Staunchly against bodily autonomy for women, Johnson supports a nationwide ban on abortion which he considers, “a holocaust.” This inexperienced, soft-spoken Ned Flanders suggested that abortion activists want to kill babies that are “half way out of the birth-canal,” and voted against Americans having access to purchase legal contraception. The most powerful Republican in Washington insisted that, if only women would bear more “able-bodied workers,” he wouldn’t be forced to cut trillions of dollars from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Hostile towards gay and transgender people, Johnson called them “dangerous” and “deviant” threats to the American way of life and defended laws that criminalized homosexual relations between consenting adults that he called “inherently unnatural.” He warned that same-sex marriage was a “dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”

Last year, Johnson introduced legislation that would prohibit the use of federal funds for providing education to children under 10 that included LGBTQ topics — a national version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. He also is working to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.

Johnson is a virulent Christian Nationalist, an ideology modeled on Hungarian president Victor Orbán’s program of “illiberal democracy,” and defense of Christendom against Muslims, progressives, and the “LGBTQ lobby.” Johnson “pushed all kinds of hateful anti-LGBTQ bigotry while at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian Nationalist legal outfit that wants to drag this country back to the 5th century,” warns Andrew L. Seidel, civil rights attorney and author of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American. For nearly twenty years, Johnson served as senior legal counsel and spokesman for the ADF.

Designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ADF is a legal advocacy organization that not only supported “re-criminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults,” but has also defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people and contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia. Johnson and the ADF claim that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society.

Politicon: “James Carville explains everything about Mike Johnson”

The ADF, according to the New York Times, is the “largest legal force of the religious right.” They would go on to successive Supreme Court victories, most notably rolling back abortion rights in the Dobbs decision, undermining LGBTQ rights in the (purported) same-sex wedding website case 303 Creative, allowing employer-sponsored health insurance to exclude birth control, and twelve other cases related to curtailing the civil rights of women and LGBTQ people.

Johnson’s rise to the speakership is best understood in terms of the ongoing white Christian nationalist takeover of the American government through MAGA rather than, as the mainstream press suggested, the quirky, exhausted and embarrassed result of a bickering caucus. Since the rise of the Tea Party, the primary driver for both the GOP’s dysfunction and its incipient fascism is the political might of organized right-wing Christianity, successfully redeployed especially in primaries, to wrest control from establishment “Republicans in Name Only” (“RINOs”).

As the former political director of the AFL-CIO Michael Podhorzer wrote, “the political muscle provided by white Christian nationalism’s extensive church-based infrastructure in congressional districts, and its national reach through Christian broadcasting and national organizations, has turned MAGA into a ruthlessly successful RINO-hunting machine.”

Still, Johnson’s loathsome ideology and religious zealotry were not the main reasons for his elevation to the speakership — most Republicans share his repulsive worldview. Rather, the MAGA cult embraced his tireless advocacy on behalf of despotic Donald’s seditious attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Most House Republicans voted to back the Fabricator’s lies about the election; but few had worked as diligently as Johnson to foist fraudulent conspiracy theories, such as “rigged Dominion voting machines,” on Americans. A constitutional lawyer who uses the law to subvert democracy, Johnson enlisted dozens of fellow-members to support a sham Texas court case seeking to cancel the election results in battleground states.

Johnson’s role, neglected at the time, was such that the Times later called him “the most important architect” of the campaign to block congressional certification of the Electoral College results and thus overturn Trump’s defeat. Circulating his hollow rationale to the party, Johnson reminded them that Trump “anxiously awaited” their support. Proudly exhibiting a bizarre religious devotion to the Un-Christian Trump, Johnson helped plot the Jan. 6 attempted coup while calling the insurrection a “peaceful protest” and defending the Seditionist at both of his impeachment hearings.

At a time when Trump’s co-conspirators, probably including his Chief of Staff, admitted they lied about the election being stolen, House Republicans handed the reins of power to someone who showed no hesitation to help overturn American democracy. Johnson was given a powerful government position by people in the government who don’t believe in government — and installed an unrepentant election-denier leader two heartbeats away from the presidency.

In his first major initiative as House speaker, Johnson pushed through a bill to provide $14 billion in military assistance to Israel. Before the vote, he declared, “Israel doesn’t need a cease-fire.” However, Palestinians do. Israel’s aerial and ground offensive, ostensibly targeting Hamas infrastructure, has killed over 11,000 people while those who managed to flee Israel’s attack in northern Gaza now encounter a scarcity of food and medicine in the south. “Residents wait hours for a gallon of brackish water that makes them sick,” reported the Times of Israel. Scabies, diarrhea and respiratory infections rip through overcrowded shelters.” 

In addition, Johnson engineered the House censure of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian serving in Congress. The censure resolution is “rife with propaganda, fake history, and racism,” said Juan Cole on Informed Comment. 

In his first public appearance, the newly-elected Christian Zionist told a crowd of Jewish Republicans in Las Vegas: “We are going to stand like a rock with our friend and ally, Israel.” He boasted that his first act as speaker was passing the pro-Israel resolution in spite of “no” votes from several democrats, including Rashida Tlaib, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar. Their opposition was due to the bill’s failure to recognize Palestinian victims and call for a cease-fire. Johnson maliciously and deceitfully blamed their defiance on an “alarming trend of antisemitism” enabled by “academia and the mainstream media, and fringe government figures.”

The evangelical Christian’s rise to power is the biggest political victory for the evangelical movement to date and his connections to Israel reflect the movement’s deep ties to the Israeli far right. “God is not done with Israel,” said Johnson cryptically. He gushed that his 2020 visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount was the “fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.”

This remark references the Christian Zionist end-times belief, derived from a literal reading of the Bible, that Israel is God’s chosen nation and that its 1948 creation will lead to the Second Coming of Christ. In the real world, they rabidly support the state of Israel and its policies, especially regarding the expansion of settlements, the annexation of territories in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

In the biblical narrative, Christ will defeat Evil, or the Antichrist, in an apocalyptic battle that will take place in Israel at Har Megiddo, or Armageddon. Along with Christian believers and converts who have ascended to heaven in the Rapture, Christ will rule from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for a thousand years. Fueled by these fantasies of a cataclysmic war in the Middle East, Christian Zionists maintain that literal war is not something to be avoided, but inevitable, desired by God, and celebrated. These zealots condemn those that oppose Israeli occupation as being evil, aligned with the “Antichrist.”

The Bible becomes a script for those millennial Christians in power, like Mike Johnson — a self-fulfilling prophesy of violence and destruction that portends an apocalyptic foreign policy. In some warped minds, the current battle in Israel may be hastening the coveted dooms-day of reckoning. In a bizarre twist to the end-times prophecy, those Christian Zionists who are the most passionately pro-Israel also believe that those Jews who do not convert to Christianity will not be raptured, and if they don’t convert during the horrific cataclysm at Har Megiddo, they will be condemned to suffer eternally in the “lake of fire.”

Eager to visit the Christian holy land, Johnson traveled to Israel with his pal Gym Jordan. Jordan, who was considered an aggressive and confrontational jerk, was rejected by his party for the speakership. Yet Jordan apparently served as a spiritual mentor to Johnson, who has guest-hosted Jordan’s national radio show Washington Watch, and praised Jordan as a “great friend and leader” and “a guiding light” on his podcast Truth be Told with Mike and Kelly Johnson.

