Alternet writes in an opinion piece:
‘God’s gonna cut you down’:How Republicans conspire with churches for powerFor Republicans, the purpose of religion is — as it has been for authoritarians since Old Testament days — political and social control. It’s not about spirituality: it’s all about raw, naked, taxpayer-subsidized power and the wealth associated with it.
A Michigan county Republican Party just posted a video showing picture after picture of that state’s Democratic politicians, starting with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who right-wing terrorists have already tried to kidnap and murder.
Under each picture — including a picture of George Soros representing, presumably, the “International Jews” who Republican politicians suggest wield space lasers and secretly are trying to control the world — reads the death threat, in bold, all-caps:
“GOD’S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN!”
The wealthy pastors of at least four Republican-aligned megachurches in Georgia have invited Hershel Walker to campaign, in clear violation of their tax-exempt status.
Across the nation, white evangelical churches brazenly push their parishioners to vote for Republican candidates: they’ve been getting away with breaking the law since the 1980s and don’t show any inclination to stop now.
Back during Trump’s second impeachment trial, Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and heir to the multimillion-dollar Graham fortune, publicly said that the 10 Republicans voting to impeach Donald Trump in the US House of Representatives were like Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.
“And these ten, from [Trump’s] own party, joined in the feeding frenzy,” he wrote. “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”
Franklin Graham is a multimillionaire in large part because neither he nor his family have to pay any taxes on their family’s business’ income or even pay property taxes on the land and buildings their business owns and in which they live.
Former Vice President Mike Pence claimed during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not protect Americans from having other people's faiths forced upon them.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” it states.In fact, there are no references to a supreme being anywhere in the Constitution, because the Founding Fathers were adamantly opposed to centralized religious power as well as requiring individuals to subscribe to any particular denomination.
“These lefties want to scrap religion, Mike Pence, and I think it’s a terrible mistake,” Kudlow griped.
“Well, the radical left believes that the freedom of religion is the freedom from religion. But it's nothing the American founders ever thought of or generations of Americans fought to defend,” Pence said.
These are more warnings that the Christian nationalist wing of the Republican Party intends to establish Christian fundamentalism as controlling US law and society. The intent could not much be clearer. Republican Party fundamentalist Christian elites will obliterate secularism, secular education and secular law. That will be replaced with Christian Sharia law. It will be administered by an enraged, vengeful Christian Taliban right out of the Dark Ages. To get what they want, those elites are openly lying and slandering the left. Even worse, they openly break laws.
Apparently no one in law enforcement is trying to stop this Christian illegality. Christian nationalist reasoning in defense of lawbreaking is that God’s sacred ends justify all means. That includes law breaking. Law enforcement appears to accept that as OK. Most rank and file Republicans seem to be fine with all of this. In view of their open support or silence, essentially all Republican elites accept Christian theocracy and want to replace secular law and society by force.
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