's why I am puzzled by so many christians (especially evangelicals) who are claiming a religious exemption to avoid taking the COVID-19 vaccine. It is not against the christian religion to get a vaccination, and many who are claiming this exemption regularly get vaccinated against other diseases. I believe this is just right-wing politics disguised as religion.

The following is part of an op-ed by Curtis Chang (a consulting faculty member at Duke Divinity School) in The New York Times:

Religious exemptions to employer mandates are a precious right in our democracy. This is why it is especially important not to offer such exemptions to coronavirus vaccine mandates. They make a mockery of Christianity and religious liberty.

Now that the Food and Drug Administration has fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, government agencies, universities and businesses are instituting vaccination requirements. This has prompted a wave of requests from individuals to opt out of such requirements by claiming a religious exemption.

The legal basis of this request is Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires American employers to accommodate employees’ religious beliefs. One evangelical church near Sacramento has reportedly issued more than 3,000 letters requesting exemptions, and a pastor in Brooklyn told The New York Daily News that 60 percent of his congregation has asked for them. Given that evangelicals account for a substantial portion of people refusing vaccination, especially in the Delta-ravaged Bible Belt, the road to ending the pandemic may very well now run through the religious exemption issue.

According to the Civil Rights Act, these exemptions are meant to apply to people with “sincerely held religious beliefs,” and on both counts — religious belief and sincerity — the exemption demand fails when it comes to coronavirus vaccine mandates for Christians.

First, there is no actual religious basis for exemptions from vaccine mandates in any established stream of Christianity. Within both Catholicism and all the major Protestant denominations, no creed or Scripture in any way prohibits Christians from getting the vaccine. Even the sect of Christian Scientists, which historically has abstained from medical treatment, has expressed openness to vaccines for the sake of the wider community. The consensus of mainstream Christian leaders — from Pope Francis to Franklin Graham — is that vaccination is consistent with biblical Christian faith. . . .

My plea to my fellow Christians: If you insist on refusing the vaccine, that is your right. But please do not bring God into it. Doing so is the very definition of violating the Third Commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”. . .

Exemption requests also likely fail on the grounds of sincere belief. We naturally look for consistency of a belief as a test of sincerity; it’s common sense. We would doubt the sincerity of a receptionist who demands vegetarian options at a workplace cafeteria when he frequently eats steak at restaurants. Any institution considering religious exemptions should require applicants to demonstrate that they have consistently refused other immunizations for religious reasons.

Vaccine hesitancy has never been a core religious belief of evangelical Christians. The vast majority of evangelicals have historically chosen to be immunized against polio, measles, tetanus and other diseases. As a child, I attended evangelical summer camps that required vaccinations, and as an adult, I worked for ministries with similar mandates. Some conservative evangelicals just don’t like the political taste of this particular vaccine on the menu.

Even if we grant that individual Christians sincerely (though mistakenly) believe that their religious faith prohibits a coronavirus vaccination, that still does not justify an exemption. “Sincerity” does not justify putting others at risk. I can sincerely (though mistakenly) believe I should sacrifice a burnt offering to God. All the sincerity in my heart does not justify my setting my neighbor’s house on fire in the process. . . .

But even with legitimate religious claims sincerely held, the law allows companies to forgo offering exemptions if doing so places an “undue hardship” on the employer. Increasing the risk of bringing an infectious disease into the workplace certainly qualifies. For jobs that involve exposure to vulnerable populations, minimizing that risk via immunization is clearly an appropriate job requirement. Religious freedom for a teacher who opposes vaccines does not mean having the right to jeopardize children by being unvaccinated. Religious freedom means that if she doesn’t wish to fulfill her employer’s job requirement, she is free to find another job.

All employers should eliminate any religious exemptions for coronavirus vaccines for Christians, period. New York State has removed its religious exemption option for health care workers, and other institutions should follow suit.

Similarly, religious leaders will need to join with secular institutions in opposing exemptions. Pastors are already being inundated with requests for letters supporting exemptions. As a former pastor of an evangelical church, I know it will be difficult to say “no.” But my colleagues should do the right thing and refuse such requests. Refuse to mislead our secular neighbors. Refuse to abuse our precious religious liberty. Refuse to be complicit in putting our neighbors at risk. . . .

The vaccine effort has been plagued by falsehoods of all kinds. The religious exemption from vaccine mandates for Christians is the latest lie. All of us should stand together for the truth.