Along with their wives, Jordan and Johnson’s week-long pilgrimage was sponsored by the New York-based 12Tribes Film Foundation, a small outfit that that describes itself as “online warriors for truth about Israel and the Jewish people.” The organization’s CEO Avi Abelow — an arch-Zionist — lives in the West Bank settlement of Efrat.

Johnson’s first stop on his Abelow-organized visit was to receive a briefing from the Kohelet Policy Forum, a far-right Israeli think tank that would later help cultivate the Netanyahu administration’s despised plan to weaken the country’s judiciary. The itinerary included meetings with Israeli military officials, business owners, and political leaders including Netanyahu, current Israeli U.N. envoy Gilad Erdan, and other members of the far right Likud Party.

At the Golan Heights, the pair posed and smiled in front of a sign for “Trump Heights,” the name of an Israeli settlement honoring Trump for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Located in occupied territory claimed by Israel, it is widely considered to violate international law.

Johnson also visited the Temple Mount compound — the Palestinian Aqsa Mosque complex — alongside Abelov, a Temple Mount activist, and Yehudah Glick — an Orthodox rabbi and former Likud lawmaker, who has led the fight to change the legal status quo and permit Jewish prayer at this Palestinian national symbol, the third holiest shrine in the Muslim world, and one of the most sensitive flashpoints in the world. In 2023 during Ramadan, Israeli forces repeatedly invaded the sacred al-Aqsa Mosque, in an act of “state terrorism,” where they beat and expelled Palestinian worshipers on behalf of Jewish extremists.

This visit to Israel, led by right-wing extremists, influenced the future speaker’s views regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During a video made of the trip, Johnson declares — without traveling to Gaza or meeting with Palestinian leaders or activists — that the Palestinian and Israeli people were “working well together” and that there was a “great cohesion of the people” in the West Bank. He blamed “activists and the leftist groups” for “pushing” the narrative that there was conflict, implying that Palestinians enjoyed life under Israeli occupation.

Johnson called Netanyahu, in his first talk with a foreign leader, during which he echoed the premier’s comments that Israel’s war is one of good vs. evil and light vs. darkness. “I assured the prime minister of our own unwavering support of Israel and the people in our Congress and under my leadership, we will be there until the end, we will be there until the end of this conflict.” He opposes basic human rights for Palestinians as well as many Americans.

In an appearance with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Johnson described himself as “a Bible-believing Christian” and said that to understand his politics, one only need to “pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” This is cultish nonsense that threatens democracy.

Democracy means that the candidate ordained by God, in Johnson’s view, lost an election, so he forsook his oath to the Constitution to keep a corrupt, seditious demagogue in power. Democracy also leads to abortions and gay marriage. Under democracy, Johnson also believes that white Christians are being “replaced”— by immigrants, by Muslims, by trans kids, by drag queens, and by a whole litany of scapegoats. So, perhaps, the only way to save the U.S. and white Christians is to end democracy.

In a potentially horrifying scenario, suppose Trump loses the 2024 election but again claims he won and the GOP demands his “victory” to be certified, House speaker Johnson is positioned to do so. A devout apostle to the Pagan Coup Plotter, MAGA Mike is prepared to subvert democracy in deranged obedience to Trump and his biblical fanaticism.

End Times Christians keep looking for signs and portents

By Diane Roberts | –

( Florida Phoenix ) – Remember when a quarter of Americans thought Barack Obama might be the Antichrist?

They feared he’d impose a One World Government — as Dr. Peter Venkman says in Ghostbusters, “a disaster of biblical proportions, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together” — and trigger the apocalypse.

That didn’t happen, but End Times Christians keep looking for signs and portents, wars and rumors of wars, and, by God, the Israel-Hamas horror is right up their millenarianist alley.

Where many of us see the vicious killings by Hamas and the indiscriminate bombing by the Netanyahu government as atrocities fueled by 75 years of resentment, fear, rage, and oppression, as well as a radical Islamic refusal to accept the existence of Israel, evangelicals and the politicians beholden to them see the first quarter of the Second Coming.

Evangelicals subscribe to a self-serving vision of Israel, one in which Jews demonstrate the inerrant truth of the Bible just by living there. They believe they have to go through Jews, who must have a nation state with Jerusalem as its capital, to spark the return of Jesus.

“Last Judgment Fresco Cycle by Frederico Zuccaro and Giorgio Vasari.” Public Domain.

When he was in office, Donald Trump and his MAGA maniacs were glad to play along, upending 70 years of U.S. policy, declaring Jerusalem Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. embassy there and boasting that he did it for the evangelicals who voted for him in huge numbers.

Getting to the End of Days requires Jews to rebuild Solomon’s temple on the ruins of the first two — the original, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, and the second version, wrecked by the Romans in 70 AD.

Holy offering

But before the bulldozers toll in, they need a red cow.

No cow, no temple; no temple, no Second Coming.

The End Times can’t kick off ’till a perfectly red heifer with not one white (or black or any other color in her fur) is brought to Jerusalem.

Then the poor critter will be slain by a priest, burned on a pyre made of cedar and hyssop with a piece of scarlet thread. Her ashes will be mixed with water and used to purify the Children of Israel.

It’s unclear how many American politicians accept the literal truth of this, but waiting for, even trying to jump start, Armageddon has animated the history of Protestant white folks ever since they landed on Plymouth Rock.

Doomsday is ironed into our culture.

The Puritans colonized the northeast corner of what became the United States expressly to build themselves a New Jerusalem and welcome the Second Coming, a catastrophe they felt certain would happen any minute now.

Doomsday sects have flourished throughout American history, from the Millerites of the 19th Century to the Branch Davidians to James Watt, Ronald Reagan’s notoriously pro-pollution, anti-environment Interior secretary.

Watt figured there was no reason to save the planet when the Lord was going to show up soon and deliver a new heaven and a new earth.

So why not drive that big car and crank up that AC?

Jonesing for the End Times

According to the Pew Center, 60 percent of evangelicals think we are living in the End Times. A Texas preacher, one of Donald Trump’s pet pastors, responded to the Hamas assault on Israel by praying, “The last days are coming and are here, when you will come again, for your church and for your people.”

This kind of thinking, plus Americans’ perennial Islamophobia, gives cover to the rightwing politicians hollering themselves hoarse about reducing Gaza to rubble and never mind the dead children.

The excitable senior senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, told CNN, “I don’t think there’s any way Israel can be expected to coexist or find some diplomatic off-ramp with these savages.”

Hamas must be “eradicated,” and if there are thousands upon thousands of civilian casualties, well, it’s their own fault for living in Gaza — not that Israel lets people leave Gaza.

Republican and Democratic politicians are all trying to outdo each other in assuring their voters that they stand with Israel and condemning anyone who suggests that the Netanyahu government — bellicose at the best of times — should share a least a little of the blame for the death toll.

Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib admittedly jumped the gun in blaming Israel for bombing the hospital in Gaza, and practically everybody in Washington demanded she apologize.

Tlaib is a Palestinian American: Her take on Israeli’s treatment of Palestinians is bound to be different from her Christian and Jewish colleagues.

