tingilinde

mike johnson's soul brother

Sharing similar values with another prominent member of an Abrahamic religion.

 

 

dropping an oath requirement

NJ no longer requires a 'so help me God' oath in candidate filings.

a tip of the  hat to Sukie

It's clear that a stated belief in God is not a guarantee of honest and upstanding people.

 

 

 

american evangelicals and the jews

A short primer on what animates them

 

more on speaker johnson

This time the christian law school he was to be dean of.

snip

...

he staked out positions that went further to the right than the views of Republican Party leaders, saying gay relationships were “inherently unnatural” and that same-sex marriage threatened democracy. He sought to take a failed quest to allow religious prayer at public meetings in North Carolina all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He left the group in 2010, according to a spokeswoman.

Soon, he was boosting plans for a law school in Shreveport. He was hired about September 2010 to be the school’s founding dean and joined Aguillard at a ceremony announcing the project.

The school’s concept was to create an army of Christian legal warriors, as laid out by Aguillard, who said at the announcement that the law school would have “a singular focus on Jesus Christ … We will affirm Jesus Christ in every lecture, in every classroom, in every office on every square inch of campus.”

...

 

 

on fundamentalists not following their own book

This is great

a tip of the hat to Jim

the heksenwaag of oudewater

The witches's scales were used to give people accused of witchcraft an official certificate proclaiming they weren't witches.  The idea at the time was a witch was souless and souls had a weight, so a witch weighed less. 

It was a way to defy the church.

 

evangelical christians' war on the poor

Many are believers in the prosperity gospel and imply the poor are unworthy.

snip

...

This might go some way to explaining why the Lifeway study of churchgoing Protestants found that those most likely to agree that God will bless them if they give money to church and charities are most commonly found among the demographics who have felt the economic downturn most acutely. People aged 18 to 34 (81 percent) and 35 to 49 (85 percent) are more likely to get on board with a God interested in prosperity than people aged over 65 (68 percent). African Americans (86 percent) were more likely to get on board than whites (73 percent) and other ethnicities (67 percent).

But while the prosperity gospel speaks to the groups who are experiencing the worst of times, it’s also being weaponized by some of the most right-wing elements in conservative religious circles as a form of retribution.

...

 

 

what the bible is

It's far from what modern day - especially fundamentalists - think it is.  A few people have recommended the Data over Dogma podcast.  It features serious bible scholar Dan McClellan Ph.D. and is a deeper dive than I've encountered.  I've only listened to two episodes Where Angles Fear to Swim and Angels and Demons.  I'm not particularly interested in the bible as it's an inconsistent and highly edited retelling of retold tails.  That said, both episodes were interesting and would be regarded as heretical by fundamentalists.

'faith and family'

Georgetown historian Thomas Zimmer on the perpetuation of religious extremism in America and its threat to democracy.

snip

...

This is another iteration of an apologist sleight of hand that is often deployed to provide cover for the Republican Party: If extremism is not defined by its ideological and political substance, but purely as “something fringe,” then the minute it becomes GOP mainstream, it ceases to be regarded as extreme. Just like that, radical ideas and politicians get automatically legitimized: By definition, the Republican Party, regardless of how substantively extreme, gets treated as “normal” simply because it is not fringe, because it is supported by almost half the country.

The result is a portrait of Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, as someone well within the bounds of the regular, the respectable. Here is a normalization machine that perpetuates itself: Once it has successfully transformed Johnson into someone who is legible as “normal,” he will get the “normal” treatment: Rising political stars can expect a certain sympathetic fascination, even deference, and they get a home story that makes them look good. Mike Johnson just got his. All about family and faith

...

 

 

 

mike johnson and reality

He doesn't seem to score high on measuring reality by many measures. 

snip

...

Despite being roundly mocked on social media for these hysterics, he doubled down on his podcast, insisting, "This is not frivolous, light-hearted entertainment," but "serious, eternal business." Yes, he argued people are literally going to hell for laughing at Danny DeVito playing a satirical version of the Prince of Darkness.

This is, after all, the same politician who once fought to secure taxpayer funding for a Noah's ark-based theme park. Yes, he did so out of a conviction that a literal flood wiped out all life on earth except that of an old man, his family, and a boatful of animals around 2300 B.C. Never mind that there is a historical record of thriving, well-documented civilizations like Mesopotamia and Egypt at the time, and they did not disappear into a flood. The Noah exhibit even claimed dinosaurs were on the ark, which did not stop Johnson from arguing that "what we read in the Bible are actual historical events."

...