Mike Johnson: Tonight we have created a new award. We are going to do something we've never done before. We will honor him with a new award. He is the first ever recipient of the America first award. That is this beautiful golden statue here, appropriate for the golden era.
— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) March 25, 2026 at 6:44 PM
[image or embed]
...holy shit, there's an ICE thug at the pulpit.
Earlier this week a reader prevailed upon me for some assistance deconstructing a video his "independent" friend had sent him. The subject was the ICE protest at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota on Sunday, January 18, 2026. In it, a smarmy git named Rispo (link here if you're interested) took it upon himself to explain the First Amendment to us po' dumb Liberals with all the exaggerated exasperation he could summon. He then made the completely predictable leap from one protest on one day in one place...to this is just how all of these stupid Liberals dupes. The idea that the Left would dare conflate the noble heroes of ICE with fascism? With tyranny? It out Herods Herod!
Real MAGA fainting couch stuff.
So I thought about it for a minute, and the following is about 35% my original reply and 65% stuff I added in for texture, context and mouth-feel.
To start with, there are 3,500 to 3,600 houses of worship in the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area. This includes churches of all denominations, mosques, temples and synagogues, so why did the protesters choose this one?
Simple. The pastor. From Newsweek:
Who Is David Easterwood? Protesters Say Pastor Is ICE Official
David Easterwood, who leads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in St. Paul, also apparently serves as a pastor at a church that was disrupted by protesters on Sunday.
Dozens of protesters entered the Cities Church in St. Paul during a service, with some chanting "ICE out" and "Justice for Renee Good"—the woman an ICE agent fatally shot in Minneapolis on January 7.
I would imagine the galling duplicity of the shepherd of the flock being in the pay of the wolves presented an irresistible opportunity for protestors to underscore the deeply anti-Christian hypocrisy of MAGA Republicans.
Second, are you familiar with the idea of "nutpicking"? Friend of the blog Matthew Sheffield taught me that term. Nutpicking is a tactic in which you try to present one extreme example as representative of an entire ideology or belief system, which is exactly what the git in the video is doing. Leaping from one protest on one day in one church involving a handful of protestors, to "This is how the Left..." blah blah blah. These are the logical fallacies of non sequitur, a straw man argument and threat inflation all rolled into one.
Third, this guy eyerolling the idea that "these people" conflate ICE with fascists automatically negates any judgement he wants to pass on anything. The ICE goons are fascists, as is the administration that rolled them out to terrorize the citizens of Minneapolis. The fact that he doesn't believe this flags him as a bad faith operator.
Fourth, yes, in this one case, protestors were infringing on the first amendment rights of the parishioners. So what? No one was hurt. No one was shot. It's called civil disobedience, which has a long and storied history. In this case it was motivated by the fact that the pastor of the church is also an ICE agent. Maybe the parishioners learned something they didn't know.
Fifth, if MAGA explainer git is so damn concerned about disrupting worship services, take a look at the effect ICE goons prowling around primarily Hispanic churches in Chicago had on church attendance and the level of fear and intimidation among parishioners.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
Clergy sue feds over restriction on providing religious services to immigrants held at Broadview ICE facility
The group has attempted to provide communion for detainees at the facility but were denied, with officials citing “safety and security concerns,” according to the lawsuit. The group is suing the government, arguing the denial is a violation of the First Amendment.
The Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security used “shifting, contradictory, and often opaque communication” to deny clergy the ability to pray with detainees at the ICE facility in Broadview, including late immigrant activists Sister Pat Murphy and Sister JoAnn Persch.
The group attempted to provide communion for detainees at the facility in October as well as earlier this month but were denied both times, with officials citing “safety and security concerns,” according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court. The group accuses the government of violating federal law as well as the First Amendment rights of religious officials and detainees.
“A non-specific reference to safety and security is not sufficient to deny the rights of Catholic clergy and laypersons, or persons of any other denomination or religion, to practice their faith, especially as others have been allowed to do so at the ICE facility in Broadview since it became an immigration-related facility in 2006,” the lawsuit states. “The United States has a long history of accommodating such religious freedom and practice inside of prisons and jails, and there is no reason to deny them altogether at Broadview, where the vast majority of detainees have no criminal records.”
ICE agents wielding guns tried to intimidate my church. We will not bow in fear.When ICE agents descend on our neighborhoods, when fear spreads like wildfire, people of faith must be the living water that quenches it.
As a pastor, I consider the church not just a place of worship, but a sacred home − somewhere families gather to find comfort, courage and communion. For generations, our pews have held the laughter of children, the tears of grief and joy, and the prayers of the faithful.
Last month, the sanctity of our space was shattered.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the parking lot of Downey Memorial Christian Church to take a man who was walking through our property. The agents were armed, masked and aggressive.
They tried to intimidate clergy and staff − people whose only armor is their faith and moral convictions. In that moment, our sacred space became a site of state-sanctioned fear and violence.
DHS authorized ICE to harass and intimidate churchgoers from Day 1 of this administration. It has come to churches to make arrests and stage operations. There is nothing sacred to these people.
Chicago’s faith leaders have been among the most salient groups voicing opposition to federal immigration enforcement efforts.
The Coalition for Spiritual Leadership, a Chicago-based Catholic and Christian community organization, led several gatherings at the Broadview ICE Detention Center, where clergy sought to provide religious services to people detained inside.
Notably, the Rev. David Black, senior pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, was struck multiple times with pepper balls by ICE agents while protesting outside Broadview.
Away from Broadview, ICE’s presence led some Latino parishioners to stop attending mass, according to the Rev. Juan Vargas, priest at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish.
“The (attendance) numbers have been lower but still strong,” Vargas said. “We would see 50 or 70 depending on any ICE activity in the area, which would cause a little bit of extra fear.”
Vargas added that some parishioners who typically attend the Spanish mass have opted to join the English mass.
“To them they feel a little bit more comfortable thinking there’s less of a risk,” Vargas said.
During mass, the parish’s ushers scope out the surrounding neighborhood for any signs of ICE, Vargas said.
For parishioners who opt to stay home altogether, Vargas has adopted a “reach-out” policy.
“The big push has been — reach out,” Vargas said. “If you have not heard from someone or miss someone, reach out to your neighbor, give them a knock to make sure they’re doing well.”
Immigration officers assert sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, memo says
A woman who led an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church has been arrested, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday.Bondi announced the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong in a post on X days after protesters during Sunday service entered the Cities Church in St. Paul, where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement serves as a pastor.
The Justice Department quickly opened a civil rights investigation after the group interrupted services by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” referring to the 37-year-old mother of three who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis earlier this month. Bondi
“Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” the attorney general wrote on X...
Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and prominent local activist, had called for the pastor affiliated with ICE to resign, saying his dual role poses a “fundamental moral conflict.”
"It was not immediately clear what charge or charges Levy Armstrong faces. Justice Department officials have said in recent days they were considering charging the protesters under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act."
The FACE Act prohibits physically obstructing or using the threat of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking reproductive health services or seeking to participate in a service at a house of worship.
The Trump administration has criticized the Biden administration for using the FACE Act to prosecute people for blocking access to abortion clinics and reproductive health centers, calling the cases an example of the “weaponization” of law enforcement.
The Justice Department’s swift investigation into the church disruption stands in contrast to its decision not to open a civil rights investigation into Good’s killing by an ICE officer. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said last week there is “no basis” at this time for a civil rights investigation into her death.
Administration officials have said the officer acted in self-defense and that the driver of the Honda was engaging in “an act of domestic terrorism” when she pulled forward toward him. But the decision not to have the department’s Civil Rights Division investigate marked a sharp departure from past administrations, which have moved quickly to probe shootings of civilians by law enforcement officials.
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The subject today is why persuasion no longer works, why the art of political compromise is dead, who killed it, and why. And to do that, we’re going to start off with a thing I did not know about until I was today years old. That there are a few Christian churches out there that canonize Pontius Pilate as a saint.
Which is wild.
Even if you're not a Christian, you've probably heard of Pilate -- the first
century A.D. Roman governor of the province of Judea
after whom "Pilates" is named who presided over the
sentencing of Jesus of Nazareth, just as he had presided over the crucifixion
of hundreds of men adjudged to have broken one Roman law or another. The
execution of Jesus was nothing out of the ordinary: just another, bog standard
example of Roman rule, handled in bulk with the speed and indifference of the
average big city traffic court on any given Monday.
And yet in the Coptic Church, and in some Ethiopian churches he’s considered a saint. And not just any old kind of saint. They believe he and his wife converted to Christianity and he was executed by the emperor, which makes him a martyr.
Of course, this is all just goofy post hoc religious fiction, but so is so much of the New Testament.
For example, there is zero chance that a high ranking roman army officer would be attending the crucifixion of a handful of troublemakers and criminals, much less declare out loud that "Truly, this was the Son of God!" And yet, the gospel writers penciled in at least one (or possibly two, or maybe they're the same guy) centurion -- a commander of 100 men -- in attendance at this minor event.
If you want to know the long version of how and why Christian origin stories got scripted this way, there is no lack of literature on the subject. The much shorter version is marketing. Specifically, how to take a minor Jewish apocalyptic cult and go looking for converts among much wider, gentile audience. An audience that likes the brochure, but very definitely weren't on-board with the whole "gotta convert and be circumcised and keep kosher" thing.
Step 1: Have a vision that says the whole "gotta convert and be circumcised and keep kosher" thing is no longer necessary. Come one, come all! Credit that to the very active and prolific, Paul of Tarsus.
Step 2: Since the wider, gentile audience you're trying to convert are going to mostly be Romans, you start rewriting your origin story so that, even though Jesus was a practicing Jew, the Jews become the villains. They're the ones who shout down Pilates' offer to release Jesus because Passover (this never happened, and there was no such "custom")
The Barabbas episode is a well-known story in the Jesus Passion narrative. But it has, however, been debated as to matters of its historicity and viewed with suspicion on several grounds. The following arguments are usually provided:
Beyond the Gospels there is no mention of this event in primary sources for Pilate. There are a few sources attesting to Pilate’s governorship over Judea. For instance, from Philo of Alexandria (C. BCE 20-50 CE) and Josephus Flavius (c. 37-100 CE), historians have enough information to learn about Pilate’s character and his attitude towards the Jews over whom he ruled. Neither indicates the custom central to the Barabbas episode.
Based on what Philo’s and Josephus’s sources tell us of Pilate, the critic argues that Pilate would never have released a murderous insurrectionist against Rome, let alone this be a custom. Rather, Pilate was brutal and ruthless, and would use his soldiers to beat people into submission. This perspective finds support. According to Philo, Pilate “was a man of inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition…”...
Moreover, for Pilate to release an insurrectionist would likely bring the Empire down on himself, which Pilate certainly would not have wanted.
