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Why are Christians always so eager to break the law for Jesus?
Quote:Fayette County middle school of unconstitutional acts
In a news release, the Freedom From Religion Foundation said a community member informed them that two pastors from Southern Heights Baptist Church have been “proselytizing” students at Jessie Clark Middle School by letting them lead the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter.
According to the foundation, Southern Heights Baptist Church made a social media post saying that “three students gave their lives to Christ” during an FCA meeting.
“Additionally, the middle school named one of the pastors a ‘character coach’ for the middle school lacrosse team,” the foundation said, “apparently to encourage ‘growth in character, leadership and faith as they develop as athletes and individuals.’”
FFRF claims that these actions are unlawful, violating the First Amendment and the Equal Access Act.
“It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for the district to allow staff members or an outside adult to lead a religious club for students, FFRF emphasizes,” the foundation said. “Public schools may not show favoritism toward, or coerce, belief in or participation in religion.”
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
Inside Christian nationalists’ war on religious freedom
Earlier this year, a presidential commission staffed almost entirely by conservative Christians urged Americans to rethink the separation of church and state and build “bridges” between them. Last week, the Department of Justice directed federal agencies to expand protections for religious expression in public employment, military service, education, healthcare and federal contracting.
These policies reflect the influence of Christian nationalism, a movement predicated on the belief that the United States is divinely chosen,” the New Testament should shape government policies, and white Christians should dominate American culture.
In a compelling new book, “No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy From Christian Nationalism,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the only self-declared Humanist in Congress, chronicles the movement’s rise and documents its great and growing impact on American politics.
For decades, Christian nationalists sought influence within the Republican Party. Presidents Reagan and Bush talked the talk, but largely accepted the traditional constitutional framework regarding church-state relations. But as traditional churches and denominations began to shrink in the 1990s, “independent charismatic ministries” expanded. The New Apostolic Reformation, a network of evangelical leaders, maintained that America was a Christian nation under siege by secular elites, including “demons” who must be “vanquished.”
Alongside The New Apostolic Reformation, two other influential strands of conservative Christianity — radical traditionalist Catholics and the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches — emerged. Although differing in theology and tactics, all three claim that God has chosen Christians to run the country.
Most Republicans are adherents or sympathizers; 55 percent of them “embrace ‘dominion’ theology,” and more than 60 percent “want America to be officially declared a Christian nation.”
What’s more, many believe God anointed Donald Trump to save the country. Pillars of the MAGA movement, they helped elect him president. Legions of Christian nationalists, Huffman reveals, participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump has pledged to defend Christianity from the “radical left” and “root out anti-Christian bias.” He formed a task force to investigate the “targeting” of Christians, promoting the false narrative that the country’s dominant religious group is being systematically persecuted.
Trump also established a White House Faith Office, led by a pastor who called the “Black Lives Matter” movement “anti-Christ” and insisted Jesus would not have been the Messiah had he broken immigration laws. The office is part of a broader effort to bring “a renewal of faith in our schools, military, workplaces, hospitals, and halls of government.”
A principal architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought has recommended addressing the problems of a “too secular” America by criminalizing pornography; using biblical definitions of gender, marriage and family; and making the Christian Sabbath a government-enforced day of rest. As director of the Office of Management and Budget, Vought has fused notions of presidential power with his explicitly Christian vision of national renewal.
Christian nationalism also runs rampant on Capitol Hill, where, as Huffman points out, “a ministry-industrial complex” composed of “faith leaders, religious networks, advocacy groups, and a steady wave of religious programs” seeks “to embed right-wing Christian influence in government and manifest biblical dogma into policy.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), for example, dismisses the separation of church and state as a “misnomer,” considers the Bible “an appropriate course of study in our public schools,” and advocates “biblically sanctioned government.” Johnson opposes same-sex marriage, considers homosexual relationships “sinful” and denigrates no-fault divorce.
The danger is clear. Liberal democracy rests on the premise that citizens of every faith — and the approximately 28 percent of American adults who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” — stand as equals before the law. When government defines national identity in explicitly Christian terms, it marginalizes religious minorities, weakens constitutional protections for dissent, and transforms political disagreement into heresy.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
Father, Son, and the Holy State: A Look At Putin’s Relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church
The Patriarch framed Putin’s political authority as sanctioned by the Lord. “God put you in power,” Kirill stated, “so that you could perform a service of special importance and of great responsibility for the fate of the country and the people entrusted to your care.”
Religious faith has become a political instrument––another method of advancing propaganda and encouraging submissiveness regarding Putin’s regime and the war in Ukraine. The operation of the Orthodox Church in contemporary Russian society serves as a case study for the adoption of a religious institution as a state body, and has resulted in a descent into nationalistic fundamentalism.
Orthodoxy has been instrumental to the construction of Russian nationalism since the Imperial days, dating all the way back to the 19th-century Tsar Nicholas I’s doctrine of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality." The only period of exception came with the 1917 October Revolution, which saw religion outlawed under the Bolshevik Party.
