What these persons fail to understand is that it would have been redundant to include such a phrase [separation of church and state] in the Constitution. The document as a whole embodies the view that government is not to meddle in religious matters. The federal government is given very specific, limited powers only over various secular matters. It has no powers relating to religion. The government is secular both in its origin (the consent of the governed) and its function. The government and religious institutions are completely separate and have nothing to do with each other. To insist that the Constitution doesn’t mandate separation of church and state because it doesn’t contain that phrase is more preposterous than a person who is not named as a beneficiary in a will insisting he has a claim on the estate because the will does not specifically exclude him by name.
— Dr. Ronald Lindsay, The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can’t Tell Us What to Do, December 2014
Evangelical Christians continue to represent a sizeable percentage of the current president’s base support. To those who have watched evangelicals spend “the last 40 years telling everyone how to live, who to love,” and “what to think about morality,” the continued alliance with this president makes evangelicals the “biggest phonies” in all of politics. Indeed, the behind-the-scenes details of how a “thrice-married, insult-hurling” president obtained the endorsement of the evangelical hierarchy are as lewd and hypocritical as one might expect.
As much as the hypocrisy of evangelicalism can be mocked and exposed however, there exists a kernel of truth lurking behind the claim that evangelicals are supporting this president out of fear. It is simply impossible to deny that institutionalized persecution of religious ideas by public universities has occurred. Thankfully, this persecution has been continuously challenged and overturned in the courts.
The fact that persecution of religious ideas can and has occurred in our society however, does not even remotely suggest that intolerance is a uniquely “secularist” problem. In fact, intolerance of dissent and censorship of opposing views has been a general feature in religious institutions for thousands of years. Moreover, the same intolerance and censorship evangelicals claim they hate so much when it occurs in “secular” institutions is expressly embraced at the largest Christian colleges in the United States today, such as Liberty University. Does this past and current existence of intolerance in religious institutions mean that religion is inherently intolerant? No, because human bias exists generally in all human institutions, a fact the framers of the Constitution knew all too well and the exact reason why they chose to embrace secularism.
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For example, David French, who I would argue is a moderate evangelical, has argued recently that we should be wary of European immigration because those countries have a “secular-bias” that will “alter American culture in appreciable ways.” In answering this nonsense from French, it is important to acknowledge that such a statement amounts to nothing less than vile bigotry.
To illustrate, imagine for one second how French would react if a liberal pundit on MSNBC said we should avoid immigrants from Christian-majority countries because America is steadily becoming more secular. Is there any doubt French would find such a statement to be a reflection of bigotry against Christians based on ridiculous notions that they are somehow incapable of assimilating into American culture? Yet he felt no issue disparaging and demeaning immigration from a whole continent based entirely on whether they held certain religious beliefs or not. Why? Because for all too many evangelicals, non-belief is simply not viewed with the same respect as religious belief, despite the fact that our Constitutional free conscience liberty makes no distinction. Put simply, it is nothing less than disgraceful the level of bigotry that evangelicals impose on the none-religious. Until and unless the religious stop lying about the nature of secularism, falsely depicting it as the ultimate evil, I fear such bigotry will continue to increase.
(Sorry about the headline. I couldn’t help myself.)
For me, GOOP is patriarchy wrapped up with a pink, bespoke, ethically sourced, healing stone blessed, turmeric infused, hemp ribbon in an attempt to market it as California chic wellnisim (wellness + feminism). They present lies and misinformation about how our bodies work and sell expensive and either useless or potentially harmful products (for example, their supplements and jade eggs) as a path to achieving wellnism. There are some facts along for the ride so they can always claim to “respect” science.
GOOP also exploits the fact that women — likely because of the pressures of a patriarchal society — feel they need excuses to do something nice for themselves. If you like a $400 hyaluronic acid face serum in a pretty bottle from GOOP that has no proof it’s superior to an almost identical $9 product from Trader Joe’s that’s cool. Some people like fancy face creams and serums. I like to spend my money on expensive shoes, but I don’t kid myself that my $350 Fluevogs get me to work any faster than my $10 shoes from Target. My expensive shoes are also not sold with any suggestion of a health benefit.
My brand, if I have one, is authenticity and facts. It’s informed choice, not misinformation and fear. And eating apricots whenever the fuck I want.
— Dr. Jen Gunter, No GOOP, We are Most Definitely not on the Same Side, July 26, 2019
Other GOOP related posts by Dr. Gunter
Gwyneth Paltrow wants to take your money. The press is helping her
Dr. Gunter is one of my favorite medical/science writers. She’s funny, isn’t afraid to swear, and her posts, most importantly, help readers differentiate between lies, superstition, nonsense, pseudoscience, homeopathy, vaccine denialism, quackery, and scientific facts. And, she’s an atheist. If you are so inclined. add the good doctor to your reading list.
