Kim

“apart from a “Year of our Lord,” the Constitution doesn’t mention God, Jesus, or the Bible in any way. The First Amendment explicitly prohibits any national religion. The Establishment Clause stops the government from ever favoring one faith over another, and the Free Exercise Clause protects individuals’ rights to practice their religion without undue government meddling.”
― John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate

“Kristin Kobes Du Mez is professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University and author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. I asked her about this Christian obsession with power. “Conservative evangelicals have tended to prioritize interpretations that justify exercising power over others—men’s power over women, and Christians’ power over society,” Du Mez says. “Many theologians argue that Jesus rejected this approach to power. He emptied himself and refused to claim earthly power, which was very much within his reach. He said the first must be last, and that to follow him meant to take up one’s cross, to sacrifice oneself for others. These are hard teachings, however. If you want to build a movement and claim power for yourself, these teachings will get in the way.” Christian nationalists want the US to be a Christian nation, but they don’t want to follow the words of Christ. It’s like irony and hypocrisy having violent hate-sex. It’s also the culmination of what Rome did to the Jesus movement—the triumph of Christian dominance over Christ teachings. And because Christian nationalists believe that God really does support anything they do, they’re quite possibly the most dangerously entitled non-billionaires in America today.”
― John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate

“We’ve all known conservatives who were capable of being inclusive. Right-wing people, not so much. But Jesus was a revolutionary, and calling out the ultraconservative hypocrites among the religious authorities is part of what led to his death.”
― John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate

“Jesus’s admonition to not look on women lustfully is not anti-sex—it’s anti–sexual harassment.”
― John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds