How the Christian right helped foment insurrection

[TexasTowelie]

Christian-right activists inside and outside of government promoted the election fraud lie and claimed God told them to “let the church roar.”


The Jan. 6 Save America March, where then-President Donald Trump incited a crowd to attack the U.S. Capitol, opened with a prayer. Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser and White House adviser, the Florida televangelist Paula White, called on God to “give us a holy boldness in this hour.” Standing at the same podium where, an hour later, Trump would exhort the crowd to “fight like hell,” White called the election results into question, asking God to let the people “have the assurance of a fair and a just election.” Flanked by a row of American flags, White implored God to “let every adversary against democracy, against freedom, against life, against liberty, against justice, against peace, against righteousness be overturned right now in the name of Jesus.”

Within hours, insurrectionists had surrounded the Capitol, beaten police, battered down barricades and doors, smashed windows and rampaged through the halls of the Capitol, breaching the Senate chamber. In video captured by The New Yorker, men ransacked the room, rifling through senators’ binders and papers, searching for evidence of what they claimed was treason. Then, standing on the rostrum where the president of the Senate presides, the group paused to pray “in Christ’s holy name.”

Men raised their arms in the air as millions of evangelical and charismatic parishioners do every Sunday and thanked God for allowing them “to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs.” They thanked God “for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.”

White evangelicals have been Trump’s most dedicated, unwavering base, standing by him through the cavalcade of abuses, failures and scandals that engulfed his campaigns and his presidency – from the “Access Hollywood” tape to his first impeachment to his efforts to overturn the election and incite the Capitol insurrection. This fervent relationship, which has survived the events of Jan. 6, is based on far more than a transactional handshake over judicial appointments and a crackdown on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Trump’s White evangelical base has come to believe that God anointed him and that Trump’s placement of Christian-right ideologues in critical positions at federal agencies and in federal courts was the fulfillment of a long-sought goal of restoring the United States as a Christian nation. Throughout Trump’s presidency, his political appointees implemented policies that stripped away reproductive and LGBTQ rights and tore down the separation of church and state in the name of protecting unfettered religious freedom for conservative Christians. After Joe Biden won the presidency, Trump administration loyalists launched their own Christian organization to “stop the steal,” in the ultimate act of loyalty to their divine leader.

Read more: https://revealnews.org/article/how-the-christian-right-helped-foment-insurrection/
Reveal News (Center for Investigative Reporting)

[LastDemocratInSC]

1. God created man in his own image

and man has been returning the favor ever since.

[Major Nikon]

2. Every Q-loon I have met has been a fanatical Christian

[Buckeye_Democrat]

3. It's mostly the white evangelicals causing the problems.

They don't care about freedom of religion, but rather forcing their beliefs on others.

Among all Christians, evangelicals are especially compelled to CONVERT others, so their attention is usually directed outward. Hence, introspection and self-criticism are often lacking among them.

And why should they bother with self-criticism? A common statement from them is that "everyone is a sinner", so why bother? They can summarily be forgiven for their many faults because of their supposed belief in Jesus, and they're really only expected to keep spreading their religious beliefs like a virus otherwise.

"Live and let live" is impossible for them as long as there's anyone not proclaiming to be one of them -- i.e., people who must be converted.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

4. To know evangelical Christians is to dislike them, study says.

https://baptistnews.com/article/to-know-evangelical-christians-is-to-dislike-them-study-says/

-----
The survey also found that those who know the most about the teachings of a religion other than their own are more likely to rate adherents to that faith more favorably.

People who correctly answer the most questions about religious knowledge hold warmer feelings toward Buddhists, Hindus, mainline Protestants, atheists and Muslims than those who know little about faiths other than their own.

“One notable exception to this pattern is evangelical Christians,” the study said.

“One exception to this pattern is evangelical Christians, who are rated most warmly by those at the low end of the religious knowledge scale,” the study said.
-----