15 Comments

This makes SO MUCH SENSE! It is not just the united States and it never has been. We are just the last to understand it.

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You are one of a handful of people who, if you recommend a book, especially on your topic of expertise, I read it without question.

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Those within the walls of White Christian Nationalism are trapped in a mindset impervious to reality ... it's incredibly sad to me, and alarming; in this digital age, all of these various streams of poison are connecting. Thanks for this fine, and utterly disturbing, interview ...

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Yes, with each chapter, my heart sank a little more.

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Amazing how this ideology is spreading so fast with new communication tools. Lord help us.

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Yes!!!! In Texas, I call them oligarchs. Billionaires preachers. They are running the political agenda not the representatives and Senators. The schools and libraries are being dominated. They are putting religious Bible studies into textbooks and curriculum. Bible verses on the walls in the schools.

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Kristin-Thank you so much for sharing this. As you know, I’ve been observing the same patterns for the past several years. As I told you, what I see/saw happening has seemed much more coordinated, deliberate, and hateful than many might imagine. I plan to read this book. Thank you again!

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Wow thank you

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My thoughts today after honoring our veterans on D Day, and a former president convicted of corruption. I believe the Body of Christ; the churches of the United States are at an inflection point.

A pimp is the lower than the prostitute, and the pimp exerts violence and all sorts of evil to control the prostitute. I referenced Matthew 18:5-7, the night I confronted the sex traffickers.

In my world there are billionaire pimps such as Elon Musk, Spiritual pimps whom Jesus referred to in Matthew 23, and political pimps.

When I worked in my family business. There were these two German Lutheran sisters who were in a Hitler train with their parents. Their parents died and their bodies were pushed out of a moving train.

A Hungarian woman would bring me a loaf of bread on the anniversary of the day she was liberated from the concentration camp.

Then there was Jewish Sam Bernstein. He locked his keys in his car, so I drove him to his condo to pick up his extra set of keys. He invited me in, and he showed me these old black and white photographs hanging on the wall. His father managed to save his family and he brought his family from Warsaw, Poland. Very few Jewish people who lived in Warsaw survived Hitler. Sam became a Captain in the army and went back to fight Hitler.

Hitler was serving a prison sentence and came back into power. There was the church who supported Hitler, the church who was Lukewarm and did nothing and the church who opposed Hitler.

Donald Trump is a dangerous political pimp who has recruited many Republican political pimps. This week the coalition of political pimps, spiritual pimps and billionaire pimps have built a coalition to get Trump elected by any means necessary. The rich church in Revelation didn’t need God.

The homeless people will be put in camps if Trump wins. The fastest growing group of homeless are people over 60 years old especially woman.

I have Jesus’s words in my heart from Matthew 24. Watch out that no one deceives you. But see to it you are not alarmed.

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It is very nerve-racking to live through this anti-gay backlash as a gay person. Feels like I’m waiting to see how bad things get. Like I’m sitting my house with my emergency radio and canned food waiting for the hurricane to pass or something. I would say LOL but it’s not really a LOL situation. :/

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> looking exclusively on the U.S. will provide increasingly less insight into how the US Christian Right is evolving. <

Bingo.

Lots of American Christians want for America what they see in Hungary and Russia, and want for The Church In America what they see Hungarian and Russian church groupings ¿enjoying?...

True for many years now. Antidisestablishmentarianism is no dead letter. Not there, not here. Can we say cryptoantidisestablishmentarianism?

My first religious affiliation was the Jehovah's Witnesses. (I was a kid, and following the lead of my mother's sudden interest in them, but I was into it on my own and not doing it to please her.) For many, many decades they have been far ahead of even today's Christian Right about thinking of themselves as a global movement in the here and now. The Watchtower was and is published in an incredible number of languages. But I have never seen a sign that even one JW anywhere has ever come anywhere near thinking that faith in God means "helping" God by taking rule over the earth here and now so that the people with (the right kind of) faith in (the right kind of) God can be nicely in charge ASAP so that then Jesus can come right away if he wants 'cause before we do that he can't, he just can't, can't, can't, it's all right there in the contract if you will only properly understand the Book of Daniel etc. etc. etc., so hurry up and rule over the earth, by any means necessary. Do it for God. Poor little God. Poor little God needs you to be big boss guy over his earth that he made, so that then his being big boss guy over you means he is finally properly big boss guy over his own earth in the way that he really wants and that you really want.

🙄

My church is just now getting serious about countering Christian nationalism, and is so far letting that term blind them to the fact that what's involved is more a Christianist Internationale. Thanks so much for this early tip-off about Faith In Democracy -- I suspect my church will find it helpful.

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For me, all this boils down to FEAR. We all have a huge and imperative responsibility to take a deep breath when we feel afraid of change or new things or things we don't like. I'm not referring to real fear of violence or physical harm, but rather irrational fear of the world changing, our world changing.

Change is inevitable; suffering is optional (as is knee-jerk pig-headedness and "othering".)

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Thank you for posting that excellent interview with Lo Moscolo.. What, if any, are the similarities between this current movement in Germany and the highly Christianized Germany that supported Hitler and enabled the Holocaust?

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Thank you, Kristin. I am always late to getting to things. Life is a bit overwhelming atm.

My life in church ministry began in 1979 when I told a couple buddies in a hot tub conversation in Campbell, CA that I was “going to go into the ministry but did not want to make a lot of money or become famous”. After the Newtown Shootings in 2012 I hastily prepared U2’s “Peace On Earth” for my worship leaders to sing in Sunday morning services replacing the names of Irish children in the song with names of children killed in the Connecticut shootings that Friday. . . I was asked to resign because “my style was no longer accepted by the congregation”, gave a final message, and left the church a week before Easter in March of 2013. . . . I have been trying to figure out what the “heck/suck” happened these years since. . . . I remain passionately committed to Jesus and to a vision for the thriving of all Creation, all Creatures, and all Humanity.

What impact, in the US and Internationally, has Doug Coe, Doug Burliegh and the secretive “Family” and National Prayer Breakfast had in this rise of the Christian Right globally? . . . I began my career with Young Life. Discovering The Family connections to YL leadership these past years helped me understand my battles during my years of work in that organization.

SO GREATLY appreciate your work! (I own a first printing of "Jesus and John Wayne”! Got it from Byron at Hearts and Minds Books!!

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As a French-Canadian who resided in Switzerland for many years as a missionary with Youth With A Mission, collaborating with European charismatics who looked to the US for theological, cultural, and political cues, I am elated to see that the transnational nature of religious nationalism is getting greater attention. We ignore the vast networks that fuel the global Christian Right at our own peril.

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