Conversely, the Romans slowly evolve into, if not the heroes, at least sympathetic characters. The centurion at the cross. Pilate being bullied into executing Jesus by a Jewish crowd. Matthew 27:24
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”
This first century propaganda push to shift the blame for the Romans arresting Jesus as an insurgent against the Roman empire and executing him in accordance with Roman law planted the seeds from which modern, murderous antisemitism sprang. Matthew 27:25
All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”
From The Centre For The Study of Bible and Violence:
But important as it is, such historical contextualisation is not enough to deal with the legacy of Matthew 27:25 – the way in which it has been weaponised against Jews, and ‘has haunted Jewish-Christian relations for almost sixteen hundred years’.[3] The accusation that all Jews everywhere, and down the generations, are ‘Christ-killers’ can be documented from the mid-second century: Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho, told the Jew Trypho that at Christ’s first coming ‘he was pierced by you’.[4] And Melito, bishop of Sardis, preached a powerful Passiontide sermon in which he rhetorically addressed ‘O lawless Israel’, saying, ‘you cast the vote of opposition against your Lord … over whom even Pilate washed his hands: for you killed him at the great feast’.[5] Melito has been called ‘the first poet of deicide’, for making the explicit claim that ‘God has been murdered. The King of Israel has been destroyed by an Israelite right hand.’[6] Christian anti-Judaism later fused with racial antisemitism, and the deicide charge featured, for example, in the Nazi school curriculum.[7]
Note that last part about this grotesque perversion of the truth eventually became so embedded in the culture that it was party of Nazi school curriculum as you read this from Reason magazine:
New Oklahoma Curriculum Requires Students To Learn 2020 Election Fraud Conspiracies
The new standards are "the most unapologetically conservative, pro-America social studies standards in the nation," according to State Superintendent Ryan Walters.
n the new school year, thousands of Oklahoma students will be required to learn about 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories as part of a new curriculum developed by the state's controversial superintendent, Ryan Walters. Walters, who has come under fire in recent months for an effort to require Oklahoma classrooms to stock Bibles and display the Ten Commandments, has said that the addition "empowers students to investigate and understand the electoral process."
While it's not necessarily unreasonable to want students to learn about the dispute over the 2020 election, the standards' framing of the controversy (which turned up no evidence of election interference) and Walters' comments about it make it clear that teachers are meant to shed doubt on the veracity of the election.
"The purpose of the standard is simple: we want students to think for themselves, not be spoon-fed left wing propaganda," Walters said in a statement to The Washington Post in March. "Students deserve to examine every aspect of our elections, including the legitimate concerns raised by millions of Americans in 2020."
Put a pin in that terrifying development for one minute while I send another fun Roman fact your way.
Did you know that, in Roman theology, emperors could be declared divine? Well, of course you knew, because you watched I, Claudius, but maybe some other's didn't. It's true. It's the original meaning of the word "apotheosis". Through a formal vote in the Roman Senate an emperor or other august person (usually deceased) could be elevated to the status of a divinity.
These days there is a great deal of frustration and confusion abroad in the land about why the Republican party has divorced itself, not just from policies which the base never gave a shit about anyway, but from reason itself. Why do they all believe such goddamn stupid lies? Why do they persist in putting their faith in the same liars over and over again even as the lies fall apart over and over again?
Whatever happened to art of political compromise and the power of persuasion?
The answer is that Republicans have left the realm of politics altogether. Sure, Republicans still have titles and elected offices and ribbon cuttings. And, sure, every now and then there is some attempt to put on a show for the cameras about passing a bill or a budget. But those are just the trappings and relics of an age that has now passed, because they are no longer a political party.
They are a religion. And, yes, you'll hear a lot of critics (myself included) calling them a "cult", so I won't quibble except to say that there really isn't that much that separates a cult from a religion. A.I. Jebus says it's more of a spectrum, and the distinction is often a matter of social and cultural perception. For example, has the group gained recognition from mainstream society as a religion? Some people still think of Mormonism as a cult, most people would call it a religion?
Money is also a big consideration. Bring enough gold to the table, and you can sit with the big boys.
Social acceptance is also a factor. Do you have enough people in your tent to be recognized by the mainstream culture as a legitimate religion. Consider that, in the 1st and 2nd centuries, there were between 59 and 76 million people in the Roman empire. And at the end of the 1st century, the number of Christians in the empire amounted to nothing more than a rounding error. Based on the modeling of Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity, there were approximately 7,500 Christians by the end of the first century (0.02% of sixty million people);
Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity has a very interesting model that starts with 1,000 members of the Jesus Sect in 40 AD and projects a growth rate of 40% per decade up to the fourth century. As Stark lays out, this tallies with the available historical evidence, both the more impressionistic kind,[1] and a remarkable study on the growth of Christianity in Egypt, where we have the nearest approximation to births, marriages, and deaths records in the Roman world.[2]
Starks model means the trajectory was, roughly[3]:
7,500 Christians by the end of the first century (0.02% of sixty million people);
40,000 Christians by 150 AD (0.07%)
200,000 by 200 AD (0.35%)
2 million by 250 AD (2%)...
By 300 AD, there were six million Christians, and by 350 AD there were approximately thirty million, with Christians now a clear majority of the Empire.
Deciding at what point Christianity stopped being a cult and start being a religion really comes down to a matter of taste, so whether you prefer the term "cult" (since it sounds more transitory and personality-based) or "religion", something profoundly dark and disturbing that has been rumbling around in the guts of the GOP for decades has finally emerged fully into the open, and it is not a political party anymore. And now that all internal opposition has been snuffed out and the faithful are in command of their own media platforms, they are proceeding with even greater vigor in doing what Republicans have been doing all along anyway: rewriting history to suit themselves.
Just as the heroes and villains and martyrs of the Christian origin story were rearranged to suit the changing needs of the expanding church, so too are the heroes, villains and martyrs of the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 terrorist attack on the American capitol being rewritten to suit the Right's new religion.
