Stop Christian Nationalism

Welcome back to Stop Christian Nationalism. This is the first episode of the eighth season of Stop Christian Nationalism.

The 7th season ended back in May of this year. It's now October. I needed a bit of a break from this because, you know, it's disheartening to see what's happening in our country, the United States of America.

The USA used to, at least in theory, be a place of freedom, where you had the right to believe whatever you wanted to believe, to associate with the people you wanted to associate with, to say what you wanted to say, and the government was supposed to be neutral, you know, and it was supposed to be a representation of the American people.

The American people are diverse culturally. There have always been non-Christians in the United States of America. What do you think Native American groups were? Do you think they were all praising Jesus back in 1776? We had Muslims, we had Jews.

The USA is not supposed to be a Christian nation. There is not the word Christian or Bible or Jesus, or God, anywhere in the Constitution. In fact, the Constitution says you're not supposed to have any religious test for public office, but boy, now do we have a religious test for public office.

There is no more deadly public office than to be commissioned in the military. To have any position in the U.S. Military is a really serious thing. Whether you like going to war or not, we can all agree that is a really serious responsibility.

You give somebody access to guns, and bombs, and even more deadly weapons than that. We have people controlling killer robots in the United States military. When you give people access to that, you want to make sure that those people are responsible, that they are mentally healthy, that they are in touch with reality.

Think about a nightmare scenario. Is having a portion of the population that has, beliefs, ideas that are unhinged from reality, fantasies about magical beings, and prophecies, and they believe that they have a right to control the country, does it seem like a good idea to train those people how to use nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, bombs?

No way.

What if that group decided that it wanted to take control of the military and then train the members of the military in its ideology. That would be pretty serious, right?

Well, that is what has happened.

Pete Hegseth has given one of his speeches. You know when Pete Hegseth gives a speech it's not going to be boring, that's for sure.

Pete Hegseth announced at the end of last month, just about a week ago, that there is going to be a new office in the military, the Office of Religious Affairs. You may remember that in the 1st amendment, it says there's not going to be any establishment of religion, no government establishment of religion, but now here we have a U.S. Military Office of Religious Affairs.

Wait until you hear about what the mission of the Office of Religious Affairs is.

Its mission is to assess “spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience” across the military.

What on earth is spiritual fitness? What is spiritual readiness? What is spiritual resilience? Can anyone define those things?

Spiritual refers to spirits. Christianity is a religion that believes in the literal reality of spirits, of angels, of unicorns, and dragons, and sea monsters, and uh, ghosts, and um, oh, angels too, and also gods. Other kinds of strange creatures are implied.

The idea is, and you will hear Christians say this a lot, some more than others, that they believe that they are at war with demonic forces. You know what else they say? The Christian nationalists say that Democrats are demon, that liberals are demons, or at least in league with the demons.

So, you may see where I have a little bit of concern. Spiritual fitness in a military that is designated by its civilian leadership to be a Christian organization means that you're a good Christian. It means that you’re a good Christian, according to the ideology of the military leadership, which is Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth has crusader tattoos and once chanted, in a bar, “Kill all Muslims. Kill all Muslims!” over and over and over, again. That is who is determining spiritual readiness in the US military.

But, rejoining reality, How are soldiers supposed to be ready for spirits? Are they just supposed to be praying a lot?

In his speech, Hegseth talked about putting on “the full armor of God”. Earlier this year, the United States of America launched an unprovoked war against Iran, and months and months later, though they told us it was just going to be maybe a week or two, we are still stuck in that war.

That war has resulted in American deaths and Iranian deaths, a huge number of children killed. The United States has now been accused of war crimes as a part of that war.

Pete Hegseth has declared that the purpose of that war is to promote Christianity, that he's doing it because it's what he thinks his spiritual leader who is a dead prophet who has been dead for thousands of years, but he says has come back from the dead to become his spiritual leader, has given him instructions. Those instructions are to go to war.

Now there is an office in the U.S. Military that is going to be dedicated to spreading this ideology of holy war.

What could go wrong?

Well, a lot of things can go wrong.

Unlike Christians, I do not pretend to know the future. I don't believe that there is any sacred destiny. I don't believe that there are any prophecies that tell us what is going to happen in the future, but a lot of things for sure, could go wrong.

This is especially so given the context of a study that was published just recently in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. The author of this study was Samuel Perry, from the university of Oklahoma.

The study looked at the cognitive abilities of people who have Christian nationalist ideology. The study found that not only are they illiterate in history and science and have lower educational achievement, (that's not necessarily cognitive ability, but it's associated with it) but the other thing is that they have lower language skills. They recognized fewer words. They are not able to articulate ideas or understand ideas to the extent that other people who are not Christian nationalists are able to do.

In other words, Christian Nationalists just aren't as intelligent as other Americans. That means they're more gullible.

I don't think that that's a genetic predisposition. These are not people who are just born that way, but they grow up in a tradition that discourages independent thought.

You know what other organization does that? The United States military. It's well known as a place where you're just supposed to follow orders.

And what can happen in a U.S. Military, led by an impulsive person who is quite willing to start a war that is totally unprovoked? What else could happen with that US military increasingly occupying American cities, as we approach an important election?

Bad things could happen. Really bad things could happen.

Spiritual training, spiritual resilience, spiritual readiness, is nothing more than the willingness to accept gobbledygook, and wild assertions about magic and other leaps of faith without evidence. Training people also how to kill.

In just about one month, we have an election coming up.

No, it's not a presidential election, but it's an election where we can take back one branch of the U.S. Federal government.

Right now, all 3 branches of the United States, federal government are controlled by extremist, Christian Nationalists.

We can take back the U.S. Congress. Both houses are within reach.

This is not to say that, you know, just because you get a Democrat in, that they're going to vote against Christian nationalism, there are Christian Nationalist Democrats too. So, it is an uphill battle, but right now we have extreme Christian nationalist in charge and refusing to stand up against fascism and against Christian nationalism.

We have a Congress that put Pete Hegseth in charge of the U.S. Military, putting us all in literal danger.

So I want to encourage each and every one of you to go out and vote. Vote for the candidate who is the most likely to stand up against Christian nationalism. Vote for the candidate who is the most likely to impeach Pete Hegseth, and hey, Donald Trump.

You may have been told that impeachment is just not a possibility, but that's not true. We still have the rule of law.

We still need to try. If we stop trying, there's no hope at all.

The MAGA fascists want us to believe that this fascist violence by the Department of Homeland Security is a specifically Christian project. Secretary Mullin is promoting the fascist police state with Bible verses. The most recent one of these is from the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 8 verse 28: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Mullin follows up this New Testament Bible verse with a note of his own: "Trust in God and His plan for our great nation. One Homeland Under God."

The Christian god has a plan for the United States of America? Really? I’ve looked through the entire Christian Bible, and throughout the entire thing, the Christian god didn’t mention the United States of America even once. There’s no indication that the Christian god had any idea that North America even exists.

Never mind these obvious facts. Markwayne Mullin wants the United States to be “one Homeland under God”. UNDER God. What the hell is the Christian god doing climbing on top of this nation?

No one elected God to rule over the USA. Here in America we are supposed to have freedom of religion and freedom from the establishment of religion by the federal government. The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees it, but under Christian Nationalism, the Constitution has been replaced by the Christian Bible.

The implication of Romans 8:28, in the context of the Department of Homeland Security in Christian fascist America, is quite plain. Things are going to go well for Christians who obey, but for everyone else, things are not going to be okay. It's a threat coming from the Department of Homeland Security, which has sent ICE agents out to shoot protesters dead in the streets.

They expect you to be intimidated by this, and to be fair, if you are a non-Christian American, you should be afraid. This fascist Christian government has already demonstrated that it will not be restrained by the law, much less by common decency. Nonetheless, you must not be intimidated.

In response to their demand that you bow your head and comply with the regime of One Nation Under God, you must stiffen your spine, raise your head and say no. This nation is not going to lie down under your god.

The odds are against us. We’re not just facing the power of Christian zealots. We’re also up against the corrupt power of organizations such as the Blockchain Association, the organization that proudly claims to be “the unified voice of the crypto industry.”

I remember when advocates of cryptocurrency claimed that their blockchain technology was going to liberate us from centralized authority. Now, the Blockchain Association is a paying sponsor of a festival of fascist Christian Nationalism, an orgy of centralized power on May 17, when Donald Trump will declare that the USA is One Nation Under God, which of course means that the USA will be One Nation Under Trump. Cryptocurrency is good for nothing for ordinary people, but for the wealthy, it’s an excellent technology for bribing the President of the United States of America and other corrupt members of the US federal government.

When we stand up to the tyranny of One Nation Under God, we’re facing an uphill battle against extremely powerful people. Maybe the struggle is already lost. If that’s true, I’d rather lose the struggle to defend American liberty with my dignity intact. I’m in no mood to stand by in silence as I watch the Christian fascists win.

The theme of this episode is the combination of things that just don't seem to fit together, like national parks and Christian prayer rallies. Those are two things, but we don't think of them as coming together.

Oh, here's another one: Credit cards, motor oil, and the Christian Bible. They don't come together.

There's nowhere in the Bible where they mention motor oil or credit cards, right? It's kind of odd because a lot of Christians, not all Christians, but a lot of Christian theology supposes that the Bible was predicting the future, that there's prophecy. So why is it that the Bible couldn't predict motor oil or credit cards?

Motor oil, and credit cards, and Christianity, and national parks are all coming together in 12 days, because 12 days from now is May 17th, and May 17th is the day when Donald Trump and his Christian nationalist government is going to have a Christian prayer rally.

At this Christian prayer rally, Donald Trump says that the United States of America is no longer going to be a democracy, it's going to become a Christian theocracy, one nation under God, with Pete Hegseth, the guy who is in the Department of War, who says that we're at war with Iran, throwing away millions upon millions of dollars, and killing, who knows how many people, throwing the world economy into complete chaos in the name of Jesus.

Yeah, this is a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't seem to come together, but stay with me for a minute, because it does.

They're going to have a federal government prayer rally.

That used to be the kind of thing you would never do because it was understood that there is a separation of church and state. If you want to have a church and do your church things, that's fine, but don't expect the government to come in and prop you up. You’ve got to do your stuff on your own. And in exchange, hey, you don't have to pay taxes.

See, there's a separation there.

But now, in the United States of America, under Christian nationalist fascism, thanks to Donald Trump, we're having federal government nationwide prayer rallies to establish one nation under God, which has become the sort of thing that no self respecting American should pledge allegiance to, because one nation under God means bribery and corruption.

That's how we get to motor oil and credit cards.

You see, there is almost no expense in setting up a national prayer rally. All you have to do is send some emails and organize people to get together and pray at different places. It's very, very low cost.

And yet, Donald Trump and his Christian nationalist government have been taking huge payments from corporations. I've mentioned some of these already. It's a strange collection of corporations like John Deere, for example, is one of these corporations that has donated over a million dollars to this federal government prayer rally.

Two other companies I'll mention today are MasterCard - they do credit cards, and Penske - and they do motor oil - motor oil of the kind that would go into John Deere.

Motor oil would, of course, help fossil fuels, internal combustion engines to run using gasoline from companies like Exxon. Exxon is another one of these corporations that has sent money to help pay for this federal government Christian prayer rally.

None of these companies, MasterCard, Penske, Exxon, John Deere, none of these companies have any real business with preaching, churches, with prayers, with speaking in tongues or any of those other things that are associated with Christian religion. They don't sell incense to burn on the altar. They don't sell candlesticks for the altar either or funny pointy hats or anything.

So why are these companies sending so much money to create this national federal government prayer rally or to fund it?

This federal government prayer rally is, of course, a special project of Donald Trump. Donald Trump has had many of these special projects, like his birthday military parade last year, like his inauguration. These are opportunities for corporations to send money to him, in the name of the national park service, in this case, because The central location of this national federal government prayer rally is the national mall, which is under the federal parks.

This is established under Congress, and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America clearly states that Congress shall establish no law, shall create no law, establishing any kind of religion.

Oh, but what the heck. We don't follow laws. We don't follow the Constitution in the United States of America anymore. We follow the will of one person: Donald Trump.

It's kind of like monotheism, only there is, instead of at the head of it one god, there's a kind of guy who acts like a king.

So Penske and MasterCard are paying millions of dollars to Donald Trumpet through one of his pet projects in order to curry favor with him, so that then they can get the special favors, the special dispensations from the law or evasion of regulations that they want so that they can increase their profits.

It's bribery. As the United States of America is becoming one nation under God, what that means is bribery and corruption. What that means is a government that is not accountable to the people. It's accountable to powerful people in corporations, and that's what the Christian religion in the United States of America has become. It’s a cult of power.

If you are a Christian, you gotta ask yourself, is that really what you want your religion to stand for?

Well, if it isn't, what are you doing about it? What are you doing about it? What are the Christians in America doing about this May 17th prayer rally?

I saw a lot of Christians doing a lot of things expressing how upset they were when Donald Trump posted a social media image, a meme in which he appeared to present himself as wearing clothes like Jesus did. Boy, there was outrage with that, but now that you see Christianity partnering with corporations to create a system that perverts the rule of law that ends democracy, where are the Christians?

I don't see any Christian organization protesting against May 17th. That tells us a lot about the priorities of American Christians in politics today.

They don't want any blasphemy. They don't want anything that would show any kind of disrespect or even eccentricity around their religion, but when it comes to the Constitution of the United States of America when it comes to the rule of law, when it comes to access of ordinary people, to government services.

They just don't seem to give a damn.

We see that the economy is falling apart. We see that trust in the United States of America is lower than it ever has been. Society is fraying, and that's what you get when you mix religion. And government.

What we need in the United States of America is separation of church and state.

What we're getting is Christian, nationalist fascism. e see that the economy is falling apart. We see that trust in the United States of America is lower than it ever has been. Society is fraying, and that's what you get when you mix religion and government.

What we need in the United States of America is separation of church and state.

What we're getting is Christian Nationalist fascism. 

Christian nationalism is going into hyperdrive.

It's beyond overdrive, the pace at which Christian nationalism is being slammed down the throats of Americans as we are approaching May 17th, which is the day on which there will be, a national Christian prayer rally, to declare that the United States is one nation under God, to declare that the United States is no longer a secular democracy, but is a Christian theocracy.

This has no precedent in the law, in the Constitution, but Donald Trump is planning to have a government and corporate funded ceremony, a ritual, a Christian ritual, in which he declares that the United States is dedicated to the Christian God.

That's happening in less than 3 weeks, on the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States from a Christian Nationalist British Empire.

The founding fathers, when they declared independence, and then when they wrote the Constitution, were acting against Christian Nationalism.

Now, Donald Trump is rewriting history, and of course, he's not doing it on his own. American corporations are pitching in. They're helping to pay for this religious ceremony. They're paying between 1 and $10 million each.

You know, it was my plan to just talk about that this week to talk about the different corporations that are doing that, but I can't do that because there's other news going on.

Let me just highlight for right now, ExxonMobil is paying millions of dollars to Donald Trump to support this Christian nationalist takeover of the United States and end to secular democracy. No more democracy, no more constitution, no more 1st amendment for you Americans, because ExxonMobil doesn't want to have it that way. ExxonMobil finds democracy to be inconvenient, and attacking democracy in the name of Jesus, well, there's a certain segment of the population that just loves that.

It's the same segment of the population that loves their John Deere riding lawnmowers, which burn gasoline from ExxonMobil. John Deere is also giving a heck of a lot of money to make this May 17th ceremony ending American democracy in Washington, DC, and across the nation, they're going to pray, have an official government prayer.

Look, maybe you're a Christian. I want you to think about this. What does it say about your religion if you need to have the U.S. Federal government be in control of that? Do you think it really has anything to do with your Jesus or your God?

I mean, your God is supposed to be omnipotent, all powerful, and also universal everywhere across the cosmos. Why would this God be aligned with one particular nation in North America when the entire Bible is written in Western Asia 2000 years ago?

I mean, it doesn't add up, except that, boy, Christianity is popular, and Christianity is based on the idea of faith, which means, hey, you don't ask these pesky questions, you just believe real hard, and you just you just feel the feelings of faith, and you don't think about it too hard.

So, John Deere, burning fossil fuels in their internal combustion engines, ExxonMobil, They don't want you to focus on things like climate change because that's inconvenient to their business models. So they're bribing Donald Trump through this Christian nationalist prayer rally on May 17th, saying that they're helping to pay for this ceremony, which is just a whole bunch of people getting together to pray.

It doesn't cost any money to pray. Do you see how that works? It's corruption. It's bribery, plain and simple.

That's the morality of Christian nationalism.

Thank you, ExxonMobil. Thank you, John Deere, for contributing to the decline of American morality and the destruction of law and order under this new Christian nationalist fascism.

I want to talk about something even more ridiculous because a report came out today. “Report” is kind of a very formal word for what this document is. It is 200 plus pages long, but it's really just a kind of diatribe of every Christian nationalist grievance that's been stored up over the last 10 to 15 years.

It's been written by a federal government organization, which is called the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. Yeah, think about that. That is a US government agency now, the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias

The whole idea is that the federal government is just suffused with anti-Christian bias. I want you to take a look at this. The 3 branches of the U.S. Federal government. You know something? There has never been a United States president that is not a Christian, not a single one in 250 years. Where's the anti-Christian bias in that?

There has not been a publicly non-religious member of the United States Supreme Court ever. Almost all of them have been Christian. A few of them have been Jewish. It’s majority Christian. It's controlled by Christian Nationalists right now. Where's the anti-Christian bias in that?

And Congress? Hey, you know, Congress is like 87% Christian right now. 60% of American population in general is Christian. You've got a 27% gap there.

Christians are overwhelmingly overrepresented in the United States Congress, and the United States Congress is led, both houses, the House and Senate, every damned morning, by a Christian chaplain. They cannot open and do business until the Christian chaplain gets up there to do a Christian prayer. Do you think there has ever been a chaplain in either house of the United States Congress who has not been a Christian? No, there has not been a single one. Where is the anti-Christian bias?

There is an office of Christian Nationalist religious influence in the White House. They have a physical office run by the prophetic Christian preacher Paula White. Does any other religion have a White House office in the U.S. Federal government? No.

Pete Hegseth has declared that we are now at war with Iran in the name of Jesus. Has there ever been a non-Christian god that we've gone to war for? No. No, we only go to war for Christianity.

Why do we have religious chaplains in the military instead of people who have actual, proper psychological training to help people? Why do we have religious chaplains paid for by the U.S. Government, almost all of whom are Christian? How is that anti-Christian bias?

You know the answer.

There is no anti-Christian bias in the U.S. Federal government, but part of Christian religion is the article of faith that Christians are terribly persecuted by somebody or other. I mean, never mind that Christianity has been aligned with the powerful and the violent and the oppressive for almost its entire existence. It was spread at the point of a sword by the Roman Empire, the Christian Roman Empire, and then by Christian kings, and then Christian colonialism. Christianity is a cult of power, of political power.

You can look at the Book of Revelation, which is where Jesus ends up. I know a lot of Christians like to just think about the gospels, and when I say gospels, I mean mostly the sermon on the Mount, because he said a lot of stuff that sounded pretty nice, but if you look at the Bible where Jesus ended up, the book of Revelation is, quote, the testimony of Jesus, and in that book he describes his plans to establish a one world earthly political government through global genocide and torture.

Christian Nationalists believe that until that happens until they control everything, until they get to do everything that they want, and no other religion is allowed, and people are mandated to practice Christianity, that they are somehow oppressed. That's what this report from the task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias is really all about. I want to share with you just a couple of examples of that.

I have found a couple of things that I find, absolutely fascinating, and they really reveal what Christian religious values are these days. One has to do with education, a university that calls itself Grand Canyon University, although it is not on the Grand Canyon, folks, it's down in Phoenix, Arizona, which is down in the flat desert plains, where it just gets hot, it's not on the Grand Canyon. Anyway, it's a Christian university in Phoenix, Arizona. They were defrauding, their students, graduate students at Grand Canyon University were forced to pay over $10,000 more than the advertised amounts for their tuition and other fees.

Grand Canyon University lied to those students using hidden fees for so-called continuation courses that were not properly disclosed to people before they signed up for their degrees. So here you've got Grand Canyon University, a Christian University practicing fraud. Well, what if it had been a public university practicing fraud? That would have been punished too, right? I mean, any university that is charging its students over $10,000 more than it said that it would. I think we can all agree that any university public or private, religious or non-religious needs to be held to account for that kind of really creepy fraud.

It's an abuse. It's immoral, right?

But no, the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias says that when Grand Canyon University was held accountable by the Department of Education and forced to pay a $37.7 million fine for defrauding its own students, that that was an example of anti-Christian bias and persecution of Christians.

So essentially what the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias says is that when you have an organization like a university that defrauds its students, if it's Christian, it should be allowed to do that, and that holding that Christian university accountable to the laws of the United States of America, the regulation of higher education, if you ask Christian universities to follow the law like everybody else, you are persecuting them because of their religion, and that is anti-Christian bias in the federal government.

Basically, what they're saying is that fraud is a Christian value, that exploiting students, that lying to them, deceiving them, stealing their money. These are religious practices, unique to Christianity, and therefore, a Christian university has the right to engage in fraud. Essentially, whatever crime, you want to engage in, if you say it's in the name of Christianity, you can do it. Anything goes, along those lines.

Another part of the report, this is on page 130, the U.S. federal government Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias declared that homeschoolers, homeschooling families, were being subjected to religious persecution, to persecution of their religion, of their Christianity. This was an example of anti-Christian bias in the U.S. Federal government against these Christian homeschooling families. The report talks about harassment of them by the U.S. Federal government.

Do you know what that harassment was? That harassment was investigation of parents for abusing their children.

This is a really difficult thing. There is a high prevalence of abuse among homeschooling families. It's not a nice thing, but the fact is that abusive parents often homeschool their children, because they don't want anyone in the public schools, to see the bruises, or to see the behaviors that come about when their children are abused. They want to cover it up.

They don't want to let their kids out of the house, going and telling a teacher or a principal or a guidance counselor, what mommy or daddy is doing to them back at home. So, you have a higher than normal prevalence of abuse among homeschoolers

When I'm talking about this, there is a new research article that's coming out in June, in the Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect.

Isn't it terrible that we have to have a journal to study this? We do.

This is going to be in the June edition of the Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect. They found that 23% of adults that they surveyed, who had been as children, homeschool students described abuse and neglect from their parents. That's nearly one out of every 4 homeschooled children. These are kids.

Now, maybe the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias is going to say, “Well, those are Christian kids, and the parents have the right parents' rights to, you know, educate them according to their religion. And if their religion includes hitting them, beating them, to beat the devil out of them, well, golly, that just has to be the case.”

Here in the United States, we do have laws against abuse of different kinds, against children, because children don't ask to be born, and children don't get to choose their families. So we have laws that we enforce, that say that you can't abuse your kids.

But now the task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias is saying that you can't apply those rules to Christian families, that if you have Christian families, who hit, who terrorize, who sexually abuse their own children, they have the right to do that in the name of Jesus, in the name of Christianity, and that's freedom of religion.

This 200 page report is full of examples like this. Essentially, what it's saying, this U.S. Federal government Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, is that if you're Christian and you commit a crime, you cannot be held accountable to it. The law only applies to non-Christians, and that anything less than that, letting anyone who's Christian do whatever the hell they want, despite what the law is, and no matter who they hurt, who they defraud, who they damage, who they even possibly kill. Anything less than that, they say, is anti-Christian bias in the U.S. Federal government.

The poor, poor, persecuted Christians who don't get to hit kids, who don't get to practice fraud. This is what they want us to believe is the real problem.

You know, the very existence of the task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias lets you know what's really going on, because there is no task force in the U.S. Federal government to eradicate anti-Jewish bias.

There is no task force to eradicate anti-Hindu bias. There certainly is no task force to eradicate, bias against non-Christian Americans, and you know why that is.

It's because Christian voters elected Donald Trump and Christian organizations were campaigning for him in violation of the law, having tax exempt status, unlike ordinary political operations which have to pay taxes, churches don't.

You see how that gets to be an organizational advantage?

They got Donald Trump back into the White House, and now they're getting their payback.

So, we have the entire U.S. Federal government being dedicated to eradicating any equal representation for people in the United States of America.

This is a government by Christianity, for Christianity, of Christianity, and anybody else, if you want representation from this government, you're out of luck.

We can all see how well this is working out. Gasoline is at record highs, over $125 per barrel of oil because we have gone to war in the name of Christianity.

We have the Department of Homeland Security putting out Bible verses, even as it sends out ice goons with their face masks to kick people's doors down and drag people, kids, separating them from their parents, because they're not the right kind of people, because they're not white, because they don't speak English.

This is what Christianity is now.

