Standard disclaimer about some theological beliefs exercising independent influences, blah, blah, blah. But theology's mostly not doing that because it's mostly used to give accounts, justify actions and situations, explain things intelligibly, etc.

Notice how the Protestant Bible-only crowd suddenly become huge fans of the Catholic "just war" tradition when they can't cite Jesus or Paul in justifying killing national enemies.

Theological disputes are rider-talk in the service of elephants. IOW, it's deployed to justify in-group commitments.

Oh sorry, so religion and politics should be separate? Is that what you're saying? bsky.app/profile/atru...

I'm not surprised that Vance would tell the Pope he's wrong on theology. Vance's theology is whatever his *real* reference group tells him is right.

Nor am I surprised that evangelicals adjust Bible translations to get them to say what they think the Bible *should* say (what their group believes).

Thing is, Christians don't get their theology from Popes or even Bibles. They get theology from communities. This includes evangelicals who claim to get everything from reading the Bible.

So when the Pope or the Bible tells us something our community disagrees with, too bad for the Pope or Bible.

It's the classic Mel Gibson and Jesus meme where Mel is on set in normal clothes casually chatting to a very bloody Jesus (for those of you who don't know it).

Mel Gibson pictured with his doctor in 2004

Confession: I used to want to publish a book with Crossway. All the big time Reformed preachers and writers did.

I believed it would be a sign I had “made it.”

I’ve been doing some writing and taking a painful look at my past in white evangelical Reformed circles.

I’ve come a mighty long way!

Sure Crossway. The President who has been supported by >80% of evangelicals for 10 years is posting pics of himself as Jesus, but you should spam email Christians to warn them about “critical theory.“ Cuz that’s the issue in American Christianity.

Every time I read Pat Buchanan I feel like my soul needs a bath.

I don't give a damn if every conservative Christian on twitter calls Trump's post blasphemy and demands he repent. Y'all still chose him over every other GOP candidate in 2016 and 2024 and voted for him three times. Your criticisms are worthless.

Cardinal Cupich: "We're dehumanizing the victims of war by turning the suffering of people & killing of children & our own soldiers into entertainment. To splice together movie cuts w/ actual bombings & targeting of people for purposes of entertainment is sickening. This is not who we are."

Exhibit A.

Joel Berry the human is almost totally gone at this point. Pretty much all that's left is Trump apologist and troll-provocateur.

Used to read that to my kiddos all the time. Love Mo Willems books.

And yeah, that's a subtweet. Not gonna draw attention to the article or scholar that provoked it. But just know that claims to tackle "Christian identity politics" without calling out 1) the white supremacy that's virtually always implied & 2) that the claims to persecution are BS = crap analysis.

You cannot tackle "Christian identity politics" without explicitly recognizing that 1) it's inextricable from white supremacy & 2) it's founded on a lie: that (White) Christians are somehow minoritized in the US.

American Christianity is NOT race neutral, especially when it comes to politics.

Literally the first comment. Also, the fact that authoritarians *can* lose elections in some systems does not mean democracy is unaffected. Would Cowen prefer to live in an illiberal democracy or competitive authoritarian state? Are they really the same as, say, Canada?

Don't think I've ever heard an American Christian leader publicly work through the theological implications of America's racist history. Cuz it really does devastate arguments that more Christianity = better nation. Gotta grapple with that w/out just saying "Well, slavers weren't really Christians."

Hungary for the win.

Keeping Hungary in my thoughts today.

Hoping for a resounding bellwether referendum on authoritarian populism.

Right. Whatever bad Neil identifies coming from CN, it’s ultimately the fault of leftists.

Yeah, but as we can all see so clearly, Christians endorsing CRT is still way more prominent and the consequences are way worse.

Guilty

I think HGTV will be showing on all the TVs in hell.

Hot take: Any syllabus on American conservatism or the American right today without some Pat Buchanan has a truck-sized gap. Not because of him personally so much as the clearly articulated ideas that once seemed fringe & doomed but eventually swallowed the whole GOP and then our country.

A classic.

Listening to Christian pronatalists you'd think before the 1960s US women had always averaged 5-7 kids. "Then birth control and abortion happened and we stopped having babies!" They've never seen a chart showing how US fertility had been steadily falling *since 1800* until that weird post-WWII bump.

Most of the social programs that are routinely dismissed in American politics as "unrealistic" or "too expensive" could have been paid for multiple times over by the cost of this war so far, much less the costs to come.

It's never the money.

CNN: "In the initial statement from DHS, they said these two migrants had attacked the ICE agents in Minneapolis with the shovel, but what this video shows is this was not the case ... the two ICE agents made false statements under oath."

Are Christian protest events more or less violent? It depends.

In this new study, Joel Day finds Christian participation in right-leaning protest events associated with greater violence; but Christian participation in left-leaning events is "overwhelmingly peaceful."
doi.org/10.1111/jssr...