Right now, nobody’s inclined to accept alternate points of view. When Tlaib called for a ceasefire to allow food, water, and medical supplies into Gaza, and perhaps help get the hostages out, the reaction was, if anything, worse.

Along with Ilhan Omar, the only other Muslim woman in Congress, she and her family are now regularly being threatened with violence.

Outdoing each other

Trump, Republican presidential frontrunner and cult leader, is gleefully throwing gasoline on the fire. To make up for calling Hamas “smart,” he’s now promising that when he’s reelected he’ll restore his ridiculous Muslim ban, institute “ideological screening” for immigrants, and refuse to admit refugees from Gaza.

Attempting to revive a campaign on life-support, Ron DeSantis is jumping up and down squawking “Me, too!”

Sen. Rick Scott, another towering intellect, is pitching a hissy fit over the administration’s $106 billion omnibus bill funding U.S. border security, Ukraine, Israel, and humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza.

Scott, Trump, Rubio, and DeSantis all claim to love Jesus.

Non-wingnut Christians frown on collective punishment, guilt by association, and indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatants, but End Times folks are OK with all of that, interpreting the horrific conflict between Israel and Hamas as fulfilment of biblical prophecy about a last battle on the plain of Megiddo — the site of the coming Apocalypse and also a nice national park in northern Israel.

Wholesale destruction, vicious battles, lots of dead people — that’s all part of the End Times package. Prominent Baptist minister Robert Jeffress assures Evangelicals the war in Israel is “not a human struggle; it is a spiritual struggle against the forces of darkness.”

According to Jeffress, “Satan set his sights set on Israel from the very beginning.”

You might not hear quite such theological disaster-mongering from MAGA Republicans, though Marco Rubio keeps tweeting dire Old Testament verses, like this gem from the Prophet Joel: “The day of the LORD is coming! Yes, it approaches, a day of darkness & gloom, a day of thick clouds! Like dawn spreading over the mountains, a vast & mighty army!”

Clearly the New Testament is just a little too kumbaya for him.

One problem

But there’s a problem — if you’re Jewish, that is.

Evangelicals and other Republicans proclaim their love of Israel and Judaism and “God’s Chosen People,” but they don’t like to talk the end game of the End Times.

Once the fake messiah ruling the world from the rebuilt temple gets whipped by Jesus and his angel army, the Jews are going have to convert to Christianity.

If they don’t, it’s the Lake of Fire for them. Forever.

But for now, it looks like Israel’s authoritarian-leaning, strife-ridden governing coalition — not people likely to start haunting their local Methodist church — will accept their deal with the devil.

Make nice with the Christians, reap political benefits.

There’s no way most Democratic politicians will alienate the American Jewish vote: They need it.

There’s no way most Republicans want to piss off either the Jews who support them or, more importantly, the Evangelicals who own them.

If the apocalypse comes before Benjamin Netanyahu either gets voted out or convicted of corruption, well, he can probably try and cut a deal with Jehovah and move to a nice little suburb in Gehenna.

Diane Roberts

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.

 

 Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. 

Via Florida Phoenix

Co-published with The Texas Tribune

( ProPublica) – Six days before a local runoff election last year in Frisco, a prosperous and growing suburb of Dallas, Brandon Burden paced the stage of KingdomLife Church. The pastor told congregants that demonic spirits were operating through members of the City Council.

Grasping his Bible with both hands, Burden said God was working through his North Texas congregation to take the country back to its Christian roots. He lamented that he lacked jurisdiction over the state Capitol, where he had gone during the 2021 Texas legislative session to lobby for conservative priorities like expanded gun rights and a ban on abortion.

“But you know what I got jurisdiction over this morning is an election coming up on Saturday,” Burden told parishioners. “I got a candidate that God wants to win. I got a mayor that God wants to unseat. God wants to undo. God wants to shift the balance of power in our city. And I have jurisdiction over that this morning.”

What Burden said that day in May 2021 was a violation of a long-standing federal law barring churches and nonprofits from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns, tax law experts told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Although the provision was mostly uncontroversial for decades after it passed in 1954, it has become a target for both evangelical churches and former President Donald Trump, who vowed to eliminate it.

Burden’s sermon is among those at 18 churches identified by the news organizations over the past two years that appeared to violate the Johnson Amendment, a measure named after its author, former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Some pastors have gone so far as to paint candidates they oppose as demonic.

At one point, churches fretted over losing their tax-exempt status for even unintentional missteps. But the IRS has largely abdicated its enforcement responsibilities as churches have become more brazen. In fact, the number of apparent violations found by ProPublica and the Tribune, and confirmed by three nonprofit tax law experts, are greater than the total number of churches the federal agency has investigated for intervening in political campaigns over the past decade, according to records obtained by the news organizations.

In response to questions, an IRS spokesperson said that the agency “cannot comment on, neither confirm nor deny, investigations in progress, completed in the past nor contemplated.” Asked about enforcement efforts over the past decade, the IRS pointed the news organizations to annual reports that do not contain such information.

Neither Burden nor KingdomLife responded to multiple interview requests or to emailed questions.

Trump’s opposition to the law banning political activity by nonprofits “has given some politically-minded evangelical leaders a sense that the Johnson Amendment just isn’t really an issue anymore, and that they can go ahead and campaign for or against candidates or positions from the pulpit,” said David Brockman, a scholar in religion and public policy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

Among the violations the newsrooms identified: In January, an Alaska pastor told his congregation that he was voting for a GOP candidate who is aiming to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, saying the challenger was the “only candidate for Senate that can flat-out preach.” During a May 15 sermon, a pastor in Rocklin, California, asked voters to get behind “a Christian conservative candidate” challenging Gov. Gavin Newsom. And in July, a New Mexico pastor called Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham “beyond evil” and “demonic” for supporting abortion access. He urged congregants to “vote her behind right out of office” and challenged the media to call him out for violating the Johnson Amendment.

Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who studies Christian nationalism, said the ramping up of political activity by churches could further polarize the country. “It creates hurdles for a healthy, functioning, pluralistic democratic society,” he said. “It’s really hard to overcome.”

The Johnson Amendment does not prohibit churches from inviting political speakers or discussing positions that may seem partisan nor does it restrict voters from making faith-based decisions on who should represent them. But because donations to churches are tax-deductible and because churches don’t have to file financial disclosures with the IRS, without such a rule donors seeking to influence elections could go undetected, said Andrew Seidel, vice president of strategic communications for the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“If you pair the ability to wade into partisan politics with a total absence of financial oversight and transparency, you’re essentially creating super PACs that are black holes,” Seidel said.

Churches have long balanced the tightrope of political involvement, and blatant violations have previously been rare. In the 1960s, the IRS investigated complaints that some churches abused their tax-exempt status by distributing literature that was hostile to the election of John F. Kennedy, the country’s first Catholic president. And in 2004, the federal agency audited All Saints Episcopal Church in California after a pastor gave an anti-war speech that imagined Jesus talking to presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry. The pastor did not endorse a candidate but criticized the Iraq war.

Some conservative groups have argued that Black churches are more politically active than their white evangelical counterparts but are not as heavily scrutinized. During the 1984 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Rev. Jesse L. Jackson was accused of turning Sunday sermons into campaign rallies and using Black churches to raise funds. In response to allegations of illegal campaigning, Jackson said at the time that strict guidelines were followed and denied violating the law.

