Saturday, April 15th, 2017
Stephan A. Schwartz, Editor - The Schwartzreport
Stephan: There is a trend going on throughout the country, centered in Red value states; a trend which threatens the fundamental structure of the United States. I am speaking here about the growing linkage between the Republican Party and a new form of Christianity, and the effort to breech the firewall separating church and state, as Thomas Jefferson named the policy.
The Founders wrote the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment specifically to keep church and state apart. Now there is a very conscious and aggressive attempt to undo that foundational principle. Most of this never makes it into major media, which is unfortunate, and even when a story does surface, it is only here and there and there is no real coherent narrative context.
I have been following this for years now, seeing it grow as a trend. So today I am devoting the entire edition to this issue, and to illustrate how strong this trend is, I have picked stories all of which came to light within the last week.
-- Stephan
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Saturday, April 15th, 2017
Kali Holloway, Associate Editor and Senior Writer - Alternet
Stephan: The men who created the United States almost to a person felt quite passionately about the separation of church and state. Why? Perhaps because each of them, or their immediate forebears, had experienced life under a system -- the United Kingdom -- where church and state were one. The monarch was, and remains to this day, the head of both, although the relationship is largely vestigial today. Several states, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania for example, were founded specifically in opposition to this conjoining. But as the U.K. has moved away from linking church and state, in the U.S. the Republican Party is attempting to move in the opposite direction; to breach the founders' firewall. Am I exaggerating? Try this on and see what you think.
Credit: Shutterstock/Creatista
A church in Alabama is well on its way to having its own police force. On Tuesday, Alabama state senators voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that would allow Briarwood Presbyterian in suburban Birmingham to have its own cops. Now the proposed legislation heads to the desk of Governor Kay Ivey, who was sworn in days ago after Robert Brentley resigned in disgrace over a sex scandal.
Alabama SB 193 is sponsored by Republican Majority Leader J.T. “Jabo” Waggoner, who has represented the district for nearly 30 years, making him one of the longest-serving and most powerful senators in the state legislature. The bill would endow the church with the power to “appoint and employ one or more persons to act as police officers,” and would give members of the church police department “all of the powers of law enforcement officers in this state.”
Spokesperson Matt Moore said in a recent statement that Briarwood Presbyterian needs its own armed police force to protect its 4,100 parishioners, as well as its on-site K-12 […]
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Saturday, April 15th, 2017
Jack Brammer, Reporter - Lexington Herald-Leader
Stephan: Kentucky is a state whose citizens enjoy a lifespan five years less than people in Alaska, or Hawaii. A state with a high poverty rate, poor education outcomes, and a host of other problems. Is that what the Republican dominated legislature is working on? Of course not; they have much more pressing issues to deal with, like linking state laws to "Christianity." Gotta keep your priorities straight.
Kentucky state legislature and State Sen. Albert Robinson, R-London, sponsored the Senate resolution to add the phrase “The Year of Our Lord” to legislative documents.
Credit: Legislature Research Commission
FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY — On the last day of this year’s legislative session, the Senate and House quietly approved resolutions to make sure their documents are dated with the phrase “in the Year of Our Lord.”
“It’s important for us to go back to the basics of our U.S. and state constitutions that used that phrase. I’m also trying anywhere and everywhere I can to respect our creator,” said state Sen. Albert Robinson, R-London, who sponsored the Senate measure.
Both measures, House Resolution 218 and Senate Resolution 294, were approved by voice vote in the final hours of the 2017 General Assembly on March 30.
The resolutions say the House and Senate shall include “in the Year of our Lord” in the adopted date of all the chambers’ simple resolutions and floor citations.
The resolutions note that the phrase is found in the U.S. […]
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Saturday, April 15th, 2017
Jason Hancock, - The Kansas City Star
Stephan: As this report describes, "Missouri’s constitution states no money 'shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion.' It goes on to say that no grant or donation shall ever be made by 'the state, or any county, city, town, or other municipal corporation, for any religious creed, church, or sectarian purpose whatever.'”
Does that matter to Republican Governor Eric Greitens? Certainly not. Consistent with the general Republican effort he is doing everything he can to link church and state, through using public monies to fund church activities. Here's the story.
“We have hundreds of outstanding religious organizations all over the state of Missouri who are doing great work on behalf of kids and families every single day,” Gov. Eric Greitens said Thursday in a statement. “We should be encouraging that work.”
Credit: Joe Ledford
JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI — Republican Gov. Eric Greitens announced Thursday that he is reversing a state policy aimed at preventing tax dollars from being used to aid religious groups.
Greitens’ decision comes a week before the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer. The lawsuit challenges a 2012 decision by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to deny the Columbia church a grant to replace the gravel on its playground with softer, safer material.
The request was denied because an amendment in Missouri’s constitution states no money “shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion.” It goes […]
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Saturday, April 15th, 2017
Molly Worthen, - The New York Times
Stephan: The Republican Party is essentially White and Christian, but Christian means something quite different than it did 50 years ago. For much of the last five centuries Christian thinkers led the way in compassionate social policies and science. But, beginning with radio in the 20th century when fundamentalist radio preachers embraced the new technology as early adapters, something happened to Christianity. Today it represents a worldview in which facts are not only not dispositive, they are viewed as heretical and anti-Christian, and to be avoided.
The growing linkage of church and state within the Republican worldview means that the anti-fact postures of the "Christian" fundamentalist movement are now reflected in the views and postures of the Republican Party. Here is a good assessment of the process, and where it has left us.
Credit: Alex Webb/Magnum Photos
The arrival of the “post-truth” political climate came as a shock to many Americans. But to the Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, charges of “fake news” are nothing new. “The deep distrust of the media, of scientific consensus — those were prevalent narratives growing up,” she told me.
Although Ms. Evans, 35, no longer calls herself an evangelical, she attended Bryan College, an evangelical school in Dayton, Tenn. She was taught to distrust information coming from the scientific or media elite because these sources did not hold a “biblical worldview.”
“It was presented as a cohesive worldview that you could maintain if you studied the Bible,” she told me. “Part of that was that climate change isn’t real, that evolution is a myth made up by scientists who hate God, and capitalism is God’s ideal for society.”
Conservative evangelicals are not the only ones who think that an authority trusted by the other side […]
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