Newsweek reports about a shift among a growing number of Trumpist evangelical Christians who are now openly rejecting some teachings of Jesus because they are liberal talking points:
Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting ‘Liberal’ Teachings of JesusAn evangelical leader is warning that conservative Christians are now rejecting the teachings of Jesus as “liberal talking points.”
Russell Moore, former top official for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) who is now the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, said during an interview aired on NPR’s All Things Considered this week that Christianity is in a “crisis” due to the current state of right-wing politics.
Moore has found himself at odds with other evangelical leaders due to his frequent criticism of former President Donald Trump. He resigned his position with the SBC in 2021 following friction over his views on Trump and a sex abuse crisis among Southern Baptist clergy.
In his NPR interview, Moore suggested that Trump had transformed the political landscape in the U.S. to the point where some Christian conservatives are openly denouncing a central doctrine of their religion as being too “weak” and “liberal” for their liking.
“Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching—‘turn the other cheek’—[and] to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’” Moore said.
“When the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ’ ... The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak,” he added. “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.”
During an interview on conservative network Real America's Voice in January, Trump lashed out at certain evangelical leaders that he said displayed a “great disloyalty” by being reluctant to back his 2024 presidential run.
“That’s a sign of disloyalty,” Trump complained. “There's nobody that did more for the movement than I have. And that includes the movement of evangelicals and Christians and the movement very much of ‘right to life.’”
Again one can see the power of decades of authoritarian radical right dark free speech, now crystallized into a focused, potent political force by DJT, to poison what used to be core Christian values. The political radicalization that Moore describes here is undeniably authoritarian. In my opinion, the driving force is a secular wealth and power movement by elites. It is not Christian. This kind of poison has the power of God behind it. Rational discourse and honest accounts of history are simply not going to change minds that think and believe like this. Our democracy is in an existential fight against autocracy, plutocracy, Christotheocracy, Christian Sharia law, and kleptocracy.
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The NYT reports about child labor in the US:
They’re Paid Billions to Root Out Child Laborin the U.S. Why Do They Fail?
Private auditors have failed to detect migrant children working for U.S. suppliers of Oreos, Gerber baby snacks, McDonald’s milk and many other productsOne morning in 2019, an auditor arrived at a meatpacking plant in rural Minnesota. He was there on behalf of the national drugstore chain Walgreens to ensure that the factory, which made the company’s house brand of beef jerky, was safe and free of labor abuses.
He ran through a checklist of hundreds of possible problems, like locked emergency exits, sexual harassment and child labor. By the afternoon, he had concluded that the factory had no major violations. It could keep making jerky, and Walgreens customers could shop with a clear conscience.
When night fell, another 150 workers showed up at the plant. Among them were migrant children who had come to the United States by themselves looking for work. Children as young as 15 were operating heavy machinery capable of amputating fingers and crushing bones.
Migrant children would work at the Monogram Meat Snacks plant in Chandler, Minn., for almost four more years, until the Department of Labor visited this spring and found such severe child labor violations that it temporarily banned the shipment of any more jerky.
In the past two decades, private audits have become the solution to a host of public relations headaches for corporations.
In a series of articles this year, The Times has revealed that migrant children, who have been coming to America in record numbers, are working dangerous jobs in every state, in violation of labor laws.
At least among big American companies capitalism seems to be generally without social conscience in its pursuit of profit. Of course private audits by companies auditing themselves are not going to find any human, environmental or other legal problems. Authoritarian radical right politicians have been undermining child labor laws for some time now. Vox reported last March: Child labor protections are the latest Republican target -- Arkansas is leading the charge against laws that protect kids — despite revelations of dangerous child labor nationwide.
Boosting profits by eliminating labor laws to protect children is a goal of America's authoritarian plutocrats and theocrats. The plutocrats focus on profit without regard for whether the child is on their own or parents are present. The theocrats focus on what God says the parents can do with or to their kids. That focus is also significantly motivated by money.
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Russia lied about the number of Ukrainian deaths after a dam broke, presumably on Putin’s orders. Russia reported 59 deaths in areas of Ukraine it controlled, while the AP analysis found hundreds. The AP reports:
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine (AP) — They recognized the TV repairman.
The residents of Oleshky in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine could not identify many of those they buried after a catastrophic dam collapse in June sent water coursing through their homes and shattered their lives. The bodies were too bloated and discolored, volunteer rescuers and health workers said. They described seeing faces that resembled rubber masks, frozen in that last frenzied gasp for air. But to those secretly keeping count of the drowned, Yurii Bilyi was no stranger.
The cheerful 56-year-old was a town fixture. He had serviced many homes and spent his days working from a shop just across the street from the churchyard where he was buried, in a hurriedly dug mass grave, The Associated Press has learned.
Anastasiia Bila, his daughter, remembers his last words clearly over the unstable phone connection. “Nastya,” he affectionately called her, hoping to soothe her anxieties as flood waters rose quickly, inundating 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), submerging entire towns and villages along the banks of the Dnipro River, the majority in Russian-occupied areas. “I’ve seen worse under occupation.”
Over six months since the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region, an AP investigation has found Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war.
Why do evil, murdering butchers like Putin seem to never go away or die? Guess there’s always an amply supply of them. It’s just part of the human condition. They are here in America too. Just waiting for their chance to to their evil.