While some Black churches have crossed the line into political endorsements, the long legacy of political activism in these churches stands in sharp contrast to white evangelical churches, where some pastors argue devout Christians must take control of government positions, said Robert Wuthnow, the former director of the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion.

Wuthnow said long-standing voter outreach efforts inside Black churches, such as Souls to the Polls, which encourages voting on Sundays after church services, largely stay within the boundaries of the law.

“The Black church has been so keenly aware of its marginalized position,” Wuthnow said. “The Black church, historically, was the one place where Black people could mobilize, could organize, could feel that they had some power at the local level. The white evangelical church has power. It’s in office. It’s always had power.”

At the end of his two-hour sermon that May, Burden asserted that his church had a God-given power to choose lawmakers, and he asked others to join him onstage to “secure the gate over the city.”

Burden and a handful of church members crouched down and held on to a rod, at times speaking in tongues. The pastor said intruders such as the mayor, who was not up for reelection last year but who supported one of the candidates in the race for City Council, would be denied access to the gates of the city.

“Now this is bold, but I’m going to say it because I felt it from the Lord. I felt the Lord say, ‘Revoke the mayor’s keys to this gate,’” Burden said. “No more do you have the key to the city. We revoke your key this morning, Mr. Mayor.

“We shut you out of the place of power,” Burden added. “The place of authority and influence.”

Johnson Amendment’s Cold War Roots

Questions about the political involvement of tax-exempt organizations were swirling when Congress ordered an investigation in April 1952 to determine if some foundations were using their money “for un-American and subversive activities.”

Leading the probe was Rep. Gene Cox, a Georgia Democrat who had accused the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, among others, of helping alleged Communists or Communist fronts. Cox died during the investigation, and the final report cleared the foundations of wrongdoing.

But a Republican member of the committee argued for additional scrutiny, and in July 1953, Congress established the House Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations. The committee focused heavily on liberal organizations, but it also investigated nonprofits such as the Facts Forum foundation, which was headed by Texas oilman H.L. Hunt, an ardent supporter of then-Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, a Republican who was best known for holding hearings to investigate suspected Communists.

In July 1954, Johnson, who was then a senator, proposed an amendment to the U.S. tax code that would strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status for “intervening” in political campaigns. The amendment sailed through Congress with bipartisan support and was signed into law by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Johnson never explained his intent. Opponents of the amendment, as well as some academics, say Johnson was motivated by a desire to undercut conservative foundations such as the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government, founded by newspaper magnate Frank Gannett, which painted the Democrat as soft on communism and supported his opponent in the primary election. Others have hypothesized that Johnson was hoping to head off a wider crackdown on nonprofit foundations.

Over the next 40 years, the IRS stripped a handful of religious nonprofits of their tax-exempt status. None were churches.

Then, just four days before the 1992 presidential election, Branch Ministries in New York ran two full-page ads in USA Today and The Washington Times urging voters to reject then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in his challenge to Republican President George H.W. Bush.

The ads proclaimed: “Christian Beware. Do not put the economy ahead of the Ten Commandments.” They asserted that Clinton violated scripture by supporting “abortion on demand,” homosexuality and the distribution of condoms to teenagers in public schools. Clinton, the ads said, was “openly promoting policies that are in rebellion to God’s laws.”

Via Pixabay.

The IRS revoked the church’s tax-exempt status, leading to a long legal battle that ended with a U.S. appeals court siding with the federal agency.

The case remains the only publicly known example of the IRS revoking the tax-exempt status of a church because of its political activity in nearly 70 years. The Congressional Research Service said in 2012 that a second church had lost its tax-exempt status, but that its identity “is not clear.”

Citing an increase in allegations of church political activity leading up to the 2004 presidential election between incumbent Bush and Kerry, IRS officials created the Political Activities Compliance Initiative to fast-track investigations.

Over the next four years, the committee investigated scores of churches, including 80 for endorsing candidates from the pulpit, according to IRS reports. But it did not revoke the tax-exempt status of any. Instead, the IRS mostly sent warning letters that agency officials said were effective in dissuading churches from continuing their political activity, asserting that there were no repeat offenders in that period.

In some cases, the IRS initiated audits of churches that could have led to financial penalties. It’s unclear how many did.

In January 2009, a federal court dismissed an auditinto alleged financial improprieties at a Minnesota church whose pastor had supported the congressional campaign of former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota.

The court found that the IRS had not been following its own rules for a decade because it was tasked with notifying churches of their legal rights before any pending audits and was required to have an appropriately high-level official sign off on them. But a 1998 agency reorganization had eliminated the position, leaving lower IRS employees to initiate church investigations.

Following the ruling, the IRS suspended its investigations into church political activity for five years, according to a 2015 Government Accountability Office report.

During the hiatus, a conservative Christian initiative called Pulpit Freedom Sunday flourished. Pastors recorded themselves endorsing candidates or giving political sermons that they believed violated the Johnson Amendment and sent them to the IRS. The goal, according to participants, was to trigger a lawsuit that would lead to the prohibition being ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The IRS never challenged participating churches, and the effort wound down without achieving its aim.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from ProPublica and the Tribune last year, the IRS produced a severely redacted spreadsheet indicating the agency had launched inquiries into 16 churches since 2011. IRS officials shielded the results of the probes, and they have declined to answer specific questions.

Despite the agency’s limited enforcement, Trump promised shortly after he took office that he would “totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.”

As president, Trump tried unsuccessfully to remove the restrictions on church politicking through a 2017 executive order. The move was largely symbolic because it simply ordered the government not to punish churches differently than it would any other nonprofit, according to a legal filing by the Justice Department.

Eliminating the Johnson Amendment would require congressional or judicial action.

Although the IRS has not discussed its plans, it has taken procedural steps that would enable it to ramp up audits again if it chooses to.

In 2019, more than two decades after eliminating the high-level position needed to sign off on action against churches, the IRS designated the commissioner of the agency’s tax-exempt and government entities division as the “appropriate high-level Treasury official” with the power to initiate a church audit.

But Philip Hackney, a former IRS attorney and University of Pittsburgh tax law professor, said he doesn’t read too much into that. “I don’t see any reason to believe that the operation of the IRS has changed significantly.”

The Pulpit and Politics

There is no uniform way to monitor church sermons across the country. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, many churches now post their services online, and ProPublica and the Tribune reviewed dozens of them. Many readers shared sermons with us. (You can do so here.)

Texas’ large evangelical population and history of activism in Black churches makes the state a focal point for debates over political activity, said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“Combine all of that with the increasing competitiveness of Texas elections, and it’s no surprise that more and more Texas churches are taking on a political role,” he said. “Texas is a perfect arena for widespread, religiously motivated political activism.”

The state also has a long history of politically minded pastors, Wuthnow said. Texas evangelical church leaders joined the fight in support of alcohol prohibition a century ago and spearheaded efforts to defeat Democrat Al Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated for president by a major party, in 1928. In the 1940s, evangelical fundamentalism began to grow in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Today, North Texas remains home to influential pastors such as Robert Jeffress, who leads the First Baptist megachurch in Dallas. Jeffress was one of Trump’s most fervent supporters, appearing at campaign events, defending him on television news shows and stating that he “absolutely” did not regret supporting the former president after the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

Burden went a step further, urging followers to stock up on food and keep their guns loaded ahead of President Joe Biden’s inauguration. He told parishioners that “prophetic voices” had told him in 2016 that Trump would have eight consecutive years in office.

