The Roots of Josh Hawley's Rage

[malaise]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opinion/josh-hawley-religion-democracy.html?referringSource=articleShare
In today’s Republican Party, the path to power is to build up a lie in order to overturn democracy. At least that is what Senator Josh Hawley was telling us when he offered a clenched-fist salute to the pro-Trump mob before it ransacked the Capitol, and it is the same message he delivered on the floor of the Senate in the aftermath of the attack, when he doubled down on the lies about electoral fraud that incited the insurrection in the first place. How did we get to the point where one of the bright young stars of the Republican Party appears to be at war with both truth and democracy?

Mr. Hawley himself, as it happens, has been making the answer plain for some time. It’s just a matter of listening to what he has been saying.

In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius — a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago. In a 2019 commencement address at The King’s College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to “a biblical worldview,” Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.

The most eloquent summary of the Pelagian vision, Mr. Hawley went on to say, can be found in the Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Mr. Hawley specifically cited Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words reprovingly: “At the heart of liberty,” Kennedy wrote, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The fifth century church fathers were right to condemn this terrifying variety of heresy, Mr. Hawley argued: “Replacing it and repairing the harm it has caused is one of the challenges of our day.”

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Hawley will learn some hard lessons very soon

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Pelagius said it's up to us.

Much of what he wrote is lost, unfortunately.

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11604a.htm

[3Hotdogs]

2. but in another thread on D.U. today, I learned that the pope said

women can now read from the alter.

See? Religion can bring good things to the faithful. And on that same thread, someone had the balls to say something about silly costumes, in reference to the photo of the pope and cardinals.

[malaise]

4. No religion informs my choices

My fundamental philosophical truth is that every thing that lives dies so give thanks for life and "Do unto others what you want done unto you." ~Confucius

[tecelote]

30. I've always said that I don't believe in any God.

But, Mother Nature scares me. We haven't treated her well at all.

[malaise]

32. I have deep respect for Nature

I don't know if nature is female but she sure doesn't fucking joke. Nature is the true boss.
Which reminds me January earthquakes are not uncommon in my part of the planet.

[tecelote]

38. Yeah, definitely gender neutral.

I'm to the extreme left when it comes to climate change. The move to clean energy, reduction in pollutants, and slowing habitat destruction need to be a top priority.

I hope you stay safe!

[malaise]

42. You too

I try my best re the environment but I still drive a car.

[calimary]

44. I'm totally with you there, tecelote. EARTH FIRST!

[robbob]

45. Um..."Do unto others" -Confucius??

That’s a joke, right? It’s only one of the most quoted bible verses, and along with “love thy neighbour as thyself” probably the most significant and central tenet of true Christianity. Ignored by most so-called Christians unfortunately...

[malaise]

49. No it isn't

You'd be surprised how much stuff is lifted on this planet

[robbob]

55. I stand (sit?) corrected...

Ok, actually I lie in the bathtub, corrected. 🛁

But on looking up the origins of this saying, I see that it’s common to seemingly every religion and philosophy, with the oldest reference being a Vedic verse (Hinduism) from 13BC!

https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/ETHICS_TEXT/Chapter_8_Kantian_Theory/Not_Golden.htm

[malaise]

60. Who knows

but the Christians were later - I too believed that for years - it's way more important that we practice it.

[robbob]

66. Thank for not crucifying me!

My tone was a bit snarky! I learn something new every day! 😁

[malaise]

69. Hahahaha

Nothing wrong with being snarky - we're grown ups

[lonely bird]

73. See Leviticus 19:18

The Christ was stating what was said long before him.

[niyad]

59. Nearly EVERY belief system has some version of that statement. Nearly everything in the

bible is lifted from others, including the story of jesus. About the only things original in that book are the concept of original sin, and the concept of hell.

Consider reading, "When God Was A Woman" by Merlin Stone. The "christian" bible was written as a political tract.

And then there is this comment from (if I remember correctly, Z. Budapest), "it is fascinating that white European christians worship a book that has no white European christians in it."

[robbob]

62. Yes, I learn something new everyday!

See my post #55.

[Wicked Blue]

67. +1000! nt

[Cozmo]

47. "Do Unto others..." is how I live my life. It's such a simple concept. yet so powerful & fulfilling

It's funny, I always thought that I learned that in Sunday school.

