From Pine View Farm

Establishmentarians 0

At the Kansas City Star, professors Victoria Johnson and Karen Piper take a look at the unholy alliance between right-wing evangelical they-call-themselves Christians and today’s Republican Party. Here’s a brief bit of their piece:

The use of politicized war rhetoric has been increasing in the U.S., and this tendency is not occurring on “both sides” of the political spectrum. Aside from Donald Trump’s recent use of the word “vermin” to dehumanize opponents, of equal importance is the proliferation of harshly degrading rhetoric coming from religious leaders targeting anyone who opposes Trump. This tendency results from the intermeshing over the last four decades of the Republican Party with fundamentalist Christian churches — many of which view the world through a lens of good or evil, and claim that their interpretation of the Bible is the absolute truth. This fusion emerged from political mobilization through churches to support Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and has grown since then.

Fundamentalists within many religions believe their interpretations are the absolute truth, and that those who oppose their claims to speak for God are characterized as evil and must be converted or destroyed. Such religious beliefs are used to maintain authoritarian political control today in theocracies such as Iran and Afghanistan, and supported the legitimacy of past monarchies in France and Great Britain through the “divine right of kings” — which is one reason America’s Founding Fathers were adamant about the separation of church and state.

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