The Frisco Conservative Coalition board voted to suspend Burden as chair for 30 days after criticism about his remarks.

Burden called his comments “inartful” but claimed he was unfairly targeted for his views. “The establishment media is coming after me,” he saidat the time. “But it is not just about me. People of faith are under attack in this country.”

Since then, Burden has repeatedly preached that the church has been designated by the Lord to decide who should serve in public office and “take dominion” over Frisco.

As the runoff for the Frisco City Council approached last year, Burden supported Jennifer White, a local veterinarian. White had positioned herself as the conservative candidate in the nonpartisan race against Angelia Pelham, a Black human resources executive who had the backing of the Frisco mayor.

White said she wasn’t in attendance during the May 2021 sermon in which Burden called her the “candidate that God wants to win.” She said she does not believe pastors should endorse candidates from the pulpit, but she welcomed churches becoming more politically active.

“I think that the churches over the years have been a big pretty big disappointment to the candidates in that they won’t take a political stance,” White said in an interview. “So I would love it if churches would go ahead and come out and actually discuss things like morality. Not a specific party, but at least make sure people know where the candidates stand on those issues. And how to vote based on that.”

Pelham’s husband, local pastor Dono Pelham, also made a statement that violated the Johnson Amendment by “indirectly intervening” in the campaign, said Ellen Aprill, an emerita tax law professor at Loyola Marymount Law School in Los Angeles

In May 2021, Pelham told his church that the race for a seat on the City Council had resulted in a runoff. He acknowledged that his church’s tax-exempt status prevented him from supporting candidates from the pulpit. Then, he added, “but you’ll get the message.”

“It’s been declared for the two candidates who received the most votes, one of which is my wife,” Pelham said. “That’s just facts. That’s just facts. That’s just facts. And so a runoff is coming and every vote counts. Be sure to vote.”

Pelham then asked the congregation: “How did I do? I did all right, didn’t I? You know I wanted to go a little further, but I didn’t do it.”

Angelia Pelham, who co-founded Life-Changing Faith Christian Fellowship in 2008 with her husband, said the couple tried to avoid violating the Johnson Amendment. Both disagreed that her husband’s mention of her candidacy was a violation.

“I think church and state should remain separate,” Angelia Pelham said in an interview, adding: “But I think there’s a lot of folks in the religious setting that just completely didn’t even consider the line. They erased it completely and lost sight of the Johnson Amendment.”

She declined to discuss Burden’s endorsement of her opponent.

In his sermon the morning after Pelham defeated his chosen candidate, Burden told parishioners that the church’s political involvement would continue.

“So you’re like, but you lost last night? No, we set the stage for the future,” he said, adding “God is uncovering the demonic structure that is in this region.”

“Demonic” Candidate

Most Americans don’t want pastors making endorsements from the pulpit, according to a 2017 survey by the Program for Public Consultation, which is part of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

Of the nearly 2,500 registered voters who were surveyed, 79% opposed getting rid of the Johnson Amendment. Only among Republican evangelical voters did a slight majority — 52% — favor loosening restrictions on church political activity.

But such endorsements are taking place across the country, with some pastors calling for a debate about the Johnson Amendment.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, New Mexico became an island of abortion access for women in Texas and other neighboring states.

The issue raised the stakes in the upcoming Nov. 8 New Mexico governor’s race between incumbent Lujan Grisham, a supporter of abortion rights, and Republican challenger Mark Ronchetti, who advocates limiting access.

“We’re going to fast become the No. 1 abortion place in all of America,” a pastor, Steve Smothermon, said during a July 10 sermon at Legacy Church in Albuquerque, which has an average weekly attendance of more than 10,000 people. Smotherman said the governor was “wicked and evil” and called her “a narcissist.”

“And people think, ‘Why do you say that?’ Because I truly believe it. In fact, she’s beyond evil. It’s demonic,” Smothermon said.

He later added: “Folks, when are we going to get appalled? When are we going to say, ‘Enough is enough’? When are we going to stop saying, ‘Well, you know, it’s a woman’s right to choose’? That’s such a lie.”

Church attendees had a stark choice in the upcoming election, Smothermon said. “We have the Wicked Witch of the North. Or you have Mark Ronchetti.”

The governor’s campaign declined to comment. Neither Legacy Church, Smothermon nor Ronchetti responded to requests for comment.

The sermon was a “clear violation” of the Johnson Amendment, said Sam Brunson, a Loyola University Chicago law professor. But Smothermon showed no fear of IRS enforcement.

Those who thought he crossed the line were “so stupid,” Smothermon said during the sermon. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

In another example, pastors at a Fort Worth church named Mercy Culture have repeatedly endorsed candidates for local and statewide offices since its founding in 2019.

“Now, obviously, churches don’t endorse candidates, but my name is Landon and I’m a person before I’m a pastor. And as an individual, I endorse Nate Schatzline,” the lead pastor, Landon Schott, said in a February sermon about a church member who was running to fill an open state representative seat.

Johnson Amendment rules allow pastors to endorse in their individual capacity, as long as they are not at an official church function, which Schott was.

In other services, Schott challenged critics to complain to the IRS about the church’s support of political candidates and said he wasn’t worried about losing the church’s tax-exempt status.

“If you want it that bad, come and take it. And if you think that we will stop preaching the gospel, speaking truth over taxes, you got another thing coming for you,” Schott said in May.

Schatzline, a member of Mercy Culture, received 65% of the vote in a May 24 runoff against the former mayor of the Dallas suburb of Southlake. He works for a separate nonprofit founded by Heather Schott, a pastor at Mercy Culture and the wife of Landon Schott.

Schatzline said in an interview with ProPublica and the Tribune that Landon Schott, not the church, endorsed him. He added that the church sought legal advice on how to ensure that it was complying with the Johnson Amendment.

“I think prayers can manifest into anything that God wants them to, but I would say that the community rallying behind me as individuals definitely manifested into votes,” Schatzline said.

Mercy Culture also supported Tim O’Hare, a Republican running for Tarrant County judge, this year after he came out against the shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. His opponent in the primary had ordered churches and businesses to temporarily close when she was mayor of Fort Worth.

O’Hare came to prominence as the mayor of suburban Farmers Branch, where he championed a city ordinance to prohibit landlords from renting to immigrants without legal status. A federal court declared the ordinance unconstitutional in 2010 after a legal battle that cost the city $6.6 million.

O’Hare has pledged to hire an election integrity officer to oversee voting and “uncover election fraud.”

“The Lord spoke to me and said, ‘Begin to pray for righteous judges in our city,’” Heather Schott said during a Feb. 13 service. “I am believing that Mr. Tim O’Hare is an answered prayer of what we have been petitioning heaven for for the last year and a half.”

Neither Mercy Culture, Landon Schott nor Heather Schott responded to requests for comment. O’Hare also did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.

Schott’s comments were a prohibited endorsement, said Aprill, the emerita tax law professor at Loyola Marymount Law School in Los Angeles.