Where is Christ in the beliefs and actions of the religious right? Hawley and the rest, that's some sick shit.

[malaise]

51. Of course we did but Catholicism and Christianity stole a lot from others

Indeed most religions lift stuff from other places.

I've been reading a lot lately about the Maya - and learning so much.

[Karadeniz]

53. Energy cannot be destroyed.

[ancianita]

25. But they cannot preach. Reading isn't preaching. They've been allowed to read for some time.

That's not the main point the Pope made since he already knows that Catholic women may read. Unless he made a slight shift from catechismal writings to the actual Gospel. Maybe that's the change. Niggling aside, reading has been their spiritual consolation prize.

But no priestly function. He reiterated church doctrine about women's spiritual inequality that "spiritually disqualifies" them, unlike the penis population, from preaching the Gospel to other humans.

[Hestia]

34. It's altar - common mistake

[shrike3]

36. Are you serious? Women have been reading from the altar for years.

Matter of fact, this Sunday a woman did both readings. Maybe you're talking about the Gospel, customarily read by a priest or Deacon?

[Bev54]

71. Just like worldwide terrorists groups

These people us religion to justify their behaviour. Religion needs to be put back into the home and the church and get it the hell out of politics. It brainwashes people so they can no longer think for themselves and cling to the belief that their leaders are their gods. I, for the life of me, cannot understand it at all.

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. Pelagius also denied the concept of original sin.

St. Augustine condemned it as heresy.*

* As a recovering Catholic, just recounting what I learned years ago.

[malaise]

5. I recovered from them decades ago

[greatauntoftriplets]

29. There are a lot of us!

[redstatebluegirl]

37. I have been a recovering Catholic since I was 20 years old.

[greatauntoftriplets]

39. I was 24, so just slightly behind you.

[redstatebluegirl]

40. I remember when I told my Dad, that was quite a day.

[greatauntoftriplets]

81. My parents actually felt the same.

My older sister, not so much. She always was pretty bossy and anal.

Sorry that you went through a hard time.

[niyad]

50. I got kicked out of rcc when I was 18.

[malaise]

68. The only reason they didn't kick me out was my mother

She had a lot of influence in their circles.
What I loved most about her was that she eventually accepted that I did not believe any of it and let me be.

[niyad]

72. Oh, my folks never knew. What the church fathers did not know was that I was already gone.

[malaise]

74. ROFL

[Tommymac]

79. I got asked to leave because I wore blue jeans to mass in the 1970's.

Best thing that ever happened to me.

[niyad]

84. I got ex-comm'ed for heresy.

[greatauntoftriplets]

82. ...

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

6. Living your life according to dogma is like locking your consciousness in a little box,

where imagination and creativity soon shrivel and die from lack of use.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

-Albert Einstein

[Duppers]

75. 👏 Indeedy.

Thank you.

[gradmaster]

7. Free will!

As a Catholic, I've always been taught that God gave each of us an intellect and a free will. Vatican II proclaimed the primacy of conscience. One of the problems of Evangelical Christianity is that it doesn't seem to believe in those gifts of God. And while I am on the subject...how can any one claim to know "God's will"? Wouldn't that be knowing the "mind"of God?? Wouldn't that be the ultimate hubris?

[niyad]

76. "Free will, with a tendency to evil" is how we were taught. As I commented to the

archbishop, in Vegas, we call that "playing the game with loaded dice, and it's illegal."

[milestogo]

8. Damn you, Pelagius

[underpants]

11. LOL

[underpants]

9. Ok. WOW. it makes a lot more sense now.

His drive is fueled by incredible righteousness. He and Cruz appear to be headed to a battle of oneupsmanship in pandering and serving this elite of charlatans - I don’t want to give them any credit for religion or faith.

[Mike 03]

10. This piece is by Katherine Stewart.

Her recent book The Power Worshippers is breathtaking and one of the most important books of 2020. She ties a lot of loose ends together in that book.

Thanks for posting!!!

[underpants]

12. Thanks

[Mike 03]

13. From this essay:

Christian nationalists’ acceptance of President Trump’s spectacular turpitude these past four years was a good measure of just how dire they think our situation is. Even a corrupt sociopath was better, in their eyes, than the horrifying freedom that religious moderates and liberals, along with the many Americans who don’t happen to be religious, offer the world.