It is now the official canon of the Church of MAGA that the 2020 election was stolen, and any statement to the contrary is heresy that can cost you your job with the regime. From Fortune Magazine, March 6, 2025:
Trump team tests job candidates by asking who won the 2020 election
The White House is giving potential job candidates litmus tests in interviews to make sure they are sufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump and his second-term agenda, according to people familiar with the process.
Among the questions asked of multiple candidates: Would you be willing to serve as a spokesperson for mass deportations? Which of Trump’s executive orders is your favorite? Who won the 2020 presidential election? And which Trump policy do you disagree with?
Job seekers are asked their views on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and tried to overturn the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Trump pardoned hundreds of people convicted of crimes linked to the assault, which killed at least seven people and injured 150 police officers. He has called the day’s events a peaceful protest.
The insurgents have been recast as hostages and heroes...
-- liberated from their durance vile by the divine intervention of the godhead of their new faith --
-- which comes alongside promises of terrible retribution against the sinners who dared to defy the servants of the godhead:
And of course, story of the traitor Ashli Babbitt who fucked around and found out has been magically transformed into the tale of a Martyr to the Holy Cause. From ABC News:
DOJ reaches agreement in principle to settle lawsuit brought by family of Ashli Babbitt
Babbitt's family sued the government in January 2024 seeking $30 million.
The Department of Justice has reached an agreement in principle to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a pro-Trump rioter who was shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The details of the proposed settlement were not made clear during a Friday hearing before federal Judge Ana Reyes, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Babbitt's family members sued the government in January 2024 seeking $30 million for what they allege was her wrongful shooting death by Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd.
Here's what actually happened. Again from ABC News:
Byrd was cleared of any wrongdoing following an internal investigation into the actions leading up to his shooting of Babbitt as she tried to climb through a broken window that led to the House Speaker's Lobby, where several lawmakers and their staff were sheltering from rioters.
And here's the official doctrine according to the infallible leader of the Church of MAGA:
President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his solidarity with Babbitt's family and called for "justice" for what he has said was her "murder" at Byrd's hands -- in line with his broader vocal support for the pro-Trump rioters who attacked the Capitol to overturn his 2020 election loss.
In March, Trump said in an interview with Newsmax he wasn't aware of the lawsuit brought by Babbitt's family but promised he would "look into" it.
"I'm a big fan of Ashli Babbitt, OK, and Ashli Babbitt was a really good person who was a big MAGA fan, Trump fan, and she was innocently standing there -- they even say trying to sort of hold back the crowd," Trump said. "And a man did something unthinkable to her when he shot her, and I think it's a disgrace. I'm going to look into that. I did not know that."
As an emergent religion, the Church of MAGA checks all the boxes. It has its saints and martyrs and a godhead.
It has has the Republican party's age-old contempt for the existing order of things, and now, under Trump, that evil old temple is being torn down. And in its place shall be a paradise on Earth for the faithful. Revelation 21:
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
From The Atlantic, July 21, 2016:
‘I Alone Can Fix It’
Breaking with two centuries of political tradition, Donald Trump didn’t ask Americans to place their trust in each other or in God, but rather, in Trump.
From Yahoo News, March 10, 2025:
Trump: 'We're going to become so rich, you're not going to know where to spend all that money'
Miracles are now performed on a daily basis. Sometimes on an hourly basis. Through faith alone, rising prices have stopped being a bad thing and become a good thing. Who needs so many dolls and pencils anyway?
And who says they're rising anyway? Trump has declared that:
"The cost of eggs has come down like 93%, 94% since we took office, and they’re pretty much normally priced now.”
“Gasoline just broke $1.98 a Gallon, lowest in years,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday. “Consumers have been waiting for years to see pricing come down. NO INFLATION, THE FED SHOULD LOWER ITS RATE!!!”
And once Trump had been re-elected, the Church of MAGA had it's very own story of symbolic betrayal, death and resurrection.
Take a long look at the groveling deference and sycophancy of Trump's cabinet and the Republicans in congress. Doesn't that look an awful lot like an act of "apotheosis" -- of elevating Trump to divine status?
And now that it has its hands on real, state power, what would a new, bloody-minded religion be without the declarations of jihad against blasphemers and heretics. This is from the April 9, 2025 Presidential Memoranda FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
Title: Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship
...Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority. Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic. CISA, under Krebs’ leadership, suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting supposed disinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission. CISA covertly worked to blind the American public to the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop. Krebs, through CISA, promoted the censorship of election information, including known risks associated with certain voting practices. Similarly, Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines. Krebs skewed the bona fide debate about COVID-19 by attempting to discredit widely shared views that ran contrary to CISA’s favored perspective...
This July will mark the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey trial. Care to guess how many Christian evangelicals still refuse to believe in evolution? According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey indicated that 66% of white evangelical Protestants hold a creationist stance, believing humans have always existed in their present form.
What about refusal to believe in climate change despite the fact that the consensus of 97-99% of all scientists is that it is real and man-made? Or belief that the Bible is the literal an inerrant word of God despite mountains of historical, geological, paleographic, forensic and chemical evidence to the contrary?
Like it or not, for the Right this stopped being a political contest over policy questions a long time ago and became a Holy War against us infidels and heretics on the Left. That’s what all of their culture war bullshit adds up to: Church of MAGA articles of faith that their leaders have told them, are under siege by us godless, commie scum.
Long past time for Dems to wake up and stop pretending what is broken about this country can be fixed by bringing a House resolution to a Holy War.
Discovery can be hard. Sometimes it takes a lifetime.
I, for one, am in awe of people who have made discoveries about the universe, whether it's something eye-popping like finding a new exoplanet, or something more subtle, like a new species no one had ever cataloged before.
