So where did all this right-wing religious nuttery come from?

[marmar]

So where did all this right-wing religious nuttery come from?
Most Americans — and most Christians — don't want religious doctrine dominating our laws. So how did we get here?

By THOM HARTMANN
PUBLISHED JULY 12, 2022 6:30AM


Minneapolis residents Jess and John Pentz — a couple who've been married for 17 years — were traveling through Hayward, Wisconsin, over the Fourth of July weekend when Jess realized she'd forgotten to bring her birth control pills.

They pulled into the local Hayward Walgreens pharmacy, where Jess picked up a box of condoms from a shelf and handed them to the clerk manning the register.

"Manning" seems to be the right verb here: "John," the Walgreens clerk, refused to ring them up.

Jess, confused, asked him why, pointing to the shelf where she'd picked up the condoms.

"We can sell that to you," clerk "John" told Jess with a smirk, "but I won't because of my faith."

....(snip)....

The vast majority of Americans, opinion research shows, think a situation like this is absurd. As Jennifer Brooks notes in an article about the Pentzes' experience for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

When the Pew Research Center surveyed American attitudes about birth control, just 4% viewed contraception as morally wrong. Condoms protect us from disease and prevent unwanted pregnancies. What's not to like?

And what's so astonishing about the entire situation is that we have reached this point not because the American public wants religious doctrine running our law, and not because most religious people agree with an arrogant prick working at Walgreens.

....(snip)....

But hating on unions, taxes and the environment — and loving on guns — wasn't enough to reliably win elections over the long run. They needed a larger bullhorn, a way of reaching into the lives of additional tens of millions of American voters who really didn't much care about those issues.

That's where Jerry Falwell and his friends came into the picture. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/12/so-where-did-all-this-right-wing-religious-nuttery-come-from_partner/

[Turbineguy]

1. The idiots used to be quiet.

Now they get famous for their stupidity.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Onward Christian Soldiers

for those who haven't stepped foot in a church since age 7

[DavidDvorkin]

3. It's been with us from the early colonial period

The religious nuts always wanted to control America. Their influence has waxed and waned throughout our history.

[NEOBuckeye]

4. Revoke the tax-exempt status for all politically-active churches and religious orgs.

That will shut these fuckers down fast.

[lees1975]

8. I agree completely.

The key word here is "politically active." Tax exemption is on the government side of the wall of separation which Jefferson called the establishment clause of the constitution. Churches have free speech, but the establishment clause clearly defines its limits and if they want the government out of their affairs, they have to stay out of the government which means that churches and denominations, as groups, can't step into politics because that is an influence which leads to "respecting the establishment of religion." Taxing churches would not violate their free speech, it would just change their status.

For most of those who are engaged in politics, they could not care less about their faith or Christian theology or doctrine or the Bible. Those are just the means of hanging on to the support of the people in the pew. For most of the politically active Evangelical "leaders," doctrine isn't on the radar screen, money and power is what they are after. The same kind of leadership has done this to the church for most of its existence. If it were a matter of doctrinal integrity and theological principle, the five Catholic justices on the Supreme Court would have been virulently opposed by all Evangelicals because they are members of a church that the conservatives say is completely apostate, and is the "whore of Babylon", headed by an anti-Christ pope. And Mitt Romney would likely not ever have been nominated by the GOP without Evangelical support because he is a Mormon. One of the easiest positions to establish, by hundreds of books and statements by "Evangelical leaders" is their belief that Mormonism is an anti-Christian, satanically inspired cult, existing to deliberately deceive people into the very gates of hell. And why would you support someone like Trump, who openly flouted his sinfulness, including claiming to have had affairs on his three wives with "hundreds" of women, who bashes Christians as "suckers" at his rallies and gets away with it because most of them know so little about their faith that they don't recognize the bashing, and who claims he doesn't need God to forgive him.

And this is from someone who is Christian. More than anything else over the centuries, the temptation to power and influence, and the money that goes along with it, has corrupted the church.

[lees1975]

5. Like most other American social and cultural instutitions, it is about money

and that article in Salon nails it.

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/07/why-i-am-christian-who-votes-for.html

[Wednesdays]

6. It was Engel v. Vitale that started it all

I attended a fundie church for about a year in the 1970's, and all they talked about was how "they don't allow prayer in schools" (the 1962 Engel ruling deemed it unconstitutional). That galvanized the fundamentalists, and then Roe poured gas on that fire.

[nancy1942]

7. Jesus and John Wayne

I recommend this book. Very interesting explanation of the right-wing evangelical movement and how it operates.

[spike jones]

13. Just for fun, Come on back jesus and pick up john wayne on the way.

[link:

|

[usonian]

9. A collusion of manipulators.

"Christians in name only" weaponizing religion,
Oligarchs
Politicians "Keeping racism alive and profitable"
Russians. They took over for the old guard conservatives.

All for money and power. Big surprise?

This article is really to the point.
Christian Nationalism & America’s Struggle with Identity
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/2/2049677/-Cabal-1-Christian-Nationalists-amp-Their-Ideology

Explainers in more detail, but less than a book!

“Democracy in Crisis: We’ve Been Headed Here for Decades.” Part 1of 8
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/6/2044226/-America-2021-The-Good-the-Bad-the-Ugly
Read all 8 to get the "plan" in detail.
This is all a Russian plan. Started years ago.
https://pastebin.com/raw/evbnN5y7

[Midnight Writer]

10. Kevin Kruse has a great book out tracing the rise of the religious right since Eisenhower.

[werdna]

11. Hey, Thom Hartman!

Thanks for articulating my own personal observations and sharing them with the public at large! Dems, liberals and progressives need to saddle up and ride this horse through the media studios and interviews as often as possible. A couple of points: 1) riches being a sign of God’s blessing has been in the American culture since the merchant class entered the Puritan societies established by the earliest colonists in New England. Let’s not credit this as an original thought from the conservative think tanks. 2) Part of the marriage between political conservatives and the fundamental, evangelical religions, was the deliberate infiltration of those religious entity’s governance boards to replace liberal Christian theology — we are the shepherds and protectors of God’s creation — with end times theology — Jesus’s 2nd coming is nigh, and after the rapture/armageddon Jesus will reign for an era and then the Earth will be no more; so why bother with the expense and trouble of taking care of God’s creation?

[Mc Mike]

12. The birchers created all the right wing loony sects, because mainline protestantism wasn't an apt

enough tool for fascism. Pro-nazi catholics created opus dei.

[lees1975]

14. Opus Dei is just a recent American creation of a long standing Catholic belief

that the church is destined to rule the world through the papacy. General term for this is Integralism. It lines up with Evangelical dominion theology, reconstructionism and seven mountains/Kingdom now dominionism.

[peppertree]

15. +1

And that, right there, is as good a nutshell history of the modern right as you might ever read.

[lees1975]

16. It has a long history

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/07/a-pseudo-christian-cult-is-endangering.html