That this neo-medieval vision is incompatible with constitutional democracy is clear. But in case you’re in doubt, consider where some of the most militant and coordinated support for Mr. Trump’s postelection assault on the American constitutional system has come from. The Conservative Action Project, a group associated with the Council for National Policy, which serves as a networking organization for America’s religious and economic right-wing elite, made its position clear in a statement issued a week before the insurrection.

The Christian Nationalists first backed Ted Cruz, but abandoned him for Trump when Trump proved viable.

[malaise]

16. It is why they paint him in medieval costume

and it is costume

[Hugin]

19. I'm sticking until sentencing.

After that every 5 years or so for the Parole Board hearings.

[BeyondGeography]

15. A dreary power-hungry theocrat

It’s just one damn thing after another in this country.

[malaise]

17. He's history

Fuck him - I want him in prison

[Hugin]

18. Economic anxiety?

Just a guess.

[ananda]

20. Pelagius v Augustine

OK, let's take a look at Augustine and Pelagius on the inherent nature of humans, Augustine combatting Manichean, Pelagian, and Donatist heresies by taking the stance that the human is inherently imperfect (original sin) or corrupted. We are all children of Adam and inherit the contamination of sin in our post-lapsarian world, with a belief in the pride that goeth before the fall (hubris for Greeks and pre-Christians) and that this sin can be washed away through Baptism. And though people are born bad (imperfect, corrupted), they are perfectible through imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi) and the help of the Church. This is the theocentric, orthodox above-ground Christianity.

Pelagius, otoh, preferred to challenge the notion of infant Baptism, implying that the human is born perfect, inherently good and godlike. For Augustine, Pelagius is committing the original sin (hubris) by saying that, because no man is born perfect. But Pelagius saw the infant who dies as innocent -- sinless, guileless -- and heaven bound. No matter how young or old, a human is innocent UNLESS he sins, and even then he can confess. And when does a human sin? when he KNOWS what he is doing is a sin and he does it of his own free will. This involves knowledge and free will both, which means you have to eat of the tree of knowledge, which in latitudian theology is called FELIX CULPAS (the fortunate fall), fortunate because we can lose Paradise to regain it. We need the knowledge so we can make a choice and rise above the fall.

So for Pelagius, the heretic who had to go underground, people are born perfect, but corruptible, an anthropocentric view that evolved into humanism and transcendentalism Also, looking at the Weltanschauung running through Western literature, this tension between the mainstream Augustinian view and the heretic Pelagian view is present in all the major literature. In fact, we can trace one or the other of these world-views through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and into our own times. They see-saw back and forth from one age to the other, and then survive in a kind of off-balance tension so that one writer might take one view, and another writer might take another, or neither, or show the conflict evolving in characters who represent one or the other view. One can study works such as Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Eliot's The Waste Land, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and many other works in this light. This can most definitely be seen in Kurtz and Marlow, in the way the one becomes corrupted and the other does not.

[nuxvomica]

26. I've always seen this as St. Patrick vs. St. Augustine

I was not aware of Pelagius, who sounds less likely to be apocryphal than St. Patrick. But St. Patrick's story of being a slave and condemning slavery, and ignoring the licentiousness of the Irish as long as they stopped keeping slaves, is a compelling narrative for framing the divisions in Catholicism. I need to learn more about Pelagius.

[ananda]

61. That's interesting.

Thanks.

[Ligyron]

80. Thanks for this introduction to Pelagius, my new religious hero.

Actually, I reject the religious part but will no doubt embrace the philosophical aspects.

[ananda]

87. Same.

I like Pelagius too.

Being a heretic feels good sometimes, lol.

[BlueNProud]

21. It's personal for most of these lunatics

weren't invited to the parties in high school or college, didn't fit in with the cool kids. Spend the rest if your life exacting revenge,

[hatrack]

22. Revenge, with Gaw-duh on your side

[BlueNProud]

23. I'm serious a lot of these loons felt shunned or like they didn't fit in

and carry rage with them.

[Joinfortmill]

24. Yup.

[llashram]

27. this

and I hope his lesson is quite a lesson in hard truths when it comes to treason and sedition.

And as an aside: As a child St. Francis of Assisi was one of my heroes and he was quite the curmudgeon also.