“It doesn’t say ‘vote for him’ but is still an endorsement,” she said. “There’s no other way to understand the statement that O’Hare has answered prayers for righteous judges.”

Two weeks later, O’Hare won his primary. He faces Deborah Peoples, a Democrat, on Nov. 8.

A New Tactic

On April 18, 2021, a day before early voting began for city council and school board elections across Texas, pastors at churches just miles apart flashed the names of candidates on overhead screens. They told their congregations that local church leaders had gathered to discuss upcoming city and school elections and realized that their members were among those seeking office.

“We’re not endorsing a candidate. We’re not doing that. But we just thought because they’re a member of the family of God, that you might want to know if someone in the family and this family of churches is running,” said Robert Morris, who leads the Gateway megachurch in Southlake and served as a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board.

On the same day, Doug Page gave a similar message less than 5 miles away at First Baptist Grapevine.

“And so what we decided to do is look within our church families and say, ‘Who do we know that’s running for office?’ Now, let me clarify with you. This is not an endorsement by us. We are not endorsing anyone. However, if you’re part of a family, you’d like to know if Uncle Bill is running for office, right? And so that’s all we’re going to do is simply inform you.”

Saying that you are not endorsing a candidate “isn’t like a magic silver bullet that makes it so that you’re not endorsing them,” Brunson said.

The churches’ coordination on messaging across the area is notable, according to University of Notre Dame tax law professor Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, who said he hadn’t before seen churches organizing to share lists of candidates.

“I do think this strategy is new,” said Mayer, who has studied the Johnson Amendment for more than a decade. “I hadn’t heard of that before. It’s quite a sophisticated tactic.”

Eight of the nine candidates mentioned by the pastors won their races.

Mindy McClure, who ran for reelection to the Grapevine-Colleyville school board, said she thought church involvement contributed to her defeat in a June 5, 2021, runoff by about 4 percentage points. Her opponent campaigned on removing critical race theory from district curriculum, while McClure said students “weren’t being indoctrinated in any way, shape or form.” Critical race theory is a college-level academic theory that racism is embedded in legal systems.

McClure said pastors endorsing from the pulpit creates “divisiveness” in the community.

“Just because you attend a different church doesn’t mean that you’re more connected with God,” she said.

Lawrence Swicegood, executive director of Gateway Media, said this month that the church doesn’t endorse candidates but “inform(s) our church family of other church family members who are seeking office to serve our community.” Page told ProPublica and the Tribune that “these candidates were named for information only.”

Eleven days after responding to ProPublica and the Tribune in October, Morris once again told his church that he was not endorsing any candidates during the last Sunday sermon before early voting. Then, he again displayed the names of specific candidates on a screen and told parishioners to take screenshots with their cellphones.

“We must vote,” he said. “I think we have figured that out in America, that the Christians sat on the sidelines for too long. And then all of a sudden they started teaching our children some pretty mixed up things in the schools. And we had no one to blame but ourselves. So let’s not let that happen. Especially at midterms.”

Jeremy Schwartz is an investigative reporter for the ProPublica-Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative. He’s been a watchdog reporter in Texas for nearly a decade for the Austin American-Statesman and USA Today Network. His work has resulted in the overhaul of Texas’ inspection process for farmworker housing, sparked Congressional investigations of a failed Department of Veterans Affairs research program and uncovered misleading border arrest and drug seizure statistics maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Schwartz has won the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Latino Issues award for his 2017 investigation into the political underrepresentation of Latinos in Texas cities and counties, and the Headliners Foundation of Texas Reporter of the Year award, among other honors. He’s previously reported on Latin America from Mexico City.

Jessica Priest is ProPublica Engagement Reporter.

Via ProPublica

The protests in Iran are not only about compulsory veiling but about compulsory everything. Veiling has become a symbol for the government’s determination to control the bodies and private lives of citizens. That determination is behind a Draconian law passed last fall that severely restricts access to abortion. If you can’t tell whether I’m talking about Iran or Texas, it is because both are in the grip of theocracies.

The theocratic government of Iran wants to control the bodies and personal lives of women, just as Republican lawmakers in the United States do, with their anti-abortion stance. The Republican Party has come to be so tightly intertwined with the evangelical Christian community of the Bible Belt that it is a theocratic party itself, similar in some ways to the Principalists or hard liners in Iran. Just as Iranian hard liners are hostile to democracy, fearful that the people cannot be trusted to vote for the theologically correct position, so US Republicans have increasingly turned against democracy. Evangelicals are only 17% of the US population now, and are rapidly shrinking, so the only way they can impose their religious precepts on the rest of the population is through minority rule– enabled by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the legalization of dark money politics. The US wealthy for the most part have thrown in with the evangelicals to get tax breaks, since they can fly their wives to blue states or abroad for unwanted pregnancies and do not care what happens to the little people.

Just as Mahsa Amini was arrested by morals police in Iran, Brittney Poolaw and 1200 other women over the past fifteen years have been arrested in the United States for having a miscarriage, even where fetal failure to develop has been noted by medical examiners as a possible cause for the miscarriage.

Once the state legislates intervention in your body, you are not allowed to clothe it with tight jeans or to terminate an ectopic pregnancy without the state’s permission, even if that puts your life in danger. Once a political party becomes an instrument of theocracy, it feels a compulsion to impose its theology on everyone. In liberal (with a small ‘l’) political thought, which includes parliamentary conservatism, law is an expression of the majority of the elected representatives of the people. One can dislike a law, but a classic liberal must admit the validity of the law if it derived from that majority.

Theocracy is profoundly anti-liberal. Theocrats believe society must be governed in accordance with God’s will as they interpret it. Many theocrats are not clerics. Many of them wear tailored business suits. From a theocratic point of view, Roe v. Wade was illegitimate even though it was the ruling of a majority of a Supreme Court that had been appointed and voted in by the elected president and Senate. Roe was illegitimate despite being the law of the land because it violated God’s law, the theocrats said. They like to substitute themselves for “God.” Moreover, it had been rooted in a legal theory of the constitutional right to individual privacy, a theory that had itself to be razed to the ground if illiberal theocracy were going to prevail. Theocracy does not recognize a right to privacy, i.e., to individuals’ control over their bodies.

The office of Iran’s clerical leader operates under the theory of the “Guardianship of the Jurisprudent” (Velayat-e faqih). The origins of this ideology, adumbrated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (d. 1989), lay in Shiite Muslim canon law concerning widows, orphans and other individuals in society who needed a male guardian but had no family member to serve in that capacity.

Earlier religious jurists had stipulated that a qualified cleric should step in to fill this role of guardian. Khomeini expanded this conception, arguing that the cleric is the guardian of all the state’s subjects. All of them, including free adult males, are by this theory wards of the state where clerics control the state. Ideally, the guardian would be a vicar of the Prophet Muhammad, but Twelver Shiites believe that the Prophet’s line ended with the Twelfth Imam, who went into occultation and would one day emerge to restore the world to justice. The return of the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, for Shiites is analogous to the Christian belief in the return of Christ.

Until that time, Khomeini argued, clerics should rule in the stead of the Twelfth Imam, since their study of the Qur’an and of the sayings and doings of the twelve Imams made it likely that they would do best at approximating the decisions he would take if he were present.

