"Leo’s willingness to stand up to the end product of that rightward decline, the shallowest public figure in human history, may inspire the resurgent liberals from the Protestant tradition. If he can stand up to the president, they can perhaps find more voice to reclaim their heritage from the evangelicals who have walked away with the cross and the Bible in recent decades."

#PopeLeo #Trump #Hegseth #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals
/13

"Because the theology that underlays the whole white rightwing megachurch evangelical movement is unforgivably shallow. ... The depth of white evangelical theology is demonstrated by the fact that 70% of its adherents still support Trump, even after the carnival of racism, cruelty and blasphemy they’ve witnessed in the second term. The movement’s 'spiritual formation' has been tested and found wanting."

#PopeLeo #Trump #Hegseth #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals
/12

"He was overseas while that was going on, mostly in Peru, ministering to the poor. In some ways, his seems like a 1960s or 70s Christianity, preserved by circumstance. And he speaks midwestern American English, easy for everyone to understand, hard for anyone to undercut. ...

And in response, Trump and Hegseth had … nothing."

#PopeLeo #Trump #Hegseth #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals
/11

"Which brings us to the pope, the American pope, who has taken on Maga’s regressive form of Christianity more memorably & powerfully than any religious leader in recent history. Leo grew up in this country in precisely that period when the church was transitioning, post-Vatican II, to a more liberal tone. He left America before the church fathers turned rightward with their grim obsession with a woman’s right to choose."

#PopeLeo #Trump #Hegseth #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals
/10

"The first person to really stand up to Donald Trump in the days after his inauguration, as he launched his blitzkrieg of rightwing change, was Episocal bishop Mariann Budde….

There were a great many different forces behind the magnificent display of non-violent resistance in Minneapolis this winter, but one of them was the Lutheran church, dominant in the region and with a long tradition of immigration advocacy."

#PopeLeo #Trump #Hegseth #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals
/9

(continued from /8)

"have grown old unchallenged in their thinking that scripture somehow demands the various cruelties we’ve seen play out in the 'culture wars'.

But it doesn’t. In fact, for most of American history Christianity has been read in the opposite way, as a liberating force."

#PopeLeo #Trump #Hegseth #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals
/8

"Hegseth’s denominational leader, Doug Wilson, has gotten far more airtime than the heads of the much larger Protestant traditions, because they don’t do insane things like demanding women give up the vote. Partly as a result, a generation of Americans has grown up convinced that Christianity is a freak show, and another generation – those inside the evangelical tent –" (continued in /8)

#PopeLeo #Trump #Hegseth #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals
/7

(continued from /5)

"it’s producing the sudden recognition that a kind of progressive Christianity long given over for dead seems to be stirring. …

Real Christianity is always journalistically represented by evangelicalism – everyone knows its stars, the Franklin Grahams and the Paula Whites, the layers-on-of-hands in the Oval Office."

#PopeLeo #Trump #Hegseth #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals
/6

Focusing on the senior advisor to Trump's Faith Office Paula White-Cain, Oliver Markus Malloy concludes:

"America is the Jerry Springer show of the world."

#Trump #Republicans #MAGA #corruption #WhiteChristianNationalism #PaulaWhite #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteSupremacy #cruelty #immigrants
/4

https://www.atheist.guide/p/this-is-the-con-artist-trump-picked

"They were fastened tightly together by the abortion issue, the key element of the culture war. Their fusion was a carefully engineered political operation."

And now Trump has torn that engineered fusion to bits, though whether some Catholics in the US will continue to follow their savior figure regardless of his attacks on their pope remains to be seen.

#PopeLeo #Trump #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #Catholics #morality
/4