Damned Christians

[Fake Messiah]

TN teacher seeks religious accommodation; LGBTQ books removed

After a teacher objected to using LGBTQ+ material, raising questions about religious accommodations and parental rights, a Tennessee charter school removed more than 20 books from its curriculum.

In February of this year, a first-grade teacher at KIPP Nashville charter school objected to teaching two books featuring same-sex marriage because it conflicted with his religious beliefs. Instead, Eric Rivera asked another teacher in the classroom to read the books.

According to Cliff Martin, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute, the principal threatened Rivera with termination and did not discuss how he could have religious accommodation.

A demand letter from First Liberty attached the final warning Rivera received for choosing not to comply with the material. First Liberty argued Rivera was entitled to an accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and that allowing another teacher to read the books would not create an undue hardship for the school.

Title VII is a federal law under the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

“We believe there are more Eric Riveras that hold up their hand and say, ‘I would prefer not to teach this material’; we believe that schools are eventually going to have to respect them under Title VII,” Martin told The Center Square.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/tennesse...a2582.html


Why is someone a teacher in the first place if he doesn't want to teach?

[The Valkyrie]

TN teacher seeks religious accommodation; LGBTQ books removed

After a teacher objected to using LGBTQ+ material, raising questions about religious accommodations and parental rights, a Tennessee charter school removed more than 20 books from its curriculum.

In February of this year, a first-grade teacher at KIPP Nashville charter school objected to teaching two books featuring same-sex marriage because it conflicted with his religious beliefs. Instead, Eric Rivera asked another teacher in the classroom to read the books.

According to Cliff Martin, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute, the principal threatened Rivera with termination and did not discuss how he could have religious accommodation.

A demand letter from First Liberty attached the final warning Rivera received for choosing not to comply with the material. First Liberty argued Rivera was entitled to an accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and that allowing another teacher to read the books would not create an undue hardship for the school.

Title VII is a federal law under the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

“We believe there are more Eric Riveras that hold up their hand and say, ‘I would prefer not to teach this material’; we believe that schools are eventually going to have to respect them under Title VII,” Martin told The Center Square.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/tennesse...a2582.html


Why is someone a teacher in the first place if he doesn't want to teach?

A conservative christian.

Probably because he wants to be close to little kids. The same reason creepy types want to become "youth pastors".

[Fake Messiah]

Not to mention that no matter how hard these conservative Christians try to ignore homosexuality, it doesn't ignore them.

It's actually kind of hilarious:

[Fake Messiah]

When a pastor preaches cruelty, why does the congregation listen?

Halfway through Netflix's jarring docuseries Death of the Pastor’s Wife, I found myself rewinding a clip to make sure I had heard it correctly. It was that unhinged.

There was John-Paul "JP" Miller, pastor of Solid Rock Church, telling his congregation that a wife who refuses her husband sex is inviting the devil into her marriage. He claimed that withholding intimacy was comparable to rape, sex trafficking, or homosexuality.

He said it as doctrine, as some sort of Bible-based fact, and as justification for his own abhorrent behavior. What stunned me was that members of his congregation sat in the pews and nodded along.

You might think Miller was an outlier. I don’t. I think this type of behavior — pastors exploiting Scripture to justify their predatory actions and manipulate their congregations — is more prevalent than we know.

I was raised deeply Catholic, which included eight years of Catholic school, Mass every Sunday and parents who gave their time and faith to the parish without reservation. My father was a saint and an extraordinarily good man. To a child, the priests who came to our house for dinner were something close to God's stand-ins on earth.

They were revered. You don't question a man you've been taught is incapable of being wrong. After my father died, one of those priests tried to groom me. He made attempts — I'll leave it there — that no child should ever have to describe, let alone survive. Yet on Sundays, he would preach about avoiding sin, following Jesus's word and the dangers of not doing so.

That experience taught me something I wish I hadn't had to learn so young: The vestments, the altar and, most especially, the title — none of it makes a person righteous. It just makes people less likely to ask questions about them.

For years, rumors followed this priest from parish to parish. Whenever they surfaced, he was shipped somewhere else, and the cycle began again.

Yet, on Sundays, people still came to hear him, listen to him and take communion from him. I often wonder why the congregations turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to what was happening.

Watching Miller’s congregation absorb his twisted theology without blinking, I also thought about a close friend from high school in Pittsburgh — someone smart and funny whom I admired — who went on to earn a divinity degree and start a church and youth ministry in Kansas.

Nothing wrong with any of that. But when the anti-LGBTQ+ funding scandal involving Chick-fil-A broke years ago, he didn't just ignore it or remain silent. He became fixated on defending a company funneling money into anti-LGBTQ+ causes.

Among his scores of Facebook followers were kids in the rock bands he sponsored, young people in the youth groups he oversaw and members of a congregation that hung on every word he said on Sundays and beyond.

I thought, too, of cousins of mine who were obsessively plugged into a network of extreme right-wing pastors; one cousin even married one. They would share sermon clips that were less about love and more about condemning people who didn’t think or believe as they did. One of those pastors was later arrested for attempting to solicit sex from a 13-year-old boy.

