Stop Christian Nationalism

Clifford Cook
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News about the latest abuses by Christian nationalists and ideas about how to participate in the resistance against Christian nationalism. Now is not the time for silence! Learn more at StopChristianNationalism.com

  1. Oct 27

    Templeton Foundation Attacks Atheists As American Christians Refuse To Confront Fascism

    If you've been listening for the last 4 years, you know why we need to stop Christian Nationalism. This is not an abstract thing. It’s not just that we don't aesthetically like or appreciate Christian Nationalism. This podcast is motivated by what Christian Nationalists have said that they're going to do to America and what they are actually doing to the United States of America. The project of Christian Nationalism is a project of fascism, and the historical association between fascism and nasty right wing Christianity, was there from the start. In the Spanish Civil War, and then Spanish fascism that lasted all the way until the 1970s, it was the Roman Catholic Church in Spain that supported that fascist regime because they didn't want people to become atheists, so torture and murder and dictatorship were fine with the Roman Catholic church, just so long as people said that they believed in God. Now we have fascism here in the United States. We have Donald Trump, who has declared that the United States is a Christian nation. Never mind our Constitution. The Bill of Rights doesn't matter. The First Amendment doesn't matter anymore. Now we're just a Christian nation. So we go to war for Christianity with Pete Hegseth telling us that the war in Iran is for Jesus, and he's citing Bible quotes left and right as we drop bombs on schools full of children. I could go on and on about what's been going on the last couple of years, with masked secret police busting into people's homes, dragging people out of their cars, breaking their bones, putting them in concentration camps, starving them, depriving them of medication, shooting them dead on the street. This is what the United States of America has become under Christian Nationalism. So, please, it's election season, so go out and vote. If you are scared about the messages of what's going to happen, that vote won't be counted. Well, go out and vote on election day anyway. Don't give them the excuse. Wherever you are, in your local community, make sure that your ballot has the best chance of being counted. There are no more guarantees of anything under Christian nationalism anymore. Freedom is no longer taken for granted. A lot of people are going to say, oh, don't don't blame Christianity for what the Christian Nationalists are doing, because most Christian Americans are standing against that. You should ask them: Where's your evidence for that? Of course, American Christians are not accustomed to giving evidence for what they say is true. They're used to just kind of asserting what they feel is true in their hearts without having to give any evidence, but I think given what we've seen from the government that Christian Americans have given us, we have the right to ask for evidence. You see, when I say Christian Americans have given us this government, this fascism, this violence, this withdrawal of food from the hungry and medicine from the sick, I have very specific evidence of that. Exit polls in the last 3 general elections show that majorities of Christian voters voted for Trump each one of those times. That's in the past, you may say. That's in the past, and Christian voters have learned their lesson now. You may say that, but what about the evidence? Let me give you evidence. A survey by Pew Research, and this is a very well established survey organization, looked at the relationship between religious identity in the United States of America and who they're going to vote for. In this election, I'm sorry to put it so plainly, but reality has become plain. If you're voting for a Republican, to go to Congress, at this point, you are voting for fascism, and you ought to admit what you're voting for. If you're staying home and not voting, then it's kind of like just letting the fascists march down the street and take over the country, not doing a damn thing to stop it. If you're not willing to vote against the Republicans, to vote for a Democrat instead, you are voting for fascism, or you are standing by and allowing the fascists to take over and take even more power. Defending fascism is what you're doing if you vote Republican. It turns out that once again, a majority of Christians are supporting fascism. Among those who are going to vote, a majority of Christians are saying that they are going to vote for the Republicans. There is a block of Christians who are just staying home and saying that they're not going to vote, they're not going to vote for either the Republican or the Democrat. Those Christians are simply sitting on their hands, while fascism burns through America, deciding not to do anything about it, after the Christian majority voted for fascism three general elections in a row Let me give you a specific number here. The percentage of Christian