Tag: religious right

How the coronavirus has exposed the religious right’s racism

AlterNet logoOn March 10, President Trump retweeted a post from conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, who referred to the coronavirus (COVID-19) as the “China Virus.“ Kirk also exclaimed in his tweet, “Now, more than ever, we need the wall…the US stands a chance if we can get control of our borders.” Trump retweeted this and added the comment, “Going up fast. We need the wall more than ever!”

At first blush, this exchange might seem like the garden-variety white nationalist xenophobia characteristic of Trump or many of his influential supporters. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and GOP House Representative Kevin McCarthy, in fact, have both insisted on continuing to call the disease the “Chinese Coronavirus.” But Trump’s retweet, and where it originates, helps shed light not only on the Right’s brazen xenophobia, but on the link between America’s supposed religious heritage and fears of ethnic pollution.

Charlie Kirk is co-founder of Liberty University’s Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty. The Falkirk Center is described by Liberty’s newspaper as a “modern think tank set to renew and defend God-given freedoms and Christian principles throughout American politics and culture.” Continue reading.

Trump’s ‘conscience rule’ for health providers blocked by federal judge

Washington Post logoA federal judge on Wednesday voided the Trump administration’s “conscience rule” that would have allowed health-care providers to refuse to participate in abortions, sterilizations or other types of care they disagree with on religious or moral grounds.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan declared the rule unconstitutional in a 147-page decision that said it was “shot through with glaring legal defects.” The rule had been set to go into effect later this month.

The judge said the administration’s central justification of a “significant increase” in complaints related to conscience violations “is flatly untrue. This alone makes the agency’s decision to promulgate the rule arbitrary and capricious.”

View the complete November 6 article by Yasmeen Abutaleb on The Washington Post website here.

The religious right’s embrace of Trump’s GOP is driving people away from the Church: Christian author

AlterNet logoAppearing on CNN to promote his book “The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power over Christian Values,” conservative columnist Ben Howe explained that the symbiotic relationship between an increasingly radicalized Republican Party and evangelical leaders is making people considering becoming Christians reconsider.

Speaking with host John Berman, Howe — who stated that he is the son of a Southern Baptist pastor who had ties to Jerry Falwell Sr. — said the evangelical alignment with Trump — despite all of the baggage he carries which Christians previously found offensive in former President Bill Clinton — has been off-putting to people on the fence when it comes to joining a church.

“Something I’ve encountered a lot, and I’ve seen Christians use to explain other things in their lives, [is that] when something doesn’t go right often people will say it’s God’s will,” he explained. “Well, when you want something to go right and you want to support something for instance that you normally shouldn’t or wouldn’t have like Donald Trump, one of the quickest ways to rationalize that is to say God’s all-powerful and all-knowing and he’s using this man for a specific purpose in the same way God used King Cyrus for instance, that he’s a vessel.”

View the complete August 13 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

The evangelical right wants you to pray for Trump — and forget their shameful smearing of Obama

Franklin Graham and several so-called Christian (religious right) leaders want Sunday to be designated as a day of prayer for Donald Trump under the guise that he is facing attacks like no president has before. The irony is that a  number of these “concerned folks” spent the last eight years smearing and demonizing President Barack Obama in some of the nastiest tones and untrue claims. From questioning his citizenship to claiming that he is paving the way for the Anti-Christ, their attacks had the same slanderous theme – that Obama was a Manchurian candidate who hated Christianity, hated America, and was doing everything in his power to destroy the country:

Franklin Graham once claimed that Russian president Putin’s persecution of his country’s gay citizens was more noble than Obama supporting LGBTQ equality?  Graham also helped to spread the nonsense that Obama wasn’t an American citizen?

Alan Keyes, who Obama defeated for the Senate seat from Illinois in 2004, once called Obama a “radical communist.” He also stoked the birther controversy regarding Obama to the point of pushing an unsuccessful lawsuit about it. In addition, Keyes said that Obama was destroying everything American.

View the complete June 2 article from the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.