You can against that if you're a liberal Christian and say, well, that's not real Christianity, but you know something, This is what the majority of Christian voters put into office. I say Christianity is what Christianity actually does, not what it says it believes, not its articles of faith, but when it comes down to brass tax, when you give Christians control over the government, it's a complete disaster.

It's inhumane, it's cruel, and it destroys our freedom.

So what do we do about this Christian takeover of the United States of America about to destroy our democracy on May 17th?

Don't call your member of Congress, because the chances are they're not going to do a damn thing about it because they don't want to offend anybody, you know?

I mean, yes, Christians in control of our country, maybe taking away people's rights.

They may be hauling people off to concentration camps where people are tortured and deprived of basic food and medicine and legal rights and everything like that.

Yeah, they may be starting wars that destroy the economy. Yeah, all this is done in the name of Christianity. We wouldn't want to say anything like that, you know, that like, oh, hey, you know, maybe we shouldn't have Christians in control of the government, because look what they're doing, because they wouldn't want to offend Christians, because above all else, you must not cause offense.

You must not have any anti-Christian bias, no matter how much the Christian fascists are wrecking the United States of America on its 250th birthday. Yeah, members of Congress are not going to stand up for non-Christian Americans and for Christians who believe in the decency of democracy and that everybody should be equal.

No, they're not standing up for that. You’ve got to stand up for it.

On May 17th, our democracy is going to be destroyed and placed with the Christian Nationalist theocracy, but on May 1st, it is a national strike, and that is tomorrow.

That means no work. Screw work. Screw school. If you're a student, don't go to school, and don't go out shopping.

All of these businesses, like Exxon Mobile, like Deloitte, like John Deere, they want you to continue to participate in their corporate fascist economy. They want your dollars, and they think you don't have a choice.

And tomorrow is a day when you can demonstrate. All you billionaires who are in control of these corporations, you have a lot of power, but we have power too. We have power in numbers.

There are events, there are protests out in the street across America tomorrow. Get out there and get your voice heard. Scream at the top of your lungs.

You are not going to let American democracy die.

Do it now, because you may not have too much longer, before that freedom is taken away too. 

In just 3 weeks, on May 17, Donald Trump will lead the federal government in a National Christian Religious Ritual, to rededicate the United States of America, and to recreate it, no longer as a secular democracy, but as a theocracy, as one nation underneath God, under God, they like to say. I think the word “underneath” makes it much more plain what this is really about. It's a fascist move to dominate society with religious power.

One of the characteristics of fascism that people don't talk about is the way that it brings together different elements of elite power in society.

There is politics, but there's also religion, but there's also the business corporate side of this.

And so I want to talk to you this week about a series of corporations who are financially paying for aspects of this religious ritual. They are corporate sponsors of the transformation of America from a democracy into a Christian Nationalist totalitarian state.

Today, I'm going to talk to you about Deloitte. Deloitte is a business consulting company. It does a lot of financial and strategic consulting.

Deloitte was also known for using generative artificial intelligence to create a fake report that it sent off to provincial governments in Canada. This was a million dollar report, and Deloitte was caught using generative artificial intelligence to write the report instead of doing actual consulting, actual thinking, actual research.

Deloitte created a report that was full of errors and only apologized for it when they were caught.

That gives you an idea about the kind of ethics that Deloitte has.

Deloitte also announced last week that it's going to cut in half its benefits for new parents, who are its employees, its parental leave time is being cut in half, and their explanation for why they're doing this. Deloitte said that they are, “modernizing its talent architecture” That's its explanation for cutting benefits for their employees.

I think it's particularly interesting that they are cutting benefits that enable people to become parents, to become good parents. That's what right wing Christian nationalism is all about. It's all about taking away reproductive rights that enable us to choose when to become parents, but at the same time, also taking away the social infrastructure that helps people to be good parents when they become parents. So, if you no longer have the right for have contraception, or to have abortion, and you become pregnant, or your partner becomes pregnant, that's just tough.

Now Deloitte is sponsoring Christian nationalism in our nation's capital on May 17th.

Deloitte is not the only company that is doing this, and we'll be coming out with more episodes, detailing more information about the other familiar corporations who are financially supporting the Christian nationalist destruction of democracy in America.

I just want to end this episode by pointing out how very strange this is, strange, and yet it's become familiar. Two years ago, the entire idea of business corporations, giving money to the federal government, for the federal government to then perform religious rituals. It would have been obscene. It would have been a scandal. It would have been outrageous. No one had ever imagined something like that could take place.

The corporations that have given money to this religious ritual, they've given between one million and 10 million dollars each.

I want you to think about that because what does it really take for a religious ritual to take place.

You just gather a bunch of people and if you want to pray, you pray, if you want to meditate, you meditate. If you want to chime some bells, you bring them from the church. The church has already got the bells. If you want to burn incense, the church can pay 20 bucks for some incense. It doesn't cost millions upon millions of dollars. But we have both taxpayer money and corporate money being blended together.

Of course, what these corporations like Deloitte are doing, is bribing the president of the United States.

The May 17 prayer ritual is Donald Trump's pet project, that he's forced on the American people, and they are paying for that, and they're paying for the political access they're gonna get so that they get legislation that favors their business interests, executive orders from the president that will favor their business interests.

It's corruption, and that's not just immoral, it's illegal, but under Christian nationalism, morality, and ethics are out the window. Christian Nationalism is a cult of pure power. 

yesterday I put out an episode of this podcast on a Saturday because there was some news that I thought was worth putting out on a weekend.

It's not something that anyone normally would do.

And yet today, there is even more important news, specifically a piece of misinformation that is being spread by Donald Trump in the name of Christianity.

Last night, there was an attempted assassination.

Not a very good one, but an attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

This is an example of why political violence is absolutely a terrible idea.

I mean, we can talk about that morally, but even just tactically, strategically, it's a stupid idea, because the intended victims of your violence.

They typically escape because they're people in power.

They have professional security all around them.

And then they go ahead and they use this violence to extend their power.

And to distort the discussion of ideas, to bend things their way.

It makes extreme abusive politicians even more extreme and more abusive.

So, the thing is that shortly after the assassination attempt.

Donald Trump came on in front of reporters and he said, quote, when you read his manifesto, he hates Christians, unquote, Donald Trump was claiming that Cole Thomas Allen, the would be assassin, is a rabid anti-Christian, that he is a non-Christian, and that his assassination attempt was motivated by a hatred for Christianity.

I want to make it clear, that is absolutely false.

The New York Post has obtained a copy of that manifesto and has put it online.

I encourage you to go read it.

I don't usually encourage people to go read anything from the New York Post because it's just a terrible newspaper that has some really low quality writing and thinking.

But they have obtained this document, and it's important for you to read it.

What I want you to do is go and look and see if you can find anything anti-Christian in that manifesto.

I'm telling you, you won't.

And here's the reason.

Cole Thomas Allen, the attempted assassin, is himself a Christian.

In his manifesto, he refers to his church family.

The Christian church that he belongs to.

Investigators are already finding that when he was at school at Cal Tech, where he got a master's in computer science of some kind.

He was a member of the Caltech Christian fellowship.

There is nothing in that manifesto that says anything negative about Christianity.

In fact, the manifesto cites Christian theology as a justification for violence, but Donald Trump is trying to convince people that this assassin was a non-Christian, attacking Donald Trump because he is a Christian, and Donald Trump is a Christian, that's true.

Donald Trump is lying, saying that there is something anti-Christian in this manifesto, in order to justify new persecution of non-Christian Americans by his Christian, nationalist, fascist government.

Nobody can predict the future.

But the signs are looking pretty clear.

Watch out, because things are about to get pretty ugly. 

This episode is coming to you on a Saturday afternoon, which is not a typical time to release a podcast episode.

Everybody's out there, I hope, having a little bit of fun, but I am bringing this podcast to you right now for a very specific reason, and that is because just about 15 minutes ago, some news came out from the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Representative Zo Lofgren, who is a Democrat from California, one of the more senior members of Congress, and what her staff has discovered this Saturday is that President Donald Trump has fired the entire national science board.

Now, the National Science Board advises the National Science Foundation, the NSF, and the NSF funds direct scientific research that can lead to things like new medicines, new technologies that make our lives better, also just helps us to know what is actually true in the world, and what is not. The National Science Foundation also supports science and math and technical education for America's children.