There’s a very high cost to our politics for celebrating the Trump style, but what is most personally painful to me as a person of the Christian faith is the cost to the Christian witness. Nonchalantly jettisoning the ethic of Jesus in favor of a political leader who embraces the ethic of Thrasymachus and Nietzsche—might makes right, the strong should rule over the weak, justice has no intrinsic worth, moral values are socially constructed and subjective—is troubling enough.
But there is also the undeniable hypocrisy of people who once made moral character, and especially sexual fidelity, central to their political calculus and who are now embracing a man of boundless corruptions. Don’t forget: Trump was essentially named an unindicted co-conspirator (“Individual 1”) in a scheme to make hush-money payments to a porn star who alleged she’d had an affair with him while he was married to his third wife, who had just given birth to their son.
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….Evangelical Christians should acknowledge the profound damage that’s being done to their movement by its braided political relationship—its love affair, to bring us back to the words of Ralph Reed—with a president who is an ethical and moral wreck. Until that is undone—until followers of Jesus are once again willing to speak truth to power rather than act like court pastors—the crisis in American Christianity will only deepen, its public testimony only dim, its effort to be a healing agent in a broken world only weaken.
At this point, I can’t help but wonder whether that really matters to many of Donald Trump’s besotted evangelical supporters.
Skeptic: Do you really believe that the universe was created in six days?
Sophisticated Christian: Don’t be a silly literalist. “Six days” is a metaphor for a very long, long period of time.
Skeptic: Do you really believe that the entire earth was covered by water from a great flood?
Sophisticated Christian: Don’t be a silly literalist. When God said “the entire earth” was covered by flood waters that was metaphorical for a flood of the entire known world in which Noah lived. It was a regional flood. It was a flood of Noah’s entire world.
Skeptic: Do you believe that all the many languages on earth derive from the Tower of Babel?
Sophisticated Christian: Don’t be a silly literalist. The story of the Tower of Babel is an allegory to demonstrate the power of God in the face of humankind’s sinful arrogance.
Skeptic: Do you believe that Jonah really lived in the belly of a fish for three days?
Sophisticated Christian: Don’t be a silly literalist. This is another allegory. It was told as an allegorical prophecy of Jesus’ burial in the tomb.
Skeptic: Do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was born of virgin; that his father was a (holy) ghost; that he walked on water; turned water into wine; exorcised demons, sending them into a herd of pigs; healed blindness; raised people from the dead; flew to the pinnacle of the Temple with a devil; reattached a man’s severed ear to his head; and after he was publicly executed, came back to life, appeared to his former fishing buddies to share a broiled fish lunch; and finally, that he levitated off the top of a mountain into outer space where he currently sits on a golden throne as Lord and Master of the universe?
Sophisticated Christian: Of course. That is what the Bible literally says, you God-hating fool!
We are seeing countless episodes of clergy members who are having sexual relations with their (church members) in a spiritual setting; I mean, right in the church, right in the confessional. And we think that there are a lot of these clergy members who have quite honestly taken advantage of people and taken advantage of their authority or power.
It’s a very powerful thing if you are an individual who has represented yourself as sort of the conduit to heaven, you know for salvation…well then you have a lot of influence over another person’s life. You know, we see cases all the time of a clergy member saying, you know, ‘Do what I say or else you’re not going to go to heaven.’ And that’s a type of power, a type of authority that we just don’t think that anybody should have to be able to exploit for a sexual purpose.
If attorneys have a sexual relationship with a client that they represent, they lose their law license for that, you know? Same thing with a doctor. So why should it be any different for members of the clergy?
We don’t think that it is a First Amendment issue, and we’d be willing to go to court on that if we had to. But I think that there are just certain positions of authority that should not be exploited for sexual purposes, and this is one of them.
I’m not afraid and I won’t apologize for wanting to ensure that any institution around the state understands that if they have been engaged or aiding and abetting in the coverup child sexual abuse, absolutely if there are charges that can be brought, we are happy to entertain those charges and to file them. But we’re hopeful that through the process of this investigation, when we find out more about what has happened in the past, we’ll be able to prevent that from happening in the future.
In nuptial terms, our countries [Israel and the United States] celebrated their “golden anniversary” more than 20 years ago. We are now at platinum – a miracle of preciousness, radiance, and endurance. And the man who most deserves credit for this is President Donald Trump.
Under his watch, America has finally made good on its decades-old pledge to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US Embassy there. In another service to historical justice, Trump declared the Golan Heights to be Israeli territory, and in service to the security of Israel and the whole world, he withdrew the United States from a nuclear deal with Iran that was a contemporary echo of the Munich Agreement.
Trump and his senior staff have also dispensed with the useless mold of the so-called peace process, which had been bunged up by dishonesty and hypocrisy. Their administration has made clear that the Middle East must come to terms with an Israel that is proudly permanent in the land of Zion – an Israel whose Jewish roots run deepest and whose ancestral, sovereign claims are without equal.
Trump is a man of his word. On the campaign trail, he promised to protect Israel, to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, to quit the Iran nuclear deal. And he has kept each and every one of those promises – unlike previous presidents who traded principle for political expediency.
