Lyman Stone, Regional Population Economics Researcher - VOX
Stephan: Several readers have written to ask me why I seem to feel so strongly about the transformation of Christianity in the United States from what used to be known as mainline, the Christianity of my youth, to what I have come to think of as the fundamentalist Christian cult, and its linkage to conservative Republican politics. A cult that obsessively invokes Jesus yet whose actions and attitudes are antithetical to His teachings.
So today's in today's edition I have decided to focus on some of these elements.
Fundamentalism, as I have said before, is the same regardless of the religious sect. It always has the same elements: 1) a sense of superiority, judgment, and self-righteousness, 2) a sense of persecution 3) sexual dysfunction 4) an obsessive need to subordinate and control the half of the population that have vaginas. Fundamentalism also correlates with an overactive right amygdala and conservative politics.
So we will start today with the the transition itself.
Mainline church
In April, the New York Times’s Ross Douthat wrote a column arguing — appropriately for a Sunday opinion piece — that liberals need to go to church. More specifically, he argued: “The wider experience of American politics suggests that as liberalism de-churches it struggles to find a nontransactional organizing principle, a persuasive language of the common good.”
For a theologically confessional Lutheran and politically conservative Republican like me, this is an interesting suggestion. How much of the cultural and political change we have observed in the past 20 years can be explained by the quiet death of the “mainlines”?
For readers not familiar with Christian denominational classifications, “mainline” is the term that students of American religious life use to refer to more theologically or politically liberal white-majority churches. Since Sunday morning remains America’s most segregated hour, experts separate “historically black Protestant” churches into their own group, and then divide the white churches into various segments.
Mainline churches today remain diverse but tend to share a cluster of overlapping values: They may endorse […]
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TOM BOGGIONI, Raw Story - The Raw Story/Newsweek
Stephan: About once a week now I see an account of some pastor being arrested for inappropriate sex, usually with children. In the social science research community there is an emerging sense that the Christofascist cult, fundamentalist Protestantism, is beginning to show the same child molestation issues as have plagued Roman Catholicism.
Pastor Chad Robison
Florida authorities have arrested a former youth pastor after a co-worker found hundreds of thousands of sexual-oriented pictures and videos of young girls on his laptop — including some he secretly filmed in his bathroom.
According to FOX13, 36-year-old Chad Robison was the music director at Seven River Presbyterian in Lecanto, Florida, when the co-worker stumbled upon the stash of videos and photos before alerting church authorities and law enforcement.
On Thursday, Robison was charged with three counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition with a victim less than 16 years of age, one count of knowingly promoting sexual performance by a child, and three counts of ‘video voyeurism’ for his own use.
According to Citrus County Sheriff Mike Prendergast, “On his personal laptop we have more than 3,000 videos and 350,000 photographs that our detectives have combed thru. I want to emphasize this is a textbook case of an online sexual predator.”
Authorities state that Robison engaged with younger girls in video chat rooms, encouraging them to expose themselves while he recorded the […]
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Catherine Armecin, - INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES
Stephan: Note the connection with the Quiverfull movement, a movement that believes girls need only minimal education, that they must subordinate themselves first to their fathers and then to their husbands. Their only real function, this all from the websites devoted to this movement -- is to have a quiverfull of children for the cult.
But, of course, as with all fundamentalist movements in its followers, because of the extreme moral judgments in conflict with their actual personalities human sexuality is profoundly distorted. Stories like this are the result.
Quiverfull father and ‘The Willis Family’ star Toby Willis was arrested and charged with raping an underage girl
Credit: Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
Former TLC star Toby Willis pleaded guilty to child rape.
Willis was the patriarch of TLC’s former reality show “The Willis Family.” On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to four counts of rape and was sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment, Peoplereported.
Julie Hibbs, the circuit court clerk in Cheatham County, Tennessee explained that Willis received a 25-year sentence for two counts of rape and 40-year sentence for the other two counts. The four sentences will run concurrently and will be served in their entirety. So, Willis will only be in prison for 40 years.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation started investigating Willis, 47, in August 2016 for sexual abuse involving an underage girl. The incident happened 12 years earlier when the girl was only between 9 and 12 years old.
Willis left his home in Ashland City to escape the law enforcement. He fled to Greenville Kentucky but was arrested on Sept. 9, 2016. […]
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Dante Chinni, Research Adviser - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: This is how this new form of 'Christianity" plays out politically. And Trump was right, I think. He could shoot someone point blank on 5th Avenue, and this cohort either wouldn't believe it, thinking the media was lying, or wouldn't care. The reality of this community is not fact based.
In most other types of counties across the U.S., Trump’s job approval is net negative, with the strongest pockets of disapproval coming from the nation’s biggest cities and the dense urban suburbs around them.
While poll data consistently show the president earning well-short of majority job approval nationally, the community-level picture is more nuanced. Trump faces stiff opposition in some places, but in others he continues to be evaluated more positively than negatively.
The list has a fairly clear demographic underpinning.
The counties that support Trump are numerically extensive, but tend to be much more rural. Taken together, the 1,349 counties that make up his strongest base of support — Rural Middle America, Evangelical Hubs, Working Class Country and LDS Enclaves — are home to about 35 million potential voters. By themselves, the 47 Big Cities counties hold about 59 million.
Trump’s base counties also tend to have median household incomes below the national figure of about $56,000.
The counties in which Trump faces his strongest opposition are generally the most densely populated places in the country, including the Big Cities and Urban Suburbs. These […]
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Saturday, July 15th, 2017
Stephan: This report spells out the true level of Republican scumbuggery, demonstrating in real terms the moral depravity of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence and the other Republican congressional leaders. This is American government today, and I am ashamed that I have to say that.
Republican 2017 Congress leadership
A new amendment to the House Republicans’ ObamaCare replacement bill exempts members of Congress and their staff from its effects. (emphasis added)
The new changes to the bill would allow states to apply for waivers for certain ObamaCare provisions, such as a ban on insurers charging premiums based on a customer’s health and the requirement that insurers’ basic health plans cover certain services, like prescription drugs and mental health.
The GOP amendment exempts members of Congress and their staffs to ensure that they will still be protected by those ObamaCare provisions.
The exemption was flagged by health law professor Tim Jost.
Democrats quickly jumped on the development, arguing that Republicans are willing to take away protections for the general public, but not themselves.
“The best evidence yet that the new GOP repeal plan is a disaster for people’s health care is that the GOP exempted members of Congress from living under it,” said Leslie Dach, director of the Protect Our Care Campaign, one of the main groups fighting repeal.
Rep. Thomas […]
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