The religious wingnut plan to take over the government by recruiting politicians who would lie about being born again Christians is nothing new. Pat Robertson came up with it in the eighties, as a matter of fact. It was not Christian then, it was Christian nationalist and there is a big big difference. But Eric Trump doesn’t know that, or at least he gets paid to say something different, and he stepped in it big time today. This is where it all began.
“During the 1980’s I began taping and transcribing Pat Robertson’s 700 Club show because of the alarming anti-Christian political philosophy he was endorsing. He began a drum beat for drastic political and cultural changes to this country.
Robertson’s guests did something I’d never seen before: they reversed the scriptures and called it immoral for the citizens to help the poor through taxation, which, by the way is expressly required in the Old Testament. The accusation was and is that taxation robbed the rich to help the poor.
If you are interested in how the movement reversed Judeo-Christian standards, see Bloodguilty Churches (which is also available at Amazon.com).
Robertson slowly introduced the idea of an American empire; he attacked pluralism, and pleaded that the people of the U.S. “must speak with one voice.” (7/19/85)
The idea of taking over and controlling the United States government began with a series of guest appearances:
On April 4, 1985, Billy Graham appeared on the show, and in a startling announcement said, “I’m for evangelicals “… getting control of the Congress, getting control of the bureaucracy, getting control of the executive branch of government. If we leave it to the other side we’re going to be lost.”
On September 25, 1985, Tim LaHaye, appeared in a film clip with Phyllis Schlafly on the show. In that clip, he laid out the plan to take over the government of the United States. He said:
“Suppose that every Bible believing church—all 110,000—decided to…raise up one person to run for public office and win… If every church in the next ten years did that, we would have more Christians in office than there are positions…there are only 97,000 elective offices.”
Though the idea of right-wing religious conservatives controlling the U.S. government appeared to be a pipedream to most observers I talked with, for the churchgoers who were listening—and by 1985 Robertson’s 700 Club topped the Nielsen ratings with a projected monthly viewing audience of 28.7 million viewers—to those viewers—the idea of gaining and holding the power in this country was a tantalizing and intriguing concept—they began to accept the idea of dominating America step by step, day by day.”
There you heard it. There are 97,000 elective offices and Robertson wanted them all manned (or womaned but probably not) by wingnuts of his particular stripe.
Then along came Donald Trump and embraced these clowns as Christians, when they are not, they’re dominionist, Christian Nationalist crazies and that led to Eric’s comment today.
Blow back was swift.
No one has done more for Christian nationalism, not for Christianity. That Eric Trump doesn’t know the difference is the problem. https://t.co/R9nQKy97YC
— George Mason (@GeorgeMason) September 11, 2022
The great Christian.
— Critter 🕊️ 🇺🇦🌻 (@asclepiasyriaca) September 11, 2022
One more lie for Donald Trump, one giant step backward for anything even remotely Christian or spiritual.
Having spent four years studying ancient history and the Bible with scholars, it still amazes me how little everyone knows about the collection of ancient texts put together by a committee. Common sense alone ought to be enough to question a number of things, but our culture has convinced many that every word is sacred, as if it never evolved through many cultures over a couple thousand years. Things that are taken as absolutely true are not true. Of course the other side that outright rejects it is just as ignorant. There is great wisdom and mystery there, yet people want easy answers without doing any work. It’s a shame that there’s no balance in seeking the truth, wherever it can be found and also the lessons contained therein. It’s easy to be an agnostic which nowadays means I don’t know or i dont believe, but in the original Greek meant something completely different. It’s also easy to just take the lazy way and not think or study at all, as if the mysteries of the past should be ignored and to never question what has come down through the ages in one form or another. There are truths. There are unanswerable mysteries. Ultimately we shall be faced with them. One example of my daily frustration was listening to a preacher talk about how in the book of Matthew, Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which did actually happen in 70 AD. I wasn’t there when Jesus did a single thing or said a single thing. However, scholars agree the gospel writers are unknown, and thomas & mark’s gospels are the earliest. Matthew was written later, after the event had already happened. Easy to predict things that way. Matthew was all about prophesy and the writer went to great lengths to show Jesus as the fulfillment of prophesy. Mark gives a scaled down version of his life. Luke wanted to show him as a healer. John wasn’t almost in the Canon because he seemed on an acid trip as if Jesus wasn’t flesh and blood. All I’m saying is the truth is always complex & history that is thousands of years old is not a simple thing to establish as true or as completely false.There are mysteries. The saddest part is how people love to twist things to meet their own agendas. The folks twisting the messages and flipping them on their head is nothing new. The gospels have a recurring theme of the Jewish leaders doing that in trying to find an excuse to end his recorded ministry and life because he was turning their world upside down. They eventually decided to not try and challenge him because he always flipped the script. Whether you believe in powers and principalities beyond our material world is a matter of faith and possibly experience. However, even Shakespeare warned us when Hamlet told his friend Horatio there are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio. There are. Science proves to us the universe exist on an unimaginable scale in space and time. Certainties on some level are foolish. We once knew for certain the earth was flat. We were certain we were the center of the known universe. We’ve been certain of so many things that we now know aren’t even close to being true, you’d think we’d learn our lesson. I find people seek certainty because they are deeply afraid. I guess aging, pain, and certain death will do that. There you go. I found something that’s certain. But as a great philosopher, Mike Tyson once noted: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Rigidity isn’t the answer. Oak trees break in storms. Green willow trees do not. Just saying I see a vast forest of oak trees where religious beliefs are concerned. The trumps are ignorant buffoons and are glaring examples of a saying attributed to Jesus, you’ll know a tree by its fruit. We all know what they are about. It isn’t spiritual on any level. When death comes to them, AND IT WILL, all that blood money won’t mean a thing. Gosh. I just found another thing that’s certain. I’m on a roll. Our materialistic culture is due for a reckoning. I’m certain of that also. Otherwise, please explain how these shallow selfish people came into so much power. We put them there.