[malaise]

77. He fooled me with the animals

[llashram]

86. yep, exactly

[Sloumeau]

28. Hawley is a raging idiot.

Hawley is another supposed Christian who seems to have no understanding of the New Testament. Hey Hawley, do you not understand that "Treat others as you would have them treat you" means "Do nice things for people?".

[bucolic_frolic]

31. If you're not conscious and self-aware, what are you? A robot, brain-dead, a tool for overlords.

Easily controlled and exploited. Which is what those who would posit themselves as the ruling class want more than anything.

Divine Right of Kings has nothing on them.

[malaise]

33. It's a control tool

to impose his views on the rest of us. He'd ebtter start a church because his political career is going to crash and soon

[jb5150]

35. Mr. Hawley seems to believe that Sharia law is just fine ...

as long as it's done in the name of the correct deity.

[malaise]

46. Correct is

Right

[dlk]

41. Intolerance on steroids...

And the high level of arrogance that underlies it.

[Jon King]

43. I am sure his mommy and daddy and wifey told him...

that he would be the next Trump but younger and better looking, so he should fully embrace the Trump base and he would eventually be even more popular than Trump. He will learn that was a gross miscalculation.

[RobertDevereaux]

48. Wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagius

[calimary]

54. I'm not sure he'll learn anything from this unless he's ejected from the Senate -

And even that’s a big maybe.

I don’t know if a schmuck like him is capable of it. Probably thinks he’s “Mr. Righteous” or something. Has he denounced any of this? Any of these insurrectionists? Or any of their criminality? Has he recognized one molecule of his own role in planting the seeds of this? Expressed ANY regret?

Same thing for Ted Cruz.

I don’t think they’re reachable - or redeemable - at this point.

[themaguffin]

56. It his root, he is a corrupt grifter. Christianity etc. is a cover

[malaise]

64. Well I'm sure you know my view

When anyone who professes too much comes near me - I lock up the silverware

[LymphocyteLover]

57. what a fucking asshole

just fuck that fucking fuckface

[Paladin]

58. Fucking asshole. I hope his political career is toast. (nt)

[niyad]

63. So josh wants to be the sole arbiter of everyone's choices? He does love authoritarians, does he

not?

So, josh, how is it that you did not join an order? Oh, silly me, then you could not have your chosen lifestyle.

[andym]

65. Actually, his rant against Pelagius was just pandering-- which seems to be Hawley's M.O.

Augustine and the doctrine of the original sin have been considered the mainstream of Catholicism and Protestantism for centuries. Declaring Pelagius a dangerous heretic is Hawley taking a mainstream view and pandering to the religious right.

[Silent3]

70. Even if there is some twisted theological justification behind it all...

...how many lies and compromises made with obvious evil are supposed to be acceptable if the end of these means is establishing your personal ideal of a Godly society?

I don't think that you can get as treacherous and vile as Hawley has without your goals in life having devolved into nothing more than personal ambition and a lust for power. It's hard to imagine that Hawley even bothers to lie to himself anymore that he's on some sort of divine mission.

[sdfernando]

78. Not the best analogy but sounds like religious communism

and handmaidens.

[JHB]

83. So... yet another conservative who insists everyone follow his particular version of religion...

...and and wants to use the powers of the state to enforce it.

And let's note, "his particular version" doesn't even mean "Catholic", just a faction.

[malaise]

85. And they invaded the Legislative buildings fighting for THEIR freedoms

[KayF]

88. I always thought they want to go back to the 50's

turns out they want to go back to 400 A.D.

[malaise]

89. Yep

Unfuckingbelievable

[lilmamba]

90. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and to a certain extent Tom Cotton...

...have to be watched like hawks. They don’t quite have the charisma, mind control capacity, and the unique capability of being able to leverage dog whistles like Donald Trump (yet), but they’re smarter and have many of the qualities Trump’s current nationalistic supporters are looking for.

We can’t afford to have another 4 years of a nationalistic fascist, EVER. Honestly, they do scare me a little bit. Thankfully I think the people of this country are almost on to Ted Cruz’s shtick as a disingenuous opportunist (god he makes my skin crawl).

They have taken seriously as a threat to democracy that they are, and palpable 2024 republican presidential candidates.

[Hekate]

91. KnR