I share these stories because each happened within my own circle. They are data points, not the findings of an extensive study. And I’d venture to say there are no statistics capable of proving what my gut has told me for a long time.

I have long believed that the structures surrounding these zealot pastors, who stand before a captive, adoring audience every week, create ideal conditions for abuse.

The job itself gives them the room's adoration and attention. They can frame their conduct as God's will and try to prove it by manipulating the Bible or demonizing people whom congregants have already been taught to see as heathens, sex traffickers, rapists and queers.

This is the running theme that connects the white evangelical right to a twice-impeached, twice-divorced, criminally convicted, grifting, demonic president they've decided is God's imperfect vessel. They twist Bible verses into convoluted logic to justify treating him like the second coming.

In doing so, they become just as demonic and just as guilty of sin as he is — as do the pastors who praise him. In essence, Trump is the ultimate abusive pastor, surrounded by a MAGA congregation that thinks he can do no wrong.

The scandal was never just the man behind the pulpit. It's every person willing to sit in the pew and mistake his certainty for God's.

https://www.advocate.com/opinion/jp-mill...ocumentary

[The Grand Nudger]

It doesn't take much twisting. Its not as if a person is going to struggle to find abhorrent excuses for their abhorrent behaviors in magic book. It was written by and for people just like them.

[Fake Messiah]

Pastor branded child in her care a demon, days before he died of abuse

The 11-year-old boy who died last month at a church in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, was found to have been subject to severe abuse by his pastor, who reportedly publicly called him "a demon" while keeping him bound to a bed.

A local broadcaster SBS on Saturday aired a detailed report about the case, in which a 62-year-old pastor and the boy's grandmother are being investigated for child abuse leading to death.

The broadcaster reported that the boy was entrusted to the pastor's care from a very young age, following her like his own mother. But witnesses testified that the child had bruises all over his body when he visited a local store, three days before his eventual death.

The authorities found the boy in critical condition on Aug. 5, and he died hours later due to multiple organ failure. They believe his death was caused by beatings, severe malnutrition and being bound to a bed for 38 hours.

A doctor who saw the boy said he had bruises in unusual places, and said he was wearing a diaper.

The church told media that they had no choice but to tie the boy to a bed, saying he would otherwise leave and cause trouble.

But several members of the church testified that he was a quiet boy who made no trouble during church services.

One member said the pastor mentioned the boy during a sermon, saying he was a demon for reporting her to the police.

But the police did not find evidence that would require immediate separation from the suspects.

Police eventually asked the court for a separation order on Aug. 4, but it was rejected the next day.

https://m.koreaherald.com/article/10863857

[Fake Messiah]

'Loyalty to God': Former MAGA 'tradwife' unravels her 'religious psychosis'

An evangelical MAGA mom from Michigan truly believed that God would provide for her, but then the affordability crisis hit.

The International Business Times pointed to an interview with Stephania Messina, who joined the so-called "trad wife" movement. A world created on social media in which women live "traditional wife" roles such as homemaking, child-rearing and support for their husbands. They post videos romanticizing cooking and homeschooling children. So much of it comes from evangelical Christianity, and in the case of Messina, that's where hers began.

Speaking to The Guardian, Messina explained that she was in the throes of postpartum depression when she got deeper and deeper into her faith. She said that she truly believed, "I don't need to work. I don't need to worry about how I'm going to afford these kids, because God's going to figure it out."

"I took that 100 percent seriously. I was a tradwife," she said.

Her logic was that if she fully submitted to her husband's control, then God would provide financially.

"I don't need to work. I don't need to worry about how I'm going to afford these kids, because God's going to figure it out. If I'm obedient, if I surrender to the leadership of my husband, then God's going to bless me," she said that she believed.

She also started to avoid politics.

"They don't want you knowing about politics. It wasn't my job to vote or to know who to vote for. I was just supposed to submit to my husband and do what he thought was necessary," Messina explained

While she was a supporter of President Donald Trump, it didn't come from him, it came from God. "I never wore a red hat. I never went to a Trump rally. My MAGA was 'Make America Godly Again.' My loyalty wasn't to Trump. My loyalty was to God and the church."

For her, everything changed during the pandemic. Before her tradwife lifestyle, she worked as a respiratory therapist. So, her years of training and expertise, compared to what the president and church leaders were saying, was in complete conflict with everything she'd known.

Then her spouse died in a motorcycle accident. Her pastor's wife called it a "blessing in disguise" because her children wouldn't grow up with a non-Christian influence in their lives.

"After that, I was done," she said.

https://www.alternet.org/evangelical-christianity/

[Fake Messiah]

Christians threaten lawsuit if school doesn’t let parents opt kids out of trans teacher’s class

A right-wing law firm has threatened to sue North Carolina’s Wake County Public School system if it does not allow parents to opt their kids out of a class taught by a transgender teacher.

The Thomas More Society — a prolific Christian nationalist litigator with a history of cases challenging marriage equality, abortion rights, and President Joe Biden’s election in 2020 – sent a letter to the school on September 15 with a list of demands and gave officials 15 days to implement them before it sues.