American voters who are going to vote against fascism this year. Is 35%. So if you're telling me that Christians have changed their ways, that American Christians now understand the mistakes that they made and have learned their lesson, the evidence just doesn't show that. Two out of every three Christian voters in the United States of America are either voting for fascism or are not doing anything to stop fascism. They’re sitting on their hands and allowing the fascists to keep on doing what they're doing, not taking one step to defend the weak, to feed the hungry, to clothe the poor, to give medicine to the sick, to protect those people who need to be protected from fascist thugs, wearing masks, using electronic surveillance to go and target their neighbors. Those Christian Americans are either voting for fascism or they're doing nothing to protect their neighbors. Only one third of Christian American voters are standing up to fascism this year. Thank you to those one out of three, to that minority of American Christianity that is doing something. Thank you to them. Thank you sincerely. I mean that with no sarcasm at all. Thank you to them, but what the hell is going on with the rest of American Christianity, after everything we've seen? The USA is threatening to go toward with Canada for goodness sakes. This is what we get when we put Christianity in government. Christian Americans are not taking responsibility by and large for what they've done to America. They're not taking responsibility. Take a look at the evidence. It shows that most Christian Americans are quite happy with Christian Nationalism, or they're willing to do nothing to stand against fascism. I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about what is going on out there in the media landscape to continue to support Christian fascism in the United States of America. Of course, there are those networks that are just blatantly Christian fascist. They're the ones like Fox News that are clearly just kind of shilling for Christian nationalist fascism. You know what's even worse? There is a project to give cover to American Christianity, even as American Christians are overwhelmingly supporting or enabling fascism. This project pretends that Christianity is moderate and very reasonable. I want to talk about an organization that I've discovered is behind a campaign of misinformation about this. This organization is called the Templeton Foundation. I came across them, as I was researching Ross Douthat’s book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. This is a book in which Ross Douthat claims to prove reasonable, logical reasons to believe in religion and to become Christians. What's so wrong with that? If you consider the title of his book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, I want you to take a moment. Close your eyes and imagine a world in which everyone is religious. That's a world in which not one single person is skeptical. Not one single person asks questions of religious authorities. Not one person doubts religious authorities and their power, and what they tell us is true. It’s a world in which no one challenges the connection between religious to political power, which we have seen so strongly. Under that Christian control of government we have poverty. We have massive corruption. We have physical violence from our own government against our own people, and against immigrants too. So much for welcoming strangers and all that. Screw that. American Christianity isn't into that anymore. When you have a world in which everyone is religious, you have a society in which everybody is submitting to social authority of priests and of churches. You have a world in which everyone accepts on faith that what their leaders tell them is true, not questioning things independently. That's the kind of world that Ross Douthat is promoting, and it's not moderate. It's a Christian Nationalist authoritarian regime. It’s not a surprise because, if you take a look at the last chapter of the New Testament, which is where Christianity culminates, the religion is threatening to impose just that kind of society on the world. The Book of Revelation in the New Testament, is all about how Jesus comes back from the dead and tells everyone that he is going to slaughter and torture Everyone who refuses to worship him as a god. I know a lot of people don't want to believe that that's in the Bible. I suggest that you go and read it. Read it for yourself because that's what the Bible says. Anyway, Ross Douthat has done a terrible job writing his book in general, but one particular chapter really stood out to me. In that chapter, Ross Douthat is arguing that supernatural events are real, that there really are fairies and genies, and witches casting magic spells and demons. There’s one story that Ross Douthat uses in this chapter to support the idea that the supernatural is common and magic is happening all over the place, and scientists are wrong. It's a story that he retells from Barbara Luhrmann, who wrote an article in the New York Times. Luhrmann was doing an anthropology of the culture of religious belief. She tells the story of how she was