The post-Soviet religious reawakening permeated the private and public spheres. From 1991 to 2008, the number of Slavic Russians who identified as Orthodox Christians rose from 31% to 72%. Moreover, the 1990s saw the development of a burgeoning partnership between the Moscow Patriarchate––the largest and most influential denomination of the Russian Orthodox Church––and the newly formed Russian Federation. A series of agreements were signed to expand the Orthodox Church’s presence in Russia.
In 2012, as Putin faced protests and backlash for corrupting elections to secure a third-term as president, Kirill openly backed Putin and called him a “miracle of God” that had saved the country from the “systemic crisis” of the 90s. He also leveraged his authority as a religious leader to further his point: “I should say it openly as a patriarch who must only tell the truth, not paying attention to the political situation or propaganda, you personally played a massive role in correcting this crooked twist of our history.”
Kirill has also closely aligned himself with Putin when it comes to his stance on the LGBTQ+ community. Russia’s “gay propaganda” law was passed in 2013, penalizing any “individuals, businesses, and organizations that disseminate information that can be perceived as “normalizing” same-sex relationships.” A pattern emerges in these examples that is telling of Kirill and Putin’s relationship: the former provides potent, extremist religious rhetoric that justifies the latter’s oppressive and authoritarian methods.
Perhaps most relevant to the ongoing war in Ukraine is Patriarch Kirill’s adoption of the doctrine of the Russkiy mir, which directly translates to the “Russian world.” The “Russian world,” in essence, is a nationalistic myth, which contends that there is a great Russian civilization uniting Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. Sometimes this narrative even extends beyond to other territories with a significant Russian-speaking population, such as Kazakhstan and Moldova. The assertion that these independent states should actually be incorporated under a single Russian banner diminishes the sovereignty of these peoples. The “Russian world” claims to stand for traditional values that contrast a corrupt West that is always looking to attack Russia. It is unsurprising that, following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and initiation of a proxy war in the Donbas, both Kirill and Putin regurgitated the myth of the Russkiy mir to sanction these imperialist actions.
It is hardly surprising that the Russian Orthodox church fully committed itself to spreading fundamentalist and nationalistic propaganda in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, taking into account all of this context. Shortly following the invasion, Kirill pronounced Russia’s attack against Ukraine to be a “Holy War.” The rhetoric of the Russkiy mir has unsurprisingly been weaponized in full force by both church and state. Religious practice within the Russian Orthodox Church has become inseparable from support of state violence. Patriarch Kirill introduced a prayer for God’s strength to aid in a victory against Ukraine, and mandated it to be recited at every Mass. He also claimed that any soldier who died while fighting in Ukraine would be considered an act of sacrifice, referring to the Christian understanding of the term embodying a total acceptance of God and the atonement of sins. In a Christmas speech earlier this year, Putin compared Russian soldiers to Jesus Christ, praising them for their would-be heroic sacrifices and for “saving the Motherland and its people.”
The Russian Orthodox Church has reached an apogee in its relationship with Putin’s state, propagating and justifying the regime’s violence. But to categorize such a trend as being wholly unique to Russia would be a mistake. Even in America––where the boundaries between church and state have historically been well-defined––the current Trump administration has been following the same playbook, making good on their 2024 campaign promise to “bring back Christianity.” Recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth invoked religious language to frame the war in Iran as “divinely sanctioned” and as following “God’s almighty providence,” and called on Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
This appeal to a Christian faith directly parallels Kirill and Putin’s framing of the war in Ukraine. The story of how the Russian Orthodox Church became an institution devoted to an authoritarian state is not a miraculous exception, but an omniscient warning.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
Police urge residents to stay home as ‘Christian Crusader March’ looms
As anti-Islam protesters allegedly plan to come to next week's city council meeting in Dearborn, police are telling residents that it's best to just avoid them.
"Please stay home. These groups that are coming here are coming for one reason, and that is to provoke a reaction and generate attention. If nobody shows up to react, they have nothing," Dearborn Police Chief Issa Shahin said in a video.
Dearborn police say they will have an "enhanced presence" at the Aug. 18 city council meeting and a comprehensive plan to ensure everyone's safety.
The message from Shahin comes as groups of people, allegedly led by Jake Lang, may be planning on coming to Dearborn next Tuesday. Lang has visited Dearborn before and was seen walking around the streets and going to city council meetings, shouting Islamophobic rhetoric and harassing residents.
"He (Lang) needs to get out of here, if I'm being completely honest, he needs to get out of here," Dearborn resident Zayne Whitson told CBS Detroit.
On Wednesday, Dearborn City Councilmember Kamal Alsawafy said, "Everybody is entitled to their First Amendment rights, but there's a difference between expressing an opinion and deliberately coming into a community to provoke people because of their faith."
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