In addition to allowing parents to opt their kids out, the firm says the school must agree not to discipline students for using incorrect pronouns for the teacher in question and must agree that no employee can retaliate against a student who opts out of the class or other discussions of LGBTQ+ issues.

The letter demanded the school provide formal assurance that faculty and staff will not discuss sexuality and gender identity with students, “except as allowed by state law, and only with prior parental notice and a parental right to opt out of such discussion.” It also said the school must provide written assurance that the trans teacher will not be allowed in restrooms or locker rooms used by students (though schools typically have separate facilities for staff anyway).

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/09/chri...ers-class/

[Fake Messiah]

Marlon James Uncovers Depths of Depravity in Evangelical Christianity

Have we come to the point where our disgust for white Christian nationalism obscures the many poisons and mortal threats routinely generated by standard evangelical Christianity?

I ask this question after being gobsmacked by the astonishing new novel by Marlon James, The Disappearers. James answers the question bluntly: a violence-laden religion that won’t leave you alone, that insists on judging you and changing you—by force if necessary—is an inhuman and criminal religion that does not deserve to be protected or defended, let alone privileged.

Set in James’s native Jamaica, The Disappearers is about many things: colonialism, caste, racism, sexuality, trauma, literature, and much more. But to my mind, the devastating way in which this book demonstrates how militant evangelical Christianity tortures gay people—literally tortures them—is the book’s great gift. And that is saying something in relation to a book New York Times critic Dwight Garner calls “the novel of the decade, if not the century.”

I want you to read this book, so I won’t spoil it for you except to say that it tells the story of a small group of gay men in Kingston who come together in June 1988 to begin rehearsing a performance of “Fortune and Men’s Eyes,” the 1967 play that explores sexual dynamics among male prisoners. The participants understand how dangerous this project is, and sure enough: armed thugs soon descend to beat and brutalize the men during a rehearsal. One man is killed, one has his eyes gouged out, and others are horribly beaten. The survivors start to disappear in various ways, with two seeming to disappear completely, as if into thin air.

James makes it clear that the righteous Christian people of Jamaica view this bloody incident as a good and proper thing. They all agree, and the media and police also report, that the “battymen” (gay men) must have done this to each other, because anything bad that happens to gay people has to be gay people’s own fault. The marauders had stripped the men of their clothing to make it appear that this gathering was planned as a sex orgy, not a play rehearsal.

Yes, I know that the other Abrahamic faiths—Judaism and Islam—also condemn homosexuality. But the others never built a multi-level infrastructure for tormenting queer people that can compare to what Western Christianity constructed and deployed. Recall how white Christian missionaries poured into the global south to teach people of color to obey their masters, to despise their own bodies and repress their natural desires, even as these same proud white Christians reserved the right to rape and torture the objects of their ostensible soul-saving missions. Right here in North America, white Christians created boarding schools designed to “kill the Indian and save the man.” How will there not be crimes against humanity when the would-be disciples of an executed peacemaker turn into primary executioners themselves?

Today the crimes of evangelical Christianity and conservative Catholic Christianity continue unabated. Proud Christians remain the most zealous backers of cruel measures to shut down gender-affirming health care and even to deny that there is any such thing as gender fluidity.

If anyone wonders why the Christian “brand” is now something that nearly all self-respecting young people despise and reject, this kind of Christian criminality is surely the reason.

https://www.laprogressive.com/lgbtq/depr...ristianity

[Fake Messiah]

Christian leaders unite against chemical abortion

In a declaration led by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, Christian leaders are calling on lawmakers to ban the abortion drug mifepristone.

Drafted by a group of more than 30 pastors from around the U.S., the Declaration for Life with Christian Leaders supports pro-life legislation, condemns chemical abortion, and affirms the dignity of unborn children from conception. The four-page declaration has been signed by 100 faith leaders from Missouri as well as 50,000 citizens.

“This Declaration for Life, written by pastors, is calling on everyday Christians across America to stand for life and confront the scourge of chemical abortion,” Hawley stated.

Tony Perkins, who heads the Family Research Council, a national Christian political advocacy group, has been outspoken in his support of the declaration, criticizing the Republican Party’s recent silence on abortion.

“There are Republican members of Congress and state leaders who continue to champion the unborn, but the Republican Party has gone all but silent on the issue of life,” Perkins stated. “The strong pro-life language that was a part of the GOP platform for decades was removed, and little is said about abortion.”

South Korean Catholic bishops are opposing the government’s expansion of abortion pill use, calling it a "disregard for life.”

In response to South Korea’s announcement that it will allow the use of abortion pills through nine weeks of pregnancy, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea (CBCK) released a statement opposing the move.

“The CBCK voices deep concerns as this measure would only institutionalize abortion in an ‘orderly’ manner, without changing its fundamental nature, while allowing a disregard for life to be more deeply rooted in our society,” the bishops stated.

A fall campaign titled “Abortion Victims: Every Abortion Has a Human Cost” by the pro-life group Students for Life of America (SFLA) will span 150 college campuses across the United States.

Educational displays will highlight the victims of abortion and what abortion procedures look like.

The campaign began Sept. 8, near the one-year anniversary of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination on Sept. 10, 2025.

https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/christ...l-abortion