And then there are the no-less worthy discoveries made by people about themselves. Who have perhaps stumbled upon a personal epiphany or, as is often the case, done the hard and painful work of achieving a deeper understanding of why they do what they do.
And then there are people who are just full of shit. Who lay claim to suddenly discovering something about their world which was not just staring them in the face all along, but was a subject about which they had been hailed as an expert. A paid, professional expert.
Imagine a master carpenter who claims decades of experience, one day picking up a saw and demanding to know, "A device for literally cutting wood? What unnatural deviltry it this?!?"
Imagine a board-certified podiatrist with 25 years of experience suddenly proclaiming, "Oh my God, you mean there are five toes on the average human foot? What the fuck did that happen?"
Which brings us a column by David French published just a few days ago in The New York Times, where, inexplicably, Mr. French now has a job for life writing about "law, culture, religion, and armed conflict."
I've mentioned Mr. French before on this blog.
Outside of wingnut circles of self-admiration, most normal people may have first heard of him when he was Bill Kristol’s Never Trump fantasy league choice to run for President in 2016. Because voting for Hillary was just too icky.
Mr. French used to be a writer at America's oldest journal of white supremacy, The National Review, where he used his position to advance his many odious opinions, which all grew out of his hardcore, Conservative Evangelical "Christianity". But, as happened back in those days, Mr. French ran afoul of the MAGA right on the issue of Donald Trump, they ran him right out of there. How fortunate for him that he also had so many friends in the "liberal" media, that a job was almost immediately found for him at The New York Times.
Because of course it was
However, before they could bring him on board, Mr. French had to hastily "rethink" some of him more medieval beliefs about woman and gays and so forth so that he could meet the minimum requirements for reputational rehabilitation by the Beltway media. Then, on to the Times! After which a slot was found for him at The Bulwark, and an occasional chair was found for him on cable news.
Because of course they were.
Anyway, this week, The New York Time's new, in-house expert on religion wrote a long column which began with this headline:
The Day My Old Church Canceled Me Was a Very Sad Day
There followed a very long column about how shocked, stunned (pardon me while I make a quick trip to my pocket Roget's) astonished, bewildered, dismayed, floored and , yes, even flabbergasted that his Conservative evangelical church was full of...Conservative evangelicals all along!
Just as he and the rest of his Never Trumper friend were dumbfounded, overcome and, yes, even stupefied t discover that their Republicans Party was, y'know...
Here's a small snip of that long column:
This week, the leaders of the Presbyterian Church in America will gather in Richmond, Va., for their annual General Assembly. The Presbyterian Church in America is a small, theologically conservative Christian denomination that was my family’s church home for more than 15 years.
It just canceled me.
I am now deemed too divisive to speak to a gathering of Christians who share my faith. I was scheduled to speak about the challenges of dealing with toxic polarization, but I was considered too polarizing.
I was originally invited to join three other panelists on the topic of “how to be supportive of your pastor and church leaders in a polarized political year.” One of the reasons I was invited was precisely that I’ve been the target of intense attacks online and in real life.
The instant my participation was announced, those attacks started up again. There were misleading essays, vicious tweets, letters and even a parody song directed at the denomination and at me. The message was clear: Get him off the stage.
And that’s what the conference organizers chose to do. They didn’t just cancel me. They canceled the entire panel. But the reason was obvious: My presence would raise concerns about the peace and unity of the church. ...
...has had a conflicted relationship with evangelicalism over the last several decades. Early in her career, she was fired from the evangelical Westmont College, blacklisted, and ignored after she challenged traditional beliefs. She has written extensively about progressive Christianity ever since, and is the author of eight books, including Grounded: Finding God in the World—A Spiritual Revolution and, most recently, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks.
Bass was fired from her dream job for doing nothing wrong.
At the time she was working as a theology professor at an evangelical Christian college. Bass said the president of the university told her: “You’re an amazing student and an amazing scholar. I’m literally just firing you because you don’t fit here.”
So, David French has “never seen anything like it” when his evangelical church turned on him?Welcome to my life for the last 30 years.THIS IS WHAT EVANGELICALS DO. Always. They cancel people.It just takes privileged conservative guys a while to notice I guess.He literally just said “there are churches where you can’t be a Democrat.”THIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR 30 years. Geez. He didn’t know this????? There are millions of people who have experienced this. Evangelicalism has ruined so many lives.Also, maybe he should memorize that Niemoller quote: “First they came….”Finally, I’m all for Prodigal Sons and deathbed conversions. If, however, your job is public commentary on religion, you shouldn’t be so clueless.
I'm not saying it is or it ain't, but consider:
Revelation 9: Then the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and it was given the key to the pit of the Abyss. 2
The star opened the pit of the Abyss, and smoke rose out of it like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the pit. 3
And out of the smoke, locusts descended on the earth, and they were given power like that of the scorpions of the earth.…
So blotting out the sun?
Check.
From the Illinois Department of Natural Resources:
Seven years after the 2017 total eclipse thrilled and delighted viewers in the Midwest, another total solar eclipse will be visible over 128 miles of Illinois the afternoon of April 8, 2024. The next total solar eclipse visible in the United States won’t be until 2044.
Thirty-one Illinois state parks and sites managed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources are in the eclipse’s path of totality. Numerous other parks and sites lie just outside the path of totality, offering equally spectacular views of the eclipse, though for shorter periods of time.
Southern Illinois is considered the eclipse crossroads of America because it was in the centerline for the path of totality in 2017 and will be again in 2024.
The largest Illinois city in the path of totality is Carbondale. In downtown Carbondale the eclipse will begin moments before 2 p.m. and last for 4 minutes and 9 seconds, which is nearly double the length of time of the 2017 eclipse.
