Inside a Secret Society of Prominent, Right Wing Christian Men Prepping for a National Divorce
Can this really be a surprise? Is it possible to keep something like this a secret?
Josh Kovensky, a staff writer for TPM, has posted an article about "The Society for American Civic Renewal", a men-only, right wing, secret group, with secret being one of the key descriptive terms here, with the goal of recruiting a "Christian government" that can be put in place after the far right achieves regime change in the United States.
"It sounds like the stuff of fantasy," says Kovensky, "But it's real."
"It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a "Trinitarian' Christian, heterosexual, an "un-hyphenated American", and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party and Christian Nationalism in the right way," says Kovensky, describes this group as "a shadowy network occupying the commanding heights of business, politics, and culture, open to only a select, elite few, committed to reshaping the United States to align it with the group's radical values."
That should scare the hell out of us.
Subversives Have Been At Work Preparing to Bring Trump Back to Power
Trump lost the 2020 election. He knows it, and so does anyone with viable brain cells who is still breathing air and drinking water. But his defeat didn't stop the undermining of American democracy, or give anyone any breathing room before the next onslaught. Saving American democracy is going to be an uphill battle for some time to come. Trump, the MAGA movement, the Republican party that has sold out to it, are all aiming to tear apart the Constitution and put it back together in a form that supports the idea that America is a country belonging to white people who were given it as a gift from God in order to bring about a Christian nation on the face of the earth. Most believe that is for the purpose of ushering in the second coming of Christ, and they mistakenly believe it was the original vision of America's founding fathers. So there can be no wrong committed in restoring it, according to them.
Trump's defeat in 2020 only slowed them down temporarily. But they've had four years to plan their strategy which includes being sneaky and secretive, using the influence, power, wealth and assets of billionaires who support this cause, and to lay the groundwork to try and steal, and I'm going to use that word because that's exactly what they're going to try and do, the 2024 election.
The TPM article which is linked will cause a chill to run up and down your spine when you read it. This group is committed to establishing a Christian theocracy in America, patriarchal leadership in the household, and "acceptance of the wisdom of our American and European Christian forebearers in the political realm."
Looking at what TPM has uncovered and revealed here, it seems that Trump losing the 2024 election isn't an obstacle to putting him in the White House. Everything that's been thrown against the wall regarding the "stealing" of the 2020 election has been intended for use in some kind of coup, from a "cold civil war" as this group now says we are experiencing, to keeping mindless MAGA nuts agitated and ready for violence in the event that an opportunity for a violent overthrow occurs again. Apparently, they initially thought that the insurrection would topple the government and that's when they were going to take over. They're going to try the same thing again.
Using Subverted Christianity as a Weapon
As has happened so many times in history, subverting the church in order to use its influence and power as a political weapon is nothing new. So it's not surprising that yet another subversive group, aimed at destroying Democracy and establishing a white nationalist dictatorship, is emerging from right wing American Christianity. It's not hard to figure out why. The more conservative, fundamentalist, Pentecostal and Charismatic branches of the church are easily infiltrated by heretical ideology, in spite of their claims to biblical fidelity, because there is no central authority or governance, because they are already prone to errors as a result of their turning the Bible into something that its writers and those who canonized it never intended when they were doing so, and because so few of those who sit in their pews every week ever bother to read or study it in its correct context.
It's only taken a generation to undermine the core beliefs of most Evangelical churches and denominations, brand the clear teachings of Jesus as "liberal theology" and direct the attention, loyalty and financial resources of American Evangelical Christianity to far right wing politics.
And anything related to Christian nationalism is a subversion of Christianity. It's pseudo-Christian. But, as has occurred in every relationship between politics and the church in its 2,000 year history, the damage done is residual, even though there is vitrually nothing in any of these religious political movements, whether it's state supported and controlled churches, or the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition in modern America, that reflects any of the values of true Christian faith.
Christianity loses its very essence, the substance of what it is, when it becomes politically coerced. It is impossible to bring about spiritual conversion, or genuine spiritual revival, by legislation and enforcement of the law. That's oppression, not faith. Jesus deliberately and intentionally defined the Christian gospel as a spiritual kingdom, contrasting it with the old Israelite theocracy as an imperfect covenant with God. And Peter, who along with Paul was one of the more influential apostles in establishing the church, is the one who opened the door to "gentiles," erasing the exclusivity of the old idea of a "chosen" people based on race and ethnicity.
Christian nationalism, in every one of its current forms, reduces Christian faith to political trash.
Simplifying the Values of the Christian Gospel
The Quakers, whose membership as a proportion of the whole spectrum of denominations, heirarchies and churches that make up American Christianity is a small fraction of the total, have managed, in their simplicity and plain-spokenness, to simplify the practice of the Christian faith in a remarkably understandable and uncomplicated way. They don't presume to define conversion as a franchise experience for everyone, they leave that up to individual conscience.
Once defined, faith becomes a practice that reflects values. That's exactly what Jesus and his apostles taught, and wrote, in the New Testament, accepted by virtually all of Christianity as being authoritative in doctrine and theology.
The values are discerned from the written record. Living by those values earned the Quakers the trust of pretty much everyone else around them. They include peace, integrity, simplicity, stewardship, equality and community. In one way or another, those values are discerned from the written record left behind by the authors of the New Testament. And in Quaker practice, being Christian is reflecting those values to the point where everyone around them, Christian, Quaker or not, could trust them living in community with them.
Looking at what is transpiring in American right wing politics, who would you rather have living next door, Quakers or right wing, white supremacist, Christian nationalists?
No comments:
Post a Comment