We no longer have a national science board, which means that pretty soon the National Science Foundation is not going to be able to operate at all, and this comes at the same time, that in Texas, the state government of Texas is going to be able to move ahead with its plan to force all public schools, government run schools, to post the Ten commandments.

Post the Ten commandments. What's the big deal with the 10 commandments? Come on, doesn't everyone believe in the 10 commandments? The answer is no, actually, a huge number of people in the United States do not agree with the Ten Commandments.

The 10 Commandments are a religious document from an ancient society on the other side of the world, the 10 Commandments have absolutely no relationship to law or the Constitution in the United States of America.

The 10 Commandments begin like this: “I am the Lord thy God, you shall have no other gods before me.”

That's exactly the opposite of what the United States Constitution says, and the United States Constitution is the source of all law in the United States. The 10 commandments are not. The Constitution says that there shall be no religious test for public office, and that there shall be no laws that establish religion.

Our system of law in the United States is built upon the idea that government is supposed to stay out of religion, and it's supposed to be something that people make up their minds about on their own.

The founders of this country put that into the Constitution, because they were well aware of the history of what happens when you let a religious group run the government. You have bloodshed. You have oppression, you have people being assaulted and tortured and persecuted for nothing more than their own individual beliefs about religion, their refusal to go along with what the government tells them they should be thinking and doing about religion.

The Ten Commandments declare that you're supposed to worship the God of the Bible, and that you cannot worship any other gods.

So what that means is that in Texas, public schools are now being forced to teach children that Christianity is mandatory, and that you're not allowed to belong to any other religion in America.

That is false. That's not what the law says.

The Constitution says people shall have freedom of religion. It's right there in the 1st amendment to the Constitution.

Children in Texas are going to be taught that they don't have the freedom to abstain from religion, to simply lead a private life without any gods over them at all.

No, they're going to be taught that there is a Lord, that is the God of the Bible, and that the most important law in the land is that you have to belong to that religion and worship that God.

The infrastructure for science is being defunded, and science education is being weakened in our public schools. At the same time that religious instruction and religious commands. Are growing stronger.

It's a systematic attack on the very idea that we should, as Americans have the right to think for ourselves.

I want to take a look at a new program from the Department of Homeland Security that is pushing that very agenda.

On Instagram, the Department of Homeland Security put out a message that said this:

“Trust in the Lord, with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding, in all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

That's from Proverbs, chapter 3 verses 5 through 6. What it essentially means is that you should stop thinking for yourself. Don't go into your own mind and to your own understanding, don't think for yourself. Lean not unto thine own understanding, but just trust in the Lord, the Lord being the God of the Bible, the God of Christianity.

So, just obey the God of Christianity, and don't think for yourself, and in everything that you do, acknowledge the authority of the Christian God, and the Christian God will direct all your paths, will tell you what to do in your life.

Of course, there is no Christian God out there telling anyone anything. Have you seen the Christian God? Does a Christian god show up on the street, show up on TV, say “hello, here's who I am. Here's what I want”? No, that God never shows up. You know who shows up: Christian preachers and Christian politicians like MarkWayne Mullen, the new secretary of Homeland Security.

Let's remember what the Department of Homeland Security is all about.

The Department of Homeland Security is in control of ICE: Immigration and customs enforcement. We've all seen within the last year what ICE is capable of doing. ICE agents are going through America's streets. They're wearing masks, as secret police so that we don't know what their identities are, and they are kicking down doors, they are breaking into people's cars. They are pulling people out onto the street, men, women, children from their private lives, and it's taking them off to a new set of concentration camps, places where their lawyers often do not have access, places where we are getting increasing stories, that there is systematic torture, places where they don't get enough to eat, where they don't get enough to drink.

ICE agents have shot people dead in the street, have assaulted them repeatedly for doing nothing more than protesting the activities of ice of the department of homeland security.

The Department of Homeland Security ended that statement with Proverbs, chapter 3, verses 5 through 6, with the motto: One nation under God.

God never shows up.

What they mean is one nation under the boot of ice of the Department of Homeland Security, which is now a Christian organization in the government.

And it's accompanied by a picture of a Christian church, with another version of that motto, one homeland, under God. That's not the only message that came from the Department of Homeland Security in recent weeks.

Another message says, “Happy Sunday, America. May God continue to bless our homeland and our people, one Homeland under God.”

Another says, “May Christ's light continue to shine over our great nation, one homeland under God.”

Another one says, “We reflect on the ultimate sacrifice our Savior made for all humanity. Trust in God's plan. Father, into thy hands, I commend my spirit,” with a picture of the crucified Jesus, a painting, of Jesus on the cross.

All this is from the Department of Homeland Security.

Another message from the Department of Homeland Security: “Faith in God and country. It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will,” to obey the will of Christian preachers and politicians.

This federal government program of promoting Christianity in direct opposition to the ideals of democracy. A democracy is built around the basic concept that the government should obey the will of the people, and that people have the right to think for themselves and to express their opinions, and not to be ruled by any arbitrary power.

The Department of Homeland Security is saying that there is a God. There is one true religion, and they've named it. It's not just in general religion, it is Christianity. The US federal government is on the side of Christianity, and it is the duty of everybody to obey the Christian government.

Obey, comply, or else, because this Christian Department of Homeland Security can come to your door at any time, carrying guns and haul you off and take you away to a prison camp.

There are going to be a lot of people who will tell you that Christianity is a religion of love. I don't see what there is in any of this that's loving. It's controlling, it's commanding. It's oppressive. It's taking away our freedom. It's taking away the ability to educate our children in the basic facts of reality and replacing that with an ancient system that is led by an arbitrary dictator, a god who defines what morality is simply because he has the power to do it, not because he does things right himself.

This is a god who doesn't listen to anybody, who never takes the advice of people, but tells them what to do and tortures and kills them if they do not comply. When we get messages like this from our government, they are telling us what they want to do.

One nation under God, they tell us.

Another message from the Department of Homeland Security says have faith in God and country.

They're replacing facts with fear. Faith is the practice of belief in the absence of facts.

It's the opposite of science. No longer do we have the freedom in the United States of America to think, and speak, and act according to our own individual consciences, but as the destruction of the National Science Board shows us, there will be practical consequences of this movement from democracy to Christian fascism. Fewer medicines, less food.

When ancient superstition and bigotry gains control of a country that controls thousands of nuclear weapons, anything can happen. 

Donald Trump has announced that he is going to be participating as the president of the United States, in the name of the U.S. Federal government, in something called the America Reads the Bible Initiative. The America reads the Bible initiative is a partnership of private groups with government organizations. It is a theocratic project.

When I say it’s theocratic, what I mean by that is that it is intended to strengthen the grip of Christianity on government power, to replace American democracy with religious government, in which Christian leaders, not the American people, are in control.

Here is what Donald Trump has said about his participation in this project, which begins tonight with his reading of 2 Chronicles, chapter 7, from the Bible:

“From Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World and the first permanent English-speaking settlement at Jamestown to our founding in 1776 and to the present day, the Bible has been indelibly woven into our national identity and way of life.  Nearly 400 years ago, a decade after the arrival of the Mayflower, the legendary John Winthrop powerfully invoked Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew:  “We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.  The eyes of all people are upon us,” Winthrop said, imploring his fellow Christian settlers to stand as a beacon of faith for all the world to see… the Bible has enduringly illuminated our system of Government, given life to our constitutional framework, bolstered our educational institutions, and informed our deepest civic and moral identity… In every generation, through every trial and triumph, God’s Word has guided our people and our country to incredible new heights.

Today, during our 250th year of American independence, the America Reads the Bible initiative invites all citizens to once again acknowledge our Nation’s extraordinary Biblical foundations and to give thanks for the countless ways in which God has been the sacred source of our unity and national strength.  This one-week event, during which leaders in faith, Government, business, and entertainment will read every verse and chapter of the Bible, will inspire countless citizens to rediscover the Biblical truths that have animated our Republic for two and a half centuries and to pray that the Bible will continue to guide us—as individuals, as a people, and as a Nation—for the next 250 years and beyond.

I applaud every citizen participating in the America Reads the Bible initiative.  Together, we will honor Holy Scripture, renew our faith, usher in a historic resurgence of religion on American shores, and rededicate the United States as one Nation under God.”

When Trump talks about the rededication of the United States as One Nation Under God, what he's talking about is an upcoming event on May 17th, a national prayer rally, a Christian only rally. No other religions but Christianity are participating. At this rally, Donald Trump will declare that the United States is a Christian nation, a nation for Christians, not for other people.