A nearly unprecedented swarm of big, loud, scary-looking flying bugs?
Check.
From ABC News, Chicago:
17-year cicadas in Illinois part of 'double brood emergence' that will soon unleash billions of bugs
In a matter of months, they will dig their way out from underground, red eyes shining, deafening song filling the air. It will be a confluence of creatures the likes of which hasn't been seen in the United States since Thomas Jefferson was president - and won't happen again until 2245. It's a rare emergence of insects some are referring to as cicadapocalypse.
Billions of cicadas are expected to surface this spring as two different broods - one that appears every 13 years, and another every 17 years - emerge simultaneously. The 13-year group, known as Brood XIX, or the Great Southern Brood, is the largest periodical cicada brood, stretching across the southeastern United States. The Northern Illinois Brood, or Brood XIII, emerges every 17 years.
Not saying the end of the world is definitely coming and that it'll begin within shouting distance of my house.
All I'm saying is, if I feel the slightest rumble from the New Madrid Fault -- which runs right through Southern Illinois -- I'm outta here.
“Anyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out afer they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive. ” -- Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
A couple of days ago I put up a post reminding whoever reads this blog that the Republican party's dependence on Conservative Evangelical scumbags like Jerry Falwell, Jr. (which I dubbed "Christopaths" 18 years ago and, by God, I'm gonna keep using it until it catches on and makes me as rich as "dumpster fire" made me!) did not, in fact, begin in 2016. That the unholy union between unslakable Republican ambition and God-bothering grifters like Jerry Falwell, Sr. goes way, way back to the days of Ronald Reagan.
Yes, I know it began before that, so please don't inundate me with "Well, technically..."s or "You forgot about..."s. Let's just stipulate, here and now, that you're all very clever and know many thing and move on, shall we?
What brings me back to Falwell this morning is a story and a podcast.
The story is the one about Watergate and John Dean at a point when Nixon was already up to his ass in the coverup, and Dean came to him to warn him about there being "a cancer on the presidency".
Well, yeah, but the cancer on the presidency was the president, so good luck with that.
Nixon then asked Dean to take all his notes and go away to Camp David and prepare for him a full report on this Watergate matter, and then come back and submit that report to Nixon. Dean went to Camp David and started work, but quickly figured out that any such report would have to include Dean's own involvement. And, not being an idiot, Dean also figured out that, once he submitted the report to Nixon, Nixon would claim that this was the Very First Time he was hearing about this matter! Then he'd hang the whole thing around Dean's neck and make him the fall guy. That was when Dean decamped from Camp David and went to go see the the senate Watergate investigators. He had a story to tell.
I mention this story because, since the rise of Trump, the "My God! This is the first I am hearing about this!" lie has become a staple on pretty much every Never Trump thing.
You're telling me that there's racism going on!? In the Party of Lincoln?!
Shut the front door! How did this happen!!
You're telling me that the clowns on Conservative talk radio have just been making shit up to scare the rubes? That it's been a bad influence on society?!?
OMG how did this happen!!
I'm shocked -- shocked! -- I see a noble enterprise like Fox News slowly turning into a right-wing propaganda machine since Trump was elected.
Remember the Good Old Days, when it was awesome?
...Charlie Sykes, listening in wide-eared wonder to the stunning revelation that the Republican party was actually in bed with the Christopaths...even before Donald Trump was elected!!
Sykes: ..and of course the whole Trump era, and you have this, again, this extraordinary line where you say, "I couldn't help but wonder if the plot twist to the story of American conservative Christianity was that what we thought was the Shire was Mordor all along."
Moore: It's kind of like watching The Sixth Sense or some other M. Night Shyamalan movie for the second time because then you can see how all of these things fit together that previously... I mean my gut would say to me, what's going on? I mean Glenn Beck is doing the restoring honor message on the National Mall in 2010? And you have a lot of my fellow evangelicals saying this is preaching the gospel. But I would think, yeah, this is just an anomaly. It's something that's on the fringe. And then later we turn around and see it's not fringe at all. And I think maybe the... the moment that... that became clearest to me was October 7th, 2016. I remember the day when the Access Hollywood tape was released...
It goes on like that. Sykes obsessing that, since Trump the Christopaths have really lost their way.
Moore (responding as if he had just personally decrypted this from the Mayan codex) that, actually, the Christopaths influence on the Republican party may extend back into the mists of...The Before Time.
The following is not actual dialogue from the podcast..
Sykes: You're shitting me!
Moore: I am not. There is evidence of Christopaths having a lot of clout within the GOP even before Trump came down the escalator.
Sykes: But I've been involved at the highest levels of the Republican party and Conservative media for decades? How could I have possibly missed this?
Moore: We all missed it, Charlie. They were so stealthy, these Christopaths. So subtle and sneaky and silent. They were like fucking ninjas! Invisible all this time and then, whamo! Suddenly they're everywhere!
By now, none of this surprises me. After all, 18 years ago, based on what was plainly obvious all around us, I wrote a parable about where this Republican/Christopath alliance was headed. And 18 years later, I wouldn't change a word.
All I'm listening for now is the next phase of this by-now familiar "My God! This is the first I am hearing about this!" dodge. Specifically, the sound of some prominent Never Trumper groping around in the dark looking for any way -- any way at all -- that they can plausibly blame this on us dirty, godless Liberals.
It reads...
“Get your fucking hands off my son!”
(Actually it’s a photo of the Coptic script of the Gospel of Judas via National Geographic)
File this under: The Real, True Adventures of Jesus and his Kid.
OK, none of this is original to me.
