Quote:
Originally Posted by detbuch
QUOTE=Pete F.;1194305]There is no right to riot... But there is a fundamental—a Constitutional—right to protest, and I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop.
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If you don't want him to "hide" in a bunker, then if he comes out, wherever he goes, the secret service along with law enforcement will clear out the area. This is what happens with every President, especially in dangerous situations.
Nobody made him go across the street for a photo op. Ask the rector, who was driven off church property with tear gas, flashbangs and rubber bullets. Nothing was dangerous until the federal officers attacked.
The Word of God is not a prop. Holding up the Bible, regardless of its orientation, is an affirmation of the importance of its message in times when we especially need to adhere to its Words. You may wish to scoff at his sincerity, but you could do that to Christ himself, as did the Pharisees when he spoke the Word of God to them.
When you have your daughter bring the Bible in her pocketbook and she hands it to you just before you do your pose, you are using it as a prop.
Your using his holding up the Word of God as insincere is using the Word of God as a prop to attack him. You can't know what he honestly thinks about the Bible and God's Word. Christ was closest to the simple sinners who sought his help, rather than the know it all and haughty self-righteous who thought they were better. He forgave and saved several sinners, including the thief on the cross if they professed to believe in him, on the spot.
Trump's past life does not discount that he has had a come to Jesus moment. But, then, you think you know it all.
Many, who you may mock, think that the Word of God is what's needed more than anything at this troubled time in or nation.
But you may think you know all that's needed to judge them[/QUOTE]
Which word of god, do you speak of?
Here's some history of Neo-Confederate, white-identity, apocalyptic evangelicalism, that some call the Cult of the Shining City.
This is who Donald Trump was messaging yesterday with his bible stunt.
For starters, the Cult of the Shining City is not an organized group. The members, most of them, believe they're just evangelicals. There are members with power who use them and manipulate them.
But there are millions of them, and they worship Donald Trump like a messiah.
None of this is tin-foil hat stuff. It's not about smoky rooms. It's the hidden history of how America's Right has been co-opted into an apocalyptic fantasy that currently threatens our safety and the safety of the world.
This is history, not conjecture. It's how we got here.
Trump's photo-op yesterday seemed bizarre to everyone but people who grew up in white-identity, apocalyptic evangelicalism.
This was a choreographed messaged that Trump is engaging in a holy battle on behalf of God and Christians, but also a possible call to violence.
Not every Cult of the Shining City member believes Trump is a messiah, but almost all believe he is a holy man fighting on their behalf.
The beliefs vary, but it is an apocalyptic cult that Trump has used to build his base.
To begin, we have to start with the Confederate States of America. Secession was done, in part, based on the belief that the North had violated God's racist commandments.
They believed in "an Almighty God" who crowned white people as his champions on Earth.
The Confederate States of America was an explicitly Christian nation, in definition and practice. The society was built upon the idea that God was a white supremacist being who ordered whites to enslave lesser people.
White supremacist Christianity was the CSA's reality.
Confederate preachers like Benjamin M Palmer warned of "perilous atheists" in the North who sought to betray the racist God's white supremacy religion.
They preached that slavery and white supremacy were ordained by God and that the North was becoming devilish.
The Confederacy split not only politically, but religiously. They claimed to continue the heritage of the original United States, and claimed to be the real America.
This was based on their religious belief in a white supremacist God and also political advantage.
Contrary to popular belief, the Confederacy didn't consider itself a separate country, but the actual America and the heritage of the Founding Fathers.
They embraced George Washington, particularly, as Jefferson Davis was sworn in under a memorial to him.
Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders blamed the people's lack of faith in the racist God for their defeats, ordering days of humiliation and fasting in order to get right.
Failure was seen as God's fury for disbelief in his white supremacist orders.
When the Civil War ended, it was seen as a reunification of culture, but the Confederate Christianity didn't just go away. Southern preachers continued preaching that God was a white supremacist and that blacks were to be subjugated and enslaved.
It stills exists now.
One of the Southern preachers who believed in God-ordained white supremacy was Jerry Falwell, whose ministry held segregation as a Godly decree and any attempt toward equality the work of Satan.
Falwell called segregation a "line drawn by God" and warned that any attempt to desegregate or dismantle white supremacy was the work of the Devil and would draw God's anger.
Like Confederate preachers of old.
Civil Rights protests gained the attention of Confederate Christians like Falwell, who charged that protestors were doing Satan's work and were being "manipulated" by outside forces, including Communists and anarchists. It was a charge of spiritual war.
Despite popular history claiming Martin Luther King was beloved, he was treated like a satanic antichrist, using Christianity for nefarious purposes people like Falwell and segregationists claimed were Communist and devilish purposes.
Falwell aired his suspicions about MLK and disputed his social justice interpretation of the Bible.
To counteract, Falwell and others actively moved their faith toward hidden white supremacy through ideas of power and economic success.
All tenets of white supremacy.
The new Evangelical Right was white supremacist and Neo-Confederate in nature, but hid that prejudice behind the idea of morality and achieving success through the economic world.
Christianity was about power and profit. Fascistic pursuits behind a smiling veneer.