That statement represents the contradiction between what Trump claims is the role of Christianity in American history and what it actually is.

He says, “God has been the sacred source of our unity and national strength,” but that's just not true. Actually, Christianity has been a source of division in the United States of America. Really, that's what the Christian prophet Jesus would have wanted. In the Bible, in the gospels, Jesus says he didn't come to bring peace. He came to divide people from each other, to rip families apart, to cause disunity, and boy, Christianity is doing that for sure. 40% of Americans are not Christians, but Donald Trump is set on declaring that, for those of us who are not Christian, we're not going to be Americans anymore, and we will be faced with the choice of either accepting Christianity or giving up our place in this country.

That kind of religious divisiveness is what that city on a hill that John Winthrop promised was really all about. After John Winthrop invoked the gospel of Matthew, talking about the city on the hill, he set up a tyrannical theocratic Christian government that tortured and executed people for failing to follow the kind of Christianity that John Winthrop thought they ought to engage in. John Winthrop and his successors established Christian rituals of humiliation, putting people in the stocks, beating people, killing people, simply because they would not accept the authority of the Christian church.

We all know about the Salem witch trials. That's the legacy of John Winthrop, and his intolerant Puritan Christianity.

That colonial period of religious cruelty is specifically what Donald Trump is citing as an example of what he wants the United States of America to become again, and that is reinforced, unfortunately, by Donald Trump's choice of a specific passage from the Bible that he has chosen to read.

He has chosen to read the 2nd book of Chronicles, chapter 7. He's not going to read the whole thing. So, I want to give you a bit of a larger passage from that chapter. So that you can understand what it is that that passage is really up to, to help you see why Donald Trump is choosing to read that instead of any other passage from the Bible.

Donald Trump is going to read this in an official federal government event tonight.

2 Chronicles 7 is a part of the Bible in which you have King Solomon. It's part of the Old Testament, and the God of the Bible is talking to King Solomon.

“The Lord appeared to him at night and said:

I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.

“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people,if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.

“As for you, if you walk before me faithfully as David your father did, and do all I command, and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father when I said, ‘You shall never fail to have a successor to rule over Israel.’

“But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them,then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples.This temple will become a heap of rubble. All who pass by will be appalled and say, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’People will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the Lord, the god of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them, that is why he brought all this disaster on them.’”

This ideology is what Donald Trump says is the foundation of our nation. In this passage, you have the God of the Bible talking like Donald Trump talks.

You know, another thing that's happening today is that the ceasefire between the United States and Iran is going to be over, and maybe they'll come up with a deal at the last minute. Maybe the bombs will start falling again. Maybe Donald Trump will start killing people again because they are not doing what he says.

They're not giving him what he wants and that's what happens when you don't give Donald Trump what he wants: He kills people. He destroys things.

That's exactly what the god of the Bible is doing in the 2nd book of Chronicles chapter 7, which Donald Trump says is the guiding light of our country. I think you can see why Donald Trump has chosen this passage.

This passage from the Bible, 2nd book of Chronicles chapter 7 provides religious justification for totalitarian government.

In this part of the Bible, the god of the Bible is declaring that he will support a royal throne. He will give that, not as a promise to the people, of the nation, but to the leader of that nation, saying, “you will never fail to have a successor. I will establish your royal throne,” and he's talking to an individual there. He is saying, I'm going to give you, as an individual, the undisputed power to command all of the people in this nation.

The deal is that you have to obey his religion. You have to do what this God commands.

Why would they do what this God commands? They have to obey, because they have been attacked by this God. They have been abused by this God, terrorized by this God. Right here in this passage of the Bible, it says so.

It says that this god who has all of the power, closed up the heavens, so that there was no rain, so there was a drought. People didn't have water to drink. People couldn't grow crops. They were starving. Then, this god sent locusts to devour the food that they already had. Then, this god sent a disease, a deadly disease, to kill people.

That's what this god is like. He starts out by punishing you, and then says, you want this to stop, you have to agree, not just to worship me, but also to follow this guy, King Solomon, who I am declaring is going to be your absolute ruler. If you do that, I'll stop killing you. I'll stop abusing you. I'll stop destroying your property, ruining your lives.

Then he says at the end, just keep in mind, King Solomon, if you ever disobey me, I will bring disaster on you again.

This is not a loving God, this is not a God who wants just to have good things for everybody who's just trying to get along, this is a commanding, absolute tyrant, a dictator, an absolute dictator, who wants to have power for the sake of power.

Of course, we know that this God doesn't exist at all. This God never actually shows up. It's an invisible character.

It's a mythology. However, as an ideology, this Bible has a negative impact that is quite tangible in our country.

Our president of the United States, who is mentally unwell, a sadist who seems to enjoy inflicting cruelty for the sake of his own sense of power, is invoking the idea of this part of the Christian Bible, in which you have the God of the Bible, declaring that he will install a dictator, a tyrant.

In this part of the Bible, the text refutes the idea that there can be any freedom for people to rule themselves. The text of the Bible refutes the idea that people can choose their own religion.

This is another thing that's really striking in what Donald Trump is choosing to say here. In this passage from the second book of Chronicles, the god of the Bible specifically says that you must not ever go and participate in any other religion, you may not entertain even the idea of any other gods, or else I will torture you, I will kill you, I will destroy your society.

Some people may say, well, this is just the Old Testament, so it doesn’t count. That’s balderdash.

This is a biblical passage that Donald Trump has chosen to represent his agenda as a Christian politician. Besides, Christians are often quite happy to impose Old Testament rules when it suits them - when it justifies their appetite for oppression.

More importantly than that, and if you've been listening to this podcast, you know what I'm about to say: This violent totalitarianism is not just an idea that appears in the Old Testament. It's in the New Testament as well. In fact, it's where the Bible ends up.

The end of the entire biblical story is in the book of Revelation, where Jesus appears. In Revelation, Jesus talks to somebody named John of Patmos, and he says to John: I'm going to torture everybody who refuses to obey me. I'm going to torture everybody who does not worship me as a god king, because I'm coming back and I'm going to establish an earthly kingdom.

I'm going to smash all the nations that refuse to obey me. I'm going to kill them, but first I'm going to inflict a terrible torture upon them that lasts 5 months.

Yes, this is Jesus in the Bible. That is Christian canon, for practically any Christian church that you might hear about, the book of Revelation is canon. Right at the beginning of the book of Revelation, it says, this book is “the testimony of Jesus”. These are the words of Jesus.

So if you want to talk about the teachings of Jesus, that's what this is about, and it's right in line with the 2nd book of Chronicles, chapter 7 that Donald Trump is going to read tonight. It's saying that the main thing you need to do as a Christian is not to be good to other people, it's not to be kind. It is to obey.

If you don't obey, God is going to come and torture you, and kill you, and your job as a Christian is to watch, as that God, as Jesus, comes back and tortures and kills people for disobeying Christianity. Furthermore, the message is that you should do nothing to stop it.

That's not compassion. That's not love. That's not turning the other cheek.

You know, I don't think Jesus is ever coming back. I don't believe in undead rulers from 2000 years ago, but that's not the problem. The problem is that we have the president of the United States, who is claiming that power for himself, and we have seen enough from Donald Trump to know that he is quite willing to make these terrible threats come true.

When Donald Trump talks about the United States being one nation under God, that's what he's talking about. He's talking about one nation under him.

You are going to hear a lot of people say something else. You're going to hear them say that the 2nd book of Chronicles chapter 7 is all about people being humble and atoning for their sins, as the text puts it, for their wicked ways.

I want you to think about this: When does the god of the Bible ever atone for his wicked ways, for abusing people, for torturing them, for killing them, simply because they will not worship him?

God is a spiritual narcissist, and Donald Trump is taking his inspiration from that.

You're also going to hear a lot of people say that Donald Trump is not a real Christian. They say Trump is a fake Christian, but that's not true.

He attended a Christian church weekly as a child. He went to at least a couple of other Christian churches through his young adult in middle adulthood. He was married 3 times in 3 different churches by 3 different Christian preachers. He's always talking about Christianity and wanting to make the United States one nation under God, a Christian God.

The thing some people presume about Christianity is that it is a religion of compassion, and so that therefore, anything that is not compassionate cannot be Christian, and therefore, Donald Trump is not a Christian.

But this Bible verse shows that is not the case.

The 2nd book of Chronicles, chapter 7 is frankly sadistic.

What it sets up is a moral universe in which the powerless always have to grovel before the powerful to apologize and to beg for forgiveness from the great leader for failing to worship him as much as he deserves.

That's the vision of religious morality, that the Bible sets up in the verse that Donald Trump is reading tonight. It ought to terrify you, that he wants to impose this upon you, as one nation under God.

Here in the United States of America, we have had a constitution that is supposed to protect us, that says there is no religious test for public office, and the 1st amendment, the very 1st amendment to our Constitution says there is going to be no establishment of religion by the government.

We can't have any laws doing that. Donald Trump wants to take that apart because he wants to be worshipped.

The foundation of our country is the separation of church and state. Separation of church and state is a promise that has never been fulfilled, but it has never been more clear that that is what we need.

Welcome to Stop Christian Nationalism.

It's been a crazy week this week. It's just Monday, and it's already been a crazy week.

At the end of last week, Donald Trump announced that he's going to build a triumphal arch in Washington, D.C. To celebrate his victory, his victory where, his victory in the war in Iran.

There's been no victory there. Iran has been able to hold its own and to devastate the American economy.

But what's on that triumphal arch, as it's designed, is of particular interest to this podcast. It says: In God we trust. In God we trust.

You know, there are a lot of Americans who trust in God, that's true. There are a lot of Americans who don't, in fact, an increasing number.

And given the crazy hijinks, the fascist abuses, all of the violence, all of the corruption that's been going on under this Christian government, run by Donald Trump and his Christian nationalist Republican allies, I think what we're actually seeing is a further decline in American Christianity.

It's becoming really embarrassing to say that you are a Christian in the United States of America.

That embarrassment was made plain this morning when Donald Trump posted a picture of himself, this was a generative artificial intelligence image of him, a younger version of him, but that's not really the main point of it. The main point of it is that this image showed Donald Trump as Jesus with magical glowing hands that can perform faith healing on sick people.

Yes, Donald Trump believes that he's Jesus, and we know that Jesus, according to Christian doctrine is God.

So when Donald Trump puts on that triumphal arch in Washington, DC, in God, we trust, when he has this rally, this prayer rally on the national mall, run by the U.S. Federal government, and in fact, across the nation, organized by the federal government to establish Christianity as the official religion of the United States of America, and to rededicate America to one nation under God, we know who Donald Trump is referring to when he talks about God.

He's talking about himself. He is, literally, to quote Depeche Mode, his own personal Jesus, and, you know, a lot of people may say, oh, that's blasphemy.

That was one of the big reactions to this meme, this image that Donald Trump posted of himself, that here he is. He's Jesus.

But you know, for a lot of Christian Nationalists, that's not blasphemy at all. I mean, for years, Republican Christian Nationalists have been saying that Donald Trump has been anointed by God, that he is God's chosen leader.

He has been appointed by God, not elected by the American people, but chosen by the Christian God.

And now, are we really supposed to be upset that Donald Trump is creating images that show that he believes that he is actually God, that he is actually Jesus Christ?

I mean, hey, that's what Christian nationalists have been saying for years.

And for that matter, what's the matter with blasphemy at this point, given what Christianity is doing?

Christianity in charge of our government has dismantled our democracy. It's taken food away from the hungry, medicine, away from the sick. homes away from people who need shelter, it's waged unprovoked war, costing the American people billions upon billions of dollars and ruining the reputation of the United States of America around the world.

Christian government has given us rampant corruption with Donald Trump taking cryptocurrency bribes in the billions of dollars - openly. The law is not being followed anymore because the law is whatever the leader wants it to be, at this point, and folks, that is a Christian doctrine.

The Christian model of government has always been an authoritarian leader at the top, making all the rules, and everyone else, having to do nothing but obey, the one who is in charge, and that is, in the divine sense, the Christian God himself, that authoritarian leader, who can be cruel, one moment, kind, the next, and then cruel again, and there's no consistency in the Bible, of morality.

It's kill, then it's no, don't kill, be compassionate, and then it's kill again from this god. It's absolutely chaotic and erratic. And who does that remind you of? Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is the very model of a Christian national leader, because he acts like a king, and the divine right of kings.

That is a doctrine that comes right out of Christian theology. You have monotheism, and you have monarchy, and they come hand in hand, and Jesus is supposed to be the king of king, and Lord of Lords, he's not the senator of senators, or the president of presidents.

He's the king of kings, and he's supposed to be obeyed, and feared, and worshiped.

That's what Donald Trump wants for himself. That's why he didn't think twice before posting an image of himself as Jesus. Made sense to him.

It kind of does make sense if you follow the strange kind of logic of Christian government.

But, you know, there is some good news this week as well.

Over the weekend, there was an election in Hungary, and Hungary for 16 years has had a Christian nationalist dictatorship under Victor Orban. This weekend, the Christian Nationalist Party of Victor Orban lost the parliamentary elections.

And what that means in that form of government is that they don't control the parliament, they don't get to select the prime minister.

They don't form the government anymore.

After 16 years of Christian Nationalist dictatorship in Hungary, the Christian Nationalist government was finally voted out of power.

If they could do that there, surely we can do that here. In the United States of America.

We can get rid of Christian Nationalist fascism. 

I've been thinking a lot about my anger.

The anger that I feel toward Christian nationalists shoving their religion down my throat.

There's part of me that thinks, I really shouldn't. Allow them to make me angry.

I should just be peaceful in the face of everything that's going on.

The thing is, if I'm peaceful in the face of everything that's going on, well, that might feel better for me, maybe, but it's not gonna change anything.

Now, this is not to say that I want to be angry all the time.

People get upset about atheists being angry. Why are you so angry all the time? Often those people don't stop to ask what is making atheists angry. Rather, it's an accusation: Why are you so angry all the time? Like, why are you choosing to be angry? What's wrong with you and having your anger?

You know, I think there is a whole lot in the world right now that's going on that really should make people angry.

People are getting hurt.

And it's not just people specifically their bodies getting hurt getting taken off to prison, getting shot, getting bombed.

It's also entire ways of being that are being destroyed.

We have educational institutions being defunded, so that learning, basic learning is becoming more and more impossible.

We have media organizations that have been undermined or bought out or bribed or bullied into participating in fascism. So that we don't even have information anymore.

So there's a lot to be angry about.

But on the other hand, there is glorious tea.

I have this tea I want to tell you about, and I promise that I'm not getting off the topic here.

This tea is ginger turmeric tea, and my son's girlfriend brought this over about a month and a half ago, and I've been rationing it out to myself, cup by cup, when I really needed it, and I really needed it this morning, because I was just feeling really stressed out about some particular work I had to do.

It's the kind of thing I'm not really good at, but I need to get done, and that always makes me feel stressed out.

So I made this, this cup of tea, ginger and turmeric, there's something about the 2 of those things that come together, and it just feels like you're drinking a warm ray of sunlight.

You know, I mean, you taste it in your mouth, but you also feel that warmth coming down into your chest.

It just makes me feel so much better.

And it's not about the nutritional value of ginger and turmeric.

I could just chew on ginger and turmeric roots.

If I wanted to get that.

There's more to life than just getting your literal nutrition, your vitamins, your roughage.

There is something that religion for the people who believe in it is good at, which is getting them to feel things.

And we need to have the ability to have feelings that heal us, as well as feelings that motivate us to take care of the things that need to be taken care of.

So I get this great feeling from that ginger turmeric tea, and I've just ordered myself a new bag of it, loose leaf tea, so that I can make it the way I like it.

And um, that's great for me.

But, you know, you might think that that tea is disgusting.

Some people are really turned off by ginger or turmeric.

There's a kind of weirdness to the flavor of that, especially if it's raw, those roots, it can be off putting.

I mean, and some people just don't like things that I think are great.

Like mint for me, whether it's a tea or it's an ice cream.

The flavor.

I just chew on the leaf.

It's to me gorgeous.

And I appreciate it because this doesn't appear to be anything unhealthy about mint.

It lowers your blood pressure.

It helps your stomach.

It helps with headaches.

It gives you energy without making you jittery. Or keeping you up.

It can give you energy to get things done, but it also can help you go to sleep.

I mean, isn't that wonderful?

Yeah, but I've met people who tell me they think mint is absolutely disgusting and they don't want to have anything to do with it. They don't like the smell of it. They don't like the flavor of it.