Some I’d read, some I’ve picked up talking to Jesuits and much of it I got through a series of letters that a good friend of mine assembled several years ago when he was getting his thoughts on paper.
No, I have never read “The DaVinci Code” (I started it and found it to be similar-if-not-outright-derivative of things I’d already read, and the writing was, well, turgid) so if this is too overlapful of that, skip it.
First, by way of setup, this fascinating story from the Los Angeles Time:
Manuscript Indicates Jesus Urged Judas' BetrayalSo you want to know the really-real story of Jesus?
From Associated Press
12:47 PM PDT, April 6, 2006
WASHINGTON — For 2,000 years Judas has been reviled for betraying Jesus. Now a newly translated ancient document seeks to tell his side of the story.
The "Gospel of Judas" tells a far different tale from the four gospels in the New Testament. It portrays Judas as a favored disciple who was given special knowledge by Jesus -- and who turned him in at Jesus' request.
"You will be cursed by the other generations -- and you will come to rule over them," Jesus tells Judas in the document made public today.
The text, one of several ancient documents found in the Egyptian desert in 1970, was preserved and translated by a team of scholars. It was made public in an English translation by the National Geographic Society.
Religious and lay readers alike will debate the meaning and truth of the manuscript.
But it does show the diversity of beliefs in early Christianity, said Marvin Meyer, professor of Bible studies at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.
The text, in the Coptic language, was dated to about the year 300 and is a copy of an earlier Greek version.
A "Gospel of Judas" was first mentioned around A.D. 180 by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon, in what is now France. The bishop denounced the manuscript as heresy because it differed from mainstream Christianity. The actual text had been thought lost until this discovery.
…
"Perhaps more now can be said," he commented. The document "implies that Judas only did what Jesus wanted him to do."
Christianity in the ancient world was much more diverse than it is now, with a number of gospels circulating in addition to the four that were finally collected into the New Testament, noted Bart Ehrman, chairman of religious studies at the University of North Carolina.
Eventually, one point of view prevailed and the others were declared heresy, he said, including the Gnostics who believed that salvation depended on secret knowledge that Jesus imparted, particularly to Judas.
…
"Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom," Jesus says to Judas, singling him out for special status. "Look, you have been told everything. Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star."
The text ends with Judas turning Jesus over to the high priests and does not include any mention of the crucifixion or resurrection.
…
Well, settle down and bring me a scotch and I will reveal all.
Now is this little story I'm about to tell true?
How the hell should I know? It is to my mind, however, no less riveting an explanation of the Jesus Story than the cartoons they pass off as genuine coin in Sunday School, or either the Abattoir Christianity or "JC, CEO" faiths that are pimped by various hucksters on the Right.
In other words: We Purport, You Decide.
So once upon a time…
The Kingdom of Judea was in upheaval as is had been for years. The Romans had conquered the region and had tried to bend in into becoming another distant province of their empire.
Their success was…mixed.
The Occupiers were militarily superior to the locals in every way, and there were a lot of advantages to being a client-state. And, yes, they had effectively co-opted many of the local elected officials, but everyone knew what the score was.
The Occupiers said “jump” and their proxy government said “how high.”
And the locals – who had been conquered and pillaged many times before and who would have found our modern notion of separating Church and State incomprehensible – existed in various of states of high-pissoffery.
The Occupiers were almost uniformly seen an affront to their God and despoilers of their holy places.
Some people just wanted to be left alone. Some thought cooperation was the lesser of many evils; the only way to stave off something much worse. Many were seething with rage. And a few of them took up arms against the Occupiers and those they saw as collaborators.
And those who drew blood in their cause saw it as a sacred thing.
It was a cauldron of faith, politics, family, tribe, righteous fury, military power and insurgency, always gurgling away at a low boil and kept in check by compromise when possible, and massive shows of force when not.
And I don’t think it is exaggerating the situation by a whole lot by describing it as an on-again-off-again form of urban warfare taking place in the context of a low-grade civil war.
Say, does ANY of this sound familiar?
Does anyone fail to notice that if it were air strikes vs. carbombs instead of legions vs. daggers, this is exactly what the front page of the New York Times looks like every single day?
The reason I mention it is I am always surprised when devout Christians are oblivious to the context in which their central stories take place.
In a city in the grip of factional fighting that shuddered and bled for years before JC came along.
A city that was all but wiped off the map in the denouement of that Long War, 40 years after Jesus was supposed to have been killed.
So instead of the Disney Christ, existing outside of time and space in a Neverland of shepherds and parables, wise men and stock-character Romans, just imagine it as it really was.
In a city in the middle of a guerilla war, where leaders desperately rose up again and again only to be killed, again and again.
And then a young warrior-priest hit on a new strategy.
He is well-educated in both tactics and law. He is of royal blood, and like true royalty feels quite at home talking to people of every station in life. The Essenes know him, as do the Zealots. Even to the worshipers of Mithras he would not be a stranger.
He has developed what we would call a broad constituency, and he also has a duty. The same duty every Jewish lead bears in his turn: to drive the Romans out.
As a rabbi and a royal, he has also taken a wife. Seriously, who in those times would have trusted a wifeless, childless leader? They were married at Cana (you may have read about it), and had a son, then entering his teens.
The son is a royal and a rebel like his old man, but has fallen in with the armed, hard-core, “Revolution Now” crowd. His dad worries about him, but he’s a strong-willed and righteous kid who’s been listening to dad's anti-Roman kitchen-table-talk his whole life, so what can the old man really say?