  2. Oct 21

    MAGA Preacher Would Make It A Crime To Be NonChristian

    I want to give you a specific reminder to vote in this year’s election, but it's not going to be my voice so much giving you that reminder, as the voice of Christian nationalist Stephen Wolfe, a Christian leader. Wolfe is a big supporter of what Donald Trump is doing, what the Christian nationalists in the U.S. Congress and controlling the Supreme Court are doing too. He is the author of a book called The Case for Christian Nationalism. In case you think that that's just going to be some kind of, wow, mild mannered, gosh, Christian nationalism doesn't want to control your life or anything kind of argument. No, that's not what Stephen Wolfe is about at all. But like I said, let me have Stephen Wolfe, speak for himself. “I would say there actually is a reason why the state should punish blasphemy. It’s not because simply because it's a religious crime that requires, or it's a sin that requires repentance. That's not the end of the state, the end of the state is not that you would repent. The end of the state is that there would be justice and peace and all that. So if you look at an act of blasphemy, which would be, let's say it's atheism, Let's say it's some sort of profanity or cursing God. The church would look upon that as a sin, but the state might look upon it as a crime because it's detrimental to civil society. That is, the judgment would be, we don't want that sort of thing normalized in our society because that sort of thing is actually bad for our own end as a state. We want a virtuous society. We want a peaceful society. We want to create the sort of conditions by which virtue can arise. We want to create the conditions outwardly, such that someone can be free to pursue what is good. So it would be good then for us to say, look, in terms of like public institutions, we don't want public universities to have philosophers that are atheists. And so we're going to deny, we're going to say that if you are an atheist, you cannot be a hired member of a university. Now I know that violates all sorts of like civil conventions, but that might be the reasoning.” Did you hear how Stephen Wolfe was talking about how he's all for peace and justice and all of that, as he puts it so casually? Peace and justice and all of that, except that you're not allowed to say anything against God. You're not allowed to criticize the Christian God. If you are somebody who doesn't believe in God, doesn't believe in Christianity, while you aren't allowed to have a job at a public institution like university. If you are an American, you are not allowed to learn from somebody who just doesn't have your religion. You're only allowed to learn from somebody who is a Christian. I want you to pay attention to the way that he's talking about that. He's not just talking about prohibiting people who teach atheism in the classroom at public universities. He's talking about prohibiting people just for being atheists. If you just simply are someone who is not a Christian, who does not believe in the Christian God, you will not be allowed to teach in American public universities anymore. If Stephen Wolfe has his way, and Donald Trump and the Republican Party have said the same thing in Project 2025, they identify clearly that the government is going to establish Christianity as the religion of the land, and that you will be allowed to do only what is good, that you will have freedom, but only freedom to do what's good. That's the same language that Stephen Wolfe is using. The Republican Party is already working to enact this agenda. They aren't passing blasphemy laws yet, but they are establishing in the U.S. Military an office which will evaluate the religious fitness of each soldier. If these soldiers are not religiously fit, according to the status or to the standards of Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of War, they can be cast out of the military for that. Stephen Wolfe is a voice of the Christian nationalist right, and we have seen in Congress that too many members of the Republican Party are willing to go along with this. We've seen that in the U.S. Supreme Court. We have a majority, a super majority, really, of Christian nationalists who are not willing to stand up for the First Amendment freedom of religion, and freedom from government establishment of religion. We've seen what Donald Trump has done in the White House, declaring on the 250th anniversary of this nation that we are no longer secular, we are a Christian nation. Stephen Wolfe is telling you what that means. You will no longer be allowed free speech. You won't be allowed to criticize Christianity. That will become a crime. If that's a crime, you've got to ask yourself, what is the punishment going to be?

  3. Oct 12

    Christian Nationalism Is Execution By Firing Squad Livestreamed To America's Children

    Christian Nationalist Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is demonstrating that the military will violate the Constitution in the name of Jesus. Nothing that this organization of religious violence does can be trusted. Welcome back to Stop Christian Nationalism. This episode is going to be really short and not so sweet, sour. When this podcast began back in 2022, it discussed what could happen if we had unrestricted Christian nationalism in charge of this country, and now we are heading down the path to some really really bad stuff. We see what's happening with Christian nationalism, most directly in the form of Pete Hegseth, who has been put in charge of our nation's military. Pete Hegseth has decided that there is going to be a public execution by firing squad, live streamed to the entire world on the internet. I want to acknowledge straight up that the person who's going to be executed is not any kind of moral example to anybody. This is a U.S. Army psychiatrist who grabbed a gun and shot and killed a whole bunch of people, and they were soldiers. It doesn't really matter who the people he killed were, though, does it? In the end, nobody deserves to get killed. We can ask all kinds of questions like how does a U.S. Military psychiatrist get so crazy that they open fire and end up killing a large number of their comrades?What's going on with that? The point we have to deal with is that in December, there is going to be a firing squad execution that is going to be live streamed to the public, and that Pete Hegseth has approved this from the top, has pushed for it, as a matter of fact, at the same time that he's claiming that the United States military is there for Jesus, that it is a Christian organization. So we now have to conclude that Christianity is for public executions, online, for children to watch people getting shot to death. You know that's what's going to happen. They're not going to have any kind of restriction that is going to stop little kids from watching a person get shot to death. They want the spectacle. They want to revel in the violence. This is now part of public Christianity in the United States of America. The United Nations has warned the United States that this is a human rights abuse. The Christian Nationalists in the United States of America are not listening to that. The Constitution of the United States of America explicitly forbids this. Let me read to you the 8th Amendment from the Bill of Rights, which is part of the Constitution. It says: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel, and unusual punishments inflicted.” I don't see how anyone can argue that a public execution live streamed online to all kinds of people, including children, is not cruel and unusual, a firing squad. It's barbaric. It's medieval. It's a very Christian thing to do. This is what happened all the time back when Christian nationalism was in charge of medieval Europe. They had public executions in order to impose morality. How is it Christian? It's not forgiving, but you know, Christianity often isn't forgiving. Christianity is often just a matter of imposing authority because God has authority, and then God chooses human beings to put into positions of authority, and when those peoples authority is questioned, they have to do what they have to do to smack it down. I mean, Christians talk about all the time about God imposing punishments, about God putting diseases on people, curses on them, killing people, as punishment. God is a terrible moral example. God does not follow the 8th amendment of the Constitution. You could make an argument that, hey, you know, the Constitution doesn't apply to the US military, but there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States of America that says that the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution does not apply to the military. In fact, it is the Constitution that creates the military as a legal force of violence. The 8th amendment is not saying that this shouldn't be imposed just in civil courts, it's imposing this restriction on any aspect of the U.S. Federal government at all, including the Pentagon, including the U.S. Military, no cruel or unusual punishments, but Pete Hegseth, appointed by Donald Trump, as a Christian nationalist doesn't care at all about the Constitution. Soldiers, including Pete Hegseth, may go ahead and swear an oath, “so help them God”, whatever that means, to uphold the Constitution. Obviously, that's not going to stop them from violating the Constitution. So now the question you've got to ask yourself is this: When are they coming for you? When are they coming for you? When will you be tied to a post and shot in public? With the execution live streamed to America's children, to teach them what happens when you disobey.

  4. Oct 6

    Encouraging Wild Religious Beliefs Among Those Trained To Kill

    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.

  5. May 6

    Homeland Security Threatens NonChristian Americans With A Bible Verse

    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.

  6. May 5

    Motor Oil and Credit Cards and Christianity

    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.

  7. May 1

    Christian Nationalist Task Force Says Stopping Child Abuse and Fraud Is Anti-Christian Bias

    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, un

  8. Apr 29

    Deloitte Supports Christian Nationalist Takeover of the USA

    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.

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News about the latest abuses by Christian nationalists and ideas about how to participate in the resistance against Christian nationalism. Now is not the time for silence! Learn more at StopChristianNationalism.com

Information

  • Creator
    Clifford Cook
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    123
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Clifford Cook
  • Show Website
    Stop Christian Nationalism

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