Likewise, more that 3/4s of Republican evangelicals want to declare the United States a “Christian” state, essentially repealing the First Amendment with its Establishment Cause. They want to control people’s bodies in the U.S., even if they have to do it undemocratically, just as the ayatollahs have the same goal in Iran. Iran has the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent. America’s Red States have the Guardianship of the Pastor and Priest. In neither case are we autonomous adults. We are wards of the state, reduced to being juveniles in custody.

Because of evangelical Republican rule of some US states, we already have elements of the Christian Republic of America, to mirror the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Christian missionaries are now settling in the occupied areas of Palestine, and benefitting from Israeli land grab policies. American Evangelicals have allied with far right Zionist settlers to further entrench an imperial presence in occupied Palestine. Missionaries have been in Palestine since 1819.

Though the United States was founded on freedom of and from religion, Evangelical Americans set out to “save” American Indians, Jews, Catholics and other non-believers since before the Salem Witch Trials. They imported a narrow interpretation of Biblical myth, which they implemented in the name of Jesus. Non-believers were to be converted or smote. Jews are to be rounded up so the Apocalypse can commence. While they aid and abet the Jewish state in solidifying the occupation of Palestine, they fantasize about an Apocalypse, during which Jews must convert to Christianity or suffer in hell.

Har Bracha, is an Orthodox Jewish settlement staffed by American evangelicals from HaYovel, to support their mutual interests in Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank.* Hayovel (The Harvest) is a “faith-based service organization” of Christian missionaries that recruits young Evangelicals to Israel to “plant trees, harvest grapes and prune vines.” They position this as an opportunity to “fulfill Biblical prophecy.” This supports Israeli imperialism and defies international law at the same time. Planting trees is a noble act to support and enrich the earth. In this case, it’s also a front to further entrench the Israeli occupation of Palestine; this time for the benefit of Christians, not Jews. It is an unlawful land grab occurring on land owned by Palestinians.

That land had been regularly cultivated by Palestinians until the 2^nd Intifada ended in 2005, at which point they were banished from their own land. It was vacant; it wasn’t abandoned. Hayovel filled that vacuum as if no one ever claimed title to it, thereby contributing to Israel’s unlawful occupation. Some Jewish settlers used to be squeamish about sharing Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) with their Evangelical brethren, until they recognized their common ground. A press release states, “One of Hayovel’s main beliefs is that Judea and Samaria are part of Israel’s biblical heartland, which is why they are focusing their tree-planting efforts specifically in these areas,”

The Greening Israel Project is a tree planting project started by Norwegian Christian missionaries. Hayovel has become its most visible and active proponent, and is an American organization with 501 (c) 3 status. Arguably, this activity violates the terms of their status, as they have to be registered as a 501 (c) 4, to legally engage in political activism. They acknowledges that they don’t have legal rights to plant this land and say,” We do not own any of the land where we plant trees. We work closely with individual farmers, local Jewish communities, and local municipality governments. Most of the Greening Israel Project forestry sites are located on land owned and controlled by the State of Israel.” The problem is that the local farmers are Palestinians banished from their land, so the land is not “owned and controlled by the state of Israel.” Even Israel claims to own only 10% of that land.

Hayovel founder Tommy Waller said, “From our perspective, they (Palestinians) don’t have jurisdiction over that land.” He added, “I don’t want you to think we’re some sort of evil people who want to hurt Palestinians. That’s not who we are. We’re just all about the land. For us, seeing the land come alive is what the prophets spoke about, and this is like a biblical mandate for us.” Waller and his family live on Har Bracha.

Evangelical imperialism is a new dynamic. The economic brand goes back to the Romans and other empires that have come and gone. Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are men of ice cream and Jews of principle. They don’t want their products sold in the occupied areas of Palestine. But Unilever, the company that bought the brand defied its founders, by resuming sales in the occupied territories in June. Ben and Jerry’s thoughtful objections have elicited allegations of “anti-Semitism”. Right-wing settlers and Evangelists love their Chunky Monkey too.

The new licensee for B&J’s in Israel is American Quality Product, owner Avi Zinger. He said, “There is no place for discrimination in the commercial sale of ice cream. It has always been important to me to ensure that all customers – no matter their identity – are free to enjoy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.” As it turns out, Unilever was blackmailed into resuming sales in the settler territories by Israeli PM Naftali Bennett, who warned of “severe consequences” for all Unilever Israeli food brands, if they didn’t resume sales.

This is a reaction to the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement. Thirty-five states have anti-BDS legislation in effect, which infringes on First Amendment-Free Speech rights. This is constitutionally troublesome because it directly conflicts with Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution. Ultimately, anti-BDS laws enable local governments to quash political dissent. Israel’s Evangelical supporters have been a huge contributor to the anti-BDS movement, and now require allegiance to Zionism as a tenant of faith. The common thread is an oppressive right-wing dynamic to solidify right wing power in Israel and deny Palestinian self-determination.

*Revised 1 Sept. 2022 to acknowledge the difference between the two.

Alito posed as a defender of religious freedom, but what he seemed to mean by that was the religious people who are bigoted against gays shouldn’t have to serve gay people. This is, by the way, the same argument that bigoted white evangelicals deployed against desegregation — they didn’t think they should be made to serve people with the mark of Cain and that their bigotry was inherent in their religion. If Alito’s notion of religious freedom prevails and is reinforced, you have to wonder whether we don’t go back to Jim Crow Apartheid.

de Vogue explains,

“In 2021, the court said that Philadelphia violated the First Amendment when it froze the contract of a Catholic foster agency that refused to work with same-sex couples as potential foster parents because the agency believes that marriage should be between a man and woman. Alito wrote separately to complain that the court hadn’t gone far enough in its opinion and should have made it much more difficult for the government to enforce laws that burden some individuals’ religious beliefs.”

Alito went on to say, that he saw a challenge in convincing “people that religious liberty is worth defending if they don’t think that religion is a good thing that deserves protection.”

Alito’s pose as a mere beleagured defender of “religious liberty” attempts to conceal his role as a reactionary attempting to carve out civil rights exceptions for the religious that allow them to injure the rights of other Americans on the basis of their faith. That isn’t religious liberty, it is religious license, and the Founding Fathers tried to get rid of religious license with the Establishment Clause.

Ironically, even as Alito has managed to impose 20th century Roman Catholic dogma on all Americans, striking down any right to privacy or for women to control their own bodies, he is puzzled as to why anyone would be hostile to his agenda. Jewish Americans have pointed out that he has taken away their rabbinical right to an abortion and given control of Jewish women’s lives in the Red states over to right wing Christians.

That isn’t religious liberty. It is the tyranny of a religious majority.

As for the place of religion in American life, it is rapidly declining. The US was unusual in the period between the end of WW II and about 1990, among industrialized democracies, in having very high rates of self-reported belief in God and church membership and attendance.

On the order of 40% of French did not believe in God in the late 20th and early 21st century. The figure today is a majority, 51%.

In contrast, until the 1990s only 2% of Americans said that the had no religion, and even in the 1990s that figure only rose to 8%.

This year, Gallup found that religious “nones,” people who say they don’t believe in God or have no religion, are up to 19%. Only 81% of Americans now believe in God, by Gallup’s projection.

