James Talarico has been found guilty of quoting Jesus. The sentence he uttered, according to right-wing media, was “demonic” and “blasphemous,” exposing him as a “fake Christian.” Talarico is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas on a platform The New Yorker recently described as basically the New Testament. One Newsmax host accused him of using fake Bible passages.
The passages in question are familiar ones, found in Matthew 22 and Matthew 25. Love God and love your neighbor. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the stranger. They are, in fact, in the Bible.
The right’s attacks on Talarico aren’t about him, or at least not entirely. They’re about a much older argument — one progressive Christianity has been losing in public for 50 years — about whose version of the faith gets to count as real. The answer to that question has consequences far beyond any Senate race. When Christianity becomes a tool of power rather than a challenge to it, it doesn’t just damage the church. It destabilizes democracy. We are watching that happen in real time.
They ran out of pearls to clutch so now they’re making fists.
“American Conservative Christians” are not Christians. They never have been.
Yeah, this unfortunately. Christian nationalists will never and cannot enter the kingdom of heaven
Maybe Paulians.
Meanwhile only the sound of crickets when Hexseth quoted fake Bible passages from Pulp Fiction.
The xtian right wing cannot really be considered to be following the things that the character of Jesus is made to say in their own texts.
They should not really be called xtians. And no, I’m not trying for the No True Scotsman thing here…
At best, they might be considered Paulians
since they seem to be so very different…
These cunts wouldn’t know Jesus if he descended from heaven with trumpets and handed them a Bible.
They’d have ICE detain him for having the wrong color skin.
When Christianity becomes a tool of power rather than a challenge to it, it doesn’t just damage the church. It destabilizes democracy. We are watching that happen in real time.
I’m not American, but I am a Christian, and I believe that wholeheartedly. Religions, including my own, should never hold political power. However religion can and should serve as a reminder that temporal authority is subject to something higher, thereby tempering and relativizing secular power, which is always tempted to absolutize itself.
The Xtn right is becoming the type of power our nation’s founders came here to get away from. Their influence corrupts both faith and government. Blaming cross-dressers for grooming children when the actual news headlines are pastors and priests abusing kids. They have become the American Taliban.
Ahh yes, the national socialists of religious demographics, hiding behind an ideology like a fucking brand while doing the exact opposite of everything it demands they practice in life, back with another thing to say. How about they fuck off. Christians need to much more vocally call out the disingenuous weaponization of their belifs in the purusit of power, I know these evangelical freaks are a minority, they just own all the major media so they get to have the loudest voice. Still, it needs to be rubbed in their face every single day that they would be the ones to crucify Jesus again if he did come back like they claim to want.
Make it make sense
“Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?”