Trump is a businessman and a statesman with an instinct for justice. He sees an Israel that does whatever is necessary for its security and defense, against the odds and sweeping international consensus. These are the kind of nations and people that he likes to deal with.
Trump is also a patriot who wants to make America great again. He is constantly aware of that cost that the United States risks paying should it lose credibility. An America the projects strength and credibility rallies most world powers to it; these, in turn, respect and value its steadfast loyalty to its allies, chief among them Israel.
By rights, Trump should enjoy sweeping support among US Jews, just as he does among Israelis. That this has not been the case (so far; the 2020 election still beckons) is an oddity that will long be pondered by historians. Scholars of the Bible will no doubt note the heroes, sages, and prophets of antiquity who were similarly spurned by the very people they came to raise up.
Would it be too much to pray for a day when the Bible gets a “Book of Trump,” much like it has a “Book of Esther” celebrating the deliverance of the Jews from ancient Persia?
Although the result in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association case was entirely predictable, reading it still left me stunned. The case involves a dispute over whether a local government in the state of Maryland can tax its citizenry in order to maintain an overtly Christian World War I memorial.
With an objective Court, a decision recognizing that the state had no such coercive taxation power under the First Amendment would have been readily assured. After all, I am old enough to remember when the United States Supreme Court believed that government financially compelling free and independent individuals to endorse beliefs they find objectionable was always demeaning. When an individual’s objection to such forced extractions was not trivialized as the taking of mere offense, but a sacred objection against tyrannical government power. But, alas, that was the long-forgotten time of ….*checks notes*…. holy shit, just a year ago?
It is undeniably telling about the state of free conscience liberty that when faced with extending the same principles against forced extraction to non-religious or non-Christian citizens, the Court’s views on the issue abruptly changed. Nothing can excuse such blatantly different outcomes to the same objection, and no explanation other than outright religious bigotry against non-believers can explain the outcome in the Bladensburg cross case.
From the beginning of the Court’s plurality opinion, it becomes rather transparent that Justice Samuel Alito is seeking to diminish the objection of the non-believer against being forced to pay for a religious monument. According to Alito, the objection boils down to being merely offended at the sight of the monument. Moreover, in contrast, Justice Alito takes a great deal of time to elevate Christian moral objections regarding the views of the same monument. For example, Alito states that “[a] government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the divine will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion.”
Using Alito’s own logic here however begs the question: Why is a country that roams the land forcing people to pay for the erection and maintenance of religious monuments not seen as being aggressively hostile to non-religious people? More importantly, as noted by the dissent, tearing down these monuments is not the only solution. All the state of Maryland had to do to conform with First Amendment principles was stop forcing people to pay for the Christian monument and instead let the upkeep be maintained by willing donators. I will never understand why an insistence on willing participants was not enough to settle this case and that the only satisfactory outcome for the cross’s radical theocratic proponents was having the authority to force unwilling others to pay.
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In other words, according to the Court, the Latin Cross has transcended religion and become a secular symbol. This is literally the equivalent of saying that Jesus Christ is not a Christian figure, an idea so absurd that it becomes somewhat offensive that the Court would expect people paying attention to take this conclusion seriously.
Unfortunately, such a transparently biased outcome that favors Christianity at the expense of every other belief is becoming an all too familiar outcome, in a particularly dangerous time. As I have repeatedly stressed, we are in a unique moment in our history when a sizable portion of the population with whom religion plays no role lives alongside an equally sizable portion for whom religion plays a vital role. Disturbingly, the growth of a non-religious population that demands the same free conscience protections has come to be seen as a menacing threat to many religious people. It is now to the point that a religious zealot and bigot who just so happens to be the country’s former Attorney General can openly describe irreligious citizens as a dire threat to our country that must be stopped.
We’re supposed to be a ‘Christian’ nation are we not? But we are known throughout the world as the most warlike country on Earth. And I would say almost all the wars in which we’ve been involved, have been unnecessary.
So if God’s kingdom was on Earth, we would live totally at peace with each other. Maybe that’s an individual choice too. Not just between nations not being at war, but with a friendly attitude, or a loving attitude to other people that are different than us.
My father waited until I was twenty-four. The war was on. I was in Italy. From time to time he used to send me parcels of books to read. In one of them were two in the Thinker’s Library series: Renan’s The Life of Jesus and Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man. I started with The Life of Jesus and found it quite interesting; I turned to The Martyrdom and found it enthralling. . . One Man! Mankind! There was no God. God had not created Man in His own image. It was the other way round: Man had created God. And Man was all there was. But it was enough. It was the answer, and it was both totally convincing and totally satisfying. It convinced and satisfied me as I lay in my tent somewhere on the narrow strip of sand that divides Lake Comacchio from the Adriatic; and it has convinced and satisfied me ever since.
I wrote at once to my father to tell him so and he at once wrote back. And it was then that I learned for the first time that these were his beliefs, too, and that he had always hoped that one day I would come to share them.
