Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Roisin Ni Fiachra

(2,574 posts)
Fri Feb 5, 2021, 09:01 AM Feb 2021

It's Time to Talk About Violent Christian Extremism

For two decades, the U.S. government has been engaging with faith leaders in Muslim communities at home and around the world in an attempt to stamp out extremism and prevent believers vulnerable to radicalization from going down a path that leads to violence.

Now, after the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory helped to motivate the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with many participants touting their Christian faith — and as evangelical pastors throughout the country ache over the spread of the conspiracy theory among their flocks, and its very real human toll — it’s worth asking whether the time has come for a new wave of outreach to religious communities, this time aimed at evangelical Christians.
.........
She sees QAnon’s popularity among certain segments of Christendom not as an aberration, but as the troubling-but-natural outgrowth of a strain of American Christianity. In this tradition, one’s belief is based less on scripture than on conservative culture, some political disagreements are seen as having nigh-apocalyptic stakes and “a strong authoritarian streak” runs through the faith. For this type of believer, love of God and love of country are sometimes seen as one and the same.
..............
“[Christian nationalists] see it in cataclysmic terms: This is the moment, and God’s going to judge us,” she says. “When you paint it in existential terms like that, a lot of people feel justified to carry out acts of violence in the name of their faith.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/04/qanon-christian-extremism-nationalism-violence-466034


The whitewashing of fascism, in all its manifestations needs to stop. It's not Christian Nationalism, it is Christo-Fascism. Fascism, by any other name, still stinks like fascism. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has grown to the point where it has become an immediate threat and clear and present danger to democracy, Freedom of Religion, and objective government of the US.

Real Freedom of Religion means freedom from legally mandated Religion, the right to practice the faith and belief of our choosing, as well as to not practice any faith or belief at all if we choose. Freedom of Religion means living under laws that are not based in, and on, subjective religious dogma. Authoritarian psycho puritan Qhristo-Fascists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and her Qpublican party have become a threat to democracy, the US government, and the lives of innocent people, as their attack on our nation's Capitol and both houses of Congress have clearly illustrated.

I, for one, welcome our new authoritarian Qhristo-fascist Qpublican overlords!

Prayer time begins at 8:00


Christian Fascism

Christian fascism denotes the intersection between fascism and Christianity and it also encompasses the fascistic, totalitarian, and imperialistic aspects of the Christian church. It is sometimes referred to as "Christofascism", a neologism coined by liberation theologist Dorothee Sölle in 1970.

George Hunsinger, director of the Centre for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, regards the conception of Christofascism as being an attack, at a very sophisticated level of theological discourse, on the biblical depiction of Jesus. He equates what is viewed as Christofascism with "Jesus Christ as depicted in Scripture" and contrasts it with the "nonnormative Christology" that is offered as an alternative by some theologians, which he characterizes as extreme relativism that reduces Jesus Christ to "an object of mere personal preference and cultural location" and that he finds difficult to see as not contributing to the same problems encountered by the Christian church in Germany that were noted by theologian Karl Barth.
.........
Chris Hedges and David Neiwert contend that the origins of American Christofascism date back to the Great Depression, when Americans first espoused forms of fascism that were "explicitly 'Christian' in nature".[11]:88 Hedges writes that "fundamentalist preachers such as Gerald B. Winrod and Gerald L. K. Smith fused national and Christian symbols to advocate the country's first crude form of Christo-fascism".[12] Smith's Christian Nationalist Crusade stated that a "Christian character is the basis of all real Americanism".[12] Hedges also believes that William Dudley Pelley was another prominent advocate of Christofascism.

By the late 1950s, adherents of these philosophies founded the John Birch Society, whose policy positions and rhetoric have greatly influenced modern dominionists.[12] Likewise, the Posse Comitatus movement was founded by former associates of Pelley and Smith. The 1980s saw the founding of the Council for National Policy[12] and the Moral Majority[13][14] carry on the tradition, while the patriot and militia movements represented efforts to mainstream the philosophy in the 1990s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fascism
Latest Discussions»General Discussion»It's Time to Talk About V...