And who's to say? Are they wrong?

What if we had a government that forced people to have mint?

And I think most people like mint.

You know, let's say maybe 80% of the people, 90% of Americans like mint.

Would it be right if we had a government that forced everybody, including the 10% of Americans who hate mint to drink mint tea, to eat mint ice cream, to chew on the leaf, to grow it in their backyards, to have it in their houses, strewn about as a kind of herb to get that lovely smell in there?

Well for them, that would be pretty damn disgusting. Wouldn't it?

And that's the thing.

I think when it comes to things like what we drink, what we eat, that is an individual thing, and there are people who get really judgmental about that.

And I don't like that.

The food shaming people who will look at what someone's eating and say, oh, that's that's just disgusting or that's wrong or why won't you try this thing? You really should try it.

They want some people to to have the kind of nutrition that they have.

They want people to have an attitude toward food that they have because they think it's right and moral and they're superior in some way about that.

It's the same way with music.

Some people really like Taylor Swift and other people don't.

And they all have their points of view on Taylor Swift, and I could see how some people might think that she's just commercial or, you know, a little bit kind of conventional in some ways, but other people might find her music to be absolutely stirring.

And that is a very intimate relationship you have with what makes you feel right, with what makes you feel good.

You know, if there's a beat in a pop tune, that makes you feel like you can have the energy to face the last couple hours of your afternoon.

I don't really think we ought to have a society where we judge each other for that.

You know, we get all sniffy about, oh, I've got my alternative band so much better than yours.

Things like food and music or a lot like religion in that way.

People get all into what's the right thing and what's the wrong thing and what's the best and what's not good and the time that we have in life is too short to argue about that stuff.

But once we have people trying to force that on us.

We had a government, uh, department of music, for example, that tried to push certain kinds of music on us.

Oh boy, then yeah, I think that's worth arguing about.

Because the thing that's really bugging me about that is that we are forcing it on each other.

And that's what's happening with religion.

Our U.S. Federal government is forcing Christianity on people and state governments are doing it too, down in Texas.

They are working on passing a new law that is going to make it mandatory for schools to teach the Christian Bible, and from elementary all the way through high school.

Students in public schools.

Government run schools are going to be forced to read stories from Christian religion.

Stories about magical beings and about Jesus and worshiping God, and about people having their lives destroyed, righteously by those spirits, and about the claims of Christianity to religious power, and to political power.

Because boy, that's a lot of what's in the Bible, is that religion claiming the right to have power over people's lives.

And it's, in a wy, a perfect embodiment of Christianity to have this new law in Texas imposing Bible stories on all children.

And by the way, Texas will not be including stories from other religions.

There will not be any mandatory Buddhist stories or Hindu stories or Zoroastrian stories, no stories from Shinto, no stories from Native American traditions, certainly.

None of that will be forced upon students statewide, only Christianity.

And so you may think if you're a Christian, well, that's fine for me because, hey, I'm a Christian, and I like that kind of thing.

But how long is it going to be until the Texas state government decides which kind of Christianity is going to be taught by the government, is going to be forced on your children, is going to be put into government acts of worship.

I mean, in a sense, it's already happening because there's going to be a government board that's going to choose which stories from the Bible get taught to children and which ones don't.

And that's teaching a certain perspective on Christianity, not just Christianity in general, and certainly not just religion in general.

It's teaching a very particular kind of Christian agenda.

And we saw another aspect of that.

In Washington, DC, around the Easter holiday, on Good Friday, in the Pentagon, in the Department of War.

They had a Good Friday, Christian religious ritual, and it was strongly, strongly suggested to top leadership that if they wanted to get in, Pete Hegseth's good favor that they would attend, but it was also announced that this would be a Protestant. Ritual.

This would be a Protestant Christian Good Friday ceremony, and that no, there would not be any Catholic Good Friday ceremony, that if Catholics wanted to participate, which they would have to do, to make Pete Hegseth see that they're in line, and Pete Hegseth wants everybody to tow the line at the Pentagon.

Disagreement is no longer welcome there.

Well you've got to do the Protestant thing.

You can't do the ceremony your way.

If there's one thing about Catholicism, I think everyone can agree on, it's that for Catholics, the way that you do a religious ritual is really important.

And they don't look at that as just some kind of arbitrary thing, oh, what's the difference?

You know, if we just, you know, get a guitar out and sing our way through or we start snake handling or whatever, different Christian ways of doing things that are not what the Catholic Church does.

No, the Catholics are pretty, I think it would be fair to say they're kind of uptight about that.

Kind of in the same way, like vegans are uptight about their diet.

And you could say, hey, well, we're gonna have a dinner, and it's for meat eaters only, and we're just not having a vegan dinner.

Well, you know, you could say, oh, come on, it's food.

What's the difference?

So what if I put a little bit of hamburger in your lasagna?

It's all food. It's all calories, right?

But you know it's not.

And you know that for vegans, it's like a really important thing that they don't eat meat. They have moral, ethical, philosophical, not to mention aesthetic and nutritional reasons for that.

You can agree or disagree with vegans about that, but they have reasons for what they do, and you just go throwing meat into their food.

That's nasty.

But that's what Pete Hegseth did with his Protestants only at the Department of War order.

See, that's how it always goes when Christianity takes control of a government.

I mean, back when Ferdinand and Isabella, they ran the Muslims out of Spain, right?

Saying that they'd been there a long, long time, but they called them foreigners and random out to purify Spain, but was that pure enough?

No, they then kicked out the Jews or forced them to convert to Christianity.

But was that good enough?

No, because then Ferdinand and Isabella, and their Christian nationalist monarchy decided that, oh, hey, what if those Jews are pretending to convert to Christianity, but they don't really believe it in the way that we think we that they ought to.

They began a little thing called the Spanish Inquisition.

It began by targeting the Jews to make sure that they were really, really meaning it when they said that they worshiped Jesus, torturing them, killing them, stealing from them.

But then it was Christian against Christian.

How Christian are you? Are you the right kind of Christian?

If there's one thing that Christians like to do, they love to accuse other kinds of Christians, of not being real Christians, of being fake Christians.

Pete Hegseth's bunch says that the pope isn't getting it right.

I mean, for that matter, JD Vance says the pope isn't getting Catholicism, right?

Then the Catholic pope says, well, no, you're not real Christians, and God doesn't listen to you, and then the other people come back and say, when I pray, God listens to me, but he doesn't listen to you, and it all sounds petty and small and just kind of stupid. Until they start sending soldiers out to enforce religion, until you have someone like Pete Hegseth, saying that he's bombing children in Iran for Jesus, and that it's a miracle.

What has been done with all the bombs and bullets and missiles, destroying people over there?

Which is not to say that the Iranians wouldn't do the same thing.

They're the government at least.

It's fundamentalist religion against fundamentalist religion.

That just gets me back to that sense of tea.

What do we want in society? 

I know what I want. I want the chance to enjoy my tea, my way.

See, I don't think that there are any spirits or monsters.

There are no demons. There are no angels, there are no gods out there, making our lives worse or better.

You know who's doing that is, I think, ourselves.

And so we should have the power, people should have the power to choose what makes them feel good.

So long as it's not hurting other people.

I don't think when I'm drinking my tea, it makes anyone hurt because I'm drinking my tea.

I don't choose to be a Christian.

I do not believe that their religion is real in any literal sense, but I don't want to stop them from having the right to do it their way.

I recognize that for some people, believing in Jesus and praying and singing and doing whatever it is that they do, in their particular denomination, makes them feel kind of tingly, warm something, and they might call that the holy ghost or Holy Spirit, but it's really, you know, maybe it's kind of like how I feel when I drink my tea.

The thing is that different people get pleasure in life or solace, they get comfort in life, that helps them get through all the really hard stuff in their own individual ways.

And if we have a government that's starting to micromanage our lives, telling us how we have to seek pleasure and how we must not seek pleasure for ourselves.

You know, it's just kind of make a whole bunch of people feel awful.

It's not decent.

It's not kind.

 It's not caring.

 And I think we're seeing pretty clearly with the Christian nationalism that Donald Trump has imposed on this country and it's only going to get worse.

 Over time, the longer he's there, it's not bringing peace.

It's not bringing joy.

It's not bringing prosperity.

It's bringing anger and division and destruction.

Not just here in the United States, but all around the world.

I want you to have your tea your way.

If you want to have religion have it your way.

Just don't impose that on me.