But get this: 11% of Americans don’t think that the God they believe in hears prayers or intervenes in the world. I.e. they hold that he is not what the theologians would call “provident.” Then another 28% believe in God and think he hears their prayers, but they also don’t think he intervenes in this world.

Thomas Jefferson’s Deism has won! Only 40% of Americans, a minority, believe in a God who hears prayers and answers them!

Historian Bradley C. Thompson wrote, “This much can be said with confidence: when Jefferson wrote of “Nature’s God” he almost certainly meant the impersonal, far-removed, deist God that set the world in motion according to the laws that were meant to govern in his absence. The Declaration’s God is not the God of the Old Testament (nor is it even the God of the New Testament) but is Nature’s God.”

This decline of religion is in part generational. Alito is 72 and his was the generation when only 2% did not believe in God.

Among young adults in the US, according to Gallup, 32% do not believe in God.

Self-identified liberals are even less religious than the Millennials and Gen Z. Only 62% of them say they believe in God.

It isn’t clear what has driven this stampede away from the church. But sociologists have some ideas.

Patricia Wittberg notes that “young adult Catholic women are now less observant in their attendance, less orthodox in their beliefs, and less likely to remain Catholic than young adult Catholic males.” She notes that it has been suggested that they are alienated by a male-dominated church hierarchy. I don’t think she’s giving enough weight to the Church’s anti-abortion, anti-birth control stances, which directly and negatively affect young women.

I confidently predict a further outflow of young American women from the church in the wake of Alito’s Dobbs decision, because he has made it crystal clear that elderly religious Catholic males are not the friends of young women.

Many youth were also raised by Baby-Boomer parents who themselves were open-minded about religion and perhaps not very observant.

A 2019 poll found that fully 37% of American Catholics are considering leaving the church over the priest pedophilia scandals.

It has been suggested that many younger Americans have dissociated themselves from their parents’ church because churches have tended to be homophobic and hostile to gay rights, whereas acceptance of gays is at 72% among US youth. You hate to hear your pastor or priest badmouth your LBGTQ friends.

If Alito, Thomas and other religious conservatives overturn gay marriage rights, they will be further driving young people away from religion.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic has cut church attendance in half, and many pastors think the congregations are never coming back. Donations are way off in consequence, as well.

So, Alito is being disingenuous in representing himself as merely fighting for religious “liberty.” He is fighting to let religious people refuse to serve the rest of us and to allow them to dictate our behavior according to their theology. Most ironically of all, Alito may single-handedly have killed off religion in the United States in the coming generation by associating religion with the end of women’s rights.

A devastating yearlong investigation into the executive committee of the largest conservative evangelical denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, has documented widespread claims of sex abuse including accusations of rape, cover-ups and gross mistreatment of women seeking justice.

In 2019 the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News partnered on a series of investigative reports on sexual misconduct by Southern Baptists with formal church roles. Subsequently, the annual meeting of the SBC held in June 2021 voted to authorize an investigations firm, Guidepost Solutions, to conduct an independent probe of its executive committee and its handling of sex abuse. The report and the list of alleged offenders has recently been made public.

I am a scholar of evangelicalism, gender and American culture, and over several years of my research I have seen how deeply ingrained aspects of conservative white evangelicalism force women to stay silent. In researching my two books, “Evangelical Christian Women” and “Building God’s Kingdom,” I found how structures of patriarchy force women to stay silent.

These deeply ingrained aspects of conservative white evangelicalism include “complementarianism,” or the patriarchal view that God gives authority to men and requires submission from women, and purity culture, an extreme version of sexual abstinence.

Purity culture

The SBC’s “True Love Waits,” a premarital abstinence campaign for teens launched in 1992, was an important component of the rise of purity culture. It was best known for the purity rings that girls wore as part of a pledge to their virginity to God and family.

More than merely the value of forgoing sex until marriage, purity culture centers sexual purity as a primary measure of the value of young women, who need to remain “pure” to attract a godly man in marriage. Sex education is virtually nonexistent, and dating is traded for “courtship” leading to marriage, under the authority of the girl’s father.

As author Linda Kay Klein writes in her book “Pure,” women are taught that they are responsible not only for their own purity, but for the purity of the males around them. Women are also made to believe that they are responsible if men are led to sin by what women wear. Additionally, they can be blamed for being inadequately submissive and for speaking up when they should be quiet. Women raised with these teachings also report experiencing tremendous fear and shame around issues of gender, sex and marriage.

The rhetoric of purity culture can be traced directly to the racist origins of the Southern Baptist Convention. The defense of slavery was the very foundation upon which the denomination was built, and the protection of the “purity of white womanhood” was a the justification for the perpetuation of white supremacy that outlived slavery.

How survivors described the abuse

Credibly accused men were protected by the SBC, while the women who dared to speak up were called sluts, adulteresses, Jezebels and even agents of Satan. For example, the report details the story of one woman whose abuse was mischaracterized by the SBC’s Baptist Press as a consensual affair and she was harassed online and called an adulteress. She ultimately lost her job at a Southern Baptist organization.

The report, which the former SBC leader Russell Moore calls “apocalyptic,” details harassment, insults and attacks on social media, some of which came from Baptist leaders to whom the women had been taught God required them to revere and submit. For example, the executive staff member at the center of handling abuse accusations, Augie Boto, characterized the survivors seeking justice as doing the work of Satan.

Survivor after survivor described their treatment at the hands of their own leaders as worse than their initial assaults. One survivor told investigators that when she provided details of her sexual abuse as a child among other things, one Executive Committee (EC) member “turn(ed) his back to her while she was speaking … and another EC member chortl(ed).”

“I ask you to try to imagine what it’s like to speak about something so painful to a room in which men disrespect you in such a way. … to speak about this horrific trauma of having my pastor repeatedly rape me as a child, only to have religious leaders behave in this way,” she said.

Shaming and silencing women

When victims are permitted to tell their stories to people in authority, it is likely to be an all-male committee including perhaps friends of the accused.

In such a hearing women – who because of purity culture practices have often been taught to always be modest and quiet in mixed company and may have had little to no sex education – are asked to detail what they often say is the most painful experience of their lives. Purity culture creates in women a strong sense of shame surrounding their bodies, their own sexuality, and sex in general. When they exhibit evidence of that shame it is taken as an admission that they share responsibility for the abuse.

Like their forebears before them who mobilized the mythic purity of white womanhood to shore up their power, today’s leaders at the center of this report remain male and overwhelmingly white. They use the language of purity culture to shame and silence women seeking justice while, at the same time, leading the charge in the fight against coming to terms with racism.

Can there be real reform?

The chairman of the SBC executive committee, Rolland Slade, and interim President and CEO Willie McLaurin said in a statement, in response to the report: “We are grieved by the findings of this investigation. We are committed to doing all we can to prevent future instances of sexual abuse in churches, to improve our response and our care, to remove reporting roadblocks.” Other Baptists too have expressed shock and anger at the revelations.

The Guidepost Solutions report concludes with a series of strategies such as forming an independent committee to oversee reforms, including providing resources for prevention and reporting of abuse. As helpful as these strategies may be, they don’t address how the underlying culture of the SBC continues to maintain the structures of white patriarchy.

Julie Ingersoll, Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Florida

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