The uprising Jesus had planned was, of course, both spiritual and political -- two concepts which would not be teased apart and thought of separately for millennia. To craft and trigger his rebellion he made an underdog's careful use of the agitpropic power of “prophecy fulfillment” to fill the streets with followers, perhaps using the radical idea that in the true fulfillment of Jewish Law the revolutionaries could literally love their enemies into making concessions to capture the imagination of the war-weary residents of Jerusalem.
Maybe the streets were too narrow?
Maybe the crowds were too large?
Whatever happened, at some point the wheels came off, and the massed power of the Roman military moved in. It was soon obvious that the uprising had failed, and seeing that the tide was turning and they were all now (or would soon be) wanted for capital crimes, Jesus and his team went into hiding.
Which leads to what I think of as one of the central, unanswered question of New Testament.
Why didn’t they just put their boogie shoes on and scram?
Live to fight another day?
C’mon, you’ve got a city full of followers presumably willing to hide you. Friends in high and low places. Pals among the Essennes down the coast. I mean, who the fuck plans a rebellion without an escape route?
Without a Plan B?
It's 106 miles to Chicago! You've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.
So hit it!
But they stayed.
Why?
Don’t think supernatural; don’t think stilted or scripted or Cecil B. DeMille.
Just think like a smart, compassionate leader of men during a time of war and ask yourself, "What would make me blow off my chance at retreat and regrouping?"
How about if the Romans had your kid?
Your child, who is not just your flesh and blood, but the heir to a royal line.
A teenaged boy who had been name after his father, and since people didn’t have last names in those days, he would have been called something like “Jesus, Son of the Master” or “Jesus, Son of the father”.
But where in the New Testament do you find a second man named Jesus?
Hey baby, you’re soaking in it!
This site sums it up as well as any...
Now the gospels tell us the name (title) of the robber Pilate offered to the crowd for release in Jesus stead was "Barabbas" or Bar'Abba Mk 15:6-15, Mt 27:15-26, Lk 23:17-25, Jn 18:39-40.This site covers the basics pretty well too...
(This is not a personal name. It's a title - in Aramaic it means "the Son of the Father"). Some ancient manuscripts of Matthew, confirmed by the writings of the church father, Origen (250ce), reveal the full name of the criminal as " Jesus Bar'Abbas " , just like the "Jesus Bar'Abbas" ( Son of the Father "God" ) that Christians worship .
The church father Origen was appalled by the use of "Jesus Barabbas" in the manuscripts he was familiar with because he held the conviction that no "sinner" should bare the name and title of "Jesus the Christ " .
…
"…scribes deleted the name Jesus from Jesus Barabbas out of reverence for Jesus Christ ." D. A. Carson, Matthew, in vol. 8 of The Expositor's Bible Commentary, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), p574.
In the Christian story of the passion of Jesus , Barabbas, actually Jesus bar-Abbas, (Aramaic Bar-abbâ, "son of the father"), was the insurrectionary murderer whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover…So word gets back to you via intermediaries that the Romans have your son and have charged him with being a member of the sicarii (An armed, militant sect dedicated to overthrowing the Romans by force.)
"Jesus Barabbas"
According to the United Bible Societies' text, Matthew 27:17 reads: "...whom will ye that I release unto you? Jesus Barabbas [Greek: Iesous ton Barabbas] or Jesus which is called Christ [Greek: Iesous ton legomenon Christon]?"
Some early Greek manuscripts of Matthew present Barabbas' name twice as Jesus bar Abbas: manuscripts in the Caesarean group of texts, the Sinaitic Palimpsest, the Palestinian Syriac lectionaries and some of the manuscripts used by Origen in the 3rd century, all support the fact that Barabbas' name was originally Jesus Barabbas, though not all modern New Testament translations reflect this. Origen deliberately rejected the reading in the manuscript he was working with, and left out "Iesous" deliberately, for reverential considerations, certainly a strongly motivated omission. Early editors did not want the name Jesus associated with anyone who was a sinner.
He had committed a capital crime (Mark 15:7 says that he had committed a murder during an insurrection) and was soon to die…but the Romans would be willing to trade.
The Father for the Son, and the clock is ticking.
You see how with a little context we’ve moved this along from a child’s badly staged Sunday School pageant to an episode of “24”?
"My name is Jesus of Nazareth...and this is the longest day of my life!”
Your rebellion is fucked, your movement is in ashes and as you and your posse pack fast and get ready to blow town, word reaches you that your son and heir is rotting in a Roman prison awaiting execution.
What do you do?
Well if you read the story of the Last Supper without changing a single phrase -- only shifting the context and the emphasis -- according to scripture, you call an Emergency War Council.
You make some brutally hard decisions, share a Passover meal and a prayer with your dearest friends and loyal lieutenants -- men who have sworn to live and die by your word -- and then pick out two of them to do the hardest things they will ever be asked to do.
As their leader, you start issuing orders.
Mercy first, so with staunch-but-not-very-bright Peter, you keep it simple. You tell him to escape. To lie his ass off, deny he ever knew you, and get out of town.
Pete doesn’t want to -- in tears he says, “If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise” -- so you have to insist.
Then onto the shoulders of your ferociously loyal security chief, Judas Iscariot -- Judas of the Sicarii? -- you place the heaviest burden of all; the life of your child. Judas will handle the exchange, including personally turning you over to the authorities, and since the Roman offer came strings attached including an insistence on secrecy, he can never, ever breathe a word about the real story to anyone or the deal is off.
You know it'll destroy him and his good name for all time -- “The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born." -- but you also know it has to be done, and only the strongest of your men can handle that burden.
"Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me."
For god’s sake, these aren’t prophecies. They’re final commands, given to a platoon whose heart had already been shattered once that day.
And then you lead your brothers in a prayer, and walk out into the night and into history.
To save your son.