Thank you for this dissertation. I hate religion. It has been forced on me most of my life. If I am anything I would say I was a Baptist Buddhist, or a Boodist. When people take up a Bible, they should have one that explains the facts about a particular chapter and read that first. Nothing was written within hours or days or even months or a few years after the events being chronicled. That is the first thing. Second, only the gospels and Acts are possibly written by disciples, and as you say they were written decades after the events they are recording.
The Old Testament is used to support the bigot religion which is the religion of the fascist. They say that it has to be taken literally because if you don’t then who is to say what is the truth. Well G-Whilikers, there are two creation stories right at the start. The first says man and woman were created simultaneously while the second says the woman came from the man’s rib. As to us being baby killers, the first book of the Bible says life begins at first breath. As to queers, Sodom was not destroyed because of their sex habits, but because they hated the poor and immigrants (look it up). Sounds like fucking Republicans to me.
I don’t believe Republicans will all go to hell, but I do believe they will spend quite a while (as I will) reconciling their many sins.
Scholars agree none of the gospels were written by the disciples. They are second hand accounts at best, the earliest is estimated 70-80 years after his death. Thomas is considered the earliest, mark being second. The earliest surviving texts are in Greek, not Aramaic, or Hebrew, aramaic being the language Jesus spoke. Hell, our English language has evolved over time through cultures etc., and words often change meaning. There were few educated people and texts were copied by hand over & over. The actual word to describe Mary did not mean ‘virgin’ but ‘young woman’. There are many examples of these type of errors that have evolved into Christian dogma. The word for ‘hell’ could be changed into the name of the trash dump outside Jerusalem simply by lengthening an apostrophe. There is much confusion about the titles Jesus referred to himself, and the Bible doesn’t support him saying he’s the only son of God. He called himself many things. There are mysteries. Everyone knows for a fact when you die…you are dead. Period. However, it’s hard to explain what happened to group of disciples who ran and hid, rightly so, when Jesus was killed by torture and crucifixion. EVERYONE knew the certainties of public torture and horrible death if you crossed the romans. What caused them to step forward for the same treatment shortly thereafter? People DONT volunteer for certain death based on a lie. Maybe one crazy person but all of them met the fate they KNEW would happen. Then it went on for 300+ years until the roman emperor The story passed down is the one we know. Somehow they were convinced he cheated the grave. That would shake up my world. There are multitudes of questions that go unanswered. In the old testament, why didn’t God just take out Pharoah instead of killing thousands of babies? How did the slaves in the desert come up with enough gold to make an idol, a golden calf? They are endless. Buddhism isn’t a religion but a system of philosophy and moral behavior. Of course Hinduism and the other religions of the east have their own issues with bureaucracy. My point being Religion is the one discipline where everyone takes their beliefs seriously but rarely seriously enough to study, question, and incorporate knowledge from all disciplines. You don’t see people pick up a book on calculus or physics & claim expertise. Those that swallow things whole without knowledge and those that reject it as bunk without knowledge are closer together than they think. By the way, the Adam & eve story has truth in its mythology. DNA has proved we all came from the same lineage although that looks impossible on the surface. Science hasn’t disproved religious concepts but proved them in many cases. I don’t take most people’s ideas about ‘god’ very seriously because most people, not knowing the speed of light, have NO CLUE about the vastness of space, therefore they don’t even know where they are. Hard to take their definitive statements about the ‘creator’ when you don’t know the creation itself. I find ignorance with the believers & nonbelievers alike.
Rereading I left out it went on til the roman emperor Constantine was converted.
Thank you for a better explanation of something I’ve tried to point out many times – what we know as the gospels and in fact much of the New Testament wasn’t written down at the time. It was passed around verbally, and handed down through generations before things started getting written down. When Constantine decided to invest in Christianity as a way to bring order under his rule we had the whole Council of Nicea thing where a lot of debate took place on what would go into some tome codifying Christianity took place. Even the issue of Jesus’ divinity was hotly debated and voted on. Since unlike me you’re an actual student of this stuff perhaps you’d write up something. This site does have a place for Community contributors.
Well, according to the Holy Bible Jesus was God’s son, God in the flesh here on earth quite literally. There are accounts of Jesus doing everyday normal person stuff including drinking and eating, which also means he took shits. But I’m sure that if God were to send him back today (and for decades I’ve been one of a multitude that he wouldn’t get treated any better than the first time!) he wouldn’t even let Trump be Jesus’ asshole!
I got a kick out of the tweet with the seven deadly sins. The movie version of Camelot was terrific but they cut some stuff out. I sure wish they’d included the number The Seven Deadly Virtues – the character Mordred who got little attention in the movie performs it. I soooo would love to see say Hugh Jackman (believe it or not he’s got some serious musical theater chops!) dressed up in a fat suit, slathered in glowing orange grease paint makeup and with a horrible blond wig perform this number:
If anyone qualifies as the Antichrist it’s TFG.
He’s got my vote & my southern Baptist mom said that back in 2016, may she rest in peace.